There are ways BYU gets faster, healthier football players

Remember this as the season of BYU football players getting untimely hamstring pulls?

And the year before?

And seasons before that?

There may not be one cure all solution and I know BYU’s staff is researching it just like they did the rash of foot injuries that led to a change in some cleats a few seasons ago, but a close look at the Air Force football program may provide some fodder for athletic director Tom Holmoe to consider in which tools to provide Bronco Mendenhall.

When Troy Calhoun was hired at Air Force Academy, he brought in a specialty coach, one who is paid as an assistant coach on staff aside from the conditioning coach. Matt McGettingan worked at Iowa State for 11 years. Before that he was at Notre Dame for four years.

This McGettingan guy was instrumental in developing All-American Chad Hall, a 5-foot-8, 185- pound BYU-type athlete who averaged over 32 touches per game over the last seven weeks of the 2007 season. Hall got better as the season progressed.

The thing McGettingan brought to the Academy is increased development of flexibility, speed and endurance to Falcon players. He centers his work on the core of an athlete’s body, the engine. He uses a lot of those big exercise balls, ropes and a lot of stretch exercises and programs what Cadets eat and drink. AFA weight lifting isn’t centered on breaking personal records for tonnage, but increasing reps and fast twitch muscle fiber.

The knock on AFA before McGettingan came was that Falcon football players simply broke down in November. The pounding wore them out and they couldn’t finish the season playing at a high level when a championship was on the line.

Prior to his coming to the Academy, the Falcons had posted a 12-24 record over the second half of the season the past six seasons. In 2007, the Falcons ended the year 5-1 over the last six weeks and won six of its final seven games. In addition to being in better physical shape, the Falcons saw fewer significant injuries. In the last two seasons, Air Force was 4-2 over the second half of the season to improve to 13-5 over the last two seasons in the second half of the year.

According to Troy Garnhart, a spokesman for Falcon football, the new approach to flexibility, speed and core work has paid off. “I can’t remember any football player at Air Force this season who had a serious hamstring injury. The injuries we’ve had are from impact, or force on a player’s body from getting hit.”

“The use of roller balls, ropes, plumber pipes is so different from what you see. Our players are stronger without losing flexibility. I think they are faster. Troy used to have O-linemen who he’d try and fatten up. Our linemen go about 250 but he’s got them to slim down so they’re more lean, still at 250 and able to engage and move. They don’t engage for nine seconds, but they have to engage and be able to move and be more effective.”

Garnhart says the new approach is 180 degrees from what conditioning used to be by centering on building the core and increasing flexibility.

“We’ve seen a decrease in muscle pulls to knees, groins, hamstrings, shoulders, calves.”

It is a fact BYU has experienced numerable hamstring and groin pulls this season. But it isn’t just this season.

This fall, much of it early in two-a-days, players dropped left and right to pulls and strains. Harvey Unga missed the Oklahoma game and McKay Jacobson was out four weeks with a hamstring tear experienced IN WARM UPS before the USU game. Brian Logan played all season with a muscle strain and DB Robbie Buckner may have lost opportunity to start over a muscle pull.

Seems unnecessary and preventable. It also seems more political than financial.

The BYU athletic department can do so much more than it is doing to enhance the total conditioning package for athletes in football and every other sport taking advantage of research and current science that embraces the whole spectrum of diet, nutrition, flexibility and injury prevention.

BYU may not get faster athletes. It must milk every tenth of a second out of what they do have.