It wont be clear until training camp, and perhaps not even then, what dividends the Green Bay Packers new strength and conditioning program will pay.
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But this should illustrate the mentality longtime strength coach Dave Redding is aiming to instill: If youre caught sitting down in the weight room, you have to do sit-ups.
Media members got a look at the Packers revamped weight room on Wednesday, with Redding providing an overview of the changes hes made to the facility and the offseason program since he was hired in January.
Most notable is a system conceived by one of Reddings assistants, Mark Lovat, who suggested workouts might be more efficient if players didnt have to stop and record every lift with notecards and pencil.
Instead, the workout is projected onto a wall, with several options presented for each type of lift, and players are kept on the move. That gives players leeway to design their workouts, while also freeing time between lifts for extra core, stability and rehabilitation work.
It just gives us more volume of what were doing, gives them more variety, said Redding, a 23-year NFL coaching veteran who emphasizes free weights and functional training.
When you have a hard card, youre kind of limited on how many lifts you can give them. And this gives them ownership on what they can design to do their own things.
Weight work in the offseason program, which began March 16, is split into two categories. Mondays and Thursdays are pull days, focused on triple-extension and Olympic movements. Tuesdays and Fridays are push days, when players do bench presses, squats and other traditional muscle-mass work.
Each workout lasts a little less than two hours. Wednesdays and weekends are off days.
Its a program designed to have players peaking by the start of organized team activities in late May, while also promoting durability and preventing the sort of nagging injuries that plagued them during the 6-10 skid of 2008, after which coach Mike McCarthy fired strength and conditioning coach Rock Gullickson.
If these guys are in shape to play the game of football, those chances of going through these nagging little things (decrease), Redding said.
At the end of the second quarter, at the end of the fourth quarter, when fatigue sets in and somebody gets to you because youre fatigued, and you get rolled up on because youre too tired to get out of the way when youre not fatigued, those things have less a chance of happening.
As for the weight room layout, Redding pointed out the addition of two long rows of dumbbells and other free-weight equipment, the removal of most machines and a roughly 15-foot-wide path down the middle of the room in which players do lunges, one-legged squats and other movements with weights in their hands. Players also are spending time in The Don Hutson Center for flexibility and speed work and conditioning.
No ones thanking him yet. But Redding said players seem to have embraced the changes.
Theres a moment of every workout four days a week that theres a gut check, Redding said. It takes them to that moment where they have to make that decision: Can I go another rep? Can I go another set? Can I keep this pace?
Thats what Im after work capacity, volume, ownership. These kids have done a great job of pushing each other.