Alright, i'll get into it a little. I really struggle with these threads, because people call me out for "talking out of both sides of my mouth" anyway. And in the case of our S&C, they're probably right. I see some flaws with what we do, but the Cornhuskers are my team. So am I going to sit here and say that we are screwed and what we are doing isn't close to correct? I'm not going there, but I will bring up some things that have been brought to my attention and things I don't agree with. I want to preface this though, if you get 100 strength coaches in a room, you'll get 100 ideas on how to do things. There's really not a perfect way to do things yet.
I'll start with something we have a lot of success with.... putting on weight. HuskerPower is basically a body builders workout where you put on a ton of mass and do the circuit workout. It starts with the back squat to increase testosterone throughout the circuit to naturally get the body kicking out what it needs to grow its muscles. This is primarily what we have built our program around. It makes sense, because rarely are you getting the 310 pound offensive or defensive linemen that is FBS/Power5 ready. Alabama is, but we aren't. And if any of you were at the 2018 coaches clinic where our coaches spoke, this is where my first worry happened. "There's this new term 'functional' that people are using. If you coaches stayed with HuskerPower from the 90s, you didn't set your program back at all. That's still the gold standard." The older coaches in the audience nodded with approval as if they took a viagra pill. They knew Nebraska football had changed something, and they were able to then go back to what they knew. But for me and a few guys, it was tough to digest, because we were being told that HuskerPower was the first thing in the history of earth that got it right the very first time it was created.
But when you take a deeper dive, is putting on weight always good? I can't find the thread, but remember everyone in July 2019 posting the pic of Martinez at the road race and talking about his "gains"? We couldn't get over what it was going to be like having him run over people at his new size. I tried to insert myself to slow the talk down, but at the same time you don't want to extinguish positive thoughts and messages. But fast-forward to the 2019 season, and was our QB more explosive? Was he faster? And you saw it across the board with our linemen in space, or the regression of some linebackers. Which leads me the point of the game isn't the 90s and in a phone booth anymore, it's being spread out and speed/athleticism is key. So again, there's been some advancements.
Now you have your teams like Wisconsin, etc., but they still defensively need to be able to stop the spread. So let me tell you where I worry a bit with what we are doing, with where football is heading, and how McCaffrey trains that you asked about.
I've read the book that he models his training after, it quite literally states that you should get rid of squatting. Now, I wouldn't do that, squatting is pretty important for some things. But it's a fundamental difference between the #1 lift we focus on, and what sprinters/McCaffrey focus on. For the most part, McCaffrey doesn't squat except for an occasional 1/4 box squat, it's almost all hex bar deadlifts and unilateral TRAINING. (I put in bold for you to remember later). What his book states, is that bodybuilding is not about actual strength and rhythmic reflexes, it's not about muscles working together, it's actually about growing muscles as much as you can. You don't have to worry about them working well together, because bodybuilding is designed for you to look good standing for an hour on stage (or in my case tipping back beers on the beach).
So how does that relate to us? If you have imbalances, and are just creating muscle gain, you are widening the gap of those muscles working in synergy, which gives you injuries. I think injuries have been a huge issue for us these first two years.
But let's go back to the word I bolded, TRAINING. For the most part, you are either training or you are exercising. McCaffrey talks about 5 minutes rest in between his sets, not doing more than 5 reps in season. Nebraska goes 30 seconds between reps in their circuit workout, or 10 reps of 800 or 900 pounds on the bar. It crushes your CNS (bolded for later talk). McCaffrey and his trainer talk about how the workouts take longer, but they are less taxing and his body performs better on the field. He talks about how he made the classic mistake of overtraining, if he wasn't feeling dead after his workout he took that as someone outworking him. He found out when he crushed his body all week, he was slower when it mattered most. He was exercising, he wasn't training to be the best NFL RB he could. He has a comment of "this may come off wrong, but I was working too hard and it was having a negative impact on my performance." Here, we were celebrating "having puke buckets".
Those are just a few of the things I struggle with. We put too much weight on guys, wreck their CNS, and the high weight high rep squats at limited range of motion are creating unathletic players in the open field, IMO. I don't know what changed, and i've told this story before, but we went to a smaller college where a buddy had a cousin. One of his friends looked at a Nebraska DL and goes "what makes you guys just **** on everyone." The player looked at him and I am not lying, went down to touch his toes and his elbows almost hit the ground he was so flexible. We've lost a bit of that. We look stiff and unable to react in open spaces. I'll just go ahead and put this out there, I don't think you can combine HuskerPower with Oregon speed offenses. Oregon had a track coach getting their guys fast, we have an outwork your opponent get jacked strength coach. That wasn't a negative, i'm just saying how do you combine those two things? There's a place for both things in football, but I just don't know how you can reach your max potential if you try to do both things. One focuses on muscle gain, Oregon and now Alabama focus on speed training and getting guys as fast as possible. There's a reason Usain Bolt was the fastest to ever do it, but looks like he really doesn't lift at all.
I'm just going to go one more negative thing and i'm not trying to be a prick here, but it was brought up to me by someone that had played with our strength staff at a previous stop, and I spoke with them roughly a month ago. He knew I was a Nebraska guy and asked how I thought things were going. Told him what I say on here... "we will get where we want, Frost won't let us be mediocre long, but we definitely should have been to a bowl game last year. We underachieved." The guy shook his head but had had a few pops so he wasn't going to let it slide. "Ya, you're lucky you have Frost. I think 2019 was your strength coaches 8th losing season out of 10 tries." That was a crazy stat I had to fact-check. He went on to say "there's a reason he's only been recommended or hired by old Nebraska guys, a lot has changed since then. The teams you are losing to are getting their guys hired away to CFP teams. Indiana doesn't get better players than Nebraska. But they are trained better. Watch to see what Alabama does the next few years with those coaches."
I don't mean to go so negative there, but 8 losing seasons out of 10 is a crazy stat. Our biggest issue IMO is lack of athleticism. With Covid, guys were running hills and doing body weight or makeshift weight room workouts on their own, for the most part. I think that's going to be huge. You see some of these guys and they can't even turn to talk to you they've gotten so big. Guys like Ben Stille and Matt Farniok are plenty big, time to get them athletic and mobile which we have been doing the past few months. I think that is really going to help us in the long run. I just really struggle with how we've looked. How did Colorado with a strength staff and football coaches only there for 2 games beat us? We could have 95% of the players on Indiana and Purdue if we offer them a scholarship, but they beat us.
All of that said, we are going to get there. 7 wins for sure this year. I like what we are doing and our staff definitely took a look in the mirror after 2019. It didn't go the way the coaches or players wanted it to. And it wasn't from lack of effort.
EDIT: I see I forgot about 1/4 squat. Definitely some benefits. I would use it a couple weeks before combine or testing as it will artificially inflate some of your numbers and help you test better. But if you build a program around it, we go back to imbalances. Because it will certainly boost testosterone and build muscle, but all of the angles you are cutting out your muscles aren't being trained while missing it.
