Strength & Conditioning

By OrangeForever

Look, I am the grand master of the "Joey Batson Sucks" parade. I have no problem expressing my disdain for him, but that is not to say he doesn't have a lot of knowledge. He has every certification you can possibly fathom. His technical knowledge is as good as it gets.

This is where I have a disconnect with him. His job is not to lead strength seminars or disseminate information. His job is unnatural and hard. His job is to take 100 men from all over the country to do things to their body that is unnatural and hard. He is asked to build strong, fast, athletic men that can do things that are uncommon. He trains offensive lineman whose movement patterns and strength needs are so far from what a cornerback will utilize, you may as well be comparing baseball players to soccer players. My problem with Batson is multifaceted.

Problem 1 -- He does not cultivate a gladiator mindset.

Go watch a Scott Cochran YouTube. Google Tommy Moffit. Or just read this about a guy who has kicked our asses 2x in a row. Fitz is unbeaten against us.

Clemson's guys do not do this. In Dabo's first year, South Carolina's team quit and were at each other's throats. If a S/C does his primary job -- the creation of a dogman mindset, this does not happen. Clemson jumped on SCar, Dabo gets hired, the rest is history. Now our players bicker, they lay down and quit, they don't finish games time and time again, and this is Joey Batson's #1 job IMO. Everyone in college football is strong, everyone can run, everyone has good players. 1-AA players win Super Bowls now. Clemson's players are good enough to win, Clemson's players however do not had a mindset of dominance cultivated in them.

Problem 2 -- He utilizes power lifts as foundational, not a facet

I bust Joey's balls a lot for being in love with the bench press, but the fact of the matter is barbell bench is a good exercise. However, barbell bench, back squat, and power clean as your foundation, as the core of your program is an inherently flawed practice. These are for the most part simple, isometric movements. Guys who dominate, especially at power positions like the line, linebackers, and running backs, seem to be guys who can take what they’ve built in the weight room and transfer it to the field. They tend to possess strength at odd angles and from weird positions. If you’ve ever blocked another human or tried to tackle them, you know that you aren’t always in the perfect position. You need to find ways to train both standard strength and strength in odd positions to prevent strength leakage. The game moves fast and from all directions, and it rarely is played the same way twice. Thus, you need to change up the resistance and how you move it very often. Box Squats, Box Front Squats, Deadlifts, Squats, Snatch Grip Deadlifts, Romanian Deadlifts, Sandbag Cleans, Sandbag press, prowler pulls, heavy ass sled drags, are all things that needs to be done on a day to day basis to play a game that moves in all directions, explosively and violently. You can look at our guys and see it doesn't happen.

I also question what type of unilateral movements we do. Football is also a game where you are on 1 leg a lot. At Alabama and Auburn I have seen Cochran and Yox do all sorts of variations of dumbbell, barbell, step ups, step down and explode, weighted vest split squats, plyometric split squats, box jumps, unilateral hurdle hops etc.

I have no problem with power lifts as a facet of my program, but the carnage and unpredictability of football dictates that we must have a blend of olympic lifts, strong man exercises, and the like to make certain we have prepared Clemson's football players for the chaos that ensues 60-70 times a game.

Problem 3 -- Larry Greenlee
Guy is a former shot thrower and he is in charge of handling the speed and skill of our program? Think about covering a kick -- you run as fast as you can for 40 yards in a straight line, reacting to an external stimuli you have to change direction and attack another runner, all while people are trying to kick your ass. Then you have to throw your body into the returner or blocker. The guy we have in charge of all that is a dude who slid across a 6 foot ring and threw a shot? Get out. I've seen him and what he does. I know Batson got him NASE certified, but that doesn't mean he can teach our guys. At Michigan dozens of guys that never lifted for him come back to train with Barwis in the off-season. At LSU they all go back to train with Moffit. Have you ever read about a guy coming back to run with Larry Greenlee? Aaron Kelly trained at XPE down here in Atlanta, they used our schools facility on days when they did their 110s. Hines Ward, Osi Umenyora were all there and they said they are jealous of their teammates that had quality S/C prorgrams to work out at in the off-season.

A few years ago, I saw our kids doing a conditioning test to start the year and they were jogging laps around the field. Are we running cross country?

Chris Ard on TigerIllustrated had galleries of our guys running up the dyke at Lake Hartwell. Another wasted workout. Your knee angles and chin angles are all wrong. Your hamstring tightens as your stride length shortens running up a hill that is anything more than a 5-10 degree incline. And if you are going to work UPHILL, you risk hamstring and hip flexor tightening if you don't conversely go DOWNHILL and open up the hammies/hipflexors. You create what Loren Seagrave calls "Symbiotic imbalances." I call it "Clemson Football"

Commentary is the opinion of OrangeForever and only OrangeForever