I love the game and this is simply how life has played out for me. Anything could happen in the future, however.
I once thought that I had found the athlete that I would assist in going to the Olympics ( a long jumper); however, that was not meant to be.
This is what I’m doing for now so this is what my efforts are directed towards at present.
The need is there; however, our time with the athletes is finite so I direct it towards that which is most in need, relative to my field of expertise, while still playing towards the strengths of their potential.
The needs are one in the same/mutually dependent as the acceleration of sport mastery is the objective at either level and, correspondingly, the better they play at this level the greater their candidacy for the next.
is a tough job. Overseeing the development of 100+ players is daunting. The number one obstacle I see is compliance. It is difficult to get everyone to work hard and follow the program to the letter. To go back to U of M, I think Barwis succeeds in getting players to buy into what they are doing. I commend him for that. I just think the militaristic, run till you puke, and degrading language is a little bit over the top. My biggest problem is he bases all his parameters on numbers. He supposedly had 20+ guys power cleaning 400+ lbs, and 2 cleaning over 500 lbs. I don’t buy it. I have trained strong athletes, played college football, and been around this sport a long time. I have rarely seen collegiate players clean over 400 lbs. I have heard that at WVU they inflated all their lifts. Spotting a guy on a max bench. Doing a half squat. Why is there no youtube video of Owen Schmidtts supposed 525 lb power clean? I think Barwis is too much of a discussion point at a major college program. I live in Michigan and have had this guy jammed down my throat for the past 6 months. I don’t remember Gittleson getting articles written about him. I don’t really care one way or another aside from the fact that I have to debase his bullshit with local highschool coaches who attended his seminar. I do this to preserve the athletes I train. From game one, I saw little to show me Michigan was the faster, stronger, more fit team. I saw a weak o line. I saw a porous secondary. I saw no pressure from their “dominant” front seven other than Obi Ezeh. I will with hold comments till I see more action, but that is my take on what I saw.
In regards to the WVU numbers, I know someone who interned in the weight room and my source told me that all tests were estimations based off of repetition maximums sometimes as high as 5-10RM
As we know, the greater the repetition number on the RM the lesser the correlation to the true 1RM.
At any rate, with all the hoopla regarding the huge presses, squats, and cleans, my source couldn’t confirm that any of them ever happened in actuality.
They were all “projected” maxes from 10+rms at approx. 325-335. Obviously not very accurate-see earlier in this thread.
It’s very early to determine if the new s & c is a success or not. The o-line did look bad but with only one returning starter that was, to some degree, to be expected. I did feel like the team, as a whole, looked fresher at the end of the game than I’ve seen many UM teams in the recent past.
Schilling(the one returning starter), at times did look overmatched but still probably better than he did last year but of course it’s just one game.
Many problems at this point could be a case of guys not understanding the new schemes so I’ll definitely reserve judgement for some time-new schemes/new staff, etc.
One reason Git. was very rarely mentioned in articles is because he wished to remain in the shadows, imo. He also knew that if much of his program was publically known(which it was to some degree but he wasn’t about to contribute to the info.) it would come under heavy scrutiny since there are not that many true HIT dinosaurs around anymore-thankfully.
The one thing that really annoys me about the whole football and S&C thing is the idea that the more guys there are throwing up during workouts, the better the S&C coach.
I don’t know how many S&C coaches and how many head coaches believe it, but a lot of fans and writers sure seem to.
It seems if you can make 35 guys throw up on the first day, you earn a lot of credibility.
Agreed and of course part of that is the media’s take on training. If it’s hard enough training to make you throw up then it must be very tough and therefore good.
If the goal of the workout was to throw up then it must have been an effective session.
Gittleson was known to have quite a few people spewing during his 30 year watch. I think he equated throwing up with strength development.
That many people throwing up on the first day probably says a lot more about the unrealistic demands of the workout rather than it represents an indictment of the current condition of the team.
players who don’t train nearly as hard as Barwis runs kids. Are they not succesful? I have on occasion had kids puke while working out. It’s the exception rather than the rule. My whole philosophy is to try to manage the training load so as to avoid over training kids. I just want them to improve their performance. I have no desire to run kids till they puke. To the contrary, many think my training looks simple. It’s not rocket science. It’s hybridized WSB and CFTS. My speed work is plain old sprinting. No chutes. No bungees. I do resisted runs. No ladders. I look like a dinosaur with my “archaic” methods. I guess I need to go to a Barwis seminar to learn some effective new tools. I was on a U of M forum and I swear someone thought Barwis invented plyometrics! Not bashing the guy, but the Barwismania in Michigan is just too much!
The MB hype is, largely, from people with zero to very little background in anything related to s & c.
I still think he’s probably a BIG improvement over MG but UM s & c sure sounds to still have overtraining as a theme. The injury rate sounds a little better than in the past but not by a lot.
I would still like to see, along with witnessing the 500 lb(projected max) cleans, a list of the world class(might have said Olympic, actually) sprinters he said he worked with. I do believe that’s what he said.
With all of that said, I’m glad he’s there instead of Git-potentially much better situation than in the past-imho.
500lb cleans are a thing of the past. I’ve heard some scouts from the league say that he has said he had a guy POWER clean 635. In Athens, Rezazadeh C&J 580. When is somebody going to call him on this BS? Listen to some of his interviews…he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s pretty apparent if you listen closely.
I guess if college football players can be faster for 40 yards than guys who win the Olympics, they can be better weightlifters than guys who win the Olympics, too.
Asbury Park, MB should know that 600 lb. cleaners are not all that common. I’ve only coached 6 or 7 in my career;).
I just can’t understand how someone can say, with a straight face, that a projected max equates to an actual max number. Instead of seeing it as a guesstimate, he’s stating those projections as though the athletes have actually lifted that weight.
When he hears that no one else in the country has football players cleaning 500+ lbs., you would think that would be the first clue that he does not either.
Another astonishingly hilarious point, which I have all too often reiterated throughout my time answering questions and consulting with coaches who seek knowledge above the embarrassingly mediocre status quo, is that so many (S&C) coaches who swear by the weightlifts and their derivatives know so little about the actual sport.
If he, in fact, claims to coach/have coached athletes who can power clean +500/600lb he then appears that much more naive to those of us in the know who understand that there are only a handful of world class weightlifters on the planet who are capable of a +230kg power clean.
The only squat cleans that I have been told of in the 270+ range were by Pisarenko and Botev in training (I heard the news of Botev from my lifter who trained with Abadjiev) and of course we would all agree that Alexeyev, Taranenko, Rezazadeh, and a others were capable; however, I don’t have any concrete information in this regard and as a result I’d prefer not to speculate.
At any rate, it’s amazing what American sport coaches get away with because the likes of bullshit of this magnitude being sold in any other country or continent (where they actually understanding weightlifting and sport training in general) are about as great as the likelihood of me running for president.
Yeah I think it might be on another thread where it is discussed they were essentially clusters rep-maxes with much intra-set recovery. I can’t recall which thread though it might be on the one titled Michigan Madness.
Speedcoach I totally agree with you. I am the strength and conditioning coach at a local high school here in michigan and the kids and parents said the same thing you said that the new u of m coach is awesome! I saw his program and started laughing. Is there any way we could talk soon cause I would love to talk philosophy with you? Thank you in advance.
Some people need to debunk this bullshit before kids start getting wrecked. Watched the Miami O game. Still waiting for the physical dominance to show up. Also, got a kick out of the ten minute Barwis interview on youtube. He tries to talk over the journalists who cover him to make himself sound like he’s brilliant. The guys right that he leaves no stone unturned. He throws all his shit at the wall(kids) and hopes some sticks. Where is the training economy? How about recovery? I would love to live on the planet where Barwis lives. Apparently there, the human organism is a boudless recovery one.One last rant, sorry if this offends some functional guys, but I don’t get the 3 dimensionally unstable talk. I know football takes balance, but last I checked, the field is stable and the body moves over it not the other way around. Just a thought.
