Samson\'s NFL Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year: Seattle\'s Mike Clark

by: Steve Silverman
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Take a look around your living room. If you are an average adult in your 30s, 40s or 50s, chances are a young person is taking up space in your house, sleeping in a bed you provide, eating your food and wearing clothes that you have bought.

That young person is likely to be on the couch watching TV or playing video games. The thought of why this young person is inside on a beautiful day giving his opposable thumbs a workout on toggle switches and not playing outside has you shaking your head.

If you are worried what all this indoor passive play is doing to the physical condition of young people, you are not alone.

Mike Clark, the strength and conditioning coach of the Seattle Seahawks, is concerned about it as well. Not just because he has a health-related position and is worried about the long-term health of society. He is concerned because he sees the impact of this kind of passive activity on the players that he is charged with getting bigger and stronger and quicker. They may be elite level athletes who are getting paid millions to play in the NFL, but there are conditioning deficits when compared with the players of 10 or 15 years ago.

That may need a second or two to sink in, but it does make sense. Clark, the NFL’s Samson Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year, sees the same kind of weaknesses in elite level athletes that many parents see in their junior couch potatoes.

“I don’t see the same kind of conditioning overall that we saw, five, 10 or 15 years ago,” Clark said. “I’m not talking about specific individuals – but in the group of athletes as a whole. NFL players are certainly elite athletes and the cream of the crop. But I don’t believe they are in the kind of shape they were in previous generations because of the lack of developmental play and the increase in passive play.”

“Kids are driven to school, they sit in school, and a lot of places don't even have mandatory recess, or any recess. They sit there in front of computers, they go home and play Nintendo and get on their computers, and pretty soon their arms are coming out of their chests instead of their shoulders. The structural posture is so bad, and that is a huge deal. We've got a lot of work to do in that area.”

It makes sense because video games have taken such a major hold of our society. But the thrust of this piece is the outstanding job that Clark has done in getting the Seahawks prepared every week and their rise to a 13-3 record during the regular season and a spot in this year’s Super Bowl against the Steelers.

Clark, a modest sort who is not looking to take credit for any of his team’s success, admits “that we didn’t hurt them any.”

Clark’s philosophy as a strength and conditioning coach is all about getting his players quicker, stronger and more powerful -- all of which makes them better football players. The way this is done, he said, is to concentrate on the lower body first and then building up the upper body.

“I take a look at our opponents every week when we take the field before the game,” Clark said. “If I don’t notice their glutes (gluteus maximus or buttocks), calves and hamstrings, then I feel good about how we are going to do that day. That’s where the power and dynamic strength is going to come from.

“I always tell my players that I’d rather they look better going than coming.”

That’s just a clever way of saying that when it comes to overall football ability and functionality, the hamstrings, the gluteus maximus and the erectors of the back are the most important. “These are the biggest and most powerful muscles we have and they provide the bulk of the power,” Clark said. “Don't get caught in the trap of being the body builder and working all the muscles you can see in the mirror. It's the ones that you don't see that are more important." 

As his profession has grown more established with clear methods taught for building strength, quickness and power, Clark sees the role of a strength and conditioning coach as one of artist and communicator.

“It is an art because you can’t just hand out one format that everyone can follow,” Clark said. “You have to get to know your players and their individual talents and strengths. You have to design specific programs that may include a little bit more of a power workout for some, while you may have to concentrate on agility for others.”

One of the other keys for Clark to do his job well is communication and trust with trainer Sam Ramsden. While both have clear delineations in what they have to do, when the trainer and the strength coach can work together well, it is clearly beneficial for the team.

That was the case prior to the NFC championship game when Seahawk star running back and NFL MVP Shaun Alexander was recovering from a concussion suffered in the divisional playoff win over the Redskins. While Ramsden and the team’s medical staff was supervising his recovery, Clark was involved with several game-related tests to show if he was going to be at full strength and full speed for the game.

“It’s one thing to recover from a specific problem like a concussion, but it can be quite another to show that a player is ready to play his best game,” Clark explained. “That’s where our communication is so important. Sometimes we will discuss a specific situation and even though it may be more on the medical side, I might have a suggestion. Other times I won’t have any insight and I’ll let him know. You can’t guess in this business.

“He will also have suggestions for me and I think that’s why we work well together. There is no ego and no concern about stepping on the other guy’s toes.”

That is not always the case around the NFL or major college sports. Strength coaches and trainers are looking to protect their turf and may not share information with their coworkers.

“I have seen and heard of a number of cases just like that,” Clark said. “I am not going to throw anybody under the bus and mention any names, but there are cases throughout the NFL and at other levels of football where the trust factor is not there between trainer and strength coach. It makes it very hard to do your job.”

Clark uses a common-sense approach when it comes to getting players prepared in the offseason and throughout the regular season as well. He’s not interested in having his players win body-building contests – his job is to help players perform as close as they can to their maximum level.

As a result, 80 percent of the workout routines that his players use are done standing – as opposed to prone or on a bench -- and involve more than one muscle group. “They are multi-joint exercises done with free weights that have large ranges of motion – and they are often done with speed,” Clark said.

A look at the Seahawks reveals that the success of the running game is one of the biggest reasons that the Seahawks have turned into one of the league’s dominant teams. Clearly Alexander, who rushed for 1,880 yards and 27 TDs (he added one more score as a receiver), is a brilliant talent. But talent is nowhere near enough to make a player dominant in the NFL.

Alexander is the beneficiary of a tremendous offensive line and OLT Walter Jones and OLG Steve Hutchinson are the group’s two best blockers. Whenever the Seahawks need to make yardage on a key 3rd-and-short situation, Alexander runs to the left side 90 percent of the time.

Not coincidentally, Jones and Hutchinson are among the most dynamic performer in the Seahawks’ weight room. “I really don’t want to single out any individuals or take any credit for what they do on the field,” said Clark. “But I think I can say this quite accurately… we haven’t hurt them any.”

Jones and Hutchinson are widely acknowledged as the best tandem of blockers in the game and have great functional football strength and surprising quickness for men so large. “They are among the strongest at their positions in the league,” Clark said. “And Steve has gotten noticeably stronger since he came into the league (drafted in 2001).”

Clark also points to WR Darrell Jackson as a player who has gotten sharper and stronger throughout his career with the Seahawks. He missed nine games with a knee injury in 2005, but when he returned he was nearly in top form.

Despite his great talent, Jackson was noted as much for his drops as his receptions. But it all came together for him in the divisional playoff win over Washington when he caught nine passes for 143 yards and a touchdown.

Jackson is one of the players that Clark admires the most because he attacks his strength training regimen with such vigor. “He really goes after it hard,” Clark said. “He pushes himself all the time and he is a very demanding worker. You want all the players to be successful, but when a player like Darrell has a great game, you know he has earned every bit of it.”

Getting players stronger and faster has always been Clark’s goal, and the development of that part of strength and conditioning has come a long way.

“We started doing a lot more running, a lot more explosiveness out on the field, and realized the fastest movement in all of sports is the Olympic weightlifters when they do the snatch,” Clark said. “Football is a power sport, and a man that bench presses 500 pounds uses about 420 pounds of foot pressure per second, which is okay. Eight hundred pound squats is about 760, but a 280 power clean generates just short of 1,900. So we started going that way with our workouts.”

Clark designs workouts in order to help players improve. He is not interested in having players sit on a bench work on curls. It is all about dynamic movements that mimic what happens on the football field.

“You play the game on your feet, so do activities, do strength training activities while you're on your feet,” Clark said. “At least 70 percent of it. And, to be honest, if you count the running and throwing of the med balls and jumping, plus lifting, we'll probably do 80 percent of everything we do standing up.”

Clark’s approach has clearly worked wonders with Seattle.

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