Sunday Edition Article
Thinker,
In your maximal and operational output lecture you spoke of not doing lower body weights with Jonathan Baldwin? I was curious to know what made you realize those things were not needed. Was it through testing? Did you ever squat him and notice he regressed? Or was it just your experience in knowing that it was not needed?
Thank you
That determination was made over time and through communication with him. He wasn't the only one I made that adjustment for.
If you go back over the lecture you will learn my explanation for making such an adjustment.
His legs were strong as hell to begin with and I made it very clear to him, as well as all my other athletes, that it's their responsibility to communicate any and all concerns with me regarding their readiness or any other thing. Since I wasn't the programme manager at the time, it wasn't in my capacity to make the necessary adjustments to his competition exercise (sport practice) load, thus I made the adjustments that were within my capacity.
As a result, JB got faster, jumped higher, jumped farther, and felt better than ever and that's all I cared about.
Contrary to what the theme of this website might imply, weight training is irrelevant in the preparation of athletes. Sport results are the key, so unless one is a powerlifter, weightlifter, or strongman, the process of developing strength is by no means limited to a weight room.
In the case of an athlete as gifted as JB, he got all the leg stimulus he needed from sport practice, hill sprints, jumps, medicine ball throws, and low load auxiliary resistance training for the legs.
The summer before his last year, I timed him repeatedly at just under 4.4 (stopwatch) on the 40 yardd, he vertically jumped 41 inches, bench pressed 375 pounds for a 1RM, and broad jumped 11'1. Most importantly, I went off how he said he felt in practices and games.
Most important, he was drafted in the first round where he deserved to be.
He and I remain close to this day.
The bottom line is that any and all adjustments must be made in favor of each individual athlete. This is how I ran the combine program for Rep 1 sports group when I was at Juggernaut and the result was that every single athlete (9 in total) that I trained for Indy, set one or more life-time personal bests at Indianapolis and most of them earned at least one or more top performer ranking amidst the entire combine. Again, most importantly, eight of them were drafted. I didn't have Miles Burris squat with a bar, though he did belt squat and he set a life-time PR on the broad jump and vertical jump at Indy.
Forget team, forget coaches, forget any other irrelevant factor. It's all about each athlete as an individual and as they say in the SEAL teams, it's the strength of the individual that makes the team strong.