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Training tweaks could taper injury trend: putting the off back in the offseason might be the best thing NFL teams can do at time this of year
Sporting News, The, April 29, 2005 by Dan Pompei
When hard-working Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher popped a hamstring 5 minutes into his first training camp practice last July, you had to question if what he did in the offseason didn't make him vulnerable to injury. Are offseason conditioning programs and individual training regimens preventing injuries or contributing to them?
It has become a boiling controversy in NFL front offices.
"It's a question that has been asked by a lot of people---the players, the players association, by some personnel within the ranks of the league," says Dr. Elliot Pellman, chairman of the Jets' medical department and the NFL's medical liaison. "The commissioner has asked questions about it. Owners have."
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If the injury trend continues, Pellman promises exhaustive studies that take into account variables such as the positions of players, medical histories, recovery times and types of conditioning. For now, he acknowledges there is a fine line between conditioning and strengthening and overconditioning and overstrengthening.
Studies show some disturbing trends. Injuries last season increased 20 percent from 2003. About 70 percent of the injuries are considered "overuse," non-contact injuries--muscle strains and pulls. NFL players suffered more lower-abdominal pulls than in previous years. And here's the kicker: Roughly 70 percent of the "overuse" injuries occurred before the regular season.
There is concern about this at every level because injuries shorten players' careers, impair coaches' ability to win and diminish owners' revenue streams. Every game missed by an NFL player because of injury last season cost his team an average of $83,000. Some teams, such as the Titans, whose injured players missed more than 200 combined games, spent tens of millions of dollars on players who watched the games in sweatsuits.
Many teams have addressed their concerns by cutting back or tweaking their offseason programs. The collective bargaining agreement allows teams 14 weeks of offseason work, but the Bears are using only 10 of those. "One thing I've noticed over the years--after 12 weeks, I think it's too much," new Bears strength and conditioning coordinator Rusty Jones says. "You're around each other all the time. I like to see it between 10 and 12 weeks."
The Bengals also are using one week less than they are permitted, and they are asking players to lift weights for only 45 minutes per day. The Steelers are asking their veterans to be around for no more than five or six weeks.
"An athlete has a finite amount of professional-quality effort to expend," says Mark Verstegen, director of performance for the NFL players association and president of Athlete's Performance, a company that designs training programs for elite athletes.
The Bucs have changed to a three-weeks-on/one-week-off program to avoid overwork. "You have to take a look at that," Bucs coach Jon Gruden says. "It's a long year when you're busting it for 11 1/2 months. Maybe it does take a toll out there."
The amount of time players spend working out is significant, but how they work out during that time might be more significant. A 3-hour workout comprised exclusively of Olympic lifts is as obsolete as a breakfast drink of a dozen raw eggs and wheat germ. "Olympic lifting has its place, but if that's all you're doing, and you're not concentrating on the balance it takes to be an athlete in this game, you're going to have injury problems," Jones says.
The coaches who administer offseason programs have to be concerned first with recovery. The Bears took it to the extreme; they gave players 14 weeks to rest after the season ended and didn't begin their program until last week.
The offseason program also can be viewed as an extension of the recovery period. "A lot of players are structurally out of balance from the season before and don't realize it," Jones says. "This game creates dominant muscles and imbalances. With a good program, you find some things out."
For instance, if a player has dominant quadriceps and his hamstrings aren't strong enough, he is a candidate for hamstring pulls.
Verstegen preaches "prehab" to teams that want to avoid an excess number of players in rehab. "It's a new paradigm in sport," he says. "We look at how the person looks from right to left, from front to back. Do their joints function properly, or do they rotate out? It's just understanding human movement patterns. Then we prescribe corrective exercise, which includes flexibility, stability, strengthening ... so we have proper movement patterns and the athlete can withstand a lot of the demands placed on him."
Among the teams that have been aggressive on the prehab front are the Patriots, Colts, Seahawks, Packers and Bears, who are testing players in seven basic movements to identify muscle imbalances. From there, players are assigned lifts, stretches and exercises on a device called the "core board" to minimize the imbalances.
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