Agreed. I think lack of consistent contact in practice is what is leading to many in game contact injuries. Practicing in shells most of the week can help with recovering from injuries but it is lousy for preparation which leads to apprehension and injury.
Too much emphasis on muscular strength.
A guy who benches 250 and a guy benching 450 will hit (say) a wall at different impacts.
If the ligaments and tendons, joint etc aren't at same level people get injured (like happens to guys on steroids).
People (like Carl Banks) were nervous about Saquon because he was so strong with weights and big muscles that invited injuries.
There has been a revolution in diet, and there has to be one with regard to what I call "meathead" S&C training.
When you see Stanford players at combine they usually aren't monsters at lifting.
They changed to emphasize stretching and flexibility more and saw injuries go down.
Stanford’s Distinct Training Regimen Redefines Strength
"From 2006, the year before Turley arrived on the Farm, as Stanford’s campus is known, through last season, the number of games missed because of injury on the two-deep roster dropped by 87 percent. In 2012, only two Cardinal players required season-ending or postseason surgical repair; this year, only one...
His approach is grounded in physics, on the premise that low man wins on contact, that to get low requires mobility and stability and the ability to apply force in the opposite direction. His players bench press, but he cares more about how they lift — with hands closer together, without bouncing the bar off their chests — than how much. He wants them to bend all the way down when they squat.
Freshmen in Turley’s program do not lift weights upon arrival. Instead, for the first few weeks, they do “body work,” or push-ups and pull-ups and squats or lunges without weights; basically old-school, military calisthenics...He noticed the best players in the weight room often were not the best players on the field. That made little sense...Although Stanford players may not perform as well in the bench press, or in the 40-yard dash at the N.F.L. combine, they often top the charts on F.M.S. scores....Turley is a strength coach, and he is not a strength coach, or not exactly. Strength is not his focus. Function is. Balance is. Flexibility is."
Shannon Turley, Stanford’s director of football sports performance, stresses function, balance and flexibility, and his program has helped prevent injuries.
www.nytimes.com
