A Big Player gets Quicker

Player Analysis: Drew plays offensive tackle for his College team. He’s 6’5” and weighs 290 pounds. His college coach told Drew he needed to improve his foot speed and agility. His 40-yard dash was 5.7 seconds and 20-yard agility was 4.9 seconds.

The training first focused on teaching him how to move. We worked hard on lengthening his stride. We lowered his center of gravity. This required an intense core-strengthening program. Then we broke down the footwork specific to his position and designed skill drills to reinforce and strengthen the movements.

Once he had mastered the mechanics of movement, we added the SmartVest to his workouts. We started out with 6 pounds and every 2 weeks added an additional 2 pounds. He peeked at 14 pounds.

With it being the off-season, we took a more aggressive approach with his training, each week increasing the volume of drills. That is, the intensity and distance he was moving. After 4 weeks, he did a week of recovery in which he exercised for 1 hour, doing his stretches and some cross training aerobic activity, such as biking, swimming, stair climber or treadmill. We trained on this cycle for 10 weeks. We re-timed Drew to find he had taken an astonishing .6 tenths of second off his 40 yard dash time and .48 tenths of a second off his 20 yard agility time.

Drew started 6 games as a freshmen.

Take the challenge…