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Home | Old vs. New: Comparing Michigan's Strength Philosophies |
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| Written by Nick Meyer | |
| Monday, 29 September 2008 | |
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Since Mike Barwis arrived in Ann Arborfrom West Virginia, he has been hailed assomething of a visionary and an expert by the local media as well as thenational media as everyone seems to want to know what his workouts are like andhow much they appear to be helping the Michiganplayers. Meanwhile, ex-strength coach Mike Gittleson has been universally dumped on forhis old techniques and criticized for holding the program back. Gittleson wasaround for a long time but many felt his methods were outdated. The new staff walked into Michigan'sweight room, took one look around, and said it looked like a 'museum'and immediately got the athletic director, Bill Martin, to purchase all-newequipment that would total around $1 million in cost. Here's the deal with Gittleson: his training methods were based mainly onstraight-line power. He used a lot of machines which aided in allowing theplayers to get as big as possible and to lift more weight than they would becapable of if they had used free weights as Barwis uses. That's not entirely abad thing because smash-mouth football was the way Michigan liked to play, however. As long as Michigan committed tothat strategy and went with it all the way, it would end up giving them anadvantage over other teams in the pure strength department. I feel it can stillbe 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 torun right at. Short yardage plays were almost always blown up by Michigan's incredibleability to deliver massive blows at the point of attack and to move people offthe line. The 2006 defense was one of the most stout against the run the NCAA'sseen in some time. Michiganplayers 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 asimportant as other people do, because it's not a movement that is conducive towhat players actually do on the football field. He said that if a player isperforming a bench press-style movement, he's probably on his back trying toget someone off of him. Barwis is all about Olympic-style power clean movements targeting thefast-twitch muscles, running for days, and doing balance work and plyometrics.Speed is of the utmost importance as is endurance. This philosophy wouldn'twork quite as well in a smash-mouth style like Michigan used to run where they would justtry and line up and out-execute the opponent, but it should work perfectly withthe new spread-option/hurry-up system. So, it appears we have two systems that work well with two differentphilosophies. I don't think Gittleson's system was as bad as it was made out tobe, at least not the overall philosophy of it. If teams like Miami (FL) andmaybe Georgia Tech for instance, teams that also ran the ball a lot, had asimilar system of all-power, all-the-time, I think they would have had muchbetter offenses over the past two years. Those teams tried to run power offensebut 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. Theover-emphasis on power seemed to take its toll on some positions, especiallythe safeties and linebackers on defense who always seemed to lose their balanceand fall down or miss open-field tackles. Ernest Shazor in particular was aplayer who absolutely flourished in the box and was an All-American safety, butwhen he got out in space against Vince Young he was made to look like a JVplayer in high school. The team always seemed to wilt in the fourth quarter aswell, and the overall shape of many of the players, especially the linemen onboth sides of the ball, was always called into question. Many of them hadmassive bellies and appeared quite out of shape. Now, Barwis enters town with a reputation as being a miracle worker. Hismethods will definitely pay big dividends for the players, and the system seemsto match which is the most important thing. Just the fact that seems to be moredemanding than Gittleson will also help out a tremendous amount. The main question is whether or not Michiganwill 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 beable to still stop those teams. Time will tell. Barwis' presence should be a big boost to the overall conditioning, speed, andexplosiveness of the Wolverines, but Gittleson wasn't quite as bad as he wasmade out to be. Gittleson's mistake seemed to be from the outside lookingin that he had an inability to adjust his philosophy at times to help out thespeed guys on the outside, and the straight-forward play-calling also seemed tohinder the Michiganoffense a great deal. Michigan wasa consistent winner under Gittleson, but under Barwis, they have a chance totake the next step and compete for BCS titles. So Michigan fans should thankGittleson for seeing them through some tremendous years and helping to leadthem to a national title, but now with Barwis, things are about to get a wholelot more interesting.
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Nice article Nick. Maybe the Big 12 title game...
Hey thanks for bumping this back up. I complet...DRS Gear
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