Paying the Price

Pictured above is a hill that 49ers head coach Mike Singletary had installed this summer at their training facility. What had been a gentle slope is now padded with 2,500 tons of dirt. It takes a run of about 45 feet to get to the top.

Coach Singletary calls his creation, "Pain"

Singletary said that athletes who trained that way “were a cut above some of the other competition around the league and had a long playing career.”

“It’s something you can’t get in the weight room. Something you can’t really get on the track,’’ he said. “It builds something that’s kind of a mystery.”

"We set the bar high, and these guys worked their tails off,” Singletary said. “You do that, and something develops inside a team. You can’t buy it. You can’t talk through it. You have to do it. We paid the price.”

Rigorous Off-Season Gave Revis His Edge

From the Ny Times:

Before Darrelle Revis shut down two of the N.F.L.’s top receivers to open this season, before he entered the discussion for the league’s top cornerback, he went to Arizona and trained like a boxer preparing for a championship bout. There, he found sweltering heat, marathon workouts and the personal torture chamber that is Will Sullivan.

Sullivan is Revis’s off-season coach. They meet at Fischer Sports in Phoenix, where Revis works on strength and conditioning for four hours each morning and trains on a field for three hours every afternoon, alongside pros like Philadelphia’s Donovan McNabb.

This was two-a-days before two-a-days, Sullivan joked.

“He wants the punishment,” said Diana Gilbert, Revis’s mother. “Just to see how much he can endure.”

Revis arrives in Arizona in late June, when many of his N.F.L. counterparts relax or take vacations. Everything with Revis and Sullivan is a competition, be it basketball, video games or training, filled with jawing back and forth.

But this year, as Revis sought to become the best cornerback in football, the training took on added intensity.

Revis came with a goal sheet that included, for the first time, earning top honors at his position.

He brought a list of opposing receivers he would be shadowing across the field under the new defense installed by Coach Rex Ryan, with film on each.

Sullivan and Revis broke down that film together, then went about preparing for each receiver on the field. They fine-tuned Revis’s footwork, focused on his weaknesses, discussed receivers like Atlanta’s Roddy White whom Sullivan had trained.

Sometimes, after seven hours of training, the two headed to the basketball court, where they engaged in one-on-one games that lasted hours without water breaks.

“I’ve been training Revis since he was a junior at Pitt,” Sullivan said. “He’s always been focused. But this year, he took it to a different level.”

Before Revis heads to Arizona, he spends one week with his family outside Pittsburgh. When he leaves, he shuts off most contact with the outside world, turning down tickets secured by his agent to award shows, finding a singular, obsessive focus.

To that end, his family has noticed a newfound maturity in Revis as he begins his third N.F.L. season. Diana Gilbert said her son had tightened his inner circle, dropping bad influences and keeping those who spoke truthfully and kept him grounded.

None keep Revis more level than his uncle, the former N.F.L. defensive end Sean Gilbert. After Revis shut down New England’s Randy Moss on Sunday, Gilbert told him, “Two games down, 14 left, you still stink.”

When Revis entered the league, among the first advice dispensed by Gilbert was this: Do not believe all N.F.L players have heart, because they do not. Ultimately, the game comes down to will.

“There are two ways to deal with the pressure,” Gilbert said. “You feel it. Or you apply it. I ask him every day. ‘Which are you doing?’ I want him to go after their best player, and I want him to take his will.”

Wise beyond his 24 years, Revis has matured on the field, becoming smoother in his footwork transitions and quarterback reads, as he increases his awareness.

The Jets have bestowed the nickname Shutdown upon Revis, and on the NFL Network last weekend, Deion Sanders ranked Revis among the top three cornerbacks in football.
This came after Revis shadowed Moss and Houston’s Andre Johnson. With help on both players from his teammates, Revis held Johnson to four catches for 35 yards and Moss to four catches for 24 yards, and Revis intercepted a pass against the Patriots.

Most instructive, though, were those receivers’ numbers in the games in which they did not face Revis. Johnson tallied 10 catches, 149 yards and 2 touchdowns in the second week. In the opener, Moss caught 12 passes for 149 yards. They call this the Revis Effect.

Revis possesses a rare combination of speed and strength for a cornerback, built in part by those training sessions in the Arizona heat. Revis played Moss physically, bumping him at the line, jamming his routes, even sitting across from Moss when both players were on the bench.

“If he went to the bathroom, I went, too,” Revis said.

Moss and Johnson played down the impact of a cornerback like Revis. Both said all cornerbacks received help from safeties, or other cornerbacks, and Moss even went so far as to suggest he could play cornerback in the right defense.

Regardless, the Jets’ defense has yet to allow a touchdown in eight quarters, and Revis may be the single most important piece of Ryan’s system. He stands alone on what teammates have started calling Revis Island, matched up each week against the best receiver on the opposing team.

Of course, Revis studied all of them back in June and July. Sullivan reminded him of that Monday morning, via a text message that read simply, “Who’s next?”

Curry gets a jump on NBA conditioning

First round draft pick & college All-American Stephen Curry is getting ready for his rookie season in theNBA. His trainer is making him run sprint after sprint, dribble backward and forward, then run three quarters of the court and make 10 NBA-range 3-point shots in a row. Of course, if you miss, you start over.

“This is what it takes,” said Curry, a lottery pick by the Golden State Warriors this summer. “You've got to go to training camp at the top of your game and not use it to get in shape.”

An excerpt from “Values of the Game” by Bill Bradley

The need for discipline applies first to conditioning. It’s painful and grueling, but there’s no alternative. You can’t lead the fast break or tear down 20 rebounds a game if you can’t run and jump without fatigue. Getting into shape and pushing the body to new levels every day is a mental activity. When you believe that you can’t do another lap or another push-up or another abdominal crunch, your mind forces you to go ahead. When your wind is short and you have a pain in your side from running, only your mind can get you to withstand the pain and go on. As UCLA’s legendary coach John Wooden says, “Nothing will work unless you do.”

I used to hate getting into shape no matter which routines I followed- laps, line drills, playing one on one full court, running the floor while passing the ball back and forth with two teammates. After six weeks of agony, during which every part of my body ached so badly that many mornings I crawled from bed to bathroom to soak in a hot tub, the pain began to diminish and the muscles started to come around. When you train seriously for basketball, you learn the difference between getting into condition and getting into condition. In the lesser of those two states, you can run up and down the floor and do what you have to do without the interference of fatigue. But you’re not really in peak condition until you can cruise when others push. When your body is honed, you can run your opponents around and around, with little immediate purpose beyond tiring them out, making them angry, or distracting them from any defensive concentration.

My toughest opponent, John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics, was a true genius when it came to using conditioning as a weapon. His goal was to get his opponent to give up, to stop overcoming fatigue, to stop pushing himself. Havlicek saw it as a matter of who gives up first. “You’ll pass out before you’re overworked, bust most people don’t know that,” he once told Orlando Magic senior executive vice president Pat Williams. “They think they’re overworked, so they stop. They could have kept going, but they didn’t. They weren’t beat physically; they were beat mentally.”

Running the Hill

Article from espn.com on Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan and his conditioning program. Click here for story.

Rip Hamilton "Marathon Man"

Newspaper article on Richard Hamilton titled "Marathon Man" refering to the Piston guards' great work ethic. Here are some excerpts:

During the season, conditioning coaches are responsible for keeping players in top shape; in the off-season it's the players' job. Hamilton takes his conditioning seriously. His off-season training day usually begins at 9 a.m. with a run near his home in Washington, D.C, with his pit bulls, Shark and Diamond. He runs five times a week until they're all dogtired. "I just go out there and sprint," Hamilton says. "Once I know they're tired, I know I've done my job."

After a run he hits the gym for an hour of individual basketball drills, which he does six days a week. "As soon as I step on the court, I go hard," he explains. "Everything is moving, coming off screens, no stationary shots. I just shoot till I'm tired." He also lifts weights four times a week for strength and flexibility, focusing on the core muscles.

He boosts his endurance and recuperative powers by following a strict diet. "My dad is a health freak," says Hamilton, a Coatesville, Pennsylvania, native. "When I was young, he had me drink V8 juice." Hamilton's father still cooks for him during the summer, and Hamilton remains an avid and dedicated vegetable and fruit drinker.

In the off-season, Hamilton typically downs six egg whites, oatmeal and some fruit for breakfast. During the season, his usual pre-game meal, two hours and 10 minutes before a game, consists of whole-wheat pasta smothered in mariana, grilled chicken breasts and vegetables. "What you put into your body is what you get out of it," he says. Being fit is "a lot more than just working out."

Most athletes regard their bodies as investments; Hamilton treats his as a temple. "I've never drunk alcohol or smoked cigarettes in my life," he says.

"He's in the top 1 percent of NBA players when it comes to fitness," says Arnie Kander, the Pistons' conditioning coach. "He's very aware of what's required to keep his body healthy. He's always looking for that edge that can help take his body to the next level."

Chauncey Billups, Hamilton's teammate, once marveled, "He doesn't ever get tired." But what does a tireless pro with monklike devotion to fitness have to teach weekend warriors wanting to stay in game shape?

Hamilton's advice is direct: Respect your body and believe in your abilities. "Sometimes when you think your body can't go to a different gear, push it to the limit," he urges.