The new staff at Iowa State is not only bringing some new ideas and new energy to Ames, they're also bringing with them an approach in the weight room that I've never heard of, and most programs would never think of doing. They're doing some things that are downright scary.
In a Q&A session between Scout and the Cyclones' new director of strength and conditioning Rudy Wade, Wade explained one of his more unconventional approaches in the weight room. When players come in on Friday's they've been given two full days to recover, so Wade and his staff are amping up the intensity and using some popular horror movie themes to find a theme that "maybe only our type of guys here would understand and appreciate".
From coach Wade:
Fridays, it’s a lower-body training day, they know we’re going to get after them when they come and we want to mess with them a little bit. I think probably in the beginning they were probably a little scared and it’s kind of more now, a few weeks in, maybe they get more of a kick out of it. In the beginning I wanted them to be scared but I want the end product to be scary. I want a bunch of sick dudes that like stuff like that.
When we played the Saw theme song we put the jigsaw face up on all the TVs. We did the Halloween theme song. We played a storm siren on repeat for four and a half hours one morning. We had some kind of horror thing on last Friday. Like it was starting to mess with me. During the last group I said, ‘As soon as we’re done with the group, we have to turn this off, man.’ They know it’s going to be a good go on Friday and we’re having fun with it. We just try to pick a Friday theme that maybe only our type of guys here would understand and appreciate.
You get two full days to recover [on Friday]. We put the workout up on the board and I noticed last Friday in that first group if there were 35 guys in it we probably had 30 guys come in and check the board before the workout started. They know it’s coming on Fridays.
Can you imagine going through an intense workout out with a storm siren blaring for an hour and a half? It's certainly unconventional and out-of-the-box, but when the Cyclone defense is facing a fourth down against the Longhorns in Austin with the game on the line, this unconventional approach may just be the edge they were looking for.
Read the full Q&A, with more insight into Wade's weight room philosophy, here.