July 12, 2005
Throughout the Summer, Football Senior Captain Michael Ononibaku has agreed to write a weekly journal, filling us in on the progress of his and his team's training in preparation for the upcoming season.
Read past entries:
Week 1
Week 2 - July 11, 2005
As the summer progresses, the countdown towards training camp intensifies. At this juncture, there are just four weeks remaining until the start of the preseason, otherwise known as "two-a-days". Summer workouts become increasingly intense and more oriented towards football. After a month of Augie's strength and conditioning training, we are each experiencing significant improvements in our lifting and running. Also improving is the general attitude amongst the players here this summer, which has been really positive. All we seem to talk about is football, and everyone is determined to do what it takes to get our program at a winning level this season. The summer is typically the time to relax and enjoy yourself, and it can be easy to overdo it if you're not disciplined. Especially when you're in a big city like DC, there are plenty of opportunities to go out and have fun. But for the guys here this summer, finding a balance between commitment to the team and the temptations of summer is absolutely essential. We don't go out every night partying, but we are enjoying our summer regardless. Partying all the time isn't going to make us better as a team, but hard work and a winning attitude will. With training camp on its way, there is a sense of urgency to focus on a winning season and the sacrifices become secondary. This attitude subscribes to one of the quotes that we have up in our weight room. It reads: "Do today what others won't do, so tomorrow you can do what others can't".
This past week marked the midway point of our summer workouts. The number of guys working out this week is slightly less than usual since some were still at home for the July 4th weekend. Augie introduced new lifting workouts, which focus more on plyometric movements and explosive Olympic lifts. We are benching and squatting with rubberbands to add more resistance in our lifts, and this allows us to be more explosive and to work more muscle groups. I'm really enjoying these new workouts; I always felt that weight room and football strength were strongly correlated with explosive Olympic movements, so this is definitely a great idea. The sprinting and endurance training we do is also nothing to joke about. Typically, we start off with a dynamic warm-up and some stretching, and then we get right into the running. Recently, we ran sixteen back-to-back 100-yard sprints with forty-five seconds of rest in between, and then we ran a 300 yard shuttle. This was basically a mile of sprinting, and in addition, we had to run each 100 yards within a given time. The workout seemed hard to some of us at first, but when we finished, we thought to ourselves that it wasn't bad at all. We were tired, but we could feel that our fitness had improved. Most of us were able to run our last 100 yard sprint just as fast as the first, and almost everyone made their allocated time. In football, such endurance is crucial - on the field the fourth quarter has to be just as intense as the first.
This past Friday Augie had us test for the 300-yard shuttle run. We usually do it during training camp, but he promised us that if we passed now, we wouldn't have to do it again in August. In order to complete it successfully, you have to run two shuttles back-to-back, and the average of those times has to fall under the break off point for your position. Remarkably, all 15 of us passed, and that was pretty impressive considering the difficulty of the test. I was especially impressed with Liam Grubb, our starting offensive tackle and one of the biggest guys on our team, who passed his 300-yard shuttles with one second to spare. Grubb has gotten himself into good shape, and I believe he's going to have a breakout season this year. If the whole team works hard and stays focus, I'm sure that we're going to be a great force on the field come September.
Successful workouts like last Friday demonstrate how far we have come this summer, and how the right attitude can get us to where we want to be as a team. We are determined to do whatever it takes to prepare for next season, even though it may imply long exhaustive days, minimal partying, and prioritizing football workouts over other plans. From the outside looking in, it can seem like these sacrifices take the fun out of our summer, but I disagree. We train hard everyday because we want to, we strive to get better, and we have developed an intense passion for success. For seniors like myself, this is our last time around, and since we haven't yet had a winning season at Georgetown, there is a certain pressure to make this year memorable. No one could agree more than senior Jason Carter, who will be with this program for his fifth year, because he redshirted as a freshman. He commented: "I believe we're all here willing to do what it takes to prepare for next season...guys are eating healthier, partying less, and watching film more often...after four seasons of being here, I believe this group of guys has the most potential to be successful this year".
