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Since Mike Barwis arrived in Ann
Arbor from West Virginia, he has
been hailed as something of a visionary and an expert by the local media as well
as the national media as everyone seems to want to know what his workouts are
like and how much they appear to be helping the Michigan players.
Meanwhile,
ex-strength coach Mike Gittleson has been universally dumped on for his old
techniques and criticized for holding the program back. Gittleson was around for
a long time but many felt his methods were outdated.
The new staff walked
into Michigan's weight room, took one look around,
and said it looked like a "museum" and immediately got the athletic director,
Bill Martin, to purchase all-new equipment that would total around $1 million in
cost.
Here's the deal with Gittleson: his training methods were based
mainly on straight-line power. He used a lot of machines which aided in allowing
the players to get as big as possible and to lift more weight than they would be
capable of if they had used free weights as Barwis uses. That's not entirely a
bad thing because smash-mouth football was the way Michigan liked to play,
however. As long as Michigan committed to that strategy and went
with it all the way, it would end up giving them an advantage over other teams
in the pure strength department. I feel it can still be a viable strategy in
college football as evidence by teams like Wisconsin and Texas.
The running game was always
pretty good and the defense was extremely hard to run right at. Short yardage
plays were almost always blown up by Michigan's incredible ability to deliver
massive blows at the point of attack and to move people off the line. The 2006
defense was one of the most stout against the run the NCAA's seen in some time.
Michigan
players always seemed to put up huge numbers on the bench press at the combine,
etc.
But contrast that with what Barwis teaches and you'll see a huge
difference. He's already said flat-out that he doesn't think the bench press is
nearly as important as other people do, because it's not a movement that is
conducive to what players actually do on the football field. He said that if a
player is performing a bench press-style movement, he's probably on his back
trying to get someone off of him.
Barwis is all about Olympic-style power
clean movements targeting the fast-twitch muscles, running for days, and doing
balance work and plyometrics. Speed is of the utmost importance as is endurance.
This philosophy wouldn't work quite as well in a smash-mouth style like
Michigan used
to run where they would just try and line up and out-execute the opponent, but
it should work perfectly with the new spread-option/hurry-up system.
So,
it appears we have two systems that work well with two different philosophies. I
don't think Gittleson's system was as bad as it was made out to be, at least not
the overall philosophy of it. If teams like Miami (FL) and maybe Georgia Tech
for instance, teams that also ran the ball a lot, had a similar system of
all-power, all-the-time, I think they would have had much better offenses over
the past two years. Those teams tried to run power offense but their players
seemed much thinner and more built for speed from what I saw.
That
doesn't absolve Gittleson from the mistakes he made, however. The over-emphasis
on power seemed to take its toll on some positions, especially the safeties and
linebackers on defense who always seemed to lose their balance and fall down or
miss open-field tackles. Ernest Shazor in particular was a player who absolutely
flourished in the box and was an All-American safety, but when he got out in
space against Vince Young he was made to look like a JV player in high school.
The team always seemed to wilt in the fourth quarter as well, and the overall
shape of many of the players, especially the linemen on both sides of the ball,
was always called into question. Many of them had massive bellies and appeared
quite out of shape.
Now, Barwis enters town with a reputation as being a
miracle worker. His methods will definitely pay big dividends for the players,
and the system seems to match which is the most important thing. Just the fact
that seems to be more demanding than Gittleson will also help out a tremendous
amount.
The main question is whether or not Michigan will still be able to handle a power-running team
like the Badgers or Penn State. Morgan Trent told me at the spring
game that he was confident they would be able to still stop those teams. Time
will tell.
Barwis' presence should be a big boost to the overall
conditioning, speed, and explosiveness of the Wolverines, but Gittleson wasn't
quite as bad as he was made out to be. Gittleson's mistake seemed to be from
the outside looking in that he had an inability to adjust his philosophy at
times to help out the speed guys on the outside, and the straight-forward
play-calling also seemed to hinder the Michigan offense a great deal.
Michigan was a consistent winner under
Gittleson, but under Barwis, they have a chance to take the next step and
compete for BCS titles. So Michigan fans should thank Gittleson for seeing them
through some tremendous years and helping to lead them to a national title, but
now with Barwis, things are about to get a whole lot more interesting.
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