Impact of Tolbert at SC coach over one month

Submitted by iawolve on
One item that keeps coming up in the practice interviews is how much better the team "looks" and is conditioned which is attributed to Tolbert. This is mentioned again a few threads down in Bolden's interview for MGoBlue. I am not doubting Tolbert's ability, I am glad to have him. My question is what could he have done with these guys in a little over a month? Is it more attitude and belief or did Wellman simply have no idea on how to run a SC program? I have not seen the team yet so I don't have a way to compare with the eye test. Interested in any insight here. Hail Harbaugh.

MGoStrength

March 1st, 2015 at 3:48 PM ^

Questionable practices could be anything that isn't supported in the literature.  It could be how to program, how to vary intensity over time, how to periodize your trianing program, how hard/long to push athletes, ideal rest periods or rep tempos for various training outcomes, prioritizing one outcome for a particular sport over another (strength, power, hypertrophy, endurance, stability, mobility, etc.).  It could be as simple as which energy system is most ideal for which sport.  It could how many days per week you should train athletes in season vs out.  It could how to set up the exercises in a workout, like the order.  It could be only training in the saggital plan vs using more "functional" multi-planar exercises.  It could be a focus on machines vs free weights, barbells vs dumbells, olympic lifts vs plyometric training, it could be unilateral exercises vs bilateral, it could be nutritional advice.  I mean the list goes on and on.  And, all this stuff is highly researched in the journals and publications.  But, the bottom line IMO is there is more than one way to skin a cat.  And, almost anything done hard and consistently over time will yield positive outcomes when it comes to exercise.  So, it's more important how you go about your businesss than what specifically you're doing or what your exact program philosophy is.

dcallen39

March 1st, 2015 at 1:20 AM ^

I appreciate your theory on enthusiasm's role vs evidence based practice. I agree with the role that positive psychology has in a person making great gains. I think one of the most critical characteristics of any coach is the ability to inspire an athlete to do the impossible.
However, I do not think these things have to be exclusive. We can have the best of both worlds! An enthusiastic, inspiring and charismatic strength coach who utilizes available research! I also don't discredit the value of trial and error (research will always lag behind clinical practice).
I know a lot of people (myself included) were excited about potentially getting Stanford's S&C coach because he seems to be ahead of the game in both arenas (although using a functional movement assessment before implementing strength training hardly seems 'cutting edge').
In the end I think I will wait to pass judgement on the current S&C staff until the 4th quarter of the first game in SLC. If the team can keep up in that environment I will take that as a sign of good things to come!

MGoStrength

March 1st, 2015 at 4:05 PM ^

Agreed, the two are not mutally exclusive, but IMO one is clearly more important than another as an S&C coach.  If I was paying a guy on the internet to do my own personal programming, I'd want the most knowledgable guy whose up to speed on the current literature.  He's not coaching me and I'm providing all the motivation and execution.  However, if I want a strength coach who is responsible for the hands-on coaching of 85-105 guys, a different skill set takes precidence.

 

Shannon Turley is a pretty well respected coach in S&C.  In fact, a friend of mine, Ryan Cidzik, works with him there.  But, Turley is not really know as a rah rah in your face high intensity sort of strength coach.  You will never see out of him what you may see out of Scott Cochran at Alabama.  He's not that kind of guy.  And I think our conditioning in the 4th quarter is less a function of the strength coaches as it is the football coaches and how they run practice.  Maybe if you watched practice now after the strength coach as had them for winter conditioning that would be more indicitive.  But, once the season gets under way they spend limited time with the strength coach, and the volume and intensity of workouts and conditioning goes way down as the volume and intensity of skill practice, games, and practice times goes way up.  You can only have so many stressors at once.   So, the 4th quarter conditioning it's more a function of the philosophy of the head coach and how he runs practice IMO. 

HollywoodHokeHogan

March 1st, 2015 at 12:10 AM ^

          Every offseason fans of every school that changes S & C coaches says this same damn thing.  To give just the exmaples from Michigan, people said it with Barwis while they bitched about Lloyd Carr giving everybody pizzas.  They said it with Wellman while they bitched about Barwis.  Now they'll say it about Tolbert and bitch about Wellman, even before a single game is played.  And if Tolbert gets fired, they'll say it about the next guy while they bitch about Tolbert.   

bronxblue

March 1st, 2015 at 9:20 AM ^

These posts are always the most fun to read after the fact, just to see the tried-and-true arguments over the quality of S&C now versus "the last guy."  

 

Don

March 1st, 2015 at 3:47 PM ^

It's an article of faith around here that Darrell Funk was a miserable failure at being an OL coach, even though the vast majority of MGoBloggers holding that opinion wouldn't be able to describe precisely, in detail, just exactly how and in what way he was deficient in his coaching methods if their lives depended on it. Their opinions were formed because of how ineffective our relatively-well regarded recruits were doing at game time.

Yet at the same time we're supposed to entirely dismiss out of hand the possibility that the previous S&C staff wasn't exactly up to snuff, either, because "it's up to the kids" or "all S&C coaches teach the same stuff."

Either all assistant coaches make a difference by virtue of the fact that they're individuals with unique strengths and weaknesses, or none of them do. You can't logically have it both ways.

MGoStrength

March 2nd, 2015 at 11:01 AM ^

Caveat...I know exercise very well, I only know offensive line play what a run of the mill mgoblogger/fan would know.  A strength coach's job is not to make the athletes better football players, or in this case offensive lineman.  His/her job is to improve attributes of athleticism such as strength, power, size, speed, agility, mobility, stability, etc. and to build mental toughness.  So, the only way to tell if a strenght coach is doing a good job is to look objective measures that he uses to asses those things like 1-rep max testing, 40-yd dash testing, pro agility testing, etc.  And, we as fans never get to see that stuff, so it makes it harder to judge a strength coach as a casual fan.  But, you should not judge a strength coach based on how the players play in games.  It's the job of the sport coaches to then turn those attributes of athleticism into better football players or offensive lineman.

 

When it comes to how the offense line performs however, any casual fan can see the o-line sucked and with the same coach for 3 years it seems reasonable to think he didn't do a very good job.  I don't think you have to be an expert or know why he didn't do a good job to still be able to know he didn't do a good job.  My point here is it's probably not fair to judge a strength coach by how players play in games, but it is fair to evaluate a position coach that way.

BlueMk1690

March 1st, 2015 at 4:38 PM ^

This thread is on every college team forum every time there's a coaching change, isn't it?

There's a reason all those guys with their radically different philosophies and approaches keep getting hired for big money jobs..nobody has a frickin clue which one of them is better (hint: the outcome is probably not notably different enough that anyone can tell).