What's interesting is that UCLA has gone from three players last season to 14 now who can bench 400 lbs. That puts them in the top-end of the Pac10, and the nation. Other Pac10 teams mentioned near the top were Washington (12 players), and at the bottom Oregon (three), WSU (two).
Nationally: Texas (15), Ohio St. (14), Miami (five to seven).
USC has 32. (That's not a typo, that would be thirty two).
Here is the ironic thing. USC S&C coach does not focus soley on weight lifting yet USC outclasses everyone in the country in weight training. Carroll hired Carlisle when he was assistant at Tennessee and I think he has been one of the major reasons along with Carroll and Chow for the success of USC. USC had 100% participation in this off season workouts, and out of the 85 players on the team, there were only a total of 14 absents during the whole offseason workouts.
I am huge believer in that the offseason is where you win or lose the games in the fall. I remember hearing Mack Brown saying that at his spring practice which was shown on ESPN. Nebraska I think was the first University to hire top notch S & C coaches and took it real serious. That was a major reason for the success of Nebraska.
Here was a Q & A that i thought was interesting that was related to weight training and how USC works out.
Q & A with Trojan strength coach Chris Carlisle
How much weight training is involved in your program?
We squat because you've got to have the base and everything, it's very important, but it's probably the slowest movement we do in the weight room. Everything else is maximum velocity because you have to train the way you play. We don't train slow in the weight room. We work on three premises and they're up on my board right now; How to, How fast, How much. When these freshmen come in we teach them how to lift. We teach them how to lift properly because we reduce the chance of injury when we get great technique. If you watch our coaching staff, this is all reflected on the football field. Maybe it goes back to me being a football coach but you have to teach the athletes how to do something first. Then we worry about how fast that ball moves because we've got to get at playing speed. Then we worry about how much, how much will come out of how to and how fast, how much just happens. We tie that all together with great technique, the coordination of the three joints and core development. Then you've got a football player, not a weightlifter. There's a huge difference, we've got a lot of kids coming out of high school who are weightlifters but this is not weightlifting. We lift weights but we train with a specific movement in mind. Everything we do in here can actually be taken back to the football field and re-enacted on the field. There are some people who say there's no cross over between the weight room and actually doing the skill, and there's some truth in that, but if you don't work on the movements in here you're not going to get great outcome on the field. You can jump all day and jump all day and your vertical jump may go up a little bit because you're jumping but when I come in here and I train exclusive movements and I train plyometrics and then we go out and test vertical jump, now we have great improvement. Rather than an inch improvement, we'll have a two inch improvement. You get a guy like Omar Nazel who weighs 250 now, he played at 225 last year, his vertical jump is now 37". People say there's no crossover, I say there's a great amount of crossover when you have a kid like Nazel who is 6-5, was 225, now is 250 and his body fat is down. We take body fat every four weeks, we know where his body is and now he's made a transition to where he's got a 37" vertical jump. When he walks out there now he's gonna be a factor. He was a lanky kid, now he's a football player. That's what we do in this program, Omar is a great example of what hard work and focus can bring about.
Bruins Flexing their Muscles
Nationally: Texas (15), Ohio St. (14), Miami (five to seven).
USC has 32. (That's not a typo, that would be thirty two).
Here is the ironic thing. USC S&C coach does not focus soley on weight lifting yet USC outclasses everyone in the country in weight training. Carroll hired Carlisle when he was assistant at Tennessee and I think he has been one of the major reasons along with Carroll and Chow for the success of USC. USC had 100% participation in this off season workouts, and out of the 85 players on the team, there were only a total of 14 absents during the whole offseason workouts.
I am huge believer in that the offseason is where you win or lose the games in the fall. I remember hearing Mack Brown saying that at his spring practice which was shown on ESPN. Nebraska I think was the first University to hire top notch S & C coaches and took it real serious. That was a major reason for the success of Nebraska.
Here was a Q & A that i thought was interesting that was related to weight training and how USC works out.
Q & A with Trojan strength coach Chris Carlisle
How much weight training is involved in your program?
We squat because you've got to have the base and everything, it's very important, but it's probably the slowest movement we do in the weight room. Everything else is maximum velocity because you have to train the way you play. We don't train slow in the weight room. We work on three premises and they're up on my board right now; How to, How fast, How much. When these freshmen come in we teach them how to lift. We teach them how to lift properly because we reduce the chance of injury when we get great technique. If you watch our coaching staff, this is all reflected on the football field. Maybe it goes back to me being a football coach but you have to teach the athletes how to do something first. Then we worry about how fast that ball moves because we've got to get at playing speed. Then we worry about how much, how much will come out of how to and how fast, how much just happens. We tie that all together with great technique, the coordination of the three joints and core development. Then you've got a football player, not a weightlifter. There's a huge difference, we've got a lot of kids coming out of high school who are weightlifters but this is not weightlifting. We lift weights but we train with a specific movement in mind. Everything we do in here can actually be taken back to the football field and re-enacted on the field. There are some people who say there's no cross over between the weight room and actually doing the skill, and there's some truth in that, but if you don't work on the movements in here you're not going to get great outcome on the field. You can jump all day and jump all day and your vertical jump may go up a little bit because you're jumping but when I come in here and I train exclusive movements and I train plyometrics and then we go out and test vertical jump, now we have great improvement. Rather than an inch improvement, we'll have a two inch improvement. You get a guy like Omar Nazel who weighs 250 now, he played at 225 last year, his vertical jump is now 37". People say there's no crossover, I say there's a great amount of crossover when you have a kid like Nazel who is 6-5, was 225, now is 250 and his body fat is down. We take body fat every four weeks, we know where his body is and now he's made a transition to where he's got a 37" vertical jump. When he walks out there now he's gonna be a factor. He was a lanky kid, now he's a football player. That's what we do in this program, Omar is a great example of what hard work and focus can bring about.
Bruins Flexing their Muscles
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