Stimulating competition in the off-season – what’s your method?

Whenever off-season workouts start to get slightly mundane and I find myself scurrying up and down the hallways of our school grabbing kids to make sure they’re in the weight room, I’m reminded of something that Alabama head coach Nick Saban said to hundreds of onlookers in the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville during this year’s AFCA convention. To paraphrase Coach Saban, “It’s the human condition to be average, to just survive. It’s normal for people to be mediocre by nature. They don’t want to do the extra things to make themselves better, so we can’t expect that they will. It’s our job as coaches to bring it out in them.”
It’s been a long-time goal of mine to find innovative ways to motivate players. I remember reading in AFM about Kent State’s point system that tracks the progress of their student-athletes in and out of the classroom throughout the year. They orchestrate an entire draft where the seniors pick the guys they want on their squad and they are held accountable for them. Randy Edsall, the head coach at the University of Connecticut, is doing something similar, splitting up his players into two conferences with six teams each where they accumulate positive points for things such as weightlifting while getting points subtracted for infractions like missing class or poor academic performance. Urban Meyer has had great success with his Champions Club where top off-season performers are rewarded with top gear and top grub (steak as opposed to macaroni and cheese at the training table). It’s motivation through social hierarchy at his finest. Would we expect anything less from a national championship mind?
AFM wants to learn more about what you are doing in your programs to create competition in the off-season. It’s every coach’s goal to get to the point where the players are leading themselves and things such as peer pressure, accountability and camaraderie take on an entirely new level. In this issue, we profile what Missouri is doing to develop the mental toughness of their program with their Mat Drill workouts. It was a concept created a long time ago, yet few programs across the country have mastered it as much as Gary Pinkel’s crew in Columbia. He’s done it with the help of Josh Stoner, the head strength and conditioning coach who was generous to reveal his methodology for what has transformed the Tigers from a Big 12 doormat into a perennial top-25 team. Now it’s your turn to let us know how you’re getting the most from your kids this off-season – e-mail me at Mike.Kuchar@AmericanFootballMonthly.com.

Yours in football,

Mike Kuchar
Senior Writer
American Football Monthly
MikeKuchar@AmericanFootballMonthly.com