Good Morning Scoop,
So much has been made of opt-outs this bowl season, as it is greatly devaluing the bowls.
In this post, I aim to provide a little more reasoning behind why players choosing to opt out as well as a simple solution for reducing the number of opt-outs.
Let’s start here…
This years NFL Combine is March 1st - March 7th (OU’s Pro Day typically One-Week Later)
- If a player participating in this years NFL Combine participated in the game, that will leave them with 8-Weeks of true combine prep. Trainers such as myself break things down into to proven blocks of training known as mesocycles and microcycles. This is where the bowl games becomes an issue with how competitive and under a microscope the combine now is.
Now let’s look at what all goes into combine prep:
Step 1: Recovery from Football Season
- This step is critical because it is what sets the player up for success. All athletes will meet with a doctor/physical therapist and go through an entire screening process (often similar to what team doctors will do) and identify any key major/minor injury that needs to be addressed. If an athlete has any soft tissue injuries, it can take up to 2-4 weeks for that to be back to near-optimal standards.
Therefore, you could potentially be looking at a 6-week training period which then starts to become an issue.
Step 2: Nutrition
- Nearly every single athlete trims down for the combine. Extra weight is of no use to an athlete in non-football related modalities. In fact, it hinders speed, power, and endurance -two major factors that are important for a good performance. For many athletes, it can take a bit of time to trim down to the type of weight needed to perform well.
There is also a risk of losing strength if weight is lost too quickly. I believe this is what impact Orlando Brown and his performance in the bench press, as he didn’t opt out due to playing in the CFP.
Step 3: Training
- Let’s say we have a perfect world for an 8-week training period. Each week will consist of 5-6 training days. 3 of those days will be your high CNS days where you are pushing to maximum intensity while 2-3 of the others will be on the lower side of CNS demands and this is in a perfect world of no injuries or underlying issues.
This gives up 24 “money days” as I call them where the athlete is going to try and get faster, stronger and more explosive.
Your training consists very highly of developing the skills and techniques needed to “win the combine.”
While that may seem like a lot, the final week to two weeks is likely going to be a tapering week where things get a bit lighter as the athlete prepares for performance at the combine.
This trims us down to about 18-21 days of legitimate work.
While athletes can absolutely improve in that span, as a performance coach, you run the risk of things having to go perfectly with minimal margin for error.
If there is soft tissue recovery needed then there is even less margin for error. This is also assuming the athlete isn’t performing in a Senior Bowl type even which narrow timeline even more.
When an athlete opts-out, they are giving themselves a security blanket for
The absolute simplest and most effective solution for reducing the number of opt outs will be working with the NFL to move the combine to a later date.
Otherwise, I don’t see a scenario where it will work to reduce opt outs.
So much has been made of opt-outs this bowl season, as it is greatly devaluing the bowls.
In this post, I aim to provide a little more reasoning behind why players choosing to opt out as well as a simple solution for reducing the number of opt-outs.
Let’s start here…
This years NFL Combine is March 1st - March 7th (OU’s Pro Day typically One-Week Later)
- If a player participating in this years NFL Combine participated in the game, that will leave them with 8-Weeks of true combine prep. Trainers such as myself break things down into to proven blocks of training known as mesocycles and microcycles. This is where the bowl games becomes an issue with how competitive and under a microscope the combine now is.
Now let’s look at what all goes into combine prep:
Step 1: Recovery from Football Season
- This step is critical because it is what sets the player up for success. All athletes will meet with a doctor/physical therapist and go through an entire screening process (often similar to what team doctors will do) and identify any key major/minor injury that needs to be addressed. If an athlete has any soft tissue injuries, it can take up to 2-4 weeks for that to be back to near-optimal standards.
Therefore, you could potentially be looking at a 6-week training period which then starts to become an issue.
Step 2: Nutrition
- Nearly every single athlete trims down for the combine. Extra weight is of no use to an athlete in non-football related modalities. In fact, it hinders speed, power, and endurance -two major factors that are important for a good performance. For many athletes, it can take a bit of time to trim down to the type of weight needed to perform well.
There is also a risk of losing strength if weight is lost too quickly. I believe this is what impact Orlando Brown and his performance in the bench press, as he didn’t opt out due to playing in the CFP.
Step 3: Training
- Let’s say we have a perfect world for an 8-week training period. Each week will consist of 5-6 training days. 3 of those days will be your high CNS days where you are pushing to maximum intensity while 2-3 of the others will be on the lower side of CNS demands and this is in a perfect world of no injuries or underlying issues.
This gives up 24 “money days” as I call them where the athlete is going to try and get faster, stronger and more explosive.
Your training consists very highly of developing the skills and techniques needed to “win the combine.”
While that may seem like a lot, the final week to two weeks is likely going to be a tapering week where things get a bit lighter as the athlete prepares for performance at the combine.
This trims us down to about 18-21 days of legitimate work.
While athletes can absolutely improve in that span, as a performance coach, you run the risk of things having to go perfectly with minimal margin for error.
If there is soft tissue recovery needed then there is even less margin for error. This is also assuming the athlete isn’t performing in a Senior Bowl type even which narrow timeline even more.
When an athlete opts-out, they are giving themselves a security blanket for
The absolute simplest and most effective solution for reducing the number of opt outs will be working with the NFL to move the combine to a later date.
Otherwise, I don’t see a scenario where it will work to reduce opt outs.
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