There was a discussion here a couple of weeks ago, and I’m too lazy to go look it up, that talked about the strength and conditioning philosophies. As a recap, there was mention that Oregon had some internal differences, partly because they whipped almost everyone with their speed but routinely lost to a more physical Stanford team. They made some changes and went with a more “Power” approach in S&C and ended up beating Stanford and narrowing losing in the national title game but subsequently their performance fell of significantly.
There was sentiment expressed that it is a choice and you embrace speed or power and that most teams are going the speed route. Alabama hired staff from Indiana and Devonta Smith credited them with giving him the extra burst that he thought was the difference between his junior and senior years. Having watched Alabama, they are also not as physical as they have been in the past. I wonder if that will become something other teams can exploit over the next few years.
The point of this is more to ask the question because I’m not terribly knowledgeable about strength and conditioning. I get that you can’t simultaneously run the “Speed” and “Power” approach but, if you’re going to try to marry speed and power, wouldn’t you do it sequentially? And maybe tailor it for specific players and position groups? For example, maybe your program for walk-on linemen is two years of bulking up and adding strength and then moving to the core/flexibility/speed emphasis. Maybe, for some, winter conditioning is power and summer condition is speed (or maybe that's the maintenance of both). Maybe, if you find a 4.35 guy, you just leave him in the speed category. Getting in front means being innovative. Would it be at all rational to have co-S&C leads with one heading Power and the other coming from the Speed camp and then have the coaches decide where a given player needs to be at a specific point in time? If that’s rational, they could work, over time, on the right duration and sequences to hit the optimal combination of power and speed for different body types and physiologies.
I spend a lot of work time thinking about what we can do more efficiently or innovatively in my research program and I applied that to what little I know of strength and conditioning at the 30,000 foot level and, what to a naïve outsider, appears to be frequently be a more rigid either-or approach to S&C. The Oregon title run and this year's Alabama team seem to be examples of marrying the two approaches by sequencing them, albeit not necessarily in a truly strategic fashion. In any case, they both had tremendous years and looked different/better from their previous selves early in the transition from one philosophy to the other, though one went from speed to power and the other more from power to speed. Perhaps this is non-sense but I thought it might be worth seeing what those of you actually know something about it think.
There was sentiment expressed that it is a choice and you embrace speed or power and that most teams are going the speed route. Alabama hired staff from Indiana and Devonta Smith credited them with giving him the extra burst that he thought was the difference between his junior and senior years. Having watched Alabama, they are also not as physical as they have been in the past. I wonder if that will become something other teams can exploit over the next few years.
The point of this is more to ask the question because I’m not terribly knowledgeable about strength and conditioning. I get that you can’t simultaneously run the “Speed” and “Power” approach but, if you’re going to try to marry speed and power, wouldn’t you do it sequentially? And maybe tailor it for specific players and position groups? For example, maybe your program for walk-on linemen is two years of bulking up and adding strength and then moving to the core/flexibility/speed emphasis. Maybe, for some, winter conditioning is power and summer condition is speed (or maybe that's the maintenance of both). Maybe, if you find a 4.35 guy, you just leave him in the speed category. Getting in front means being innovative. Would it be at all rational to have co-S&C leads with one heading Power and the other coming from the Speed camp and then have the coaches decide where a given player needs to be at a specific point in time? If that’s rational, they could work, over time, on the right duration and sequences to hit the optimal combination of power and speed for different body types and physiologies.
I spend a lot of work time thinking about what we can do more efficiently or innovatively in my research program and I applied that to what little I know of strength and conditioning at the 30,000 foot level and, what to a naïve outsider, appears to be frequently be a more rigid either-or approach to S&C. The Oregon title run and this year's Alabama team seem to be examples of marrying the two approaches by sequencing them, albeit not necessarily in a truly strategic fashion. In any case, they both had tremendous years and looked different/better from their previous selves early in the transition from one philosophy to the other, though one went from speed to power and the other more from power to speed. Perhaps this is non-sense but I thought it might be worth seeing what those of you actually know something about it think.
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