WholeHogSports
Razorbacks grinding it out during early-morning summer workouts
Posted on Saturday, June 28, 2008
URL: http://www.wholehogsports.com/nwat/66645/
The unrelenting taskmaster had done his worst, subjecting his chargers to an onerous early morning workout, but Arkansas’ head strength and conditioning coach Jason Veltkamp couldn’t break Andrew Davie’s spirit.
The vigorous exercise regimen hadn’t divested the junior tight end of the vim and vigor he needed to obliterate a rock painted Florida Gator orange. The sledgehammer he so lustily wielded smashed the rock repeatedly, pulverizing it in to bits against the ground of the Razorbacks’ outdoor practice field.
Davie’s demolition work is the reward Veltkamp and his staff of five athletic trainers confer upon the offensive and defensive player they deem to be the “ grinder of the week, ” a distinction reserved for the hardest workers.
There’s a different rock to represent the 12 opponents on Arkansas’ 2008 schedule. The defensive honor was given to redshirt sophomore defensive back Ramon Broadway after the first session of workouts concluded in the dawn of Friday morning.
“ Our saying is, ‘ We’re going to go out and move a mountain, and we’re going to move it one rock at a time, ’” said Veltkamp, who projects the image of a drill sergeant with his close-cropped haircut, withering glance and stern countenance. “ That’s why we go break a rock with our grinder of the week each week. ”
Veltkamp said he challenged Davie to assert more leadership and effort after last week’s ritual rock smashing. At 25, Davie’s age has thrust him into a position of leadership.
“ Davie is a guy I asked to pick it up from a leadership standpoint one week ago, ” Veltkamp said Friday morning. “ We need leadership out of upperclassmen, guys who have been on the field, played the game, made plays here. We need those guys to step up. I asked him to do it one week ago about this time last Friday. He changed the way he went about things the last seven days. ”
Veltkamp developed his unorthodox training regimen when he was the strength and conditioning coach at Utah (1999-03 ) and Louisville (2004-07 ). It borrows elements from Marine Corps training. During spring workouts, Veltkamp had the players carry heavy, unwieldy rocks, hoping to instill toughness they can draw on during the season.
“ You hear a kid in the fourth quarter of a game, when you’re down by 11, say, ‘ Hey, we didn’t go out there and hold those jagged rocks in our arms till we bled for nothing, ’” Veltkamp said. “ You hear that and you know those kids think they should be able to win a football game. They pushed through that and they know they made it. ”
Sophomore tight end D. J. Williams said Veltkamp’s workouts threatened to sunder the team initially.
“ I hate to say it, but some people in the beginning of the workouts, way back when we first started, had some bad words to say to each other, ” said Williams, looking considerably slimmer than his 240-pound playing weight from last season. “ Everybody was breaking down mentally. ”
Over time, the workouts galvanized the team. It had been pushed to the threshold of its endurance and forged ahead, mining reserves of energy that had been previously untapped.
“ We had something called the full metal jacket during the spring, ” Williams said. “ It was more Marine, military-type stuff. We thought it was ridiculous at first, but as went on, we realized if we didn’t get our job done we were going to hurt our teammate beside us. Everybody now pushes even if they’re throwing up while they’re running. ”
Losing the contents of one’s stomach is a common occurrence during Veltkamp’s workouts. Friday morning he introduced a new series of drills that required players to push weighted blocking sleds and weave through a labyrinth of traffic cones.
The offensive lineman wore weighted vests as they went through the choreography of their pass-blocking techniques. Doing the drill on the incline leading toward Razorback Road made it more arduous.
If the players were tired, they didn’t show it. Displaying any signs of fatigue merits more work for the offender and his teammates, earning them what Veltkamp calls an “ overtime” session. Dropping under a targeted weight is also forbidden, creating a catch-22 for the players. The more they buy into Veltkamp’s philosophy, the more weight they shed.
“ You could go to McDonald’s five times a day if you want and come here and sweat it out and you’ll stay the same, ” said Jonathan Luigs, Arkansas ’ Rimington Award winning center. “ I wish I could do this all day, every day until I’m 45. That way I’ll live for a long time. ”