Just going to answer you all at once here...
Between 12-24 months ago I made a post about being still up in the air about MP and if he would be an asset, I figured him to be an improvement, but there were some things I was keeping an eye on. Didn't want to bash on anything that was going on because it was relatively early in the new staffs tenure, whether that was year 1 or year 2 I can't remember. The first thing I will say that made me look a bit crooked is he stated "we aren't going to do anything revolutionary, we are just going to make the kids work harder and lift harder than they ever had before." To me that caught me a bit off guard because there was a lot of stuff out there that was new and could be changed, but it sounded to me like he was just a motivator and then build from there. So we are paying a guy 200k to come in and just motivate guys to squat with more intensity than they ever had before? It was just odd. However, as many of you pointed out, when he got here we weren't even doing lifts from the floor. Our new S&C staff (MP in particular) basically had the mindset of "well this isn't revolutionary, but these players have never done this" so they had to start slow. Some of our biggest guys were power cleaning 135 pounds because their form was awful and they would get hurt if we went too heavy. So part of the "handcuff" is from what was going on before. Further, our guys were so imbalanced and getting hurt all the time from not doing lifts from the floor they were trying to correct instability issues as well as teach new lifts that frankly shouldn't have been new.
But I kind of lump that into transition things you need to just get thru if you want to earn your six figure salary. Epley was brought back, and he and MP didn't see eye to eye. What MP wanted to do didn't always jive with what Epley wanted. Also, MP was forced to hire certain people he wouldn't have if the choice were his. So some of the workouts were MPs, some were Epley's influence, and then you get into kids not even respecting Epley from time to time when he did show up in the weight room. You also pile on that when MP wanted people to power thru minor injuries, soreness, and other things, he was overruled and kids could sit out. I think some of the "skipping" workouts thing is overblown, but it was part of it.
So after reading that i'm sure it will get made into a massive thing. What I would encourage people to realize is that these were a bunch of little things that all rolled up into one made it pretty tough to get anything done. Again, there wasn't a constant and consistent message. We had so many bigger issues than S&C, but it's so important to have everyone on the same page. Stanford is the perfect example of a S&C coach (Turley) that gets exactly what the coach (Shaw) wants to do and formulates the plan accordingly. If there's divide between the S&C staff before we even figure out what's best for on the field results, there's something you can point to that can change for the better.
Thanks, ***. Always appreciate your input and insight!
