HarveyWallbangers
08-10-2007, 11:22 PM
I found this article interesting. If the Packers have success, ou can bet other teams will follow. I think it's a good sign that McCarthy has the 'nads to do this.
Two-a-day practices soon could be thing of past
By Pete Dougherty
Could Ted Thompson be right? In the near future, might the decades-long ritual of grueling two-a-day practices of training camp be fading to the NFL’s past?
“It might be a morning practice for 2½ or three hours, then the rest meetings,” the Packers’ general manager said recently in describing a typical day of training camp several years from now.
Over the past three decades or more, teams already have scaled back significantly on the rigors of training camp, starting from the two-a-days in pads that started in early July when Thompson was a rookie with the Houston Oilers in 1975, to the shortened five-week training camps of today.
With the huge money invested in players and the lack of depth because of the salary cap, teams are looking for any way to enter the regular season as healthy as possible. In the past decade, clubs have continued to cut back on the number of practices in pads – few teams work out in pads twice a day except for perhaps the first day or two of camp – and often shorten workouts as camp goes on.
The increased emphasis on offseason workouts and practices has allowed coaches to reduce training camp without sacrificing much, because they can get a vast amount of work done in the offseason. The offseason workout programs have players in better shape year round, and the individual teaching sessions along with minicamps and “organized-team activities” practices in the spring and summer allow them to install the offensive and defensive schemes in the offseason, so that when training camp opens players know the plays and techniques well.
Mike McCarthy took the concept of resting players a step further this year and appears to have broken new ground with his decision to give his players the day off from practice for the first three Wednesdays of camp. The team still has meetings and walk-throughs on Wednesdays, and the players have required weight-lifting workouts, but they’re spared the pounding and huge energy expenditure of a full practice.
McCarthy has his doubts about Thompson’s prediction of eventually having only one-a-days in camp, but he’s convinced that rest and recovery is as crucial for a team collectively in training camp as it has been shown in studies for individuals to gain improvement through working out. His concern about cutting back too much is that while it might help players’ overall health, it also will put him at a competitive disadvantage because he would have to scale back too much on the offensive and defensive schemes with the reduced practice time.
“Football’s still played with pads,” McCarthy said. “You refer to football shape, leaning and pushing on guys, you’ve got to get into that. People don’t realize how young we are, we were the youngest team in the league last year with a 40-year-old (long) snapper, we were real young. We’re still pretty young. We need this time. You can’t do that work in the spring. Now if we could do padded work in the spring, you could go to that (one a day in camp). But they’re never going to do that.”
Nevertheless, McCarthy is on the cutting edge with his new camp schedule. He’s been closely attuned to the importance of practice schedules for years because of his close involvement in scheduling beginning his second year as offensive coordinator at New Orleans in 2001, when he and coach Jim Haslett met extensively to work out the practice schedule for training camp. Haslett essentially allowed McCarthy to schedule the offense’s portion of practice. When McCarthy went to San Francisco in 2005, coach Mike Nolan gave him the same responsibilities for the 49ers.
So after his rookie season as the Packers’ head coach last year, McCarthy concluded that he worked the team too hard in camp, primarily in the long week before its third exhibition game, at Cincinnati. Early this past offseason, he and his administrative assistant, Matt Klein, researched the practice schedule extensively and calculated the snaps the team ran last year in the offseason, in training camp and during the season. They determined the team would lose about 100 repetitions in camp by going to his new camp schedule that includes the three Wednesdays off.
He discussed the issue with his coaching staff, especially with Rock Gullickson, the team’s strength and conditioning coach.
“He knows that if we had any say in it, we’re all for it,” Gullickson said.
McCarthy said in deciding to go with the new schedule, he committed to establishing the team’s identity and plays of emphasis on offense and defense during the offseason workouts. That’s when the schemes were installed, so then training camp would just be review and a chance to improve timing and football conditioning.
McCarthy also says he’s conducting a highly challenging training camp for his players physically even though he has only seven two-a-day workouts.
“People look at two a days or one a days and say, ‘This team is working hard’ – I know that’s the only information outside people have,” McCarthy said. “But look at the practices. (These) practices are hard. The full practices we’ve had are as hard a practice schedule as I’ve ever been through. But in the same breath I’ve built in rest and recovery that they’ve never had before. We’re still getting our work done, but we’ve hung our hat on things we accomplished in the spring. But we’re still working the (heck) out of them.”
McCarthy’s new schedule is going over big with the players. It’s not that they get much time off from football – they are free to do what they want Wednesday evenings, but have meetings and personal workouts earlier in the day – but the rest seems to help.
When asked if he noticed the difference from the Wednesdays off, 32-year-old receiver Donald Driver exclaimed, “Did I? My body was not sore. Normally my hamstrings would be tight around this time, but now my hamstrings feel good.”
Though it’s only the first time McCarthy has tried this system, and the Packers have yet to play an exhibition game, they also seem extremely healthy.
The Packers have only two players on injured reserve, backup tight end Tory Humphrey with a broken lower leg, and backup punter David Lonie, who had an ankle injury. They only have eight players with injuries that kept them out of practice Thursday, and only two of those are worse than day-to-day: halfbacks Vernand Morency (knee) and P.J. Pope (knee).
“We have some injuries,” said Reggie McKenzie, the Packers’ director of pro personnel. “But we don’t have a whole bunch of groins, hamstrings, quads, those are the injuries that are fatigue injuries.”
The extensive offseason work that allowed McCarthy to do this schedule will always be crucial and potentially contentious because the collective-bargaining agreement limits the intensity of the non-padded offseason workouts.
Last year, in the purely physical training part of their offseason program, the Packers had 53 days of workouts, and only three players had perfect attendance. This year, they trimmed that to 46 workouts, and 32 players had perfect attendance. Also, Gullickson said that 85 percent of the players participated in a “good portion” of the workouts.
However, for the actual minicamps and organized-team activities practices, the CBA limits the intensity of the work. Article XXXV of the CBA says, in part, “Contact work (e.g., ‘live’ blocking, tackling, pass rushing, bump-and-run) is expressly prohibited in all offseason workouts.”
Several teams have been penalized with the loss of some offseason practices or workouts after complaints by their players about the intensity of the practices. Rob Davis, the Packers’ union representative, said he and his assistant player rep, Mark Tauscher, monitored the intensity. Davis said he and the team’s veterans have open communication with McCarthy and wouldn’t hesitate to tell him if the practices, most notably the line play, became too intense.
“There wasn’t anything in violation, at least collectively in what Tausch and I thought,” Davis said. “And we got out of it healthy, we didn’t get any players hurt, and I think we’re reaping the benefits of that right now.”
Two-a-day practices soon could be thing of past
By Pete Dougherty
Could Ted Thompson be right? In the near future, might the decades-long ritual of grueling two-a-day practices of training camp be fading to the NFL’s past?
“It might be a morning practice for 2½ or three hours, then the rest meetings,” the Packers’ general manager said recently in describing a typical day of training camp several years from now.
Over the past three decades or more, teams already have scaled back significantly on the rigors of training camp, starting from the two-a-days in pads that started in early July when Thompson was a rookie with the Houston Oilers in 1975, to the shortened five-week training camps of today.
With the huge money invested in players and the lack of depth because of the salary cap, teams are looking for any way to enter the regular season as healthy as possible. In the past decade, clubs have continued to cut back on the number of practices in pads – few teams work out in pads twice a day except for perhaps the first day or two of camp – and often shorten workouts as camp goes on.
The increased emphasis on offseason workouts and practices has allowed coaches to reduce training camp without sacrificing much, because they can get a vast amount of work done in the offseason. The offseason workout programs have players in better shape year round, and the individual teaching sessions along with minicamps and “organized-team activities” practices in the spring and summer allow them to install the offensive and defensive schemes in the offseason, so that when training camp opens players know the plays and techniques well.
Mike McCarthy took the concept of resting players a step further this year and appears to have broken new ground with his decision to give his players the day off from practice for the first three Wednesdays of camp. The team still has meetings and walk-throughs on Wednesdays, and the players have required weight-lifting workouts, but they’re spared the pounding and huge energy expenditure of a full practice.
McCarthy has his doubts about Thompson’s prediction of eventually having only one-a-days in camp, but he’s convinced that rest and recovery is as crucial for a team collectively in training camp as it has been shown in studies for individuals to gain improvement through working out. His concern about cutting back too much is that while it might help players’ overall health, it also will put him at a competitive disadvantage because he would have to scale back too much on the offensive and defensive schemes with the reduced practice time.
“Football’s still played with pads,” McCarthy said. “You refer to football shape, leaning and pushing on guys, you’ve got to get into that. People don’t realize how young we are, we were the youngest team in the league last year with a 40-year-old (long) snapper, we were real young. We’re still pretty young. We need this time. You can’t do that work in the spring. Now if we could do padded work in the spring, you could go to that (one a day in camp). But they’re never going to do that.”
Nevertheless, McCarthy is on the cutting edge with his new camp schedule. He’s been closely attuned to the importance of practice schedules for years because of his close involvement in scheduling beginning his second year as offensive coordinator at New Orleans in 2001, when he and coach Jim Haslett met extensively to work out the practice schedule for training camp. Haslett essentially allowed McCarthy to schedule the offense’s portion of practice. When McCarthy went to San Francisco in 2005, coach Mike Nolan gave him the same responsibilities for the 49ers.
So after his rookie season as the Packers’ head coach last year, McCarthy concluded that he worked the team too hard in camp, primarily in the long week before its third exhibition game, at Cincinnati. Early this past offseason, he and his administrative assistant, Matt Klein, researched the practice schedule extensively and calculated the snaps the team ran last year in the offseason, in training camp and during the season. They determined the team would lose about 100 repetitions in camp by going to his new camp schedule that includes the three Wednesdays off.
He discussed the issue with his coaching staff, especially with Rock Gullickson, the team’s strength and conditioning coach.
“He knows that if we had any say in it, we’re all for it,” Gullickson said.
McCarthy said in deciding to go with the new schedule, he committed to establishing the team’s identity and plays of emphasis on offense and defense during the offseason workouts. That’s when the schemes were installed, so then training camp would just be review and a chance to improve timing and football conditioning.
McCarthy also says he’s conducting a highly challenging training camp for his players physically even though he has only seven two-a-day workouts.
“People look at two a days or one a days and say, ‘This team is working hard’ – I know that’s the only information outside people have,” McCarthy said. “But look at the practices. (These) practices are hard. The full practices we’ve had are as hard a practice schedule as I’ve ever been through. But in the same breath I’ve built in rest and recovery that they’ve never had before. We’re still getting our work done, but we’ve hung our hat on things we accomplished in the spring. But we’re still working the (heck) out of them.”
McCarthy’s new schedule is going over big with the players. It’s not that they get much time off from football – they are free to do what they want Wednesday evenings, but have meetings and personal workouts earlier in the day – but the rest seems to help.
When asked if he noticed the difference from the Wednesdays off, 32-year-old receiver Donald Driver exclaimed, “Did I? My body was not sore. Normally my hamstrings would be tight around this time, but now my hamstrings feel good.”
Though it’s only the first time McCarthy has tried this system, and the Packers have yet to play an exhibition game, they also seem extremely healthy.
The Packers have only two players on injured reserve, backup tight end Tory Humphrey with a broken lower leg, and backup punter David Lonie, who had an ankle injury. They only have eight players with injuries that kept them out of practice Thursday, and only two of those are worse than day-to-day: halfbacks Vernand Morency (knee) and P.J. Pope (knee).
“We have some injuries,” said Reggie McKenzie, the Packers’ director of pro personnel. “But we don’t have a whole bunch of groins, hamstrings, quads, those are the injuries that are fatigue injuries.”
The extensive offseason work that allowed McCarthy to do this schedule will always be crucial and potentially contentious because the collective-bargaining agreement limits the intensity of the non-padded offseason workouts.
Last year, in the purely physical training part of their offseason program, the Packers had 53 days of workouts, and only three players had perfect attendance. This year, they trimmed that to 46 workouts, and 32 players had perfect attendance. Also, Gullickson said that 85 percent of the players participated in a “good portion” of the workouts.
However, for the actual minicamps and organized-team activities practices, the CBA limits the intensity of the work. Article XXXV of the CBA says, in part, “Contact work (e.g., ‘live’ blocking, tackling, pass rushing, bump-and-run) is expressly prohibited in all offseason workouts.”
Several teams have been penalized with the loss of some offseason practices or workouts after complaints by their players about the intensity of the practices. Rob Davis, the Packers’ union representative, said he and his assistant player rep, Mark Tauscher, monitored the intensity. Davis said he and the team’s veterans have open communication with McCarthy and wouldn’t hesitate to tell him if the practices, most notably the line play, became too intense.
“There wasn’t anything in violation, at least collectively in what Tausch and I thought,” Davis said. “And we got out of it healthy, we didn’t get any players hurt, and I think we’re reaping the benefits of that right now.”