Football Is In The Air

My son is playing 11U Pop Warner Football this year so I have spent a lot of time over the past 6 weeks watching his practices. Gearwrench’s sons are also playing and we were talking a few weeks ago about incorporating some of their stretches and drills into a Q. Well, with the NFL season upon us, I figured it would be a great time for a football-themed Q. I originally planned to use this weinke on Saturday but changed direction with the rain this past weekend so I took a few things out and squeezed 1 hour of work into 45 minutes. 7 men made their way to Folsom to tackle their day head-on!

We kicked off with some stretching and light cardio –
Hurdle stretches (I think 3 of us were able to touch our toes)
LBCs
High Knee Walk with a hip twist
Butt kickers
Side Straddle Burpees (kinda like up-downs – do SSH until Q says down, then burpee, repeat until Q says stop)

Short mosey to the bottom of the parking lot beside the car containing a guy doing who knows what.

One thing you see at big football games is the blimp. So – BLIMPS
10 – Burpees
20 – Lunges
30 – Imperial Walkers
40 – Merkins
50 – Plank Jacks
60 – Squats

Mosey to the ampitheater. One thing coaches always do is make players run and it seems like every school has a hill somewhere that they must conquer. Let’s run some hills!

Triple Nickel – 5 hip slappers on the ampitheater wall, run to the top of the hill for 5 big boys, repeat for 5 reps. Nice job by everyone picking up the six!

Mosey to the tennis courts. Everyone has heard of the Combine aka the Underwear Olympics. There are a set of drills all players run to gauge athleticism, speed, and strength. We’ll do a version of the 6 primary drills at the NFL Combine.

Stogie left.

Shuttle Drill – We spread out across 2 tennis courts (this worked well, BTW). Starting in the middle, run 5 yards to the sideline, back across the court 10 yards to the other sideline, then turn and sprint across the center line. The record is 3.81 second by Brandin Cooks so we did 4 reps (rounding up the record), starting around 75% on rep 1 and increasing to full speed. We are not as fast as Brandin Cooks but I saw a lot of hustle out there!

3 Cone Drill – This one was a little tricker but again the tennis court proved to be a great setup to mimic the combine. Starting in the center of the court, sprint 5 yards to the sideline, run back to center, turn and run to touch the net, turn and sprint back past the center of the court (the starting point). The NFL record is 6.42 seconds by Jeff Maehl so, while I wanted to do 7 reps, we did 5 due to time.

Broad Jump – Lots of guys (self included had to be a little easy on this one to prevent injury – the combine record is 12′ 13″ by Wojo! Just kidding though he out broad jump anyone I’ve seen jump in F3 Gastonia! I actually don’t know who has that record but no biggie, we did 13 broad jumps across the courts.

Vertical Jump – To simulate vertical jump, I called squats (or jump squats if you prefer). The record is 45 inches by Chris Conley. He wears # 18 so we did 18 reps.

40 Yard Dash – The most famous of all of the combine events! We don’t really care about records on this one. The best 40 of all time is probably Rich Eisen going 6.14! Time is running short so I believe we did 6 – 40s. 3 of us were on one side of the courts, 4 on the other. On the next to last run, the winner from each group squared off in the final to be declared winner. Wirenut held off a late charge from Gearwrench to be declared the “Folsom’s Fastest Man”. Ball Join was sure to note that this is how it normally goes with Gearwrench’s race car.

Bench Press – The ultimate test for strength for he future hogs up front in the NFL is the bench press. The NFL Combine test is a rep count of 225 lbs. The NFL Combine record is 49 by Stephen Paea. To simulate, we circled up and did Broke’s famous perfect form hand-release merkins with shoulder taps at the top. Spackle led the cadence as we did them until we couldn’t do them anymore. Last man standing wins. Ball Join outlasted Gearwrench and was named “Folsom’s Strongest Man”. Shoutout to Spackle who dq’d himself for not doing the shoulder taps around rep 10…I’m not sure anyone noticed to be honest, but he’s a man of honor and I respect it.

We were a few minutes over so mosey to the flag for COT.

Announcements: Family Skating this Saturday 9/17; JJ5K 9/24; Convergence at BullDog 10/15 (the date changed), Iron Pax Challenge Thursday at Folsom, Extinction Run 10/1 (location TBD, check Slack).

Prayer requests: Huck, Striper’s brother, Sarlacc’s 2.0, Wirenut’s work friends, Snelling family, Lincoln Middle School, all of us and our families, and Jiffy. YHC took us out in prayer.