Clemson is right, HIT is a union. Now that we know their secret they will have to get rid of us…
Personally, in addition to the reasons mentionned above, i noticed that HIT people astroturf on strength forums without good moderators. It is especially noticable when they all recite the same sHIT verbatim.
The Philadelphia Eagles use the sHIT program and they lead the league in tendon ruptures and non-contact ACL tears.
The Browns and Bears supposedly have amazing strength coaches and their teams are Shit. Just being devil’s advocate.
Not 100% sure about all of these…but some shit programs sound like:
Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State…and I am sure many others ( if anyone knows more please let me know I am interested to find out!)
Colleges I have read that seem to have better programs in my opinon based on non HIT methods, more of a westside, Tier system, western methods based programs are:
Wake Forest, LA tech, Georgia Tech, Cornell (somewhat?), Arizona State, Davidson (their new weightroom is awsome), North Caronlina, Clemson, Missisipi, Wash. St.( I think they still utilize westside?), VMI…All of these schools have and I think still do, utilize much better methods of training their athletes in the weightroom (IMO), I also have read that UNLV is using alot of Strongman type training for their footballers…sounds a lot better that shit training to me…any more info on schools would be awsome!
I may me a little late on the reply to this, but why emphasize more work capacity in the weightroom when you are getting plenty of that through your track workouts? Use the weightroom for what it’s for… getting stronger. I don’t believe in doing high volume in the weightrooom unless for a very breif period (2-3 weeks) in the beggining. As long as you are getting a chance to recover from there is nothing wrong with soing sub-amximal strength training this early. Anyways with Olympic Lifts 3’s are high volume.
Actually, the Browns had Buddy Morris until the new coach came in this past year and brought the Jets former strength coach. Not sure if he is HIT, but i know for damn sure that Buddy Morris wasn’t. But, hear the new guy there is too popular though.
Actually the Bears just got a new strength coach, but the old guy was far from “amazing” from the grapevine.
Regardless, the Browns have sucked with Buddy (past years) and the Bears still suck with this new guy (the guy that is supposed to be good…weightlifting olympic medalist, etc).
So are the HIT guys lazy or just misguided?
As a 17-year-old I attended Michigan’s football camp, where Gittleson explained his training philosphy to all the campers. What I remember squares with what Clemson said about the Bucs clinic, and with what my man who when to U-M said in a previous post: No squats, cleans, etc; go to failure on every set and so on…
He brought in a dude named Walter Smith, who was a starting WR at the time. Smith wasn’t a big guy at all – about 5-foot-10, 180 – but he was RIPPED. He did about 22 reps at 225 while all of us high schoolers stood there, slack jawed. So at the time it seemed to me that they were doing something right.
When I enrolled at Northwestern the next year I noticed the training program was VERY different from Michigan’s, but I thought it was a case of different strokes. Never suspected any fundamental flaws in what they were doing at Michigan. (although when we beat them our S&C coach made sure to point out that they along with ND and Penn St. didn’t do squats).
I said all that to say this: Gittleson didn’t seem like a lazy guy. He seemed like he believed in what he was doing and he seemed committed to getting the best out of his athletes. The players I met thought the world of him.
And the HIT program didn’t seem like it catered to lazy athletes. The summer before my freshman year I trained with a guy from U Toledo who had us doing an HIT circuit, and it was HELL. We threw up a few times that summer. A lazy guy wouldn’t have survived it.
I’m not disagreeing with the guys who say HIT is a bad way to prepare for football, track, etc. I’m just not buying the argument that sheer laziness on the part of coaches and athletes is the main thing keeping it going.
So for some of you guys who have had longer discussions with HIT advocates (or any HIT guys who happen to be reading this thread), what are some of the benefits of that type of training? Even if any real gains under that type of system are an illusion, what kinds of “improvements” would an athlete make under that kind of system that would lead him to believe it’s the best way to train. There must be at least SOME, or else nobody would do it.
Michigan State is no longer HIT-at least football is not. Look back on page one of this thread. Tommy Hoke,formerly of Appalachian State univ.,is the strength coach for football since May of 2004-seems as though it is paying off for them. A friend showed me where they had sold off, or were at least trying to, all of the old (s)HIT tools including a number of Hammer machines on line last fall.
The new guy is the one who claims to have been Carl Lewis’ strength coach while(the coach) was at U. Houston-John Lott I think is the name. This of course must be taken with a grain of salt since it has been said that for the exception of maybe his last year in track 95-96 he probably did not do much lifting at all-if even then. Though he said not be a (s)HIT proponent I do hear he is big on valuable weight training staples such as leg extensions and that they do high rep hypertrophy work almost non-stop during the year with no real strength work present. Just what I’ve heard. I believe there was a thread on this site within the last year to year and a half including some of his Lewis’ related claims. I don’t recall the title/topic of the thread.
[b]I said all that to say this: Gittleson didn’t seem like a lazy guy. He seemed like he believed in what he was doing and he seemed committed to getting the best out of his athletes. The players I met thought the world of him.
And the HIT program didn’t seem like it catered to lazy athletes. The summer before my freshman year I trained with a guy from U Toledo who had us doing an HIT circuit, and it was HELL. We threw up a few times that summer. A lazy guy wouldn’t have survived it.
[/b]
I am not saying that HIT is only for lazy coaches but let us think about most configurations at large facilities.
Clone Hammer Circuits- Since hammer is a huge machine infuence many NFL and NCAA teams use the equipment into a circuit. Most are shaped like a U or horseshoe and you do a superset of single joint movements or upper/lower body movements. This rep scheme is many times 8 reps for one or two trips. Since they are involved with short rest periods many times they are creating lactate responses.
Now if everyone follows this Operating System why hire coaches for 100,000 grand? Why not lease this shit for 5 grand a year and hire a bunch of interns? The program doesn’t care about equipment/space and doesn’t include many effective exercises period.
It takes me a long time to coach a clean or squat and this fatigues me. I don’t see HIT guys coaching but training athletes. When I individualize a program for various athletes based on position and unique injury/somatype issues this requires work before and after the session. With a machine just adjust the seat and a ectomorph freshman basketball player can do the same HIT program as a softball player.
I do train my athletes hard but again puking is not an indication of hard working. For example I have athletes that hate stretching and those that take the 8-15 minutes to work on ROM are hard working because they sacrifice. Doing a mean set of squats or medball circuit is not easy, but pure max strength work taxes you at the level of the CNS and doesn’t make you puke.
Many athletes find HIT to help since even compound joint/olympic lift coaches can be lazy. Coaching in the weight room is hard work and I only worked at a NCAA football team for a summer and found it to be draining. My respect to all S and C coaches at schools.
Bench is one of the few free weight exercises that are said to still do-so they could be decent on that I suppose. They have had guys coming into the program in recent years who benched over 400 and years later at combines don’t even bench 20 reps at 225. So much of the work is really strength endurance or muscular endurance and strength/power is very rarely even touched upon in such “programs”.
Funny thing about ND back then and it continued at South Carolina is that Holtz would not allow his strength coaches to use squats in their programs. I suppose he insisted on this for all the knee damage that Lou had determined it causes-probably from his vast s and c knowledge and extensive research on the subject-joking. Old school.
Who is an weightlifting medalist? Rusty Jones? In what games the special olympics? I don’t know were you are getting your facts from, but the guy at the bears has only been there since February. Regardless, before you go bashing strength coaches check your facts on who they are and what they do. Personally I don’t know much about Rusty Jones’ background, but from what I know he was not a competitive weightlifter.
First off, 22 x 225 is hardly extraordinary in Football.
Second, the players may or may not follow the team workout sessions prior to the season. Depends on whether the players need the workout money (80,000 if you make 80% of the sessions.
Third, it is the HIT COACHES who are lazy, not the players who must suffer through it, only to see their results drop in the end.
This is not speculation- this is an unarguable fact if HIT is followed long enough.
The NFL example I witnessed directly saw every player but one get worse through the season. The one exception went through the motions with the team session and worked out on his own with a program provided by Al Vermiel (Bodyweight of 215, 460 bench with 32 x 225, 660 squat, lunge walkovers with 255 for sets of 16 steps, etc!)
I can also confirm that the weightroom empressario was a lazy shit who hung out in his cubicle with an equally lazy shit from the physio room, who not only didn’t do the therapy job but actively obstructed those of us who were brought in to clean up his mess of injuries.
One marquee player wanted treatment from us but had to get rid of the team therapist on duty. His approach?
“Hey! Here’s 20 bucks, how about going out and washing my car?” The guy took the money and left! Remember what I said about second jobs?
Clyde Emrich. I read some article about how he had no say in their previous S&C program. Now Rusty Jones has given him alot more “say” in what they do.
http://charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=10553&highlight=clyde+bears
I mistook Emrich for their head S&C coach earlier in the thread.
I haven’t bashed anyone.
We had a kid last year on my team who did 20 reps as a junior (in HS) without specifically training for the reps test. Was bound for great D1 school until some great, high volume intensive tempo (we’re talking over 1000m of “sprints” for a 250lb highschool lineman 4x a week) and HIT helped in his destroying of his knee (ACL, MCL, PCL, and meniscus).
Sad thing is, most of the areas around here that have crap programs are the more wealthier areas where supposedly no talent comes from (although they could somehow win state champs and be ranked top 10 in the nation 10 years ago prior to the new S&C systems) are the ones who afford these HIT/intensive tempo guys.
Hello Charlie, everyone.
I’m the one that posted this to the UM forum yesterday, I’ve been a lurker here for some time.
I make my living as a fitness trainer (and everyone does squats, cleans, pushups, chins, etc) so don’t come down too hard on me.
Any way, I dropped this over there for them to get a little perspective on things. Most don’t give a crap.
In any case, Michigan State has changed how they do things, in 2003 under the aforementioned Mannie they were dead last in the Big Ten in rushing yards. Last season, starting a new RG and RT that were unable to crack the playing group in three previous seasons, they led the conference in rushing. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
Sorry as a Brit i can’t follow this what is RG and RT? What is rushing?
I saw the same thing when I interned for Al Vermeil and the Bulls, we actually had 2 players from the Bears that would come down the road and train. It was even told to me that the only players that did Olympic lifts would be when some of the linemen would get together and perform cleans on there ONE PLATFORM they have at Halas Hall.