Back from two-a-days, stronger, faster, and ready to roll out some new blogs.

Our excuse for being absent is that we were focused on the training…and we are sticking by that!

Let’s dive right in to this blog topic and start talking about the one topic on most die hard sports fans’ minds this time of year….FOOTBALL!

It has been nearly a week since the USC vs. OSU game and instead of jumping on the bashing bandwagon I would really like to evaluate what is going on there and help those poor Buckeyes out a bit.

Seriously, folks…three big games and three big meltdowns could bring out the doom and gloomers and the naysayers, but do you really think OSU could be that bad? Could a program win that many games year in and year out and produce so many Heismans and NFL Stars and be awful? Can you really take 4 straight against your biggest rival and a storied program like Michigan and suck?

Set aside your media feuled bias and answer honestly…I know having grown up in Ohio and sufffered through having to deal with OSU fans, that it is VERY difficult to set aside the bias, but it must be done here.

To put out a Heisman and go to two BCS Championship games in two years means that team must have some merit, and it truly defies all logic to think they actually stink. I would stack Ohio football against any other state. Heck Cincinnati St. Xavier (shout out to my alma mater….go Bombers!) ran the table against arguably the toughest schedule in High School football history last year that included three defending State Champs who subsequently won again and 2 National top 10 teams. Again this year they have beaten two defending State Champs in a tougher schedule than last year. In the last 4 years they have only lost to two teams and Lakeland is the only one outside the State of Ohio to do it (and Lakeland and Colerain each needed overtime to do it!). Sorry, I digress, but as much as I love the Bombers my point is to show that Ohio football is just like everyone else, so it would stand to say that some of the talent would stay home to play at beloved OSU.

If OSU is good, if football in Ohio is good, if they really do not “suck” then what the heck is wrong with Sir Sweater Vest and his Merry Band of Buckeyes?

Simple…watch the replays of all three epic losses and it jumps out at you.

1. UF, LSU, and USC all had more explosive power, better foot speed, quicker reactions, and greater endurance. I know…I know, the strength staff at OSU is trying to find my address as we speak but this has nothing to do with the weight room. This has to do with what is being done outside the weight room. Sport Performance experts seek to make better athletes by making them faster, quicker, more powerful so that strength coaches and football coaches can make them better football players. We never see ourselves as competing with coaching staffs but as partners. You want better athletes, and we have the tools to build them. What you do with them in season is your deal…we just make sure they show up the best athletes possible.

But we usually start by increasing speed and power. I am not talking about strength here. Any big man in college football can throw around massive amounts of iron in the weight room, but only big men who have a solid sport performance program in the off season and out of the weight room can throw it around fast, again and again. When UF played OSU our D linemen were not bigger or stronger. They fired off the line faster, hit with more POWER, and did it the entire game. That was the difference. They overcame inertia faster and got into the backfield before OSU had even taken a first step. Athletes with sound sport performance training have great start speed and get to max speed and power much faster. They also maintain those max powers and speeds for longer times. So they get off the line faster, hit with more force, get up to full speed faster, and do it the entire game. If you watch the replays, is that what you see?

In all three games OSU looked a step slower, did not fire as fast and could not fire with as much force because power is the rate at which work is performed. A lineman needs to move a lot of mass (his and his opponents) at a fast rate and that makes all the difference. You need to get out of the weight room and do some exercises that increase power, agility, speed, and even local muscular endurance. I know that UF, LSU, and USC all have great sport performance training. USC endorses the self-proclaimed king of sport performance - NIKE SPARQ - and it showed last week. They were playing the game at the highest level.

Finally, in all three games, OSU looked whipped by the start of the 3rd quarter. I mean physically whipped and they had half time to rest! They moved slowly back to the huddle, they lumbered like reluctant clydesdales back to the line of scrimmage. They were dog tired and had nothing in the tank. When you do a good power, speed, agility program you not only find gains in power output but you also discover gains in the ability to maintain those peak power levels. Great athletes play at a rate of output that has not declined as much near the end of the game. This has to do with better “endurance”, more efficient body movement and energy use, and fast recovery times. Elite athletes recover closer to 100 percent in much faster times…so those few minutes spent on the sidelines is enough for a well trained athlete to be ready for the next set of downs.

2. Another simple reason for the losses: good old fashioned sport psychology (shout out to Coleman Griffith and his seminal work in the 1920s with the Cubs). Ron White said his uncle’s favorite saying was “That boy’s got a lotta quit in him”. Well, when you have been to the mountain top and kicked hard in the face two years in a row, then had the media, friends, and family tell you how awful you are you sort of learn to have a lot of quit. When all everyone around you talks about is losing…you learn to quit some.

OSU finally learned helplessness from all of us beating on them verbally and from the physical damage done on the field. That team looked beat the moment USC reached the endzone the first time. Even Sweater Vest himself looked bamboozled. And that was not the first time he looked confuzzled: I recall them showing a shot of Tressel during the first BCS loss in the third quarter and he looked at his clipboard, up at the scoreboard, down at his clipboard and then looked up with this total look of despair.

If the coach feels beaten, how should his team feel? If the message they get for two straight years is that they don’t belong in the BCS, that they play in a cream puff league, that they are posers, how should they react?

Those poor kids lost their fire and no amount of burpees, suicides, or film room reviews will fix that. It is not about building courage and passion in these kids or beating the quit out of them in the weight room.

I hear Tressel made them a video of all the negative press from the UF fallout. They watched it prior to the LSU game….well, in golf mental skills we tell our golfers that the last thought that goes through your head before you swing is what the body will produce. You think “don’t slice” and most of the time the body will filter the word “don’t”. Guess what happens next…slice.

So they watched a video about how much they did not belong in that game and then went and proved it. So they listened to us lambast them for 13 weeks and then went and lost. So then they listened for an entire off season and went and lost in SoCal. Anyone surprised that this team has learned to lose?

What they need is a team sport pyschologist. They need to learn positive self talk, motivation strategies, and proper mental preparation for sports. They need to learn how to hit the “reset” button during times of adversity and how to develop team support. There are myriad tools a good sport psychologist can use to assist with those boys and their “lotta quit”.

I have worked with many golfers (truly the most susceptible to negative self-talk!) and if they can turn that quit train around, I know those guys at OSU can.

Remember, these are kids. They are just as delicate as our own toddlers. We take boys that have all the stresses of a normal 18 or 19 year old, add to it the national stage, pepper in family counting on them to make it to the pros, and 300,000 rabidly obnoxious fans who are sick of losing and we expect them to operate like emotionless robots? Please? That is a lot of pressure for a mere boy. Give them some tools to cope.

I love pressure and love physical sacrifice as much as the next sport junkie. My favorite time of year was two-a-days. I loved that feeling of having nothing left in the tank and still having to peel my beaten body off the turf for one more windsprint. There is no greater feeling than pushing the limits and feeling like you could conquer the world because you can conquer your own body. But we also had tremendous support. Our fans thought it was cool the year we went to the final four. The next year, we slipped back into the realm of mediocrity and barely made it over 500. Our fans…still thought it was cool when we made it to the final four. That is emotional support that let us know it was okay to be human and to be down once in a while. They supported us.

OSU doesn’t get that support. They bust their tails, they sacrifice, they peel themselves off the turf to return to Columbus and get kicked in the stomachs by their own fans and the rest of the country. They have spent two years now listening to everyone verbally abuse them….is that good support?

As tough as we all want to be, someone give those guys a hug and tell them it is okay to lose the game. Heck, even Tiger Woods used a sport psyche and he wins all the time. Maybe a good doc is in order there.

OSU, for goodness sake, use some of that Bowl Money and get them a doc!

You’ve done all the training. For months you’ve been waking up at the crack of dawn, logging the miles, running the drills. You’ve been watching your nutrition and monitoring hydration. You’ve done everything right. And now, it’s the day you’ve been waiting for, the big race, the championship game, the final meet. Whatever sport you play, you know what it’s like to have a goal and train for that one event for months. But, sometimes the hardest part of the training is not physical at all, it’s mental.

Pre-competition nerves are normal and, in some cases, can be really beneficial. If you aren’t feeling some sort of nerves or adrenaline before a competition, then you should really reevaluate your competition goals. For many athletes however, nerves can take over and lead to the start of a downhill spiral in performance, which has nothing to do with physical ability.

It all starts when you see much bigger, stronger players on the opposing team, the other runners have legs that go for miles, or swimmer in the lane next to you has shoulders as broad as a bear. Your first thought is, yikes! I can’t compete with that. You begin to doubt your training program. You wish you had logged some more miles or hit the weight room a few more times. You feel inferior and basically defeat yourself before the event even begins. From here, you are fighting a losing battle. You’ve already convinced yourself that you can’t compete, so the body responds with sub-par performance.

This happens to athletes all of the time. Coping with nerves is crucial to performance. Keeping your head in the game, even when things start looking grim, can change the final outcome. Just when you think it’s all over, with mental toughness, you can still find yourself on top. You need to practice this though. Just like you prepare your body to compete, you must prepare your mind. It’s actually not as hard as you think.

Practice with athletes who are better than you. Practice keeping the mental toughness to go out and put in %100 every time. Practicing with athletes who don’t meet your standards can be good for self-esteem, but will only bring your standards down in the long run. Put yourself through a tough workout and practice mentally pushing yourself to go further. Have a phrase that you repeat to yourself to remind you of your goals. Finally, have confidence in your training. Know that what you did to prepare is enough. On competition day, don’t focus on your opponent and spend energy worrying about their abilities, focus on yourself.

Mental focus can be hard to keep, especially as things start to deteriorate. But, with practice, you can train your mind to stay on track and keep the focus solely on you. Mental toughness and discipline can be the winning factor and can even overtake physical toughness on any given day.

So, you’ve started training. You’ve been doing the same thing almost daily now for the past few weeks and things seem to be going well. Now what? You know that the body needs change in a routine in order to hit new levels of fitness. But, how do you change it up? Do you run more miles? Lift more weights? Swim more laps? How much is too much or not enough to achieve results? Believe it or not, it’s not as hard you think to step your fitness up to the next level if you can follow a plan of periodization in your training.

Periodization should generally follow a pattern of base building, intensity, tapering, competing, and then ending with a recovery period. Base building needs to last at least three to four weeks where the intensity is kept to a minimum and the volume of training is high. Every week, there should be a slight increase in volume, but because the intensity is kept low, the body can adapt to increased volume without added stress. This is a crucial cycle because if your body is not able to tolerate volume, it will not be ready to handle the next cycle of intensity.

Following the base period, intensity is the next focus. During this cycle, you begin to stress the body in a different way but adding more intense workouts. This can mean, adding in speed workouts in the pool or on the track or lifting heavier weights in the gym. However, it is important to decrease the volume of your training when you increase the intensity so that your body can recover from each workout. Similar to increasing volume, you need to increase intensity slowly and only once your body has adapted to the previous workout.

One of the hardest, yet most important aspects of periodization, is rest and recovery. Prior to competition, you need to taper off your workouts and allow your body to recover from the previous weeks of training. Many athletes think they need to train more before competition to ensure that they’ll be ready for the demands about to be placed on the body. But this is not true. Your body needs the rest in order to be ready for competition day. Tapering is done by cutting back on volume, not intensity. Keep your intense days hard, but cut down the time you devote to the workout. This way, your body is continuously experiencing the stress, but it doesn’t break it down as much.

Recovery from competition is also a vital aspect of training. During competition season, your body experiences a high amount of stress. Once this cycle is over, you need to allow your body time to recover. Depending on the duration of your competition season, you may need several weeks to fully recover and begin the base period again. Following these guidelines will help you plan your competition cycle and get there injury free and ready to go!

It is arguably the most important tool of a runner. More so than the GPS, heart rate monitor and foam roller, the running shoe should be number one on the runner’s priority list. But with so many shoes on the market today, which one is the right one? The answer is easy if you know a thing or two about your biomechanics and the type of runner you are.

Many people think that everyone runs the same. They put one foot in front of the other and that’s that. Well, that statement is entirely false. Everyone’s biomechanics are different and luckily the running shoe industry has responded to this reality by making shoes that fit different running patterns. Weather you need, cushion, motion control, arch support, are an athlete in training or you simply log in a few miles per week, there is a shoe for you.

Cushioned shoes are great for efficient runners who don’t need any correction.The term pronation refers to the natural roll of the foot as you land on the outside edge and roll inward. This is normal and how most people land on their feet. If you have normal pronation and relatively normal arches, then you need cushioned shoes. These are great for efficient runners who don’t need any correction. These shoes are also great for those who have an orthodic that corrects any biomechanical errors. Generally, the more cushion you get in a shoe, the more miles you can log before replacing them based on your weight. If you don’t log more than 20 miles a week you can get away with a less expensive shoe. However, if you log high mileage and are training for specific events, it is important to invest in a higher quality pair of shoes, or even two. Many marathoners rotate between two or three pairs at a time. This is important because it takes 36 hours for the cushioning in a shoe to return to its full capabilities after a run. Mizuno Wave Rider’s, Wave Creation and Brook’s Radius 7 are high quality shoes that hold up well with high mileage. New Balance brand is a great brand for beginner runners and the 755 is a quality shoe for those just starting out.

In many runners, overpronation is prevalent. This means that as the foot strikes the ground, it rolls too far inward. It is easy to tell if you are an overpronator by examining the bottoms of your shoes. If the inside of the heel is worn down more than the outside, you more than likely overpronate. Motion control shoes are what you would need to correct this. These shoes control the amount of overpronation and have added arch support since the overpronator generally has flat feet and runs with a heavy foot strike. Adidas Supernova Control shoes are highly rated as well as Asics Gel Revolution and Brook’s Addiction 8.

If you are a serious runner and don’t like the thought of running fast in a heavily cushioned shoe, you would be interested in racing shoes. These shoes are very lightweight and don’t offer much in terms of cushioning and correction. It is only recommended you wear these during races and speed work and not during weekly training runs. Mizuno Wave Precision, Saucony Grade Sinister and New Balance 902 and 903 are some examples of some popular racing shoes.

Perhaps running on the same road endlessly is boring to you. Then, you may want to invest in a good trail shoe. These shoes have added stability for the rough terrain you may encounter on the trail. They also are water resistant for more durability. New Balance 800 series are a great trail shoe along with Asics Gel-Trabuco and Brook’s Adrenaline ASR.

Choosing a running shoe should not be taken lightly. Don’t pick your shoes based on the color or what your friend has. If possible, go to a running specialty shop and have a professional watch you run. They can then size you up with the right shoe for your biomechanics. Or, you can examine your own shoes and have a friend watch you run and examine your feet. It may seem like a lot of effort, but having the wrong pair of shoes can lead to a string of injuries that can sideline you for months. Make the effort to invest in good shoes and you’ll run far. Happy running!