The Penn State Coaches Show from Primantis kicked off tonight. James Franklin won't join the program until next week, so tonight's show featured, among others, strength and conditioning coach Dwight Galt.
Below is a quick recap of what he had to offer...
Team morale...
"They’ve been unbelievable for three and a half years but after last year the confidence, the drive, just the desire to keep taking this thing in another positive step has really been great with them. It's been a blast to train them. Believe me, they don’t need any motivation. That's for sure. I’m just kind of holding onto the rope and they’re dragging me. Just their attitude and their effort has just been phenomenal."
Training approach by position...
"We do a general strength, power, speed, agility and conditioning type of thing for everybody, but after that we really get specific. We really want to make sure that everything we're doing for our athletes in those five areas is going to be similar to what the demands are on the field, so, yes, to answer your question it gets very specific. We tier things according to their training age and what position they play. I think that’s the best way to really individualize our programs."
Evaluating progress in the weight room...
"The bod pod has always been an important tool. This may sound kind of crazy, but this is the first year we have really have relied on it to get us the information we need. Our talent situation the first three years, especially the first two years, was such a way it just really didn’t make any difference. There were certain players who were real good. There were certain players who were (attempting) to get to that level and it just wasn’t the same talent. We weren’t really focused on fine-tuning the athletic machine like that. Now with the total exchange of talent and with the talent that Coach Franklin’s staff are bringing in it's a huge part of our deal. We really focus on gaining the right kind of weight. We don’t have to throw kids out there their first year because they’re just so much better than the older guys talent-wise. Now we can sit there and we can cultivate them and we can train them correctly. We can get them ready to focus on making sure it's all lean mass and not putting fat on that later on we have to take off anyway."
How he's seen the senior class evolve...
"They’re grown men. You’re working with grown men after they’ve been here for two or three years. Now I’m in my fourth season and all those guys I had first coming in, they’re men. They’re big, strong and fast. They get it. They totally bought into the culture. They spread the culture, which is gigantic. The culture is a huge part of what we’re trying to do here at Penn State, add on to what always has been a great culture here. Having older guys like that is great. You have 21 seniors and 15 of them are starting right now, so it's going to be a real strong part, leadership part of our team."
Upperclassmen helping freshmen acclimate...
"It’s a tough transition, when you go to high school coming into this situation. I have the guys who are coming from great training programs. They have worked so hard in high school. They all have personal trainers, and they get up here and they told me all the stories of the recruiting process. Then after the first week they’re like, I’ve never imagined it would be like this. A lot of it is the competition. Not only are they 18 going with 21-year olds. It’s just the speed and competition of it, so it’s just a huge transition. It's always been a really necessary part of the experience is to surround them with supportive older player as well as us as support stuff. I think what's neat and unique now: A lot of these older players, they’re really good. But a lot of these true freshmen, redshirt freshmen and true sophomore are really good too. So it might be, 'I’m not helping this guy take my reps.' But it's not that way at all. It’s a really supportive deal. They’re helping guys even though they’re fighting for playing time, so that’s a pretty neat deal for us."
Friday lifting sessions for non-travel squad...
"The Friday lift is pretty interesting because the front of the body looks great. Everybody likes that. It’s the first thing you see in a person and an athlete, it’s the front of the body. The back of the body, called the posterior chain, is what’s going to make you a great player. That’s your hamstrings, your glutes, your calves, your upper back, your lower back. Those are gigantic movement-type muscle groups. Friday is all posterior chain muscle groups. It’s a lot harder. It's easy to bench and do all the things you do with the front of your body, but the back of your body is painful. It's harder. More weight is involved because the muscles are bigger, so these guys embrace that Friday lift. Those guys embrace that Friday lift because they know that is their ticket to get on the field, it's their ticket to further their career, and also that is the best way to catch up. We do some things on Friday during the season that’s 14 weeks long. By the time Thanksgiving comes around, they go home for Thanksgiving, their parents don’t recognize them. So it’s been a very very successful part of our extra strength program."
Lifting during the season for all players...
"I think it was in the late 1990s when I was at University of Maryland. During the in-season training phase it's all about football. You better make sure they’re ready for Saturday. You don’t do anything during the week that’s going to slow that process or that regeneration aspect of practice down. Then I got to thinking. I'd get them in January when the season was over and they’d be so out of shape and they’d be so weak that it’d take me to February 10 to kind of start to even get them to where they were before. So I started to do the math. OK, they’re here four years, so basically I’m wasting six months of the year because I'm backing off so much. So I started experimenting. I started to make the in-season program more of an aggressive cycle. I wanted to continue their growth throughout the whole four years, but I also wanted them to get strong toward the end of the season, because everybody else was backing off during the season. So I said if they back off and I keep going hard it's going to give them competitive advantage. Oh my goodness. It worked unbelievable. We’ve had some great success with that. One thing at Vanderbilt that I think really caught a lot of people by surprise: In the 10 years previous to when we got there, the record in November was 3-30. They were kind of fading fast. In the three years that we were there we were 12-3 in November. So we were just getting stronger and everybody else was just maintaining. It was a huge advantage. Plus it really helps you in your career."
Body mass vs. speed...
"We need mass. You need mass to not only play the game but you also need mass to propel yourself forward horizontally in a rapid way. You have to have really strong muscles. One thing we’re most proud of is we have a very aggressive speed program. We also have a really aggressive body weight (program.) We're also in the Big Ten. This is big boy football. A lot of our guys gain weight. As our guys gain weight, their 40s are going down. That’s not really supposed to happen. As you gain weight, you’ve got more mass to carry. It's generally harder to propel that.
"Saquon Barkely, for example, came in at 206 and he ran a 4.43 when he first got here. Then he got up to 220 and he ran a 4.38. I was like, oh, this is working pretty good. Kid almost gains 20 pounds and lowers his 40. Then he got to 231 this summer and he runs a 4.33. He keeps putting mass on his lower body and improving his speed. We can just go guy after guy that we’ve seen his happen with."
Below is a quick recap of what he had to offer...
Team morale...
"They’ve been unbelievable for three and a half years but after last year the confidence, the drive, just the desire to keep taking this thing in another positive step has really been great with them. It's been a blast to train them. Believe me, they don’t need any motivation. That's for sure. I’m just kind of holding onto the rope and they’re dragging me. Just their attitude and their effort has just been phenomenal."
Training approach by position...
"We do a general strength, power, speed, agility and conditioning type of thing for everybody, but after that we really get specific. We really want to make sure that everything we're doing for our athletes in those five areas is going to be similar to what the demands are on the field, so, yes, to answer your question it gets very specific. We tier things according to their training age and what position they play. I think that’s the best way to really individualize our programs."
Evaluating progress in the weight room...
"The bod pod has always been an important tool. This may sound kind of crazy, but this is the first year we have really have relied on it to get us the information we need. Our talent situation the first three years, especially the first two years, was such a way it just really didn’t make any difference. There were certain players who were real good. There were certain players who were (attempting) to get to that level and it just wasn’t the same talent. We weren’t really focused on fine-tuning the athletic machine like that. Now with the total exchange of talent and with the talent that Coach Franklin’s staff are bringing in it's a huge part of our deal. We really focus on gaining the right kind of weight. We don’t have to throw kids out there their first year because they’re just so much better than the older guys talent-wise. Now we can sit there and we can cultivate them and we can train them correctly. We can get them ready to focus on making sure it's all lean mass and not putting fat on that later on we have to take off anyway."
How he's seen the senior class evolve...
"They’re grown men. You’re working with grown men after they’ve been here for two or three years. Now I’m in my fourth season and all those guys I had first coming in, they’re men. They’re big, strong and fast. They get it. They totally bought into the culture. They spread the culture, which is gigantic. The culture is a huge part of what we’re trying to do here at Penn State, add on to what always has been a great culture here. Having older guys like that is great. You have 21 seniors and 15 of them are starting right now, so it's going to be a real strong part, leadership part of our team."
Upperclassmen helping freshmen acclimate...
"It’s a tough transition, when you go to high school coming into this situation. I have the guys who are coming from great training programs. They have worked so hard in high school. They all have personal trainers, and they get up here and they told me all the stories of the recruiting process. Then after the first week they’re like, I’ve never imagined it would be like this. A lot of it is the competition. Not only are they 18 going with 21-year olds. It’s just the speed and competition of it, so it’s just a huge transition. It's always been a really necessary part of the experience is to surround them with supportive older player as well as us as support stuff. I think what's neat and unique now: A lot of these older players, they’re really good. But a lot of these true freshmen, redshirt freshmen and true sophomore are really good too. So it might be, 'I’m not helping this guy take my reps.' But it's not that way at all. It’s a really supportive deal. They’re helping guys even though they’re fighting for playing time, so that’s a pretty neat deal for us."
Friday lifting sessions for non-travel squad...
"The Friday lift is pretty interesting because the front of the body looks great. Everybody likes that. It’s the first thing you see in a person and an athlete, it’s the front of the body. The back of the body, called the posterior chain, is what’s going to make you a great player. That’s your hamstrings, your glutes, your calves, your upper back, your lower back. Those are gigantic movement-type muscle groups. Friday is all posterior chain muscle groups. It’s a lot harder. It's easy to bench and do all the things you do with the front of your body, but the back of your body is painful. It's harder. More weight is involved because the muscles are bigger, so these guys embrace that Friday lift. Those guys embrace that Friday lift because they know that is their ticket to get on the field, it's their ticket to further their career, and also that is the best way to catch up. We do some things on Friday during the season that’s 14 weeks long. By the time Thanksgiving comes around, they go home for Thanksgiving, their parents don’t recognize them. So it’s been a very very successful part of our extra strength program."
Lifting during the season for all players...
"I think it was in the late 1990s when I was at University of Maryland. During the in-season training phase it's all about football. You better make sure they’re ready for Saturday. You don’t do anything during the week that’s going to slow that process or that regeneration aspect of practice down. Then I got to thinking. I'd get them in January when the season was over and they’d be so out of shape and they’d be so weak that it’d take me to February 10 to kind of start to even get them to where they were before. So I started to do the math. OK, they’re here four years, so basically I’m wasting six months of the year because I'm backing off so much. So I started experimenting. I started to make the in-season program more of an aggressive cycle. I wanted to continue their growth throughout the whole four years, but I also wanted them to get strong toward the end of the season, because everybody else was backing off during the season. So I said if they back off and I keep going hard it's going to give them competitive advantage. Oh my goodness. It worked unbelievable. We’ve had some great success with that. One thing at Vanderbilt that I think really caught a lot of people by surprise: In the 10 years previous to when we got there, the record in November was 3-30. They were kind of fading fast. In the three years that we were there we were 12-3 in November. So we were just getting stronger and everybody else was just maintaining. It was a huge advantage. Plus it really helps you in your career."
Body mass vs. speed...
"We need mass. You need mass to not only play the game but you also need mass to propel yourself forward horizontally in a rapid way. You have to have really strong muscles. One thing we’re most proud of is we have a very aggressive speed program. We also have a really aggressive body weight (program.) We're also in the Big Ten. This is big boy football. A lot of our guys gain weight. As our guys gain weight, their 40s are going down. That’s not really supposed to happen. As you gain weight, you’ve got more mass to carry. It's generally harder to propel that.
"Saquon Barkely, for example, came in at 206 and he ran a 4.43 when he first got here. Then he got up to 220 and he ran a 4.38. I was like, oh, this is working pretty good. Kid almost gains 20 pounds and lowers his 40. Then he got to 231 this summer and he runs a 4.33. He keeps putting mass on his lower body and improving his speed. We can just go guy after guy that we’ve seen his happen with."
