Strength & Conditioning

[J. Spanky]

Originally Posted by djnemo65

While I agree that the injuries earlier in the year were extreme, I would like to hear from someone with medical expertise on the culpability of the training staff, since I have none myself, before I go advocating firing people. Continuity right people?

Spanky, why do you say these injuries were largely preventable? What should the training staff have done differently?

first, i fail to see the value of maintaining continuity in this respect. we're not talking about developing a quarterback, here. we're talking about preventing "preventable" injuries. the job is either being done adequately or it isn't. in this case, i believe it is not.

second, i'm certainly not a medical expert, so i do not know what the team should be doing differently. especially since i don't know what they're doing in the first place. but soft tissue/muscle injuries are considered "preventable" because they are generally a result of insufficient or inadequate stretching (or none at all), poor conditioning, etc. as opposed to injuries like breaks or sprains which result, generally, from the excessive contact which is the nature of the sport.

this is why nobody can really be blamed for injuries like those suffered by brandon lloyd, carlos rogers or jason campbell. but the past few years we've been killed by pulls and strains. a team is bound to suffer some of these, occasionally, but we've fallen victim to an innordinate number.

i personally believe there is a direct connection between consistent success in the playoffs and the quality of a team's strength/conditioning staff. and as i stated in my initial post, we have a top-heavy roster, and until we can improve our depth it is imperative that we avoid unnecessary injuries. at most positions, there is too big of a drop off between the starter and the backup for us to overcome a large amount of injuries.

adequate depth takes years to acquire. this is a problem we can potentially fix in ONE off-season.

[Sheriff Gonna Getcha]

I don't know what to think. We did seem to have a rash of injuries last season, but some of them would have happened regardless of the makeup of our strength and conditioning staff (e.g., Jansen's leg injury). Who knows, maybe we just hit a streak of bad luck.