I recently stumbled across an old tape of mine, the NFL’s Fastest Man Competition from about 9 years ago, and was shocked to see how big and fast Travis Jervey was. For those of you who don’t remember he was an all-pro special teams and running back for the Packers. I believe he ran 6.3 for 55 meters, he ran down Herschel Walker like he was standing still. Jervey was around 6’0 225 and was so big that the announcer asked Herschel if this was the first time he had run against anybody with bigger arms than him. I tried a search on google but I couldnt find out what ever became of Jervey after about 2000, does anybody have a clue?
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_19961211/ai_n10282401
That link tells about his speed. 6.32 for 55 meters in that fotball fastest man comp. Doubt it was FAT? Anyone know?
Interestingly i never heard of this guy before.
Dencently sized, pretty quick caucasian runnign back.
Cool.
Did a search and looks like hes on the Atlanta Falcons now.
it was FAT, they had the photo finish print out and such. I had seen that he was with the Falcons for a while but I didnt know that he was with them now. You really wouldnt believe how fast the guy looked. According to one article he trained in the off season by lifting in the mornings and doing ocean running and uphill sprints in the evenings.
I thought he played at BYU, or that might have been Luke staley.
According to the article he went to the Citadel. He also said in the interview that he never ran track in college because he was too busy surfing when he wasnt playing football.
Jervey is pretty comparable to former UW lacrosse sprinter and NFL player Matt Pagel both in size and speed. Pagel probably weighed more and he ran 6.3x FAT in the 55.
He is actually retired now.He could run with the best of them.He never got much of a chance.He did have a couple of games early on with the Packers & Niners where he went for around 90-100 yards.His biggest problem was that he sometimes fumbled too much and didn’t know when to cut.He also outran his blockers.His vision & patience sucked.What a incredible athlete though.I would have loved to see him step on a track when he was young.
Matt Pagel outweighs Jervey by at least 20 lbs. Right now he is making a comeback as a fullback and is currently on the Green Bay Blizzard Arena league 2 football team. I have been working with Matt for the past couple of months. Right now he is about 255 lbs, and can still run in the 4.4 range.
Jesus, 255!!?
Congrats to Pagel though. He was decently sized in college I believe in the 220 range also running 10.5-10.6 in the 100 although my training partner smoked him at NCAA’s in 2004.
For a guy that size he has blazing speed.
A couple of days ago I came across an old Muscle and Fitness that profiled the “Fittest Men in the NFL” of which Jervey was a member. I had read a more recent article a while back that described his training and it sounded a lot like a Poliquin routine with sprints a few times a week. However, this article was printed back in 98 when he was still in his prime and competing in the NFL’s Fastest Man Competition.
Here is the program:
-Weights 3 times a week
-Emphasis on on explosive strength for the legs and overall upper-body strength
-Upper body ex. Supersetting Bench press and bent over rows for 8 sets of 20 on each!
-Lower body ex. Low Box Squat 20 reps@225, 20 reps@315, 20 reps@405!
-In this article it said he put a lot of training emphasis on building endurance on the track with 4x200, 4x100, 4x50 on one day and a treadmill workout on the other.
-Treadmill workout: 15x30 sec. intervals with 30 sec. rest, ramping up the incline every three sets and finishing at a 15 degree grade.
-Training bests:
40: 4.3
Bodyfat: 4.6%
Bench press: 29 reps@225, 12 reps@315
Squat: 650 pounds
55m: 6.28 FAT at NFL Fastest Man
The article also shows some insight into the training methods of Mike Woicik (Patriots) and Dana LeDuc (Rams) who Charlie said ran an “excellent” program.
pretty strong man.
Ya it’s interesting that he got that strong from lifting with such high reps. TO also works with really high reps and it seems to be working for him. I just find it funny/perplexing that the majority of top athletes work with methods that are largely thought to be sub-optimal at best and downright awful at worst, especially by the members of this forum, myself included. At some point should we stop crediting results gained from these methods as a sign of superior genetics or the “in spite of the method” thinking and seriously look at the results and the training that achieved them? Intensive tempo comes to mind, while I agree with the forum on the 75-95% no mans land, one cannot dismiss the countless number of successful results obtained solely by it’s use. Hypertrophy weights, western periodization, etc. the list goes on. Perhaps we should be more open minded and learn from results rather than dismiss them if they don’t line up with our exact training protocols. Sorry for the rant, just had some thoughts.
Perhaps it is just frustrating that extraordinary results are often achieved with methods that sometimes would appear to do more harm than good with no explanation as to why it worked. Also if we know such a great method of training, why is it that few elites seem to use this method and are no worse for it?
hey now there are some athletes out there that still train heavy like warrick dunn who still train with gayle hatch. i think for any athlete it is a disadvantage the more they know about training. do we know for sure he got this strong with CP setup are was it built in college. how fast were the treadmill runs and what did the rams sc have to say maybe we can compare notes?
According to the article he trained with a bodybuilder, hence the higher reps. I wasn’t specifically referring to Jervey but just training in general. For instance, most people here would laugh at what Tom Shaw does out in Florida, yet he had 4 of the top 5 fastest at the combine. Results are results, we’ve discussed this before when talking about the heavy amount of int. tempo running in most football programs.
Here is what I have on LeDuc:
-Speed endurance workout(Monday) 10x150 under 20 sec. or 14x110 under 14 sec.
-Monday and Thursday are upper body days- bench, incline, and a lot of shoulder work
-Tuesday and Thursday are football specific drills (backpedaling, flexibility, plyos) and lower body weights (squats, leg press, DB stepups, leg extensions, leg curls and power cleans)
It didn’t say how fast the treadmill runs were.
compare johnnie morton vs joey galloway workouts:
morton:
shoulder mon
arms tue
chest back thur
leg fri
leg day: 3x10 for all
leg curls
leg ext
leg press
track session:
1mile jog
stretch
8x150
500-400-300
cowboys: 100m stride, jog back 50 walk 50
galloway:
4lifting days:
key movements: 3x3-6reps/inseason 3x10
hc
squats
sh press
lunges
ip
bp
cg bp
track work:
2 sprint sessions:
day 1:
10-30 with chutes and normal
cutting and jump drills
day 2:
60-80 with chutes
cutting and jump dirlls
Personally I like the look of Galloway’s training even though I don’t like the feel of the chute (it’s too windy around here). Morton would get ridiculed if he posted that routine on here, however he did have a long and fairly productive NFL career, go figure!
Incidentally, a former coach of mine was present at Galloway’s pro day. At the end of his performance a coach stood up and said “Gentlemen we just saw Superman!”
Another thing on Jervey, he was beating James Trapp up until about 40-45 yards when Trapp pulled away.
yeh joey is a freak, osu guys really believe in heavy heavy lunges, they would squat heavy on mon then lunge heavy thur like 365 for 5 reps. coach k believe heavy lunges are great for speed development, i know first hand.
mon:
heavy hang cleans
heavy squats
heavy hang shrugs
stiff dl
lat pd
thur:
speed hc
heavy lunges
speed hang shrugs
stiff dl
lat pd
Are you referring to Coach Kazadi? What template is that?