One
thing about being a professional athlete is that people are usually very
interested in what you do. Whether it’s
a die hard sports fan, the casual observer or someone who knows absolutely
nothing about sports, they all seem to be quite fascinated with what it is like
to play a sport professionally. In my
first four years in the CFL I have had the opportunity to meet many different
people and answer many different questions. This is the source for the material of this column, simply the questions
I have been asked over the years by the people I have met. The goal is to provide an inside look into a
wide range of all things football.
Each football season begins exactly
the same way, whether you’re in the pros or pursuing your gridiron dreams at
the collegiate level. A three week
period that is both the most dreaded and most anticipated part of the season. On one hand it represents the start of a new
campaign where each and every team is equal and the possibilities for the
coming year are limitless. However, on
the other hand it brings with it a physical and mental blitz that can beat even
the most well conditioned athlete into submission. In order to start a new football season you
must first survive Training Camp.
It is one of the questions that I am
most often asked, “what’s training camp like”? With Labour Day just around the
corner the fall football season is fast approaching. Soon the fields around
Richardson Stadium will be swarming with activity as the Golden Gaels kick off
their 2008 training camp.
Training camp, or simply camp, is an
experience like no other. From the time
the sun rises until the time it disappears below the horizon its football,
football and more football. Each day
follows pretty much the same schedule; eat, practice, eat, meet, practice, eat,
meet and sleep. Both practice lasts
around two and a half hours and includes a number of different parts called
‘periods’. These ‘periods’ include; warm
up, individual, one on ones, special teams, pass skelly, inside run, team and
conditioning. The conclusion of the second practice of the day is one of the
best parts of the day. First because you
survived the day and second because you are now that much closer to the
end.
Practicing twice a day, simply
called ‘two-a-days’ is extremely gruelling on the body. Injuries are a fact of life in the world of
football and unfortunately for some they occur during training camp. For
everyone else, cuts, bruises, blisters and overall soreness is the theme of
camp. You train all winter long to prepare,
but regardless of how hard you train during the off-season each and every guy
gets sore. You walk around like an old
man, and dread the prospect of climbing stairs. However, there is one thing that helps…the ‘Ice Tub’. After each practice the first destination for
most players is a steel tub filled to the brim with freezing cold water. Fifteen minutes in the tubs is a painful
experience that can feel like an eternity.
Meetings like practice are broken
into different parts. There are team meetings, offensive and defensive meetings,
special teams meetings and positional meetings. Team meetings are mainly for motivational purposes and the sharing of
general information. The rest of the meetings are when you watch film, go
through the play book, and have “chalk talk” as they say, although it’s now
done on white boards with dry erase markers. The one thing about football is
that everything is recorded to video and from a number of angles. Watching the film from the days practice can
take as long as the actual practice. Each play is reviewed and corrections are
made. There’s a saying that goes, “the
eye in the sky doesn’t lie”, meaning that the cameras catch everything so when
you screw up there’s no hiding. Your
final meetings of the day are when you go over new plays that will be practiced
the next day. Each day in fact brings
with it new plays, which means you have to learn quickly or fall behind as more
and more is introduced. This is where veterans
have a significant advantage over rookies. For ‘vets’ its just a case of refreshing their memories, whereas for
rookies they must learn everything from the beginning.
Training camp is pretty much a case
of ground hog day, each day is exactly the same, some good, some not so good,
depending on how you performed that particular day. You stay in dorms away from your family in
order to live and breathe football. None-the-less, regardless of how unpleasant
training camp may be it is a necessary part of building a football team. Camp is when players learn their playbooks
for the season, work on new skills and compete with each other for a position
on the team. In the end it’s just a
small sacrifice that every player is willing to make in order to play a sport
that so few have the opportunity to.