The University of Tennessee held their annual strength clinic recently, and the guys at ASAP Athletic Strength and Power were there to capture some quality nuggets for both coaching staffs, and their strength guys within Butch Jones' opening remarks.
Coach Jones started off with what separates their training philosophy from what other programs may be doing, from his perspective.
"What separates us a little bit in our strength and conditioning program is that 'your on the field product', and your 'in the weightroom product' is exactly the same. They are training them the way that we want to play football here."
Jones went on to explain that they decided to buy a bunch of heart monitors the last two weeks of the season to monitor. The objective was to have a means to measure when players were actually working as hard as they possibly could.
"It was amazing, because now we can tell when kids are loafing, and not going hard. Now, with your heart rate, football is meant to be played within the 80th and 90th percentile with your heart rate. So as a football coach, they come off and they already have all their data on this big flat screen TV, and now I can when we go team periods, and some other things, what kids are not giving their all for Tennessee." he explained.
"It also lets me gage, as a coach, it was amazing to see that our wideouts, even in individual, did more taxing work, and more running than most all of our position combined."
Jones then explained that the monitoring system informs them of how much recovery time each player is projected to need, and noted to the strength coaches in attendance of how that is a perfect example of how the strength coaches work hand in hand with the goals and vision of the coaching staff.
To wrap things up, Jones reminded strength coaches that their last name is their brand.
"We're all strength coaches in here. What makes you different? What is your personal brand? Your last name is your personal brand, so what does that stand for? How are you preparing your kids differently to give them the edge? The inches make the champion to go succeed on game day."
Lots more quality content in the video below.