8/1/2007 10:31:00 PM
Manage Wisely

“Practice…practice?...we’re talking about practice. Not a game, no not a game…practice.” – Allen Iverson.

While I remember watching that interview with Iverson, I don’t remember what exactly the question was pertaining to that set him off, but I do know it had something to do with his practice regiment or lack thereof. Little is made about the pro-athlete’s need to manage his body correctly while in season. I believe so little is made about it probably because, if you haven’t been an athlete you simply wouldn’t know what it entails to put your body through those type of rigors, day in and day out, year in and year out. Coming from a basketball background I can only imagine what it must be like to play some 80 games or so sometimes 3 per week, and what that must be like on the body. Nah, I decided it wasn’t for me and that I’d take the “easy” way out what with only 18-23 games and only once or twice do we play twice in a week. Yeah, piece of cake right? Have you ever wondered why they only play one football game per week?
The short answer is because the body can’t handle more than one. When I was a younger man, I thought that this was nonsense and that it must be some sort of television programming issue but now that I’m 7 yrs invested in it professionally, I fully see why. I play what would be called a finesse position in what is deemed the most physical collision sport on the planet. “Finesse” is a term that can be used loosely here, because there’s nothing finesse about cracking back on a linebacker, picking up backside blitzes or getting plastered over the middle by an awaiting safety. While you’re still on the lines of “finesse” understand of course that an average CFL defensive back is no more than 5’11” and 195lbs. On average, they may run 40 yards in about 4.56 seconds and based on those numbers can generate up to 1600 pounds of tackling force per hit. Or for those of you that are more in tune with physics, up to 150 g’s of force. To put that into perspective, a shuttle launch produces 3.0 g’s of force, and a roller coaster ride produces about 5.0 g’s, and we’re talking about the smallest guys on the field!
If speaking in G’s and pounds of pressure doesn’t quite do it for you, than think of this. Our statistically top 4 receivers all run 40 yds in under 4.4 seconds. Which translates to running 100m in anywhere from 10.2s -10.6s or just over 20 mph (roughly 30 kmph) and defensive backs must be fast enough to keep us under wraps. So picture two 200lb objects traveling at 30kmph hitting each other and what do you get? You get one game a week…that’s what you get.
One game a week because Jason Tucker is going to have someone waiting for him when he catches that out route, at least 5 times per game. One game per week because Andrew Nowacki as you’ve seen from the highlights of last week, is not a contortionist and still doesn’t feel right from that hit last week. One game per week because I’ll continue to get leveled over the middle by a linebacker who weighs considerably more than his defensive back teammates, but runs just about as fast. I must remind you once more…that we’re the “finesse” players, so imagine what the guys who make their living being physical feel like after games!
If I’m being honest, at my position the contact isn’t always what will keep you up at night. I’m not sure if that’s due to the high levels of pain tolerance that we exhibit in this sport or not, but when maintaining your body during the season that’s really only half of your worries as a receiver. The other half is mileage. And I’m not talking about frequent flyers on West jet.
Mileage, for me starts with a 4.5 km bike ride to work. From there, I would estimate that I run at least 60m no less than 20 times per period in practice for a total of at least 6 periods per day. (Trust me, I’m low balling this figure,) which comes out to be about 7200m per day of running, which is about 4.5 miles or 7.2 km per day. Topped off with the 4.5 km that I then must ride back home and you’ve got roughly 16.2 km traveled on these legs by 2pm, and that’s not including any cutting laterally which trust me, takes a lot out of you traveling at the speeds, described above to avoid the hits described above. 3 days of practice at least per work week comes to 48.6 km before game time, (which I won’t even bother calculating) not to mention the five 200m sprints that I run on the off day each week and we’ll just call it an even 50km per week without playing the game. 50km per week, no wonder T.J. Acree had a stress fracture in his foot! The fact that he’s trying to play through it comes back to that pain threshold that I touched upon earlier, but really my point in all this is not to bore you with numbers or to seek pity for our poor tired bodies. I know some people will read this and think “I run ten miles every day and feel great afterwards,” which is all well and good…but nobody’s crashing into you with 1600lbs of force at the end of that run.
My point is that as an athlete, you must manage your body in such a way that you are as physically ready as you can be once the lights come on. That may mean different things to different people, but ultimately we must all be able to shine, when we take the field. In football it may take several days to feel recovered at all from the previous game, there really isn’t time to recharge fully, with the new work week and a new team coming in to knock us down a peg. For some, this management can mean practicing through things that others may go on disability for in their own lines of work. And for others it can mean saving every bit of energy you have until the kickoff on game day in order to be at your best for your team. We all learned early in our sports lives that there’s a vast difference between “hurt” and “injured” and when we chose this path we chose to shun anything that really wasn’t an injury. By the same token, the CFL season is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint, and we’ll need all that we can demand from our bodies towards the latter part of the season. It’s important for us as players to identify and assess our levels of discomfort and pain, to know when to play through, and when to rest up and play another day. ©

KP8