November 14, 2024 • 44 mins
On todays show we talk injuries. While the Hawks made it deep into the season with a generally healthy squad, with just 2 games left the nicks and bruises have caught up with them and are now affecting major positions on both sides of the ball. We talk what injury protocol looks like, what the steps are for return to play, which staff has control over certain parts of the process, how integrating a player back into practice looks, the relationship that is necessary between athletic trainers and the strength staff, and improper injury treatment can end someone's career.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A relatively healthy front of the season has turned into
what all Division one college football teams try to stay
away from, and that is fighting your way through injuries
and trying to maintain the health of your team. Sullivan
goes out and we have to bring in a four
string quarterback. Higgins gets nicked up as well. Today we
discussed what injury protocol looks like inside a Division one
(00:21):
football program. Hope you enjoy. Let's have a day. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
What's on, Brenda? I actually got this hat when the
brand new room was done.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Because they did it all out right.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
M I should have been rogue, of course you'd say that.
And it shouldn't be a weight for the should be
a box.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I don't necessarily love box.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But are we wearing the same hoodie today? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I've got the same one on again.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Let's go see in my office here, I just have
I just have sweatshirts or other relevant podcast t shirts
that we've done because I don't have to really get
dressed for work. But then if I'm wearing like a
something like if I if I'm wearing something that's like
doesn't look good on like a clip, that might be
like There's been several times where I'm wearing like a
(01:39):
pink shirt and I'm talking about Iowa football. It's like,
who is this guy? Like if someone comes across this,
They're like, who's this slappy? There you go talking about
Iowa football. So I try to keep that a hat
or two around.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Oh how you doing, I'm good man, I'm uh, you know,
there's it's the bye week. I listened to your guys's
uh the recap episode and it was not talked about
the fact that Brian Farrens works at Maryland.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Well it's because we haven't previewed Maryland yet.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Okay I didn't, but I was just surprised that he
didn't get brought up.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Like I was like, man, this is who who kind
of forgotten about too when the like when when coaches
go in because I don't know what his title is
over there, analyst or.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Something like that, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
They I don't know how they create those, and like
there's no there's no is there a limit to how
many like analysts the team can have?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Probably not. I mean the guy that I worked for
at Towson is an analyst over there right now too,
Rob Ambrose.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Because there's only ten official position like assistant coaches on
a on a staff, and that switched from nine when
I think like my senior year.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, and I forget who they added as that extra
coach because that's when LeVar went from doing because LeVar
was like was he was outside linebacker and then he
went to you know, tight end and special teams and
then it was just special teams only. And I forget.
I think I don't know who that.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I don't know who they brought on either. It would
have been my senior year. I have no idea. Anyway,
I think you could have like one hundred analysts if
you want.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Probably seriously, like if you start looking at some of
these universities that have a ton of money and it's like, oh, yeah,
they're just an analyst. Oh, they're just an analyst.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Like oh okay, Like when like when Wisconsin went with
Fickle and Leonard the decordinator, who everybody at this point
is like, wow, we should have hired him as the
head coach. Uh, Like I think the next year, which
would have been last year, I think he just went
to Illinois and was like a defensive analyst.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, isn't that exactly what happened with the guy the
h Lester. He was just a analyst at the Packers
and then got hired. Yeah, it's like a holding spot,
like what we called the bullpen.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
It's a loopholes. Like I mean, I don't know anyway
Ryan is coaching for you forget because they're not like,
you know, no one talks about them when Maryland does well,
you know, like I don't I doubt anybody in Maryland's
fan base. Half a Maryland's fan base don't even know
that he's on the staff.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Probably and they also have it like you know, any
I know where I guess I'm getting ahead of myself
because I was. This Maryland matchup is a little personal
to me too, I suppose. But like they're going to
have four star kids and five star kids, like not
as many, but they're going to have, you know, one
of those starred lineups like of talent.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, it's not a although I don't know. With this team,
it almost feels like the wonkiness of this season. It
feels like now they go in there because they lost
to UCLA backs against the wall, like you can't lose
this game.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
You can't, but you can't. That's the thing you can't,
but like it is a possibility, right. We had the
same thought in fourteen when we went there and lost.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
What a horrible game? Did we have the same thought though?
What was the what was the context of that?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Where who was the first time? Oh, we're we're Iowa,
They're a new Big ten team. They're like da da
da da da. I think we were head fourteen nothing
and then blew it like the kid Digs had like
three touchdowns.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Oh yeah, we played steph On Diggs, didn't we We
played so many Savages when I was there, Like I
I still to this day and the time is running
out on it because I am getting older. Uh, but
for a long time, it's been very cool since basically
my first year in college and we play ob J
and Jarvis Landry like since that moment. You look in
(05:39):
the NFL every Sunday and you're just like, yeah, I
played against him, tackled him, played with him. Like it's
been so cool. And in about five years probably there
won't be a single person left almost Tristan will still
be in the league for a while. For a while,
AJ will be in the league.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Did you play with nickname?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, A couple of those guys that were younger
when I was on my way out, but like, there
won't be very many left. I'll just be yeah, back
in my day, back.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
In the day when we were Iowa trained with my hoodie.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, I'm so trained, dude. Uh, I'm going to train
after this. Pretty excited about it. Thought about doing it
before this, but it just just didn't have it in me.
We'll talk about the Maryland Brian stuff, which is like,
it is interesting to see Lester, what Lester's done with
the offense. You know, some guys just aren't the fit
(06:37):
or just the job or whatever it is. I mean,
Lester's done a really good job with this offense. Reality
is is the numbers speak loudly versus what we've been
doing the last three years. I do think that if
Brian was still here, the numbers would have been the
best of the last four years, just because we have
a veteran offensive line, like we would have been able
(06:57):
to do stuff. But luster has been good. I held
this today's topic out just because it was going to
become relevant at some point, and that point is now,
and that is one we could talk about the bye week.
We talked about the bye week before too, But this
(07:18):
bye week is ever more important than it could have
been because the team is finally caught up with injuries,
and it really reared its head on Friday down to
a I don't know if he's a fourth or a
fifth string, whatever number it is at this point didn't
matter really. We're playing a walk on quarterback that got
(07:40):
two weeks with legitimate time in our offense. So I
want to I want to approach today or the topic
of injuries from the strength conditioning perspective. First of all,
injuries are we were really lucky through the start of
the season. Kf in press conference said like, I think
(08:03):
it was weak. Okay, it probably would have been around
the time we played like Michigan State. He's like, yeah,
we're we might be the healthiest we've ever been at
this point the season. And I'd love to hear your
perspective on injuries just from a strength conditioning standpoint in general,
because in the NFL, a strength conditioning coach's job, at
(08:23):
least from the outside from what I can tell, is
basically just don't hurt the guys. Like these guys are
very developed, You're most likely not going like if they've
made it to the league. There's not a lot of
work to do to get them to the point where
they're ready to play physically. They've proven that they can
do that, and it seems like in the NFL, your
(08:47):
job is just, hey, you know, run the guys through
some movements, like maybe even become a more functional corrective program. No, okay,
not even a little bit. So I'd love to hear yes,
that's my That was my perception of what an NFL
job would look like. And then and then a lot
(09:08):
of the stuff that they do in the offseason with
they're like, actually, you sent me a message about Jordan
low I forgot to bring that up. Oh god last week.
My perception is that like this that'll yeah sorry, yeah,
yeah yeah. So my perception is that like the guy
who's heading the program has like this easy job of
like not.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Even a little bit. Okay, all right, so let's dive
into you go, you go, you go. First of all,
is my first question is are they tracking it? Because
this was the first metric that we used at Towson
tracking injuries. Yes, they need to be tracking player availability.
And so what I did at Towson is at the
end of camp, you asked the head coach, who are
you starting eleven on both sides of the ball, who
(09:48):
are key backups or who are your special personnels? So like,
realistically you might have like fifteen to twenty guys. You
can include your kicker, your punter, your snapper, and your
punt return kick returner, so like you're gonna have a
key forty guys on a roster that are the most important.
And then you need to be tracking player availability week
(10:09):
by week and then noting what was the reason that
they couldn't play. Availability isn't your version. It needs to
be the athletic trainers deeming them able to play or not.
And it's not if the coaches say, oh, well he
didn't practice until when's there no was he physically able
to play? And then could you have gotten found ways
to get him in the game. That needs to be
(10:30):
tracked and that needs to be recorded over time. That's
metric number one. Metric number two needs to be time
return from injury. So if somebody does get injured, how
long does it take for them to come back from
said injury. Then the third metric that strength coaches should
matter is that speed, power and agility and all of
that which is why day one at teosand I ripped
(10:53):
the record board down of like squat bench jumps all
of that because that stuff that's third that doesn't matter.
Number one is player availability. Number two is how long
does it take you to return from injury if you
do get injured? If you want to intervene right here now,
it is before I go on the other stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yep, yeah, because you're ready to rip and I love it.
Uh So that's a good point. You make great distinction
there because it's not the There is another staff here
that matters, and that is the training staff and arguably
in a way more important because they have to be
medically cleared, right.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, And that's where you start really working well together.
And that's where I always talked about it at Taos
and I said, listen, when I go, what's the difference
between an athletic trainer and a strength coach because we
need to have a unified voice. Kyle Cherry, the head
football athletic trainer, and I we were boys, like super
super close, because I said, okay, when Kyle is returning
(11:52):
an injured player, if we're in the off season and
I have the whole team, and if Kyle's doing return
to play and he's dribbling a player. He's doing a
rest version of something. Isn't he acting like a strength
coach at the end of that player's rehab? I go,
when I'm rehabbing somebody during practice, because they're watching practice,
am my an athletic trainer. The lines blur and that's
where they need to be. Just complete synergy. And it's
(12:14):
one voice coming from both the athletic trainer and the
strength coach. It's not only coming from me, It's not
only coming from the athletic trainer. We need to spend
time together and learn each other's language, learn lingo. Like
Kyle and I in the winter of twenty and eleven
we spent like that entire January of just like this
(12:34):
is my progression, this is my regression, this is our terminology.
This is how we're going to be on the same page.
And ever since then we found like it had just
been heaven.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
If you don't have that relationship and that synergy, I
want to stress this to the listeners. You can fuck
up a guy's whole career bigtime. And the and maybe
we note this down for a second, and I don't
want to We've talked about it before on the podcast,
and I think he's fine with us talking about it.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Boone Myers, Oh my gosh, that guy was that port.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Oh we'll come back to it, Okay, Man, there's this
maybe I'm getting into a topic. That is Crosston. Go
down the list. There's there's several guys. You guys are
working in the weight room all day in our building.
It was actually nice. They were literally right across the hall.
(13:31):
The door looked into the other door of the of
the the training room. You have eighteen nineteen twenty year
old kids. It doesn't matter how smart they are. They
could be fucking physical therapy majors themselves. It is very
easy to confuse a guy with terminology, like you said,
and plan of care and all the stuff that he
(13:55):
has to now manage. If he's hurt and he's injured
and he has to and he's worried about his school,
he's worried about the football side of things, he's got,
you know, a girlfriend, all these things that go into
his life. And now if you have the strength coaches
and the athletic trainers pulling on two different strings telling
him two different things, or maybe even trying to tell
(14:18):
him the same stuff but using different words. Man, things
can start to get jumbled. I was so aware of
this because the special this is maybe a very weird,
abstract thing that specialists had a window into because we
had so much time during practice that I was observing
(14:39):
you guys doing the rehab on the field during practice,
and I was also observing when they would be taken
by Russ and the staff or uh god, what's his
name now?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
And so I got the you know, I was just
very like, I got to watch a lot of rehab happened.
I got to watch guys on the bike a lot,
I got to watch guys pull sleds a lot. And
there has to be Yeah, you're right, there has to be.
And I don't know, I don't know how you would
describe your guys's relationship with the training staff. I felt
like it was pretty good, but maybe there was room
(15:18):
for improvement. Uh it was okay, Okay, it was okay,
there you go. I mean there's not a not necessarily
like you have to work to make that a optimize relationship.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
I feel like, just like anything, yeah, yeah, just like
any relationship. Yeah, at my school, at tellson. The kids
called it Lima school when like when they would train
with me if they were hurt, they called it Lima
school because they never used to have to. They literally
never rehabbed during practice if they were hurt. And then
I got there and I was like, yeah, no, we're
doing stuff, and they called it lima you. And if
(15:54):
somebody had like a long term injury, they're like, oh,
you're getting that master's degree. If somebody like that, ah like,
oh shoot, you're getting that PhD.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And so you know the process of somebody somebody gets hurt,
they have to I'd actually love to know how that works.
So now they you guys have a medical meeting every week,
right and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Every yeah, you have your you have your regularly scheduled
medical meeting, but then you also have your infrequent end
of the day heyt like, so you're meeting every day,
but then you're also having that one big timeline. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
For example, let's use kid's injury a couple of weeks
ago with that with the concussion.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Which mind blowing to me that he's not back yet,
but that's I.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Would imagine he has to be ready to go about
right now.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
As we guess because you lose a day with Friday,
it would be my only reason, or it's a really
bad concussion, would be like, yeah, that that makes sense
if you think about the fact that you lose a
day in your protocol and it being Friday, So yeah,
that makes okay, that makes more sense.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And they claimed he couldn't travel like it like it
still was the plane ride was, and.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
That means he's having symptoms. Then you yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
The plane ride would have been Thursday, so then it was, yeah,
kid gets the concussion. He's ruled out during the game.
What does step ABC look like from game time to
return to play for a player like that?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Or you want concussion or you want any acute injury.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Concussions a little bit different, I guess, because there's nothing
you can really do to rehabit concussion.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Is there, Yes? And no, there is, So let's use
concussion vanilla quick version and then other injuries. Sure, vanilla
quick version. Let's say you know he gets a concussion,
you're gonna monitor symptoms the next and this is also
the very vanilla version. You can get much better with constantly.
If you're constantly evaluating players' brain health throughout the season,
(17:42):
you wouldn't be doing this version. That'd be a different path.
So again we're gonna stick with the vanilla version. The
vanilla version monitor symptoms the next day. If they have
no symptoms for that twenty four hours, then you would
be able to start super duper easy light activity, which
would be just get on a bike for twenty minute
and it's it's not a certain level of our PM,
it's nothing. Just be on the bike at your own
(18:05):
pace for twenty minutes. See if that causes any symptoms.
Twenty four hours later, if you're clear, cool, Let's do
aerobic activity. Let's actually put a heart rate monitor on you.
Let's see if you can handle you know, one thirty
to one fifty heart rate for forty or twenty minutes
on the bike. Hey, no symptoms. Awesome. Now we're going
to start to do some anaerobic activity and we can
(18:25):
do that on your feet. Let's get a heart rate
monitor on you again. Let's make sure that we're hitting
the required you know, work really hard for a couple seconds,
rest and do that over a period of time twenty
twenty five minutes, rest, twenty four hours, see if you
have any any symptoms. No symptoms, Cool, let's go into
a now, non contact practice. You're not allowed to hit anybody,
(18:45):
but now you're doing you're stressing that anaerobic system again
over time, not hitting anybody. Cool, No symptoms, awesome. Let's
do a contact practice. Wait twenty four hours after that,
no symptoms. Cool. Now you're fully And what we used
to do sometimes at Towson is during that and the
reason that I said losing a day, if you lose
(19:08):
a day, like for us, we had Thursdays off at Towson,
and because the players had to be off, I legitimately
would wear helmet and shoulder pads to help give people
a contact practice on Thursday so they could have a
normal practice on Friday and be able to go. And
we would.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
You're saying you personally would be.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Personally so I would. That way, I could run the
rehab exactly how it needed to look. So like if
I had an offensive lineman that was coming back from
a concussion, I'll get into three stance, three technique, and
I like, if I'm going to pass rush them, I'm
gonna purposely, I'm gonna lead with my helmet. I'm gonna
like because I need to know, I need to know
that you got to get contact correct, So I'm hitting
(19:48):
them in Like the athletic trainers is like, this is wild.
I was like, this is part of the job. This
is what I do. And to your point about like
there's nothing you can do to speed up a concussion,
you can't. And it's the float therapy which he did
at Towson, and you can pay for it out of
the medical budget because there is tons of research on
the benefits of sensory deprivation on brain health. So we
(20:10):
used to do that to speed the quote unquote speed
the process.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
But yeah, I was gonna say, maybe there is a
little some a little bit of some like more new
age stuff like a float therapy or maybe even red
light or something like that would help.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Start doing that with that, and again like do it
like okay, cool, you know, let's say Kay got hit Saturday,
like I'd probably like and he's feeling fine, start floating
them Tuesday, float them, like just let it. And again,
maybe it's not even so he can play the game,
but just so he can feel better as a human being.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, it's like a if anything, it's just like a
placebo like, hey, this might any.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Of our listeners out there go float and you come
out of that thing and you.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I've never floated before. Bro, it sounds awesome.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You got to start with start with sixty minutes. Most
places don't do less than sixty. Same places will offer
a ninety. It'll that'll be too long. If you like,
if you've meditated, when I think you said you have,
you'll be fine. Any of our listeners out there start
with sixty floats.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
What was the app that we used at Iowa. We
used to have we'd had space Headspace. I I really tried,
Like I think I was probably.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
One of the six.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, I really do think I was like one of
the five or ten percent that like tried to get
into like a decent like meditation routine. It was tough
back that it's really hard to get through like a
college kids age brain like, hey you should meditate, correct,
It's tough to get Yeah, it's if we.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Can get you to have thirty seconds just to breathe,
which is why at the end of training in the
off season, we would literally shut the lights off, tell
the players to kick their feet up on benches and
like we didn't do post stretched, No, we would do
a post just breathing. Get parasympathetic, and so we'd shut
the lights off in like two three minutes, put on
some like call me music.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
We're on so many tan here, but I have to
say it anyway, and it's relevant. I took yoga and
call it. I actually took it maybe twice or three
times because they let you, and you got like two
or three credit hours out of it. Anyway, the best
I ever felt physically was and this was during springball, right,
so long practices. Springball's a lot of a lot of kicks.
(22:20):
They Kirk France will run that fucking period back if
he wants to, because we missed a kick that he
thought should have gone through. So you know, high, you know,
we're working, we're conditioning a lot of heavy lifting during
that period. That's really what a specialist would feel. We did,
like I think it was called like chivasuna. At the
(22:42):
end of oh.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just lay there and yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
You lay there, and she basically the instructor would walk
you through you basically take a fucking nap, yeah, and
but she's walking you through like breathing and thought process
while you lay there. And best we would do it
like once every five weeks. It was amazing, But like
that would come out of that, Yes, when I would
come out of that dude, the moped ride back to
(23:07):
my house or over to the complex, my body would
feel like I'm on a cloud right now. This is amazing,
Like the the destress of that, the like you said,
the just oh my god, it was amazing. And I
do believe that there's probably like athletes probably haven't dipped
into that enough as far as like your everyday average
(23:30):
athlete hasn't dipped into the the breathing techniques and destressing anyway.
So that's how you would approach a concussion concussion yep.
And the symptoms you were talking about. I wanted to
hit on that. You're like, okay, well, what symptoms are
you looking for? It's probably like dizziness, headache.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
The medical staff will literally have an entire list for
the athletes, so our listeners out there, there's a list
of like all the things yeah that are part of
like inconcussion protocol, but there's a sheet of like, hey,
do you feel this when you're in this situation? Do
you feel this in this situation?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And then that way the athlete can select yes or no.
So then that way we know their symptoms, and then
we're able to track it over like hey, look you
know because worst case scenario, let's say somebody's like, oh,
something bad happens. It's like, listen, you told us right here,
on this date, at this time that you had no symptoms. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
They try to come after the university.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
But it's like no, no, no, look, this was your words.
Yeah snl skit those are your words.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, non concussion something like let's say guy.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
J just heard his hamstring.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
No, yes, yeah, say guy pulls a hammy.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
You immediately start with like, hey, how serious. Now again,
there's gonna be this. There's gonna be the athletic trainers
out there. And if you're listening to this, please don't
be those athletic trainers that say we're going to ice
it and do nothing. Please don't stop. When you stop
icing hamstrings, you get the best results. And we've had,
like I have the data to prove it from Tausan.
So don't ice them. Yeah, you're gonna like they're gonna
(25:05):
be sore the next day. So Saturday, Sunday, Monday, you're
going to evaluate them. How are they looking? And then
you go from where the athletic trainer says, hey, you
know he's really sore. Let's start with worst case neo,
really bad. Okay, the next day that you have him,
you're biking him or you're walking him, and you're moving
the athlete so that way you can get the hamstring moving.
And you're probably just doing everything, like I said, either
(25:27):
on a bike or it's all linear. You might and
we started to find this out with some research, doing
some lateral sled walk for continued glute strengthening will help
with the hamshring recovering during that process. So you're just
doing super vanilla walking, biking, getting the you know, having
the athlete moving is what you're gonna do. Then the
next day from there you would hopefully be able to progress. Okay,
(25:49):
they they handled that. Now let's start to do some marches,
Let's start to do some dribbles, Let's do some skipping.
Let's even do like a one or two step ecceleer
at a sub maximal effort. Let's just get them doing
things that make them feel like, hey, you know what,
I'm starting to feel better. And you tell the athlete
on a pain scale, zero is life, ten is re
(26:11):
injury to it we're never going above a five. We'll
deal with fives because specific adaptation to impose demands and
progressive overload. But we need to do a little bit
of something and then you just stage it from there
each day and communicate with the athletic trainer. Hey, at,
I need you to do more, Like you don't need
to be doing a bunch of eccentric camstring, Like you
don't need to be doing the GHR Like, yes, we'll
(26:31):
test GHR strength on a kanga tech to know specifically,
like how their strength is. And sure we could do
an acceleration as they get closer to being exit criteria,
but we don't need it. Like this athlete has just
been playing football for a very long time. It's an
acute injury. I need you to get inflammation down, improve
(26:52):
tissue quality. Let me stress them at practice. Let's then
talk about it on the back end, and that's how
you go.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So for those listening, you can hear there's like a
two pronged approach, right, And I mean that might be
a big way of simplifying it, but basically they're going
to spend time with the AT, but then during practice
they're also going to spend time with the strength coaches
on the side before their return to play, and like
you said, the aties are really focused on like the
(27:22):
the stuff that they can really do with the tools
that they have in the athletic training room. You know,
I'm thinking about some of the stuff like that you
guys would never touch, but it's more of an AT thing,
like they're scraping, like inflammation kind of stuff they're scraping.
They're you know, doing some mobility. I mean, even you
guys would work into some mobility stuff. But it starts
(27:43):
to get a little bit more dynamic with you guys,
and then you guys are also sort of in charge
of Hey, they're now potentially out for weeks at a time.
You you guys really have to manage the conditioning side
of things and making sure that they're still staying as
close to game shape as possible, which is where the
(28:05):
bike comes in, the sleds come in, stuff like that,
where you're still working the muscles aerobically and aerobically where
a lot of the AT stuff that's going on is
like localized to maybe the joint specifically. You know, I
think about the slant boards that they're using in there,
(28:26):
some of the balanced stuff that they're using in there,
some more of like very classic physical therapy stuff. You
guys move, you guys have like this hybrid way of
transitioning them back, and it's it's a lot more sports
specific starts to get more sports specific. It feels like
(28:47):
is that correct?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah? And then what will happen really well is like okay,
once they're with us, and you'll start to see this
phased approach like okay, hey, they're back into practice, but
they can only do twenty five percent of practice. You
typically then like, okay, go to the beginning part of
practice like individual and blah blah blah, because you're not
ready for the chaos that is nine on seven ten. Yeah, right,
(29:08):
Like you're not ready for that chaos, but you're ready
to start doing drills so we can then stress you.
And so that's where the strength coach will say, Okay,
now we have to recreate that chaos. Cool, you did
one on ones in in in Indy, you did maybe
some two on ones with your own group, but now
over here with the strength coaches, you're gonna we're gonna
hold bags and we're gonna have to force you to
(29:29):
block a three technique and climb to the linebacker, we're
gonna go two on one against you, or if you're
a wide receiver, you're gonna have to stock block me,
or we'll we'll have you literally run the route tree
like whatever it is. That was my job as the
head strength coaches, like, Okay, you're a linebacker. Cool. Uh,
I'm gonna then pretend I'm a fullback kicking you out.
You have to handle that, you have to drop. And
so as the strength coach, you need to know everything
that happens for that individual athlete during individual during games, whatever,
(29:53):
so you can recreate it. That's where you have your
GPS unit on as well. So now I've recreated practice
based off of accelerations, decelerations, change in direction, right left leg,
total volume. I then take that data to the athletic
trainer and say, hey, here's the drills that I did, sets, reps, intensities,
rest periods. Input this into their rehab folder, document whatever
(30:16):
it is that you're utilizing. Here's the GPS data that
shows you know, Jay Higgins as a linebacker, this is
what his data was on the day. And then you
start looking at acel d sal, change in direction, total volume,
high speed running, look it now literally was more than
what the guys did at practice. This is why you
can safely allow him to return to practice tomorrow in
(30:36):
a limited capacity because it's not our thoughts anymore. It
is data.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, And so to finalize it there, you guys use
that data, you provide it to the AT. They're also
kind of collecting some of their own data, and they
have the final say on the return to practice.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Correct because they are speaking on behalf of the team physician,
like they're they're signing off underneath the name of whoever
that person is in that person is where the buck
really stops. What we're doing is we're helping, you know,
communicate like hey, listen, you know, we're we're advocating to
the AT to then advocate to the physician like hey,
(31:12):
this is why they can And I had a perfect
example of that. We had a kid tears Peck in
after springball. Complete like we were doing we were straight
linear puritization seventy five, eighty five, ninety percent each week,
and in the ninety percent week we're hitting doubles and
you know, towars Peck happened in April, and as we're
(31:33):
getting closer like we're showing, you know, proof of data, like, hey,
this person's doing full body weight push ups, let's start
them on a bench press progression. The surgeon heard bench
press and the AT and like the AT was actually
able to be like listen, no, no, no, it's a four
board bench press at fifty percent, so it's limited range
of motion. And then we started to reduce the number
of boards and.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Increase pakord bench press like a.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Right, so super limited range of motion. But now we're
just getting the athlete back on the bench and thinking
about doing it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You're just you're almost just putting them in the mental state.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
More than you got to get back on the horse.
And so but I say this because if I didn't
have that great relationship with the AT, who that AT
had a better relationship with the surgeon. And now the
surgeon's like, oh yeah, you're right. So you have to
be willing to push back. But it's not it's not
what you say, it's also how you say it. It's
the context in which you say and working in that
(32:24):
true collaborative environment, because at the end of the day,
it's about the athlete. So that's that's how you do it.
That's how you integrate it practice and it sometimes it
really does get messy where it's like, okay, hey, you know, Higgins,
he can do periods one through five. He needs to
come out during punt because they're doing full kickoff. He's
out for the next two periods and he can go
back in. They can come back out. If you're a
(32:46):
really savvy, good strength coach. During that punt period, you're
talking with the kid, Hey, what do you usually do
on punt? All? Right, where do you do this? Cool?
Let's find a regressed version of it that still fits
within the scheme of what you're allowed to do. Now
that athlete does context can like really really smart, and
if you're a really really sharp strength coach, what you're
doing is you're doing all that rehab right near punt.
(33:07):
So guess what the kid gets to hear. He gets
to hear the special teams coach giving the cues and
talking to the kids of doing the things that he's
supposed to be doing. So he's learning right there.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
As you can almost run some of his reps off
the cadence, like off the field.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Correct, that's exactly what you do, and you say, hey, listen,
you're usually a personal protector word doing this, you hear
the cadence I'm going to come in and I'm going
to hit you, but it's at a sub maximum speed,
so you're still getting used to it. Like and that's
how you want to run a rehab because remember you're
looking at average time to return. So yes, you some
of our listeners can be like, well, you know, you
(33:41):
guys could just lie and speed it up, so say
that the nut. Well, sure, if we do, guess what's
going to happen reinjury, and now with the reinjury, that
time to return is going to take even longer, so
you can't speed it up, and they have to do
it the right way.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
I don't think there's incentive really for unless you're a
really shitty strength coach or at and you're like, I
just don't want more work to do today. Yeah, he's
good to go, which would just be like the worst
malpractice ever. Then yeah, you're you're more more often than not,
you're you're you're making sure that they have enough time
(34:17):
to get back. I love the what that final sort
of step of pulling that they're still involved. They're doing
some of practice, but in some of those team situations
where the whole operations going on. You pull out their
one eleventh of what is happening on the field, and
you still have them do it, but sans the chaos
around them. I really like that as a like a
(34:38):
final step. That's cool. Uh, but it doesn't always go well.
It doesn't always, you know, there's injuries are sometimes unpredictable. Uh,
they don't get better sometimes. We talked about Boone Meyers earlier.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
This might be the tagline for this, like, it's not
there's no such thing as injury prevention, and there's a
problem in this field. It's not it's injury risk reduction
because and I was talking about it this morning with
Moses Cabrera, who's a friend of mine who won three
Super Bowls with the Patriots. It is not we are injury.
(35:16):
We are reducing the risk of it. There's still the
chance we're going to do our best, but that is
that is it. We can never nobody. If any person
says they can reduce injuries, they're lying. You can reduce
the risk and you can help them become more robust,
but you play a violent sport. Buddy Morris talked about
it on the Cheeky Midwiki before where you know, working
(35:38):
with JJ Watt and stuff, and this the violentness of
the game.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
I was just gonna say, when you are when you
have really competitive people who are pushing physical ability to
the limits to find optimal performance or their best performance
and whatever it is. It could be weightlifting, basketball, ever, sport,
fucking pickleball. Uh, but you're inherently like it's the literally
(36:07):
in the name of what you're doing, Like you are
pushing the limits. And when you push the limits, like
you are assuming risk and you are there's going to
be injury there just is. So I like that. I
like I like that, and I probably will use that
as a tagline. There is no such thing as injury prevention.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
There's this not and like the problem is people like
that Jordan Love guy and the they're personal terrorists, personal.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Trainers, set the contact here justin text me. Uh. Last
week is like a video of Jordan Love. Who's who's
dealt with a lot of injury this season. He's been
on and off the field. I think, who's the backup,
like Malik Willis h has come in and they actually
won the Packers some games this year. But Love is
like this, you know, he's the post Rogers era guy.
He's like, hey, he's gonna be our promised land guy.
(36:54):
He hasn't been able to stay on the field, and
he posts this video with his Uh, I guess what
his private trainer of like him and like what looks
like a basement with some like equipment that you got
from a YMCA that sold off like equipment when they
bought new. And he's like the athletic trainers like post
(37:14):
is like just putting in that work with my guy
Jordan Lowly, Really you're putting in that work. Huh what
are you doing?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
So that's the problem is people like that. So and
to set the scene more like remember Jordan and I
didn't remember any of this, so I had to have
like again that same guy Moses was talking with me about,
he goes, remember Jordan was in a contract dispute, so
he probably wasn't in the means. He's not in the facility,
he's not training with the team, so he's being undertrained
by this guy. So to your point before about like
(37:42):
you know when if strength coaches do things like oh
you're really good, I can't hurt you. Well, guess what's
gonna happen when you go and play the sport. The
other team's going to try to hurt you. Now you're
not robust to the training. Now, I can't prove that
Jordan loves getting hurt because he trained with that guy.
But what I can say is that guy that is
his personal re we have specialists, does not work for
the Green Bay Packers and is doing these things that.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Likely has no contact with anybody in the organization.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
No, And it's like, you're just gonna now bad mouth.
Like in his conversation with somebody else, he's like, well,
I mean there's you know, seventy players on the Packers.
They can't really individualize dude, you are nothing but a liar.
That is the face of the organization. We worked with
one hundred and twenty players, and when they're like, as
I'm talking to you about things, we can still individualize rehab.
(38:34):
When there's like it's the face of the organization, there's
only seventy players in the NFL, Like that guy was
just a personal terrorist, not a personal trainer. And it's
just so sad to see. And I know some people
on the inside, on the strength staff at the Packers,
and they're like, dude, ever since he signed that contract,
like all these people out of the woodworks have been
like essentially coming and trying to like mooch off of them.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
And my response to Justin when we were talking about
this was we should just do that. We should just
go find rich NFL guys and screw this podcasting thing.
Let's just go get like six guys who are rich,
and we'll just sell to them that we can we
can keep them safe and their hamstrings will be good
with us.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Except they actually would get good quality training with us. Yeah,
with ust, like we would actually train them the right way.
And but like that's why so I had.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I'd have them do CrossFit all the time, but a.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Little dabble of it in there at the end during
the GPP phase.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Some GPP CrossFit is good, but.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Like justin love it. The current head strength coach for
the Rams, I don't know if they won last night
or not, but he won a super Bowl with them,
and he came from Purdue. And when I had him
on the show, he's like, listen, he goes, you have
to ask yourself. He's like, why do you think they
hired me? He's like a guy from college going pro.
He's like, why do they hire me? He's like, they
wanted somebody that would have the players actually lift weight.
(39:51):
He's like, you know we clang and bang quote unquote
in college in pros, you know, to your point, sometimes
they don't. He goes when I'm working with Aaron Donald
and Aaron's like, I want more. He's like, I have
to give him more, but I have to balance the
line of if I give you more and you get hurt,
my fault. If I don't give you enough and you
don't feel prepared, also my fault. So how do I
(40:13):
play into who you are Aaron Donald of doing more
and squatting and all the things that make you feel
like you're Aaron There is a risk? How do I
ride that line? And but that there's a reason that
guys like him or guys like Moses have won super Bowls.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Is it fair to say that in the NFL you're
still doing You're still touching that high end of training
and performance, but maybe not consistently breaking down the body
like you would in college. Guy, like, you're still because
you still, like you said, you do still have to
maintain that like you had, like peak speed, Like peak
(40:51):
speed has got to be so important in the NFL
when we went down and trained with Kittle actually a
couple of days before Tighten You, most of his stuff
was all focused on like peak speed explosive stuff, which
makes sense, and it actually is crazy with these athletes,
how little it takes as far as like hypertrophy and
strength wise to maintain where they're at. It's actually mind
(41:13):
blowing how little training you need to maintain, hard to add, hard,
hard to progress, but once you have it, it's it's
actually fairly easy to maintain. That goes for like your
average dude in the gym that's just trying to like
maintain his three fifteen bench or whatever. But yeah, you
do still have to touch it, and mostly just because
the speed of which the actual games happen, Yeah, so fast.
(41:36):
It would be it would be frightening to actually go
into one of those games and not have touched like
max velocity running or or like like a real couple
heavy reps of like explosive power in the weight room,
like it would it would be dangerous. It is dangerous.
It's dangerous regardless, like the speed of the NFL is insane.
So as you guys can tell listening to this, it's
(41:58):
it's a little it's it's nuanced, and there's a lot
of detail in how to bring a guy back, and
when there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot
of ways that you can mess that up, and it
gets messed up plenty of times. Thought it was a
relevant topic for today, just as we're down to like
our eighteenth quarterback, and I mean lache is dinged up.
(42:19):
We've got some receivers dinged up. Higgins got dinged that like.
It's that time of the season where the injury attrition
is a severe factor in your overall team's ability to
continue to find consistency on the football field, and obviously
IOWA has struggled with that all season. Nonetheless, it's a
bye week. Get the boys healthy and prepare for Brian
(42:42):
Farrence and Maryland fill that cup.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
I mean, you're stalling the same thing that happened in thirteen.
Win the last two games like it was Michigan Nebraska.
Then hey, win these last two games. Let's go eight
in four. It's as good as you can be. Rest up,
let's go get it.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Find yourself into a bowl game, win one there, and
then take some learning lessons into the next season. We
fucked up in the fourteen season. But hey, you know,
like at least you can you can.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Talk about it boarded. That's springboarded fifteen.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
It made fifteen better. You're right, five ten five Show
with Coach Lima. We'll be back every week this season,
like always. Thanks for listening. No game tomorrow and enjoy
no stress. You can just watch other you just watch
other college football. Yeah, let's watch football. Man, Just enjoy
college football. There's you know, the playoff is making things
interesting this year. There's like barely any teams left that
(43:33):
are undefeated. It's a good year at college football. We'll
talk to you next week. So hey, thanks for listening
to the show. If you want more, you can check
us out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube by searching
Washed Up walk Ons. And if you're interested in supporting
the show, head over to patreon dot com slash washed
Up walk Ons, where you can find bonus podcasts, merchandise,
and other cool perks. Best part, half of your subscription
(43:54):
benefits the kids at UI Children's Hospital. We'll see you
next time. Hawks buy a million on on on on
on
A relatively healthy front of the season has turned into
what all Division one college football teams try to stay
away from, and that is fighting your way through injuries
and trying to maintain the health of your team. Sullivan
goes out and we have to bring in a four
string quarterback. Higgins gets nicked up as well. Today we
discussed what injury protocol looks like inside a Division one
(00:21):
football program. Hope you enjoy. Let's have a day. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
What's on, Brenda? I actually got this hat when the
brand new room was done.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Because they did it all out right.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
M I should have been rogue, of course you'd say that.
And it shouldn't be a weight for the should be
a box.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I don't necessarily love box.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
But are we wearing the same hoodie today? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I've got the same one on again.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Let's go see in my office here, I just have
I just have sweatshirts or other relevant podcast t shirts
that we've done because I don't have to really get
dressed for work. But then if I'm wearing like a
something like if I if I'm wearing something that's like
doesn't look good on like a clip, that might be
like There's been several times where I'm wearing like a
(01:39):
pink shirt and I'm talking about Iowa football. It's like,
who is this guy? Like if someone comes across this,
They're like, who's this slappy? There you go talking about
Iowa football. So I try to keep that a hat
or two around.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Oh how you doing, I'm good man, I'm uh, you know,
there's it's the bye week. I listened to your guys's
uh the recap episode and it was not talked about
the fact that Brian Farrens works at Maryland.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Well it's because we haven't previewed Maryland yet.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Okay I didn't, but I was just surprised that he
didn't get brought up.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Like I was like, man, this is who who kind
of forgotten about too when the like when when coaches
go in because I don't know what his title is
over there, analyst or.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Something like that, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
They I don't know how they create those, and like
there's no there's no is there a limit to how
many like analysts the team can have?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Probably not. I mean the guy that I worked for
at Towson is an analyst over there right now too,
Rob Ambrose.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Because there's only ten official position like assistant coaches on
a on a staff, and that switched from nine when
I think like my senior year.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, and I forget who they added as that extra
coach because that's when LeVar went from doing because LeVar
was like was he was outside linebacker and then he
went to you know, tight end and special teams and
then it was just special teams only. And I forget.
I think I don't know who that.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I don't know who they brought on either. It would
have been my senior year. I have no idea. Anyway,
I think you could have like one hundred analysts if
you want.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Probably seriously, like if you start looking at some of
these universities that have a ton of money and it's like, oh, yeah,
they're just an analyst. Oh, they're just an analyst.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Like oh okay, Like when like when Wisconsin went with
Fickle and Leonard the decordinator, who everybody at this point
is like, wow, we should have hired him as the
head coach. Uh, Like I think the next year, which
would have been last year, I think he just went
to Illinois and was like a defensive analyst.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Well, isn't that exactly what happened with the guy the
h Lester. He was just a analyst at the Packers
and then got hired. Yeah, it's like a holding spot,
like what we called the bullpen.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
It's a loopholes. Like I mean, I don't know anyway
Ryan is coaching for you forget because they're not like,
you know, no one talks about them when Maryland does well,
you know, like I don't I doubt anybody in Maryland's
fan base. Half a Maryland's fan base don't even know
that he's on the staff.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Probably and they also have it like you know, any
I know where I guess I'm getting ahead of myself
because I was. This Maryland matchup is a little personal
to me too, I suppose. But like they're going to
have four star kids and five star kids, like not
as many, but they're going to have, you know, one
of those starred lineups like of talent.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, it's not a although I don't know. With this team,
it almost feels like the wonkiness of this season. It
feels like now they go in there because they lost
to UCLA backs against the wall, like you can't lose
this game.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
You can't, but you can't. That's the thing you can't,
but like it is a possibility, right. We had the
same thought in fourteen when we went there and lost.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
What a horrible game? Did we have the same thought though?
What was the what was the context of that?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Where who was the first time? Oh, we're we're Iowa,
They're a new Big ten team. They're like da da
da da da. I think we were head fourteen nothing
and then blew it like the kid Digs had like
three touchdowns.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Oh yeah, we played steph On Diggs, didn't we We
played so many Savages when I was there, Like I
I still to this day and the time is running
out on it because I am getting older. Uh, but
for a long time, it's been very cool since basically
my first year in college and we play ob J
and Jarvis Landry like since that moment. You look in
(05:39):
the NFL every Sunday and you're just like, yeah, I
played against him, tackled him, played with him. Like it's
been so cool. And in about five years probably there
won't be a single person left almost Tristan will still
be in the league for a while. For a while,
AJ will be in the league.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Did you play with nickname?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, A couple of those guys that were younger
when I was on my way out, but like, there
won't be very many left. I'll just be yeah, back
in my day, back.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
In the day when we were Iowa trained with my hoodie.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, I'm so trained, dude. Uh, I'm going to train
after this. Pretty excited about it. Thought about doing it
before this, but it just just didn't have it in me.
We'll talk about the Maryland Brian stuff, which is like,
it is interesting to see Lester, what Lester's done with
the offense. You know, some guys just aren't the fit
(06:37):
or just the job or whatever it is. I mean,
Lester's done a really good job with this offense. Reality
is is the numbers speak loudly versus what we've been
doing the last three years. I do think that if
Brian was still here, the numbers would have been the
best of the last four years, just because we have
a veteran offensive line, like we would have been able
(06:57):
to do stuff. But luster has been good. I held
this today's topic out just because it was going to
become relevant at some point, and that point is now,
and that is one we could talk about the bye week.
We talked about the bye week before too, But this
(07:18):
bye week is ever more important than it could have
been because the team is finally caught up with injuries,
and it really reared its head on Friday down to
a I don't know if he's a fourth or a
fifth string, whatever number it is at this point didn't
matter really. We're playing a walk on quarterback that got
(07:40):
two weeks with legitimate time in our offense. So I
want to I want to approach today or the topic
of injuries from the strength conditioning perspective. First of all,
injuries are we were really lucky through the start of
the season. Kf in press conference said like, I think
(08:03):
it was weak. Okay, it probably would have been around
the time we played like Michigan State. He's like, yeah,
we're we might be the healthiest we've ever been at
this point the season. And I'd love to hear your
perspective on injuries just from a strength conditioning standpoint in general,
because in the NFL, a strength conditioning coach's job, at
(08:23):
least from the outside from what I can tell, is
basically just don't hurt the guys. Like these guys are
very developed, You're most likely not going like if they've
made it to the league. There's not a lot of
work to do to get them to the point where
they're ready to play physically. They've proven that they can
do that, and it seems like in the NFL, your
(08:47):
job is just, hey, you know, run the guys through
some movements, like maybe even become a more functional corrective program. No, okay,
not even a little bit. So I'd love to hear yes,
that's my That was my perception of what an NFL
job would look like. And then and then a lot
(09:08):
of the stuff that they do in the offseason with
they're like, actually, you sent me a message about Jordan
low I forgot to bring that up. Oh god last week.
My perception is that like this that'll yeah sorry, yeah,
yeah yeah. So my perception is that like the guy
who's heading the program has like this easy job of
like not.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Even a little bit. Okay, all right, so let's dive
into you go, you go, you go. First of all,
is my first question is are they tracking it? Because
this was the first metric that we used at Towson
tracking injuries. Yes, they need to be tracking player availability.
And so what I did at Towson is at the
end of camp, you asked the head coach, who are
you starting eleven on both sides of the ball, who
(09:48):
are key backups or who are your special personnels? So like,
realistically you might have like fifteen to twenty guys. You
can include your kicker, your punter, your snapper, and your
punt return kick returner, so like you're gonna have a
key forty guys on a roster that are the most important.
And then you need to be tracking player availability week
(10:09):
by week and then noting what was the reason that
they couldn't play. Availability isn't your version. It needs to
be the athletic trainers deeming them able to play or not.
And it's not if the coaches say, oh, well he
didn't practice until when's there no was he physically able
to play? And then could you have gotten found ways
to get him in the game. That needs to be
(10:30):
tracked and that needs to be recorded over time. That's
metric number one. Metric number two needs to be time
return from injury. So if somebody does get injured, how
long does it take for them to come back from
said injury. Then the third metric that strength coaches should
matter is that speed, power and agility and all of
that which is why day one at teosand I ripped
(10:53):
the record board down of like squat bench jumps all
of that because that stuff that's third that doesn't matter.
Number one is player availability. Number two is how long
does it take you to return from injury if you
do get injured? If you want to intervene right here now,
it is before I go on the other stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yep, yeah, because you're ready to rip and I love it.
Uh So that's a good point. You make great distinction
there because it's not the There is another staff here
that matters, and that is the training staff and arguably
in a way more important because they have to be
medically cleared, right.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, And that's where you start really working well together.
And that's where I always talked about it at Taos
and I said, listen, when I go, what's the difference
between an athletic trainer and a strength coach because we
need to have a unified voice. Kyle Cherry, the head
football athletic trainer, and I we were boys, like super
super close, because I said, okay, when Kyle is returning
(11:52):
an injured player, if we're in the off season and
I have the whole team, and if Kyle's doing return
to play and he's dribbling a player. He's doing a
rest version of something. Isn't he acting like a strength
coach at the end of that player's rehab? I go,
when I'm rehabbing somebody during practice, because they're watching practice,
am my an athletic trainer. The lines blur and that's
where they need to be. Just complete synergy. And it's
(12:14):
one voice coming from both the athletic trainer and the
strength coach. It's not only coming from me, It's not
only coming from the athletic trainer. We need to spend
time together and learn each other's language, learn lingo. Like
Kyle and I in the winter of twenty and eleven
we spent like that entire January of just like this
(12:34):
is my progression, this is my regression, this is our terminology.
This is how we're going to be on the same page.
And ever since then we found like it had just
been heaven.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
If you don't have that relationship and that synergy, I
want to stress this to the listeners. You can fuck
up a guy's whole career bigtime. And the and maybe
we note this down for a second, and I don't
want to We've talked about it before on the podcast,
and I think he's fine with us talking about it.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Boone Myers, Oh my gosh, that guy was that port.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Oh we'll come back to it, Okay, Man, there's this
maybe I'm getting into a topic. That is Crosston. Go
down the list. There's there's several guys. You guys are
working in the weight room all day in our building.
It was actually nice. They were literally right across the hall.
(13:31):
The door looked into the other door of the of
the the training room. You have eighteen nineteen twenty year
old kids. It doesn't matter how smart they are. They
could be fucking physical therapy majors themselves. It is very
easy to confuse a guy with terminology, like you said,
and plan of care and all the stuff that he
(13:55):
has to now manage. If he's hurt and he's injured
and he has to and he's worried about his school,
he's worried about the football side of things, he's got,
you know, a girlfriend, all these things that go into
his life. And now if you have the strength coaches
and the athletic trainers pulling on two different strings telling
him two different things, or maybe even trying to tell
(14:18):
him the same stuff but using different words. Man, things
can start to get jumbled. I was so aware of
this because the special this is maybe a very weird,
abstract thing that specialists had a window into because we
had so much time during practice that I was observing
(14:39):
you guys doing the rehab on the field during practice,
and I was also observing when they would be taken
by Russ and the staff or uh god, what's his
name now?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
And so I got the you know, I was just
very like, I got to watch a lot of rehab happened.
I got to watch guys on the bike a lot,
I got to watch guys pull sleds a lot. And
there has to be Yeah, you're right, there has to be.
And I don't know, I don't know how you would
describe your guys's relationship with the training staff. I felt
like it was pretty good, but maybe there was room
(15:18):
for improvement. Uh it was okay, Okay, it was okay,
there you go. I mean there's not a not necessarily
like you have to work to make that a optimize relationship.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
I feel like, just like anything, yeah, yeah, just like
any relationship. Yeah, at my school, at tellson. The kids
called it Lima school when like when they would train
with me if they were hurt, they called it Lima
school because they never used to have to. They literally
never rehabbed during practice if they were hurt. And then
I got there and I was like, yeah, no, we're
doing stuff, and they called it lima you. And if
(15:54):
somebody had like a long term injury, they're like, oh,
you're getting that master's degree. If somebody like that, ah like,
oh shoot, you're getting that PhD.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And so you know the process of somebody somebody gets hurt,
they have to I'd actually love to know how that works.
So now they you guys have a medical meeting every week,
right and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Every yeah, you have your you have your regularly scheduled
medical meeting, but then you also have your infrequent end
of the day heyt like, so you're meeting every day,
but then you're also having that one big timeline. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
For example, let's use kid's injury a couple of weeks
ago with that with the concussion.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Which mind blowing to me that he's not back yet,
but that's I.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Would imagine he has to be ready to go about
right now.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
As we guess because you lose a day with Friday,
it would be my only reason, or it's a really
bad concussion, would be like, yeah, that that makes sense
if you think about the fact that you lose a
day in your protocol and it being Friday, So yeah,
that makes okay, that makes more sense.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And they claimed he couldn't travel like it like it
still was the plane ride was, and.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
That means he's having symptoms. Then you yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
The plane ride would have been Thursday, so then it was, yeah,
kid gets the concussion. He's ruled out during the game.
What does step ABC look like from game time to
return to play for a player like that?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Or you want concussion or you want any acute injury.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Concussions a little bit different, I guess, because there's nothing
you can really do to rehabit concussion.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Is there, Yes? And no, there is, So let's use
concussion vanilla quick version and then other injuries. Sure, vanilla
quick version. Let's say you know he gets a concussion,
you're gonna monitor symptoms the next and this is also
the very vanilla version. You can get much better with constantly.
If you're constantly evaluating players' brain health throughout the season,
(17:42):
you wouldn't be doing this version. That'd be a different path.
So again we're gonna stick with the vanilla version. The
vanilla version monitor symptoms the next day. If they have
no symptoms for that twenty four hours, then you would
be able to start super duper easy light activity, which
would be just get on a bike for twenty minute
and it's it's not a certain level of our PM,
it's nothing. Just be on the bike at your own
(18:05):
pace for twenty minutes. See if that causes any symptoms.
Twenty four hours later, if you're clear, cool, Let's do
aerobic activity. Let's actually put a heart rate monitor on you.
Let's see if you can handle you know, one thirty
to one fifty heart rate for forty or twenty minutes
on the bike. Hey, no symptoms. Awesome. Now we're going
to start to do some anaerobic activity and we can
(18:25):
do that on your feet. Let's get a heart rate
monitor on you again. Let's make sure that we're hitting
the required you know, work really hard for a couple seconds,
rest and do that over a period of time twenty
twenty five minutes, rest, twenty four hours, see if you
have any any symptoms. No symptoms, Cool, let's go into
a now, non contact practice. You're not allowed to hit anybody,
(18:45):
but now you're doing you're stressing that anaerobic system again
over time, not hitting anybody. Cool, No symptoms, awesome. Let's
do a contact practice. Wait twenty four hours after that,
no symptoms. Cool. Now you're fully And what we used
to do sometimes at Towson is during that and the
reason that I said losing a day, if you lose
(19:08):
a day, like for us, we had Thursdays off at Towson,
and because the players had to be off, I legitimately
would wear helmet and shoulder pads to help give people
a contact practice on Thursday so they could have a
normal practice on Friday and be able to go. And
we would.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
You're saying you personally would be.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Personally so I would. That way, I could run the
rehab exactly how it needed to look. So like if
I had an offensive lineman that was coming back from
a concussion, I'll get into three stance, three technique, and
I like, if I'm going to pass rush them, I'm
gonna purposely, I'm gonna lead with my helmet. I'm gonna
like because I need to know, I need to know
that you got to get contact correct, So I'm hitting
(19:48):
them in Like the athletic trainers is like, this is wild.
I was like, this is part of the job. This
is what I do. And to your point about like
there's nothing you can do to speed up a concussion,
you can't. And it's the float therapy which he did
at Towson, and you can pay for it out of
the medical budget because there is tons of research on
the benefits of sensory deprivation on brain health. So we
(20:10):
used to do that to speed the quote unquote speed
the process.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
But yeah, I was gonna say, maybe there is a
little some a little bit of some like more new
age stuff like a float therapy or maybe even red
light or something like that would help.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Start doing that with that, and again like do it
like okay, cool, you know, let's say Kay got hit Saturday,
like I'd probably like and he's feeling fine, start floating
them Tuesday, float them, like just let it. And again,
maybe it's not even so he can play the game,
but just so he can feel better as a human being.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, it's like a if anything, it's just like a
placebo like, hey, this might any.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Of our listeners out there go float and you come
out of that thing and you.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I've never floated before. Bro, it sounds awesome.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You got to start with start with sixty minutes. Most
places don't do less than sixty. Same places will offer
a ninety. It'll that'll be too long. If you like,
if you've meditated, when I think you said you have,
you'll be fine. Any of our listeners out there start
with sixty floats.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
What was the app that we used at Iowa. We
used to have we'd had space Headspace. I I really tried,
Like I think I was probably.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
One of the six.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, I really do think I was like one of
the five or ten percent that like tried to get
into like a decent like meditation routine. It was tough
back that it's really hard to get through like a
college kids age brain like, hey you should meditate, correct,
It's tough to get Yeah, it's if we.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Can get you to have thirty seconds just to breathe,
which is why at the end of training in the
off season, we would literally shut the lights off, tell
the players to kick their feet up on benches and
like we didn't do post stretched, No, we would do
a post just breathing. Get parasympathetic, and so we'd shut
the lights off in like two three minutes, put on
some like call me music.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
We're on so many tan here, but I have to
say it anyway, and it's relevant. I took yoga and
call it. I actually took it maybe twice or three
times because they let you, and you got like two
or three credit hours out of it. Anyway, the best
I ever felt physically was and this was during springball, right,
so long practices. Springball's a lot of a lot of kicks.
(22:20):
They Kirk France will run that fucking period back if
he wants to, because we missed a kick that he
thought should have gone through. So you know, high, you know,
we're working, we're conditioning a lot of heavy lifting during
that period. That's really what a specialist would feel. We did,
like I think it was called like chivasuna. At the
(22:42):
end of oh.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just lay there and yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
You lay there, and she basically the instructor would walk
you through you basically take a fucking nap, yeah, and
but she's walking you through like breathing and thought process
while you lay there. And best we would do it
like once every five weeks. It was amazing, But like
that would come out of that, Yes, when I would
come out of that dude, the moped ride back to
(23:07):
my house or over to the complex, my body would
feel like I'm on a cloud right now. This is amazing,
Like the the destress of that, the like you said,
the just oh my god, it was amazing. And I
do believe that there's probably like athletes probably haven't dipped
into that enough as far as like your everyday average
(23:30):
athlete hasn't dipped into the the breathing techniques and destressing anyway.
So that's how you would approach a concussion concussion yep.
And the symptoms you were talking about. I wanted to
hit on that. You're like, okay, well, what symptoms are
you looking for? It's probably like dizziness, headache.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
The medical staff will literally have an entire list for
the athletes, so our listeners out there, there's a list
of like all the things yeah that are part of
like inconcussion protocol, but there's a sheet of like, hey,
do you feel this when you're in this situation? Do
you feel this in this situation?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And then that way the athlete can select yes or no.
So then that way we know their symptoms, and then
we're able to track it over like hey, look you
know because worst case scenario, let's say somebody's like, oh,
something bad happens. It's like, listen, you told us right here,
on this date, at this time that you had no symptoms. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
They try to come after the university.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
But it's like no, no, no, look, this was your words.
Yeah snl skit those are your words.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, non concussion something like let's say guy.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
J just heard his hamstring.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
No, yes, yeah, say guy pulls a hammy.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
You immediately start with like, hey, how serious. Now again,
there's gonna be this. There's gonna be the athletic trainers
out there. And if you're listening to this, please don't
be those athletic trainers that say we're going to ice
it and do nothing. Please don't stop. When you stop
icing hamstrings, you get the best results. And we've had,
like I have the data to prove it from Tausan.
So don't ice them. Yeah, you're gonna like they're gonna
(25:05):
be sore the next day. So Saturday, Sunday, Monday, you're
going to evaluate them. How are they looking? And then
you go from where the athletic trainer says, hey, you
know he's really sore. Let's start with worst case neo,
really bad. Okay, the next day that you have him,
you're biking him or you're walking him, and you're moving
the athlete so that way you can get the hamstring moving.
And you're probably just doing everything, like I said, either
(25:27):
on a bike or it's all linear. You might and
we started to find this out with some research, doing
some lateral sled walk for continued glute strengthening will help
with the hamshring recovering during that process. So you're just
doing super vanilla walking, biking, getting the you know, having
the athlete moving is what you're gonna do. Then the
next day from there you would hopefully be able to progress. Okay,
(25:49):
they they handled that. Now let's start to do some marches,
Let's start to do some dribbles, Let's do some skipping.
Let's even do like a one or two step ecceleer
at a sub maximal effort. Let's just get them doing
things that make them feel like, hey, you know what,
I'm starting to feel better. And you tell the athlete
on a pain scale, zero is life, ten is re
(26:11):
injury to it we're never going above a five. We'll
deal with fives because specific adaptation to impose demands and
progressive overload. But we need to do a little bit
of something and then you just stage it from there
each day and communicate with the athletic trainer. Hey, at,
I need you to do more, Like you don't need
to be doing a bunch of eccentric camstring, Like you
don't need to be doing the GHR Like, yes, we'll
(26:31):
test GHR strength on a kanga tech to know specifically,
like how their strength is. And sure we could do
an acceleration as they get closer to being exit criteria,
but we don't need it. Like this athlete has just
been playing football for a very long time. It's an
acute injury. I need you to get inflammation down, improve
(26:52):
tissue quality. Let me stress them at practice. Let's then
talk about it on the back end, and that's how
you go.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So for those listening, you can hear there's like a
two pronged approach, right, And I mean that might be
a big way of simplifying it, but basically they're going
to spend time with the AT, but then during practice
they're also going to spend time with the strength coaches
on the side before their return to play, and like
you said, the aties are really focused on like the
(27:22):
the stuff that they can really do with the tools
that they have in the athletic training room. You know,
I'm thinking about some of the stuff like that you
guys would never touch, but it's more of an AT thing,
like they're scraping, like inflammation kind of stuff they're scraping.
They're you know, doing some mobility. I mean, even you
guys would work into some mobility stuff. But it starts
(27:43):
to get a little bit more dynamic with you guys,
and then you guys are also sort of in charge
of Hey, they're now potentially out for weeks at a time.
You you guys really have to manage the conditioning side
of things and making sure that they're still staying as
close to game shape as possible, which is where the
(28:05):
bike comes in, the sleds come in, stuff like that,
where you're still working the muscles aerobically and aerobically where
a lot of the AT stuff that's going on is
like localized to maybe the joint specifically. You know, I
think about the slant boards that they're using in there,
(28:26):
some of the balanced stuff that they're using in there,
some more of like very classic physical therapy stuff. You
guys move, you guys have like this hybrid way of
transitioning them back, and it's it's a lot more sports
specific starts to get more sports specific. It feels like
(28:47):
is that correct?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah? And then what will happen really well is like okay,
once they're with us, and you'll start to see this
phased approach like okay, hey, they're back into practice, but
they can only do twenty five percent of practice. You
typically then like, okay, go to the beginning part of
practice like individual and blah blah blah, because you're not
ready for the chaos that is nine on seven ten. Yeah, right,
(29:08):
Like you're not ready for that chaos, but you're ready
to start doing drills so we can then stress you.
And so that's where the strength coach will say, Okay,
now we have to recreate that chaos. Cool, you did
one on ones in in in Indy, you did maybe
some two on ones with your own group, but now
over here with the strength coaches, you're gonna we're gonna
hold bags and we're gonna have to force you to
(29:29):
block a three technique and climb to the linebacker, we're
gonna go two on one against you, or if you're
a wide receiver, you're gonna have to stock block me,
or we'll we'll have you literally run the route tree
like whatever it is. That was my job as the
head strength coaches, like, Okay, you're a linebacker. Cool. Uh,
I'm gonna then pretend I'm a fullback kicking you out.
You have to handle that, you have to drop. And
so as the strength coach, you need to know everything
that happens for that individual athlete during individual during games, whatever,
(29:53):
so you can recreate it. That's where you have your
GPS unit on as well. So now I've recreated practice
based off of accelerations, decelerations, change in direction, right left leg,
total volume. I then take that data to the athletic
trainer and say, hey, here's the drills that I did, sets, reps, intensities,
rest periods. Input this into their rehab folder, document whatever
(30:16):
it is that you're utilizing. Here's the GPS data that
shows you know, Jay Higgins as a linebacker, this is
what his data was on the day. And then you
start looking at acel d sal, change in direction, total volume,
high speed running, look it now literally was more than
what the guys did at practice. This is why you
can safely allow him to return to practice tomorrow in
(30:36):
a limited capacity because it's not our thoughts anymore. It
is data.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, And so to finalize it there, you guys use
that data, you provide it to the AT. They're also
kind of collecting some of their own data, and they
have the final say on the return to practice.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Correct because they are speaking on behalf of the team physician,
like they're they're signing off underneath the name of whoever
that person is in that person is where the buck
really stops. What we're doing is we're helping, you know,
communicate like hey, listen, you know, we're we're advocating to
the AT to then advocate to the physician like hey,
(31:12):
this is why they can And I had a perfect
example of that. We had a kid tears Peck in
after springball. Complete like we were doing we were straight
linear puritization seventy five, eighty five, ninety percent each week,
and in the ninety percent week we're hitting doubles and
you know, towars Peck happened in April, and as we're
(31:33):
getting closer like we're showing, you know, proof of data, like, hey,
this person's doing full body weight push ups, let's start
them on a bench press progression. The surgeon heard bench
press and the AT and like the AT was actually
able to be like listen, no, no, no, it's a four
board bench press at fifty percent, so it's limited range
of motion. And then we started to reduce the number
of boards and.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Increase pakord bench press like a.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Right, so super limited range of motion. But now we're
just getting the athlete back on the bench and thinking
about doing it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You're just you're almost just putting them in the mental state.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
More than you got to get back on the horse.
And so but I say this because if I didn't
have that great relationship with the AT, who that AT
had a better relationship with the surgeon. And now the
surgeon's like, oh yeah, you're right. So you have to
be willing to push back. But it's not it's not
what you say, it's also how you say it. It's
the context in which you say and working in that
(32:24):
true collaborative environment, because at the end of the day,
it's about the athlete. So that's that's how you do it.
That's how you integrate it practice and it sometimes it
really does get messy where it's like, okay, hey, you know, Higgins,
he can do periods one through five. He needs to
come out during punt because they're doing full kickoff. He's
out for the next two periods and he can go
back in. They can come back out. If you're a
(32:46):
really savvy, good strength coach. During that punt period, you're
talking with the kid, Hey, what do you usually do
on punt? All? Right, where do you do this? Cool?
Let's find a regressed version of it that still fits
within the scheme of what you're allowed to do. Now
that athlete does context can like really really smart, and
if you're a really really sharp strength coach, what you're
doing is you're doing all that rehab right near punt.
(33:07):
So guess what the kid gets to hear. He gets
to hear the special teams coach giving the cues and
talking to the kids of doing the things that he's
supposed to be doing. So he's learning right there.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
As you can almost run some of his reps off
the cadence, like off the field.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Correct, that's exactly what you do, and you say, hey, listen,
you're usually a personal protector word doing this, you hear
the cadence I'm going to come in and I'm going
to hit you, but it's at a sub maximum speed,
so you're still getting used to it. Like and that's
how you want to run a rehab because remember you're
looking at average time to return. So yes, you some
of our listeners can be like, well, you know, you
(33:41):
guys could just lie and speed it up, so say
that the nut. Well, sure, if we do, guess what's
going to happen reinjury, and now with the reinjury, that
time to return is going to take even longer, so
you can't speed it up, and they have to do
it the right way.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
I don't think there's incentive really for unless you're a
really shitty strength coach or at and you're like, I
just don't want more work to do today. Yeah, he's
good to go, which would just be like the worst
malpractice ever. Then yeah, you're you're more more often than not,
you're you're you're making sure that they have enough time
(34:17):
to get back. I love the what that final sort
of step of pulling that they're still involved. They're doing
some of practice, but in some of those team situations
where the whole operations going on. You pull out their
one eleventh of what is happening on the field, and
you still have them do it, but sans the chaos
around them. I really like that as a like a
(34:38):
final step. That's cool. Uh, but it doesn't always go well.
It doesn't always, you know, there's injuries are sometimes unpredictable. Uh,
they don't get better sometimes. We talked about Boone Meyers earlier.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
This might be the tagline for this, like, it's not
there's no such thing as injury prevention, and there's a
problem in this field. It's not it's injury risk reduction
because and I was talking about it this morning with
Moses Cabrera, who's a friend of mine who won three
Super Bowls with the Patriots. It is not we are injury.
(35:16):
We are reducing the risk of it. There's still the
chance we're going to do our best, but that is
that is it. We can never nobody. If any person
says they can reduce injuries, they're lying. You can reduce
the risk and you can help them become more robust,
but you play a violent sport. Buddy Morris talked about
it on the Cheeky Midwiki before where you know, working
(35:38):
with JJ Watt and stuff, and this the violentness of
the game.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
I was just gonna say, when you are when you
have really competitive people who are pushing physical ability to
the limits to find optimal performance or their best performance
and whatever it is. It could be weightlifting, basketball, ever, sport,
fucking pickleball. Uh, but you're inherently like it's the literally
(36:07):
in the name of what you're doing, Like you are
pushing the limits. And when you push the limits, like
you are assuming risk and you are there's going to
be injury there just is. So I like that. I
like I like that, and I probably will use that
as a tagline. There is no such thing as injury prevention.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
There's this not and like the problem is people like
that Jordan Love guy and the they're personal terrorists, personal.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Trainers, set the contact here justin text me. Uh. Last
week is like a video of Jordan Love. Who's who's
dealt with a lot of injury this season. He's been
on and off the field. I think, who's the backup,
like Malik Willis h has come in and they actually
won the Packers some games this year. But Love is
like this, you know, he's the post Rogers era guy.
He's like, hey, he's gonna be our promised land guy.
(36:54):
He hasn't been able to stay on the field, and
he posts this video with his Uh, I guess what
his private trainer of like him and like what looks
like a basement with some like equipment that you got
from a YMCA that sold off like equipment when they
bought new. And he's like the athletic trainers like post
(37:14):
is like just putting in that work with my guy
Jordan Lowly, Really you're putting in that work. Huh what
are you doing?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
So that's the problem is people like that. So and
to set the scene more like remember Jordan and I
didn't remember any of this, so I had to have
like again that same guy Moses was talking with me about,
he goes, remember Jordan was in a contract dispute, so
he probably wasn't in the means. He's not in the facility,
he's not training with the team, so he's being undertrained
by this guy. So to your point before about like
(37:42):
you know when if strength coaches do things like oh
you're really good, I can't hurt you. Well, guess what's
gonna happen when you go and play the sport. The
other team's going to try to hurt you. Now you're
not robust to the training. Now, I can't prove that
Jordan loves getting hurt because he trained with that guy.
But what I can say is that guy that is
his personal re we have specialists, does not work for
the Green Bay Packers and is doing these things that.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Likely has no contact with anybody in the organization.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
No, And it's like, you're just gonna now bad mouth.
Like in his conversation with somebody else, he's like, well,
I mean there's you know, seventy players on the Packers.
They can't really individualize dude, you are nothing but a liar.
That is the face of the organization. We worked with
one hundred and twenty players, and when they're like, as
I'm talking to you about things, we can still individualize rehab.
(38:34):
When there's like it's the face of the organization, there's
only seventy players in the NFL, Like that guy was
just a personal terrorist, not a personal trainer. And it's
just so sad to see. And I know some people
on the inside, on the strength staff at the Packers,
and they're like, dude, ever since he signed that contract,
like all these people out of the woodworks have been
like essentially coming and trying to like mooch off of them.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
And my response to Justin when we were talking about
this was we should just do that. We should just
go find rich NFL guys and screw this podcasting thing.
Let's just go get like six guys who are rich,
and we'll just sell to them that we can we
can keep them safe and their hamstrings will be good
with us.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Except they actually would get good quality training with us. Yeah,
with ust, like we would actually train them the right way.
And but like that's why so I had.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I'd have them do CrossFit all the time, but a.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Little dabble of it in there at the end during
the GPP phase.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Some GPP CrossFit is good, but.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Like justin love it. The current head strength coach for
the Rams, I don't know if they won last night
or not, but he won a super Bowl with them,
and he came from Purdue. And when I had him
on the show, he's like, listen, he goes, you have
to ask yourself. He's like, why do you think they
hired me? He's like a guy from college going pro.
He's like, why do they hire me? He's like, they
wanted somebody that would have the players actually lift weight.
(39:51):
He's like, you know we clang and bang quote unquote
in college in pros, you know, to your point, sometimes
they don't. He goes when I'm working with Aaron Donald
and Aaron's like, I want more. He's like, I have
to give him more, but I have to balance the
line of if I give you more and you get hurt,
my fault. If I don't give you enough and you
don't feel prepared, also my fault. So how do I
(40:13):
play into who you are Aaron Donald of doing more
and squatting and all the things that make you feel
like you're Aaron There is a risk? How do I
ride that line? And but that there's a reason that
guys like him or guys like Moses have won super Bowls.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Is it fair to say that in the NFL you're
still doing You're still touching that high end of training
and performance, but maybe not consistently breaking down the body
like you would in college. Guy, like, you're still because
you still, like you said, you do still have to
maintain that like you had, like peak speed, Like peak
(40:51):
speed has got to be so important in the NFL
when we went down and trained with Kittle actually a
couple of days before Tighten You, most of his stuff
was all focused on like peak speed explosive stuff, which
makes sense, and it actually is crazy with these athletes,
how little it takes as far as like hypertrophy and
strength wise to maintain where they're at. It's actually mind
(41:13):
blowing how little training you need to maintain, hard to add, hard,
hard to progress, but once you have it, it's it's
actually fairly easy to maintain. That goes for like your
average dude in the gym that's just trying to like
maintain his three fifteen bench or whatever. But yeah, you
do still have to touch it, and mostly just because
the speed of which the actual games happen, Yeah, so fast.
(41:36):
It would be it would be frightening to actually go
into one of those games and not have touched like
max velocity running or or like like a real couple
heavy reps of like explosive power in the weight room,
like it would it would be dangerous. It is dangerous.
It's dangerous regardless, like the speed of the NFL is insane.
So as you guys can tell listening to this, it's
(41:58):
it's a little it's it's nuanced, and there's a lot
of detail in how to bring a guy back, and
when there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot
of ways that you can mess that up, and it
gets messed up plenty of times. Thought it was a
relevant topic for today, just as we're down to like
our eighteenth quarterback, and I mean lache is dinged up.
(42:19):
We've got some receivers dinged up. Higgins got dinged that like.
It's that time of the season where the injury attrition
is a severe factor in your overall team's ability to
continue to find consistency on the football field, and obviously
IOWA has struggled with that all season. Nonetheless, it's a
bye week. Get the boys healthy and prepare for Brian
(42:42):
Farrence and Maryland fill that cup.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
I mean, you're stalling the same thing that happened in thirteen.
Win the last two games like it was Michigan Nebraska.
Then hey, win these last two games. Let's go eight
in four. It's as good as you can be. Rest up,
let's go get it.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Find yourself into a bowl game, win one there, and
then take some learning lessons into the next season. We
fucked up in the fourteen season. But hey, you know,
like at least you can you can.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Talk about it boarded. That's springboarded fifteen.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
It made fifteen better. You're right, five ten five Show
with Coach Lima. We'll be back every week this season,
like always. Thanks for listening. No game tomorrow and enjoy
no stress. You can just watch other you just watch
other college football. Yeah, let's watch football. Man, Just enjoy
college football. There's you know, the playoff is making things
interesting this year. There's like barely any teams left that
(43:33):
are undefeated. It's a good year at college football. We'll
talk to you next week. So hey, thanks for listening
to the show. If you want more, you can check
us out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube by searching
Washed Up walk Ons. And if you're interested in supporting
the show, head over to patreon dot com slash washed
Up walk Ons, where you can find bonus podcasts, merchandise,
and other cool perks. Best part, half of your subscription
(43:54):
benefits the kids at UI Children's Hospital. We'll see you
next time. Hawks buy a million on on on on
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