Interview with Keith Comeforo
By Jim Wendler
for Elitefts.com

Keith Comeforo is the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Howard University. He works with all sports and has quite a diverse background in strength and conditioning. He has also worked as the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Towson University and as a Graduate Assistant at the University of Kentucky. I first met Keith at the University of Kentucky and we quickly became good friends. Keith is one of the most innovative strength coaches I have met and his "tough love" approach to training athletes has earned him a lot of respect amongst his peers and his athletes. Keith is not one that plays the political games of strength coaches and will always tell you exactly how he feels. Plus, if you ever get a chance to meet him and have a few drinks, you will quickly realize his passion for laughter and training. 



Question: What are the biggest mistakes being made in the strength and conditioning 
field in regards to what is being done in the weight room? 

I am going assume that you mean the strength and conditioning field as it relates to athletics. There are several things that I have noticed throughout my experiences that I feel need to be addressed. 

First to me is the lack of specificity. It seems to me that a lot of coaches just like to use every cool exercise that they have ever heard of and jam it in to their training systems. I hate to use the word "functional training" because it has become such a clique and the "functional training" campaign has caused a lot of this. A lot of guys will have a hard time explaining why a certain exercise is a part of their program.

Doing too much training is another one. I have heard of workouts lasting 2-3 hours. I cant imagine workouts taking that long. I prefer the quality over quantity idea. Too many people equate long drawn out workouts with set after set after set with being "hardcore". If you are paying close attention to your rest times, and are selecting proper amounts of exercises, sets, reps and volumes sessions shouldn't take that long.

There is also too much hype wrapped up in this magical power clean. I will attack this one in another article. While I don't completely denounce them, I believe time is better spent doing other things. Stay tuned. 


Question: What has made the biggest impact on your strength and conditioning program?

The flexibility and desire to constantly re-evaluate and change my program as I see fit. As an assistant, I was a cog in a machine and I lacked the platform to make significant changes. Being the head honcho has really helped with that. The availability if information has been a major component in all of this. To be able to jump on the Internet and gather information about training has had a major impact on my program. I really find it ridiculous that so many coaches never change their programs. It seems to me that the most successful people in any field will attribute a great deal of their success to the willingness to evaluate and change. 

Some of the places I owe a measure of thanks for the info is everyone at elite especially the EliteFTS.com Q&A, T-mag, and the renegade training site. Martin Rooney's books have been great as well.


Question: How do you explain your system/program to your athletes so that they 
understand what they are doing? Or do you do this at all?

I try to dumb it down a little. I with out a doubt believe it is necessary to have the athletes understand the hows and whys of what we do. Coaching to me is just a more fun version of being a teacher, and since I am dealing with college students, I think if they can leave here with some type of understanding, they can live a healthier life after college. I never want to run into one of my alumni and see them with a personal trainer on a Smith Machine doing quarter squats. To stand there and give them the "because I said so" all of the time gets to be lame. I can't stand coaches who don't coach. I am not embarrassed by my program, and I feel confident enough to explain it. There is nothing worse that having your athletes think that you are full of crap. I also like to train with them. This allows me to teach them as we go, and the fact that I still roll up the sleeves and get to work along side of them brings a little more of their respect to the table - and I get to kid myself that I could still play the game.


Question: How do you use the Jump Stretch bands in your program?

Excuse the cheap pun but I really like their flexibility. I can do just about anything with them - they have filled in for several pieces of equipment that I did not have the room or budget for. All of my athletes use them to do their flexibility training. I try to differentiate between "stretching" and flexibility training. We hit our calves, hams, hips, and quads in a static to dynamic fashion basically from the jump stretch videos. HU has seen a significant drop in muscle pulls since I put this to work.

The joint traction by far has to be the most helpful use the bands have given me. I have done like a dozen ankles, a few backs & shoulders and even a wrist. If you haven't gotten any information on tractioning joints with the bands do it. The athletic trainers will think you are practicing witchcraft, but the athletes will be grateful.

Other uses have been for accommodating resistance our dynamic effort days (we call them speed days), and for exercises like the band GM, band knee punch, tricep pushdowns, in/ex rotation, overspeed & towing (sprintwise) and band pullaparts.



Question: How do you deal with hesitant and/or stubborn coaches that don't agree with 
your program?

I have only had to deal with this on one occasion. In my case the coach wanted to see me doing a program like a certain top 25 football team did. I calmly looked over the material he gave me (the exact summer manual from that school) and realized that it was not along the lines of what I had wanted to do. The volume of training was too high, It was centered on Olympic lifts and a had a standard linear periodization. I told that coach that I wanted the chance to prove that what I wanted to do had validity. I told him to let me do my thing over the offseason months and that he was welcome to train along side all of us to see for himself the nuts and bolts of the program (he declined). If he didn't like the results, then we would discuss the program later. I was pretty aggravated by what appeared to be his lack of confidence in me but I took it as an opportunity to prove myself. The offseason went great, we had no injuries, the kids broke all sorts of PR's and their work capacity went through the roof. He was all about it at that point. The bottom line is that if your program is worth the paper it's printed on, the athletes will progress and everything should move smoothly. If they don't, take the time to find out what went wrong and re-evaluate the program or start printing resumes…

I think a lot of strength coaches have this problem. Just the other day I was speaking to a colleague of mine who's Head Football coach called him in for a meeting and handed him a laundry list of things he wanted changed in the weight room. Now if it were administrative issues or things of that nature, I wouldn't have cared but this coach was looking to change scientific aspects of the program. At some time we need to draw a line. I realize that the profession often requires that you work as a member of a team's staff. However I don't know too many strength coaches that can parade into the defensive coordinators office and let him know that the Denver Broncos blitzed a lot on Sunday, and that we should blitz a lot this week when we play the Mexico City Amigos. On the contrary, the same coordinator can come to your office with a copy of flex'd magazine and demand that the linebackers do the "biceps for badguys" workout on page 44…


Question: In brief, how is your off-season football strength and conditioning program 
set up? (Exercises, days per week, etc.)

We basically follow the Max Effort / Dynamic Effort method. Some of the vocabulary has been watered down…we call it "Heavy day" and "Speed day" for the ease of explanation. One of my favorite remarks came from a coach as he was calling me out on some of my approaches. He said "We want maximum effort everyday… not just twice per week!!" Since this rocket science of Max effort/ Dynamic effort is too much for some to swallow, the sugar coating of heavy and speed makes it easier to coach. In Brief:

INSEASON: 3 day per week 
Day 1 (week A): Heavy (max effort) Squat/Dead (usually no lower than 3 RM ) Lower body auxiliaries
Day 2 (week A): Speed (dynamic) Bench Tri / Shoulder auxiliaries
Day 3 (week A): Extra Day: Prehab/ single joint movements/GPP
*Abs each workout

Day 1 (week B): Speed Squat/Dead Lower body auxiliaries
Day 2 (week B): Heavy Bench (usually no lower than 3 RM) Tri / Shoulder auxiliaries
Day 3 (week B): Extra Day: Prehab/ single joint movements/ GPP
*Abs each workout
**Freshmen & Redshirts follow 4 day program similar to offseason.
*** Max effort exercises change weekly for the older athletes, the Freshman & redshirt crew sometimes stay on an exercise 2- 3 weeks.

OFFSEASON
Day 1: Heavy Squat / Dead Lower body auxiliaries
Day 2: Speed Bench Tri / Shoulder auxiliaries
Day 3: OFF/Extra
Day 4: Speed Squat Lower body auxiliaries
Day 5: Heavy Bench Tri / Shoulder auxiliaries
***Abs each workout

**The auxiliaries change week to week as do their intensity. I like to use the secondary and auxiliary movements to either increase or decrease the overall volume and intensity of the session. This is also where I can play with individual needs of each athlete. Extra triceps here - extra GHD's there…

Question: What kind of conditioning do you have your football players do in the 
off-season?

The offseason has two components for us, the winter, and the summer since we have spring practice in the middle of it. A lot of coaches like to line everyone up and run their nuts off all winter long. I think that the time in the winter is better spent in the racks. We don't begin to run until about 3-4 weeks prior to spring ball. This enables us to use all of our gas in the weight room and not worry about fatigued legs on squat days. This does not mean that we go into the 3-4 weeks of running in poor shape. The winter training contains a big dose of dragging, gpp,supersetting and circuit training. Work capacity is usually pretty high going into spring ball. Even when the pre-spring ball conditioning starts, we only run 2 - 3 days per week. 

The conditioning itself is made up of a linear day where we focus on technique, starts and acceleration and we will do some type of sprints at the end with closely monitored rest time (which is a big key to our conditioning success). The other is a change of direction / agility day where we will incorporate all kinds of drills. In the summer, we will alternate between these two themes and throw in a pure GPP/conditioning day where it just becomes a balls out puke fest. 



Question: What are the biggest weaknesses of athletes today and how do you go about 
correcting them?

First is overexposure to poor and misleading information. Just like our defensive coordinator above, kids read a lot of garbage that will not help them in their sport. If it isn't the media, it's the "my cousin Walter says" workouts that seep into their training. Then when you are trying to coach them you are met with some resistance which can affect the amount of intensity that they approach training with. The way to handle this is to be a good communicator and teacher. Explain why" X" is not the best idea for the job and why "Z" is better.

I also feel that athletes lack the physical flexibility that is required to train for and play college sports. There are far too many pulls and tears that are a result of poor flexibility. 

So much attention is paid to rep max numbers that athletes spend too much time developing good numbers and bypassing other important aspects of their training. I get all kinds of freshmen with puffed out chests talking about their 405 bench press and their lats aren't strong enough to decelerate a med ball much less a bull-rushing defensive tackle. 


Question: I know you use a lot of different GPP exercises and routines with your 
athletes. How has this helped your athletes and can you give an example of a 
workout?

I like to explain it to my athletes like this. You may be a great running back but, could you go play 3 full games of full court hoops? And after that could you go home and move all of your stuff to a dorm 3 floors up by yourself with no elevator without getting seriously tired? The point is that call it what you will: GPP, work capacity, balls, or conditioning must addressed if you want to see successful athletes. If your middle linebacker runs a 4.5 in the first quarter but a 5.1 in the fourth quarter, he is not going to be as big of an asset late in the game. I once was walking with and talking to an NFL lineman and when we got to the top of the stairs, he was seriously sucking wind - and this was in the middle of his season. I use GPP stuff all over the place. Since athletics require efficient performance of several energy systems, I try to address all of them with our GPP.

Examples: The Howard Mile is a GPP workout that we do on the Track: 
Set up cones on the track behind each goalpost and at opposite ends of the 50 yard lines (if the track was a clock, cones are at 12, 3, 6, & 9). Each station will have a different exercise set up (lunges, pushups, crunches, leg raises, squat jumps, MB drills ect…) all depending on what your want to focus on. The athletes must sprint to each station and perform each exercise for the prescribed time or reps. The athletes rest after completing one full lap (400 meters & 4 Stations) for about 1-2 min and then go again until I friggin say so.


Question: What advice would you have for those wishing to become a strength coach at 
the collegiate level?

Don't do it. The business is already overcrowded. 

But if you insist, you need to be ready to move around and not make any money for a few years. So make sure that you really seriously enjoy doing this stuff. If East Podunk State School of Mining and Agriculture offers you a job, and you don't have one, you must seriously consider taking it. You can't be a resident of a great college city and just hope to someday become their strength coach. Getting out there and learning how to coach in different atmospheres will be a great asset. I guess you probably should get a certification, they are necessary for getting a job but they will not prepare you to be a coach at all.