Beyond the weight room, South Carolina’s new strength coach is all about sprinting
In the Long Family Football Operations Center, South Carolina’s new strength and conditioning coach Paul Jackson has rows upon rows of barbells, dumbbells and weight machines for working out the Gamecocks.
But one of the reasons Jackson most impressed coach Will Muschamp during the interview process, and a central part of his training regimen, is much simpler, at least on the surface — sprinting.
Jackson’s approach to speed work is rooted in his experience at the Parisi Speed School in the early 2000s, he said, where the former football player grew to appreciate the importance of development outside the weight room.
“It was a blessing, it’s a lucky opportunity I got to work there, where we got to focus on that,” Jackson said. “A lot of strength coaches, we come up in the weight room, we come up playing football, and you just know that. You don’t really get the exposure unless you had a track background. So I was able to get that and learn how to program, learn the importance of it.”
So what’s the big deal about sprinting, and how is it different than just getting a lot of running in?
“Most people who don’t have a track and field background, they look at running and they think running is all the same,” Jackson said. “And you got to differentiate between sprinting and running. So, when you’re conditioning or you’re doing anything, say, under 90% of your absolute best that you can do, for whatever reason — it’s because of fatigue, it’s because we did 20 reps, it’s because your effort — if for any reason you’re running less than, say, 90% of your absolute best, and when you’re looking at velocity, you’re thinking in terms of meters per second, for whatever distance you’re looking at.
“So that’s not gonna be sprinting, you’re not gonna be able to get faster running at those sub-max velocities, and you’re also not stressing the tissues the same way you will when you do run above those velocities.”
Talk about soft tissue and max effort dovetails nicely with what Muschamp has said about his strength and conditioning program in the past — USC uses a system called Catapult to track players’ actions and biometrics.
Using that data, Muschamp said Thursday, the Gamecock coaching staff noted halfway through this past season that skill players weren’t getting enough sprint work during practice — they set the threshold for sprinting at 80% or higher of max effort. That in turn led to soft tissue injuries, Muschamp said.
With that in mind, Jackson and Muschamp will be on the same page in conditioning sessions.
“(Some coaches) want to see certain things, and they’ve got goals and you may see a sprint workout, which, it’s got to be quality-based type of workout. So it’s not going to be, maybe, guys throwing up in that particular session. We’ll have other sessions where we’re dropping guys, you know, but that is not what those are for,” Jackson said.
Starting this week, when players reported back after the winter break, and before spring practice begins, Jackson said he already has a sprint program in place for guys to jump into.
“We will train four days a week. Two days will be those speed days we talked about, and two days will be more of a traditional conditioning days, and we progress those two days opposite. So our speed work, we’ll go from short to long where you’re working with shorter sprints, less volume, and eventually going longer sprints,” Jackson said.
“The conditioning does just the opposite. You start with longer, less intense — and by less intense I mean, it’s hard work, but it’s less meters per second. Slower might be a better word. So longer, slower and then those start to get shorter, faster. So as you get closer to football, those two days start to look more similar.”
