Topic: News: Flexibility key to speed, less injuries for Wolfpack

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Flexibility key to speed, less injuries for Wolfpack
By Ken Tysiac

RALEIGH -- About four years ago, strength coach Todd Rice was brutally honest when coach Tom O'Brien asked if Boston College's players could get faster.

Rice said they could.

"But when did blue collar become a synonym for stiff and slow?" Rice said he asked O'Brien. "We are the stiffest team I've ever been around. We can't do anything to get faster until we get more flexible."

With that, Boston College embarked on an unusual strength training regimen that has N.C. State players raving now that O'Brien and Rice are in Raleigh. Players spent the summer in a program that requires:

• Players to pass flexibility tests before they're allowed to do certain lifts Rice believes can cause injury when not performed properly.

• A long regimen of yoga-like stretches before workouts to improve flexibility and prepare players to lift safely.

• Almost no running drills of more than 100 yards because Rice considers them irrelevant to what players need to do on the field.

Rice encountered resistance from players and coaches when he implemented this program in August 2002 at Boston College after five years at California. The reception has been warmer in Raleigh.

"I can really feel the difference in my explosion and speed and ability to bend," said tailback Toney Baker.

"Players like going over there and getting stretched out, keeping your body loose and limber," said receiver Darrell Blackman. "They found out as long as you stretch and keep your body in shape, your knees won't hurt as much. Your back won't hurt."

Rice, who has kept injury statistics, has a chart that shows a 5.5 percent per game injury rate (not counting concussions) for starters before his program was implemented at Boston College. It fell to 2.9 percent the past four seasons.

European influence

A former Polish Olympic weightlifter whose name Rice doesn't even know started him on this flexibility kick while Rice was in college.The man worked as a janitor at Wisconsin-Platteville, where Rice played football, and could lift far more than Rice or any of his teammates. In the 1980s, Rice met Romanians, Bulgarians and Russians who had defected to the United States, and they persuaded him to learn their training methods.

Andrew "Bud" Charniga, who's legendary in United States weightlifting circles because he translated old Russian lifting texts to English, took Rice to Bulgaria and Romania. Rice worked with the Olympic strength coach and hockey players from Sweden.

"It's not some magical, mysterious thing," Rice said. "You have to go over there and take a look. Some of the most secretive places the Bulgarians trained at back during the Cold War, you can walk in right now."

The result was Rice's current lifting program. He said the exercises N.C. State performs are hardly revolutionary.

Olympic lifters and sprinters have been doing them for a long time. But they are unusual in the United States, where fitness magazine covers at any local newsstand demonstrate an obsession with bulky shoulders and torsos.

Cutting penalties and turnovers?

Charniga, an equipment distributor for Dynamic Fitness in Michigan, said many strength coaches focus too much on building muscle mass at the expense of flexibility.

"They're like calculus teachers, and they're getting kids in there who can barely do long division," Charniga said.

O'Brien has been sold on the importance of flexibility since the late 1970s, when Navy receiver Phil McConkey (later of the New York Giants) credited stretching exercises after he overcame a knee injury.

"A lot of strength coaches want to get bulk and power and all that," O'Brien said. "And that's important, too. But the flexibility issue is important, especially for recovery from injury and preventing injury."

O'Brien said N.C. State's players are nowhere near as accomplished as they need to be in Rice's regimen. The team suffered a devastating injury when tight end Anthony Hill needed knee reconstruction shortly before the start of fall drills.

"We need to get Anthony vastly more flexible," Rice said. "And he knows it."

But the players are excited about the new program. At first, Baker couldn't pass any of Rice's flexibility tests. Now the tailback passes every one.

Blackman predicted that Rice's program will cut down on penalties and turnovers because players are less fatigued.

"The fatigue can wear on a player's body," said the senior receiver, "and then they can get into the leaning and clutching and grabbing and holding just because they're fatigued and trying to stop somebody."

If Rice's program eliminates that, it could make a huge difference on the field.