Carlo Alvarez

On Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, we hosted the 2nd Annual St. Xavier Football Strength & Condiotioning Clinic and it was a great event. It takes months of preparation to host a one day event and I couldn’t be happier of how it turned out. The speakers are some of the top strength and conditioning professionals in the country and had a ton of information that was useful to any sports and age group.

The speaker list consisted of Dr. Ken Leistner, who spoken on the key points on implementing a strength training philosophy. Always a great speaker to listen to due to the fact that he keeps things so simple and easy to understand. His talk reminded all of us on how we should never forget that athletes need to just train. The importance of strength training for the athletes has to involve all key injury prone areas, especially the neck, which needs to be attacked to help avoid any serious injury. He also explained how the total body system of training has to be taken into consideration when the developing the athletic body due to the fact of the high impact forces of the game. Dr. Ken is always a lively speaker and keeps things in perspective.

Joe Ken spoke on Key Progressions of the Power Clean. In my opinion, Coach Kenn has become one of the top Master Strength Coaches in the country because of his progressive form of training his athletes. He is extremely smart in how he develops his athletes and has a wealth of knowledge of strength training theory and athlete development. His progression on the clean is not the normal progression you learn from USA Weightlifting. He begins all his athletes with a trap bar with elevated handles to teach them the proper athletic position prior to having them touch the bar and begin the movement. He had his son, who is a sophomore in college go through the progression and I have to tell you that his son is strong and has great technique. If anyone ever wants to learn about progression on lifting and strength training development, get in contact with him.

Brian Grasso was our third speaker. Few words can capture the essence of his knowledge. I invited Brian to speak at our clinic because his thought process and his knowledge on the youth and growing athlete needs to be heard. His theories on training and progressions go back to the days of understanding that you must develop kids in a progressive matter. Not just strength, but coordination, balance, movement, systematic strength, psychology and human understanding. He has started a revolutionary way of thinking in regards to the youth and athletic development. Keep an eye for his organization the International Youth Conditioning Association, its going to be revolutionary.

I was the fourth speaker of the day and my talk was about the Secrets to Building Better Athletes. I have come to understand that for a high school strength and conditioning program to be successful and your athletes learn and progress through a four year plan many factor most work together. I’m a big believer in constant communication, educating everyone within the system, building a power base of support and having a vision for what needs to be accomplished before you can develop your athletes. The true “SECRET” to building better athletes is to have an all encompassing philosophy and my talk covered how you go about building that philosophy with the whole athletic department in mind. I covered the 3 key factors in running an organized strength and conditioning program and how that can help the athlete in all components of development.

We also had Scott Holsopple of the University of Florida speak at the clinic. Scott does an unbelievable job at UF with Coach Marotti. We both worked under Coach Marotti at the University of Notre Dame, so we have similar philosophies on the development of an athletic mindset. Scott explained the process of keeping the team on the same path and how they go about of creating an athlete that is developed with the winning attitude in mind. It’s refreshing to hear how Coach Meyer and the staff at UF all believe in motivation and high energy to breed success. Their strategies for developing the team concept are hard core and aggressive. This dudes train like madmen and thats the way they play. Controlled chaos and systematic phychological warfare. I’m amazed at how any athlete can survive four years under these guys. I fucking love it. Every athlete should train this hard. It would probably teach our youth the many lessons that they lack nowadays.

We finished our day with in the weightroom with practical training sessions on Olympic lifts and strength training implementation. Coach Longo of the University of Cincinnati spoke on their introduction to Olympic lifts with incoming freshmen and how they integrate the progressions and complexes. Their progressions from what Joe Kenn does at University of Louisville are different, but still have great success with their implementation and explosive strength gains. Coach Longo did a great job of running us through his theory and philosophy on why he implements the lifts and how it can teach athletes the proper way of getting into athletic position and creating force in sports-specific situations.

Coach Gittleson, a 30 year veteran at the University of Michigan, took Dave Andrews, Olympic Sports Director of Strength and Conditioning at the University of Cincinnati, through a brutal workout. I’m debating if I should even include this training session in the clinic dvd’s. This is a classic session that might go into the training video vault. This was not a training session for the timid or weak of stomach. Caoch Gittleson utilized six exercises to totally tax Coach Andrews. Let me tell you Dave is not a weak or small man. This is a dude that played for Ohio State on the 2002 National Championship team. When we planned al this out, I was wondering if Gittleson was just trying to get back at Dave for the beating they gave Michigan that year. It played out perfect. Gittleson is a calm presence in the weightroom, but is maniacal about form and effort. he incorporated machine based exercises followed by bodyweight exercises that maintained constant tension on the muscle for 60 seconds. The exercise menu included leg presses, chin ups, incline presses, grip work, static split squats and neck work. It was a 30 minute workout followed by 10 minutes of barfing. it was a classic that might be let out of the bag.

Overall, it was a great event that I couldn’t be happier about. I want to thank all the attendees and sponsors who took time from their Memorial Day weekend to spend time with us. We hope next year some of you can jon us as we continue to teach and learn from each other to help your young men and coaches improve their football strength and conditioning programs. See you next year.