Newspaper Article

Pumping up WEIGHT PLAN FPC puts emphasis on strength training

ANDREW MIKULA - STAFF WRITER

2004

Overview

EIGHT PLAN PALM COAST The sign over the door to the Flagler Palm Coast weight room says it all: \"Go Hard or Go Home.\" Summer in Florida provides numerous distractions for teenagers with summer jobs, the beach, family vacations and the like. The last thing they want to do is work out hard with free weights. But football players have little choice. The difference between winning and losing in November is directly tied to the sweat and pain of June and July as athletes throughout the state condition themselves for the fall games. Flagler Palm Coast's taste of success last season a 7-5 mark and a history-making Class 5A playoff win came in part because of hard work. It's gratifying for coaches that their players are applying themselves to weight training. Summer workouts began in earnest last week and the attendance some 50 players per day has been pretty good for the two-hour morning sessions. The workouts have attracted everyone from the skinniest incoming freshmen to a handful of former FPC players home on summer break who are playing college football. This isn't just banging barbells and plates around and it's not meant for posers. Workouts are done by a specific schedule. WARMUP TIME It's Tuesday morning and the heat of the previous weekend has subsided only a little as football players arrive in the parking lot of Sal Campanella Memorial Stadium. After some light stretching, the players warm up by jogging a lap around the track, then congregate on the south turn of the track nearest the weight room for more stretching. Stretching, like everything else in the Bulldogs weight training program, is done on a buddy system. The players pair off and take turns helping each other with the routine. Flexibility is as an important component of the workouts as it is during football games. TRAINING TIPS The players gather inside the weight room with assistant coaches Duane Hagstrom and Daryll Oliver. Hagstrom, the defensive line coach and head coach of FPC's weightlifting team, brings out a box of booklets he's prepared that outline the goals of the summer camp, like \"We must realize that lifting is done for one reason to win.\" The booklets also contain the day-to-day regimen and charts so the players can monitor their progress. The Bulldogs program is built on gradually, adding more weight in each exercise and working to maximum efficiency. Players almost exclusively use free weights and the program includes exercises with ominous-sounding names like skull crushers not really so ominous, it's a triceps development routine that uses a lightly-loaded curl bar while lying on one's back on a bench. \"It's about concentration,\" Hagstrom tells those present. \"The last rep must be total maximum effort. You should barely be able to do it. The last two reps should be done with a spotter.\" Technique is everything, according to Hagstrom. It does no good to jerk weights up and down haphazardly. \"When you bench press, I don't want to see the bar bouncing off your chest.

• Publisher: Halifax Media Group
• Subject: Hagstrom, Duane / Rosenthal, Andrew