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Confederates developing new conditioning concept

Published: July 14, 2009
By Charlie Leffler
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  Over the past decade, Lee-Davis football coach Jason Meade has become well versed in the catastrophic effects of conditioning under the hot, humid conditions of late August.

  Since 2000, there have been two football-related deaths in the Richmond area, ironically both within the Capital District. In 2000, Anthony Craig Lobrano, a senior at Varina High School, died after becoming ill during football practice. In 2006, Highland Springs’ freshman Raymond Winn died after collapsing during conditioning.

  While the deaths of both players were tragedies, they are of particular concern to Meade.  In 2000, Meade’s sister Jessica was the athletic trainer at Varina while Meade himself was an assistant coach for the Springers when Winn collapsed. “We kind of know first-hand, heat’s not something you want to mess with.”

  And while Meade pointed out that Winn suffered from a congenital heart condition rather than heat stroke, it does not change the impact of his death or the sometimes hazardous climate during football conditioning. “It wasn’t a heat issue but a heart issue,” he said. “But it’s in the forefront of a player dying after practice.”

  According to Dr. Frederick Mueller, director of the National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, in their Twenty-Sixth Annual Report, 26 high school or college football players died of heat stroke between 1998-spring 2008. 

  In June of this year, the National Athletic Trainers Association released a consensus statement of heat-acclimatization guidelines for secondary school athletics. Dr. Douglas Casa PhD, the Director of Athletic Training Education at the University of Connecticut and, a co-chair of the Task Force that developed the study, pointed out that in today’s society coaches are pushing harder than in the past. “I think that part of it’s just that we know so much more about strength and conditioning now,” he said. “We realize how hard we can push them and how much better athletes can be with the proper strength and conditioning. But that’s why you have to have the proper policies in place. You still need to have breaks. You still need to hydrate them. You still need to faze people in. You still need to progressively develop things.”

  And developing things is what the Lee-Davis football program is doing. When Meade was approached by Strength and Conditioning Coach Mike Craven about a new and as yet untested program to prepare his players for the heated environment, there was no hesitation to put it into play.

  “We like to push the envelope,” Meade said. “We’re not scared to take on new things. We’re not scared to take on challenges and put our team in a better position for success.”

  While dehydration is a primary issue in heat-related deaths and illnesses, Craven pointed out it is not all about water intake. “The things that coaches did years ago; giving out salt tablets, restricting water, none of them do that now but we’ve got just as many kids dying,” he said. Accordingly, while many of the heat-related issues can be contributed to being overweight, fat content alone does not create all of the problems. “The bigger bodies generate more metabolic heat and having more mass than they do actual surface area restricts the rate they can release heat,” Craven said. “So a 285-pound muscular football player is just as much at risk as a fat football player.”

  According to Craven, the body’s ability to defend against heat-related issues stems from a combination of oxygen deliver and oxygen utilization, which leads to cardiovascular strength. Also important is blood volume (water content) which comes from proper hydration. “Young men whose cardiovascular systems are poor can’t tolerate hot, humid environments,” Craven said. “We’re seeing more heat-related deaths today because we’ve got more young men wanting to play a game that aren’t ready to play the game in the way the coaches are trying to coach it.”

  Therefore with assistance from True Fitness Solutions and Dr. Clifford Morris of Virginia Cardiologist Specialists, Craven has developed a testing method which not only identifies athletes who are at risk to heat-related issues but trains them to increase their resistance.

THE TESTING

  Five weeks ago Craven began utilizing Metabolic Equivalents of Task or MET scores to evaluate the Lee-Davis football players. “What a MET score is, is a measure of your body’s efficiency to deliver and utilize oxygen,” Craven said.

  The MET score, represented by the equation VO2, is performed on a treadmill while wearing a respirator that is hooked to a computer system. The test measures oxygen being taken in and carbon dioxide being exhaled to determine how efficiently the body utilizes fat for energy. The test also determines the exact heart rate at which the athlete’s body begins to produce lactic acid, which in turn provides the optimum training point to increase the body’s aerobic system.

  The results of the MET scores will allow the Lee-Davis coaches to specifically monitor players who are at-risk to heat-related issues when fall conditioning begins. “If you’re looking at kids you need to be watching a lot, it’s the kids that are fat, it’s the kids that have biggest body mass to surface area and it’s the kids who have the lowest MET score,” Craven said.

  “It gives us an idea of those kids that are at-risk versus those kids that are more heat tolerant,” Meade said.

  After his initial tests, the coaches got both expected results and a few surprises. The VO2s ranged from a high of 67.9 to a low of 29.1 and, as expected, most of the large linemen possessed the lowest MET scores. However, one young man who weighed 132 had one of the lowest MET scores of the team. “That was surprising,” Meade said. “But when you watch his workout he’s always kind of struggled and you go back to the old issue as a coach you want to push, push, push. But if he physically doesn’t have anything else to give, and that VO2 score is saying he doesn’t have anything else to give, then it gives you a better understanding of what he can or can’t do in practice.”

  “Nobody would have looked at this young man and said he’s got a low MET score,” Craven said. “The point is, every time we go to do conditioning with the skill people, he’s always last. And being last, the coach is always yelling at him, ‘Pick it up. Pick it up,’ because the assumption is he has no heart. It’s not that he has no heart, he’d de-conditioned aerobically.”

AEROBIC VS ANAEROBIC

  One major key to heat defense during conditioning is the body’s aerobic system, which is developed through extended workouts such as those utilized by marathon runners. According to Craven, aerobic workouts increase the body’s cardiovascular ability. “If the blood has to be able to go to the working muscle and the blood’s got to be able to take the heat to the skin to cool it with evaporation, then the cardiovascular system has to be trained as a major strength,” he said. “Well, as strength and conditioning coaches in programs across America, we’ve neglected that.”

  In comparison, anaerobic work concentrates on speed and strength over short periods, which consequentially does not prevent the body from being susceptible to heat-related issues. “All football drills are anaerobic,” Craven said. “The way the game is played, the conditioning is way more strenuous than what non-conditioned people are accustomed to.”

  Therefore, by utilizing the MET score, Craven can create a prescriptive workout for each individual player that optimizes aerobic conditioning. But in doing so he also tries to educate the players about all aspects of the heat defense issue including proper diet.

  “The structure of the muscle determines how much fat can be metabolized, sleeping, sitting, standing, and working out,” Craven said. With a Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) test, Craven can determine the proper daily calorie intake that the athlete should never drop below. “If you go under it you force water out of the muscle cells,” he said. “You cause muscle degradation. You cause fat loss. That three types of body mass (loss) means you’re showing up to football practice and no mater how much water we’re giving you, you’re staying dehydrated because you’re on a diet under RMR.”

  Craven pointed out today’s rapid diet TV show culture has deluded young athletes about the proper means to lose weight. By eating low carbohydrate diets and taking weight loss supplements, the athletes are only making themselves more susceptible to heat-related illness. “Note how this is written: carbo-hydrate,” Craven said. “Carbohydrates are what allow the cell internally to hold water. So if you eliminate this nutrient, like Dr. Adkins advocated, you force water out of the cell.”

THE IMPLEMENTATION

  To put all of Craven’s testing into use, the Lee-Davis football team initiated a cycle of aerobic conditioning three days a week to prepare the players for the regular fall sessions.

  Lee-Davis purchased 35 portable heart rate monitors that the players wear during their smaller group aerobic drills. Through use of wristband displays, the athletes can keep track of their heart rate and thereby maintain a peak aerobic conditioning level specifically designated for them. The players run laps on the track or conduct bleacher runs all while staying within their specified heart rate zones.

  Admittedly, adapting to the new training principles was difficult for the players. “It’s been a struggle,” Meade said. “The players are used to when they come out here, giving us everything they have. That’s not this kind of training. We’ll do that phase when we get to the conditioning later, when we get to the stuff on the field, the agility drills. Then we want everything you got. In this phase your coach is really on your watch.”


  Rising senior cornerback Brandon Angus agreed. “It was a little hard to get used to because you had to slow your pace down, speed it up, get your pace,” he said. “Sometimes the zones they have listed for us, it doesn’t feel like they work for us, but these guys seem like experts—and they seem like they know what they’re doing—so I trust them.”

  Though the players are far from their end result, the three players who have been retested after three weeks of aerobic conditioning, each had their MET score rise.

  Meade said that the team actually got a late start on the aerobic cycle this year and would like to initiate it in early April or late March next year to complete the full 12-week cycle before fall conditioning begins.

BONUS

  As a coach, there also is a bonus for Meade making sure that his players are properly prepared for the conditions of fall practice. The aerobic exercise also will allow his players to be in overall better shape, recover faster between plays and possess more energy at the end of games.

  “I look at it as it’s going to help our power output in the fourth quarter as much as anything and we can combine those two things in the same workout,” he said.

THE DRAWBACKS

  Two items that could hinder widespread application of Craven’s methods on football teams across the country are time and money. “It’s on the cutting edge and it does require a little more work and it does require record-keeping,” Meade said. As with any experimental procedure, the Lee-Davis coaches are recording every aspect of the training and results. “We want to be able to chart the progress of this thing throughout. So it’s well worth anything we put into it.”

  Teams also may be put off by the cost of heart monitors, which, in fact, limited the number that Lee-Davis purchased, but Meade said there are now grants available in that area.

  Likewise, the MET score testing also adds to the financial expense. Craven estimates that he can conduct the tests for around $10 per athlete, which could dissuade some parents. “If they don’t think $10 is worth it, I’ll do it for free,” he said. “But the point is, they’ll want it. I know they’ll appreciate it. And I know it will make a difference.”

THE EDUCATION

  As two of the nation’s leading experts on heat-related issues, Dr. Mueller and Douglas Casa, PhD, agree that as far as they know, no one in the country is utilizing the same preventative measures as Craven at Lee-Davis. “I love the thought that he’s making an effort to try to do something about it,” Casa said. “That’s pretty awesome because we need more people that are actually focused on that. Some athletes are going to be at greater risk. Some are not going to be in as great of shape and some of them you need to have some kind of watch list for. The whole concept is a great idea that he’s focused on that.”

  With early progress recorded, it is now the coaches’ goal to spread the word. Last week, Craven and Meade presented their testing method at the VHSL Coaches’ Clinic in Hampton Roads and were pleased with the response. “In terms of high schools, he definitely reached a fair number of PE coaches and trainers,” Meade said. “The presentation went real well, was real well received.”

  Ironically, on the morning of their presentation news quickly spread about the death of Western Carolina defensive back Ja’Quayvin Smalls who collapsed following voluntary pre-season sprint drills.

  And while the conditioning of his team may appear to be information that Meade would not want to divulge, his goal is to share it with everybody. “Anybody that wants to view this has an open invitation,” Meade said. “It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s Varina, Highland Springs, Hanover. … Yeah, this is going to give us an edge on Friday night but we’re also talking about the safety of kids …. We’re going to beat you on Friday night because we are who we are. If this is going to help your kids be safer, of course, come look at it.”

  For Craven, it’s about time that schools across the country took a proactive approach to the training of young athletes. “If we asked that kid to commit to us, then let’s commit to him.”

 

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