Coach Asanovich on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Off-Season

 Joey VanLaningham with Mark Asanovich

Every Strength and Conditioning Coach has a different view on what should take place over the off-season. Here is how Coach Asanovich views the Buccaneers.  Note this is a previously published article and though Asanovich is no longer the Buc's strength coach, it gives valuable insight into how a top strength coach views is job and the outcome of his actions.  

Asanovich was the strength and conditioning coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1996-2001 seasons, a total of six years. Asanovich's record as the team's strength and conditioning coach was 54-42-0, making him the second-most successful strength and conditioning coach in Tampa Bay Buccaneers history (up to that time).

Although it is true that all Strength and Conditioning Coaches look towards the off-season as a time for his or her players to either get bigger, stronger, and/or faster, they each have a personal philosophy about their training time.

Mark Asanovich, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, says that in terms of intensity, the off-season is just like the regular season.

He states, "We define 'Intensity of Training' as the level of effort with which a player exerts himself during his workout. The intensity of training between pre-season and regular season does not change."

Because he considers intensity to be synonymous with effort, Coach Asanovich will settle for nothing short of maximal effort at any time. "In the weight room, as on the field, maximal effort is required to develop maximal results. As such, we expect maximal efforts from our players regardless of the time of year," is how he summarizes the Buccaneers seasonal strength-training philosophy.

However, Coach Asanovich does warn about overtraining. He states, "Because we expect this level of effort, once we enter training camp, we do decrease the frequency of our workouts from three times per week (pre-season) to one or two times (regular season)." He added that the reason for the decrease in frequency was to "promote full recovery and prevent injury."

Other than intensity and frequency, the other important factor to any quality strength and conditioning program, off-season or otherwise, is specificity. Coach Asanovich says that the Buccaneers stay very specific year around.

Of this, he says; "The purpose of any training protocol is to stimulate a specific physical adaptation response. Training is a 'use it or lose it' reality. Simply meaning, if you are training for a specific response from your training, once you terminate that training mode or exercise, you lose whatever physical adaptation that you were hoping to improve in your training."

Because of his "use it or lose it" concept, Coach Asanovich sees to it that the Buccaneers stay focused on the same football-specific exercises throughout the year.

According to him, "Our in-season training or exercises are a direct reflection of our off-season training or exercises. As such, the training protocols that we employ in the off-season are identical to the protocols that we employ in our in-season protocols."

His philosophy and training protocols must be working. The Buccaneers have shown marked improvement since his arrival, and they expect even greater accolades this season with the addition of high profile players such as Keyshawn Johnson.

One thing is certain, the Buccaneers will not lose a game because they are out-ran or overpowered; Coach Asanovich will see to that.

Chet Fuhrman Sports Strength Training Philosophy

This is the way of a great strength coach.

Worked for Bill Cohwer who garnered a Super Bowl win as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.  

Furhman talks about how it's done...

It was more of a life accomplishment. The teams I coached won a high school state championship, we won championships at Penn State, and we went to the Super Bowl twice in Pittsburgh while I was there. The accomplishment for me was to help those teams win.

The most important thing about my time in Pittsburgh was our record over the 15 years that I was there. Trainers keep statistics on players that miss games due to injuries. Over those 15 years we had the least number of players miss games due to injury of any team in the NFL. That’s how you judge if we were good. That’s the bigger accomplishment.

How did you manage do accomplish that?

It wasn’t all me. Cowher knew when to push guys and when to back off. Then there were more OTAs and many teams used all 15, but he only used 12. This was when there were no rules in training camp about two-a-days. He would never have two-a-days on back-to-back days. We didn’t always go in pads. He was ahead of his time in knowing when not to push players too hard.

Trainer John Norwig is also an institution there. His staff was outstanding. They did an outstanding job healing injured players and in preventing injuries. Cowher also told players to be smart about injuries -- not to hide them. He stressed that players should get treatment. He made it a point to make sure they got treatment if they were injured.

What did you do to help keep those injury numbers down?

Cowher told me when I got there that he never wanted to hear that a player got injured in the weight room. He wasn’t going to be understanding if a player got hurt doing a bench press or power clean, or on dead lifts. I told him I had the perfect program for him because I used slow and controlled lifting movements in my program. It’s another way to get stronger but took the injury factor out of the weight room. [Boom!  Done!.  That's how you make Stronger Athletes, you train them and don't let them injure themselves in the weight room.  Not rocket science, unless you buy into the Oly lifting cult]

I had only one player get hurt in the weight room, and that was because they hurt their foot when they took a 45-pound plate off the bar and a 25-pound plate dropped off and fell on his foot.

Tell me more about the program and how it prevented injuries like those you see today?

The program did not include ballistic types of movement that cause injuries. I always use the bullrope comparison – the type of rope they use in tug-o-war that has thousands of fibers to give the rope strength.

When you power lift – do Olympic lifting or squats – what it does to tendons and ligaments is cut the fibers a little each workout. Over time, it leaves just enough to keep it all together until it snaps. That’s the analogy I always use with heavy lifting.

I had a player who could lift 500 pounds, but his career ended when his elbow gave out, Did lifting 500 pounds really help his career? No. It ended his career. He pushed his body too hard over time.

Also, as a conditioning coach, I always felt my job was to help players over the course of their life. I want them to be able to play with their kids later in life. The game is so punishing already. Why punish your body in the weight room with heavy lifting and ballistic movement? Some guys do box jumps – weights on them as they jump off of boxes. The stress and strain of those ballistic movements on cartilage and tendons – it’s no wonder why they have such bad injuries later in life. It accelerates their injuries. They won’t have a pain-free life later on. Some of that pain they have later is due to just playing the game. But why make it even worse? I think my program helped them with that.

In the end, I know some guys are just doing what the coaches tell them to do. But I remember that the strongest kids in rookie camp rarely made the team. It all comes down to whether you can play football or  not.

The Mystique Associated With Russian/Eastern European Training Methodologies

 Coach Asanovich gives us his take on the problems with ballistic resistance training.

Given the "Athletic Performance Equation," performance outcomes are dependent upon the sum interplay of a myriad of controllable, uncontrollable and somewhat controllable variables. Hence, to what extent does coaching, athletic talent, team 'chemistry,' nutritional status, psychological readiness, weather conditions, officiating, pharmacological status, luck, or for that matter, one's training protocols effect the sum athletic performance? Obviously, an attempt to conclusively quantify the effects of a single performance variable on overall performance outcomes becomes a matter of subjective speculation.

Nevertheless, by virtue of successful athletic performance, successful athletes, coaches, and teams are intuitively thought to possess successful training protocols. The unspoken assumption being that if one follows the training protocols of the champions, one will likewise evolve into a champion. Consequently, popular opinion has led many to believe that as a result of past International and/or Olympic success, it is logical that the Russians must implement the most effective training protocols. To compound this misguided perception, there are many who would also have one believe they also harbor numerous "training secrets."

Ironically, many athletes and teams have performed successfully without ever having employed these Eastern European regimens into their training programs. Truth be told, many athletes and teams have performed successfully without ever having been involved in a supervised/systematic strength and conditioning program! To this I would also add that many athletes and teams have performed successfully in spite of, rather than because of their training protocols.

However, most would assume that the end justifies the means, and if the Russians do it, that must be why they are successful. To blindly accept this position, one must naively support the belief that performance success (or lack of success) is solely dependent upon one particular training methodology. Unfortunately, this may not be the truth. Rather, as professionals, the issue is one of unbiased scientific proof, not empirically hyped innuendo.

Relative to muscle contractile velocity, there are four determining factors that determine the rate at which a muscle fiber can contract (i.e. explosiveness):

1. The degree of myosin ATPase activity.

2. The degree of sacroplasmic reticulum development.

3. The degree of troponin's affinity for calcium.

4. The degree of neural innervation size.

However, the fact is that any anecdotal gains resulting from Russian/Eastern European training are PERCIEVED gains -- and are therefore no more significant than doing absolutely nothing at all. The problem with "perceived results" (particularly when a monetary investment is involved), is that the subject's objectivity is biased as a result of their emotional attachment and vested interest in the attainment of the desired results. Unfortunately, well-intended (but not well-educated) athletes, coaches, and parents are easy targets for such commercially hyped hocus-pocus.

The fact of the matter is that ballistic resistance training is unproven and/or unproductive at best, and potentially dangerous at worst (especially in prepubescent athletes). Ballistic resistance training, like any momentum-assisted movement, violates the most fundamental principle of strength development, that being, the Overload Principle. The Overload Principle states that muscular development will only occur as a result of the application of a stressor that exceeds the muscles voluntary capabilities. As such, it follows that if the application of the stressor (or resistance) is "momentum-assisted," the amount of stress is lessened and muscular development is compromised. In other words, performing exercises at maximal speeds will result in minimal muscular effects.

To make matters worse, performing exercises at maximal speeds will also result in maximum muscular risks. Newton's second law of motion states that, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Relative to an individual performing an accelerated exercise movement therefore, the magnitude of potential internal forces produced is directly proportional to the speed at which the exercise is performed. Orthopedic injuries are sustained when these forces exceed the structural integrity of the involved joint(s). If acute injuries are avoided, repeated trauma from such biomechanical loading can predispose the muscles, fascia, bones and connective tissue to chronic injuries that are sustained once an athlete enters competition. For this reason, Dr. Fred Allman, former American College of Sports Medicine president has warned, "It is even possible that many injuries...may be the result of weakened connective tissue caused by explosive training in the weight room."

Unfortunately, a joint's structural limits are unknown until the damage has already been done--and then is too late. Obviously, risk of injury is inherent (and accepted) in sports competition. However, to suggest that there be an inherent risk of injury in training for sports competition is certainly unacceptable, unprofessional, and unethical. After all, the primary objective of any training program is to enhance one's physical potential, not endanger it! Consequently, one should be encouraged to perform strength-training exercises in a controlled manner. To do otherwise, is to invite musculoskeletal injury.

Certainly many controversies exist relative to training methodologies, ballistic training and Olympic lifting being a major concern. Yet, regardless of which training protocols may be right or wrong, as health/fitness professionals our first responsibility is to the safety of those who have entrusted their health to us. By denying, ignoring, or overlooking the risks involved in training protocols/devices, we do a great disservice to the individuals we train. For these reasons, I would encourage coaches to be very discriminating in selecting training protocols.

After all, as with anything in life that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Ballistic resistance training and Olympic lifting are no exception to the rule.