http://www.thestate.com/gogamecocks/story/841626.html
New conditioning coach brings different approach
By JOSEPH PERSON
jperson@thestate.com
South Carolina’s football players get a break today from the summer strength and conditioning program.
But there will be no rest for Craig Fitzgerald.
The Gamecocks’ new strength coach will report at 5:30 a.m. to Palmetto Richland, where doctors will induce his wife, Mary, into labor. The couple, which is expecting its second son, should be home in time for Fitzgerald to make Monday morning’s weightlifting and running session.
“My wife’s pretty good (at) scheduling,” Fitzgerald said. “She has them in the summer, so we don’t miss workouts or anything.”
Part of Fitzgerald’s job is to get the Gamecocks to show up for summer workouts, which might be voluntary by NCAA definition but are considered essential by Steve Spurrier and every other coach who hopes to be successful in the fall.
And while Fitzgerald cannot take attendance at the two-hour workouts — which consist of an hour of lifting followed by an hour of conditioning beginning at 7 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays — the 36-year-old can try to make them fun.
To that end, Fitzgerald has brought in new equipment and implemented several new drills, which have threatened to turn the lifting sessions into a Strongman competition. Players flip gigantic tires weighing as much as 1,100 pounds and bang away at the tires with sledgehammers, in an exercise designed to improve core strength.
Fitzgerald also is staging an eight-week competition, splitting players into 10 teams and letting them square off in the bench press, squat and power clean — the weightlifter’s trinity — as well as tug-of-war and man-in-the-ring contests.
The only things missing are a keg toss and truck pull.
Veteran players were chosen as captains and allowed to draft the teams. Members of the winning squad get T-shirts, hats and a steak dinner at Fitzgerald’s house at the end of the summer.
“This makes us a little different. Instead of all four days a week the strength coach is barking at you, there’s one day where the kids are motivating each other and the leaders are pulling the younger players along,” Fitzgerald said. “You should hear it. The kids are yelling for each other.”
Fitzgerald is a testament to the value of summers spent sweating in the weight room. He arrived at Maryland as an undersized linebacker and built himself into a starting tight end under the eye of Dwight Galt, the Terps’ strength coach for the past 21 years.
Kevin Plank, Fitzgerald’s roommate and teammate at Maryland, asked him to go in with him on a start-up apparel company that would manufacture workout gear that would not get soaked with sweat.
Fitzgerald passed on the offer, took his political science and history degrees and became the strength coach at nearby American University in Washington, D.C. Plank’s company, Under Armour, reported a total net income of $38 million for 2008.
But Fitzgerald has no regrets.
“I just saw how much (Galt) enjoyed his job when I was a player,” Fitzgerald said. “I wanted to do the same for as many players as I could as he did for me.”
Fitzgerald also had stints at Arizona State and Maryland before spending nearly four years at Harvard training eight of the Crimson’s 41 varsity teams, including football. Fitzgerald said one of the attractions of the USC job was to work exclusively with football.
“I wanted to go to a place where football was a major deal, and it was the deal,” he said, “and wanted to focus on that and how good we could make it.”
Since arriving in January, Fitzgerald has brought in “power stations” by Sorinex, an equipment manufacturer in Irmo. The stations allow Fitzgerald and his staff to train the entire team together.
The tires and sledgehammers give the 5-year-old Crews Building more of a Spartan feel.
“We wanted to make it a monster — all power racks, dumbbells, sledgehammers and tires,” said Fitzgerald, who arrived at USC in January after Mark Smith left for Tennessee. “It’s a workmanlike place when you walk in there now. … It looks like a giant torture chamber.”
Assistant strength coach Dan Austin said players have broken the wooden handles on at least 10 sledgehammers, and said technique is key in the training that one visiting high school coach called unorthodox.
“Regardless of how strong you are, if you don’t get the technique down flipping that tire, it’s a fight,” Austin said.
The two-foot-deep sandpit recently dug at the practice fields is no day at the beach, either. Players do sprints and other resistance training in the 20-yard pit in lieu of running hills — since there are none around Williams-Brice Stadium.
But players like the positive energy Fitzgerald brings to the workouts. Fitzgerald punctuates many of his points by saying, “rocking and rolling,” a phrase players figure to hear a lot between now and the start of preseason practice on Aug. 4.
“Strength coaches, this is the time we love,” Fitzgerald said. “Because during the season, the game schedule and practice schedule is most important to players, as it should be. Right now this is the only game in town for these guys, so it’s the time you get the most focus and intensity from them.
“We love it right now. It’s great.”
Rocking and rolling.
Reach Person at (803) 771-8496.
Sample USC workout
The following is the two-hour strength and conditioning workout USC players went through Thursday morning:
WEIGHTS
Power clean — 6 sets of 3-5 reps
Squat — 6 sets of 5-8 reps
Pull-ups — 5 sets of 8-10 reps (with weight added)
Lunges — 5 20-yard sets (with weight added)
Manual neck exercises with partner — 2 sets of 10 reps
Hamstring/glute exercises — 4 sets of 12 reps
Sledgehammer — 5 sets of 20 reps
Muscle endurance circuit — shoulder raises, sandbag curls, bumper plate grip walk, sit-ups, leg raises
CONDITIONING
“Dominators” — 20 reps of the 60-yard shuttle (30 seconds rest in between)
Sandpit sprints — 30 reps of 20-yard sprints in 2-foot-deep sand pit
Three tips
Want to tone up like your favorite USC player? It won’t happen overnight. But Craig Fitzgerald, the Gamecocks’ first-year strength coach, offer these strategies to get started:
Bite off what you can chew
“Do what you can guarantee you can do. Start off small so you know you’ll get started and build some momentum.”
Great technique
“The weight is always secondary. Technique is always more critical.”
Partner up
“If you find a great teammate (for a workout partner), that’s going to help you be consistent.”