Holding on to the momentum of winning – and stopping a losing streak – Speed Development

Hold That Momentum!

Last October I had the privilege of being behind the scenes with the West Virginia University football team and staff the day of their mid-week game against Virginia Tech. WVU was 2-4, and coming off a near miss against  Miami and a comfortable win against an inferior opponent. Virginia Tech cruised in with a 6-0 record and a top 5 ranking. The tale of two teams in completely different situations, both heading in different directions by seasons end!

WVU completely dominated the game all four quarters and only gave up a score after a botched call off a turnover. It was a physical mismatch. The year before WVU
had won a classic battle at Virginia Tech. An epic goal line stand capped the game and WVU had confidence from that game going into the 2003 match-up. Observing the team at breakfast and then in the walk-through, I sensed no doubt, lack of confidence or the hint of being a team with a losing record. The coaches never once let the players think they were not capable of winning. It looked like a room of winners who just happened to have a 2-4 record. WVU ended the season 8-5.

While I was not in the VirginiaTech locker-room to report on what was happening, that night in Morgantown was the beginning of a downward spiral that left Tech 8-5. Interestingly
they bounced back to wallop the Miami Hurricanes, but then lost a series of ugly games the rest of the season, save an overtime win over Temple. Beamer has been around the block a few times and sometimes the individuals on a team just do not respond to adversity – who knows what was going on.

If you find your team in either one of these positions, what can you do?

The importance of statistics.

You can’t walk into any position meeting room in America without seeing game performance goals and the name of each player at that position listed with their grades. Framed correctly, those goals give meaning to the concept of “intense focus on this play, right now”.

Individual execution of this play – yields – attainment of individual performance goals – yields – attainment of team goals – yields – outcome success. (make sure you read the last section to fully grasp this)

Use the “right here, right now” focus to stress goal attainment.

Speed.

Not fast enough? Want to be faster as a team? Maybe focus is not your problem! Your team is just not fast enough to the point of attack.  You can never have too much speed, but are you coaching and training the right kind of speed?

Pure speed in sports can be misleading. Mike Boyle, the author of Functional Training for Sports (www.humankinetics.com) and a leading trainer for Pre-NFL combine athletes, points out that every car made can go 60 miles per hour, but what separates a Porsche from a Yugo is how fast it can get from 0 to 60 and how well each turns at that speed. Unnecessary
concern with speed rather than acceleration and change of direction speed is the pitfall of many speed development programs. Boyle makes several training recommendations plus outlines a wide variety of drills and exercises to address this and other functional training issues.

Monday Night Football Comment…did anyone hear the comment one player made about KC’s Priest Holmes? ‘He is the fastest player in the NFL with a football under his arm!”…ok, that is the best type of speed to have, right? Maybe it makes sense to time your RB’s in the 40 with a football. What is more sport specific than that?

Produced by Ray Lauenstein