Paul Jackson's Page

Conditioning is a term often used to describe the process of causing crushing fatigue by running your team. A lot. Running them until they’re tired, throwing up, sore and on the brink of quitting.  This is easy to program and implement for the coach, and hard work is obviously being carried out but are the athletes getting better?  Some of this type of conditioning is absolutely necessary for team building or for the development of “toughness”.  The S.A.I.D principle (specific adaptations to…

Football is a game that is played right on the edge of sanity by men willing to sacrifice their bodies for victory. You will not be successful at football without a certain nastiness, an edge, an attitude that will not allow you to back down or bow down to your opponent. The psychological and physical strain that this sport puts on its competitors is just amazing. Coaches frequently preach about “toughness”, but how do we define or better yet, develop toughness? I believe it is something…

As coaches in charge of the physical preparation of athletes, we are in the business of helping our athletes DEVELOP abilities, which is not the same thing as simply having them repeatedly DISPLAY their abilities. Far too often a kid will hit a beautiful, smooth double with the prescribed intensity (which is what we want) and then be told to add inappropriate weight, causing the next set to fall apart. When a kid asks to go up in weight or to do a few extra reps, when I know he is not ready…

Body control is the body’s ability to put together a series or pattern of movements that allow the individual to execute a task smoothly. With that being said I believe the display of body control during all forms of training is paramount to athletic development. Nothing screams "ATHLETE" more then fluid, coordinated movement executed with precision at high speed.  Besides safety in training, this is the main reason I focus so hard on technique. Ripping a bar off the ground with no technique…

With the NFL combine coming up, many in the world of strength and conditioning are begining to focus on "combine prep", which is completely different then preparing to play your sport. Combine prep prepares you to be successful at the specific tests that are to be performed at the combine, not to develop the attrinbutes that will help you improve on field performance. The 5-10-5 and L-Drill are programmed agility drills that give a comparison of lateral movement skills. The problem is that…