Athletes Get Creative to Remain in Shape
Makeshift gyms at home help fill the void
Mike Brohard
When the coach says move, you just do.
The same rule applies when asked to move your coach’s things into his new house.
“I mean, that’s automatic,” Colorado State tight end Trey McBride said. “You’ve gotta respect your coach and make sure he gets his stuff moved in, so I made sure I had help and I was around, so it worked out good.”
It wasn’t a personal invite for McBride, it’s just that he works for the moving company -- owned by former CSU offensive quality control coach Ricky Santo -- which was tasked with moving some final items into CSU head coach Steve Addazio’s new home in Fort Collins. Addazio’s stuff is there, but he is stuck in his vacation home in Cape Cod, Mass., waiting for a time when it’s safe for him and his wife, Kathleen, to move themselves.
These days, players are having to get creative with the way they are working out, and moving furniture is definitely an option. McBride noted the bed frame was rather heavy, as was a dresser.
“I got a good little workout in, got a little sweat in, so it was good, it was nice,” McBride said. “I mean, I’m sure I’ll do more later, but it was a good little workout for sure.”
The players are not allowed into the facilities at Canvas Stadium, so lifting can require some creativity. Imagine the workout montage via Rocky IV, stuck in the mountains of Russia, running through snow, chopping wood and pulling a sled loaded with rocks. That’s exactly how head strength and conditioning coach Scott McLafferty wants them thinking.
“Kind of. That’s what we’re trying to get these guys to do to stimulate that brain to use,” McLafferty said. “Me, I look and see what we have. That’s what I’m used to doing, and we get creative. We’ve all been places where we don’t have much, so they just need to get creative on their end.”
Luckily, I live with my brother (Toby), so we’ve been doing a lot weighted pushups, weighted stuff like that. I actually tried bench pressing him a couple of times, but he’s a little heavier than I expected.CSU Football Player Trey McBride
McLafferty started the process by asking the players to let him know what is at their disposal, then he designed plans for them. He has them thinking backpacks weighted down with whatever they can find, back-yard playsets, milk jugs, buckets, concrete and cinder blocks.
He said about 20 players have a full rack at their homes, but some aren’t so lucky. So they find ways.
“Our strength staff has done a good job using the Teamworks app and sending us workouts, and then we just got installed with a new app that we can do work outside,” safety Logan Stewart said. “Our strength staff is doing a really good job of keeping us connected and keeping everybody active at this time.
“Me personally, I like to keep it old fashioned, the pushups and crunches. I also workout with some outside people. Me being at home, I’m exposed to my trainers, so I have the ability to go to some fields and do some field work, so that’s a blessing.”
Seeing the possibility of a shutdown, McLafferty designed a basic plan of eight workouts, four body-weight circuits and four where they pair up exercises, as well as a four-week run plan. If it goes deeper than May, he said he can add on to the schedule.
He’s not the only one. Athletic trainer Kelsey Zachman, who works with men’s golf, swimming, soccer and track’s distance runners, is using chat rooms set up by teams and email to get workouts to her athletes.
She’s also been posting video workouts people can do at home through CSU social media channels, and in the swimming chat room, she has issued “challenges” She posted video saying she did a plank for 2:27, another doing 27 pushups in a minute.
“Every week I’m hoping to send out a challenge, a weekly workout and I send them mobility/flexibility workouts they can do,” she said. “I’m hoping to do three videos a week.
“The challenges are fun. In my head, I’m thinking, ‘I better do a decent job for them to try to beat me.’ Obviously, that’s the goal in their head to try to get to what I’m doing. Julia Box sent a video, where she beat me by one (in pushups). I feel they’re doing them, but they’re not responding.”
Maybe because they’re not beating her often. Just maybe.
But some of them are getting creative. Men’s golfer Parathakorn Suyasri devised a way to hit balls into a mattress at his Thailand home in his garage to work on his swing, posting a video to his Twitter account. He said he saw others doing it, putting a sheet in front, allowing him to hit for a couple of hours a day.
Women’s basketball player Lore Devos has some normal workout equipment at her home in Belgium – dumbbells, elastics bands and a jump rope -- and the team is receiving workouts to follow.
Even still, she wanted to spice it up a bit, and found some household items to enhance her gym.
“Since I got bored at home and was really missing the gym, I built my own barbell and put some windshield-wiper fluid bottles on there and buckets with weights so I can do some weightlifting,” Devos said. “There is actually a lot of stuff you can use at home to do workouts, and it’s a lot of fun.”
Swimmer Maddie Ward has a home pool, but it’s not built for lap workouts. Her mother, Debbie, is a Master’s swimmer who competed in college, and she was going a bit stir crazy herself, so she ordered a swimming resistance band online. When it came in the mail Wednesday, the two attached it to a pole near the pool, allowing them enough space to work out, basically swimming in place with a touch of resistance.
With the water being about 50 degrees, both donned a wet suit and went to work.
“We tried it out yesterday, and it was pretty cool,” Ward said. “It’s better than what I have been doing cardio-wise, since we don’t really have any equipment here, and I’m obviously not going to run. I was in for 30-40 minutes, and I put a snorkel in and swam and kicked a little bit, so I feel like it was a pretty good workout.
“It’s nice. I was playing around with sculling with my breaststroke, working on my breaststroke kick. It makes me feel a little bit better. I missed swimming last year when I was out for four months (due to injury), but I never thought I’d have to do it again for a long period of time, so I was kinda frustrated. It was nice to have a way to just get in the water somehow.”
Tennis player Emily Luetschwager never left Fort Collins, and after a week, teammates Emma Corwin and Priscilla Palermo joined her back in town. Corwin left home because she had more space living with Luetschwager to set up for her art homework.
The two roommates have found a way to keep playing tennis, a sport where social distancing is actually required.
“There’s a park down the road, and before Emma came back, I was down there hitting serves,” Luetschwager said. “Then they took the nets down, so we’ve gone and just played without the net.”
It’s not like they can play games, but they can visualize the net and still work on aspects of their game.
“It’s weird,” Corwin said. “Some things you definitely can do. We basically just do ground strokes through the middle of the court. Sometimes I’ll hit a ball and go, ‘that wasn’t going to make it over,” but the rally keeps going. Serves and volleys are pretty ridiculous without a net.”
As Addazio himself said, his players need to be doing something. They have to have the daily mindset of what they do is more than their opponents on Sept. 5. Stewart said the luxury of a fully stacked, state-of-the-art weight facility with a training staff on hand to push and motivate is most definitely missed these days, but not the only thing.
Teammates, are one. On-field work is another.
“The biggest difference for me I notice is not being in pads, obviously,” Stewart said. “Being in pads and running around with a helmet, you’re going to be in a different type of shape than just running on the track. I think everybody is having that problem in college football. It definitely gives you time to work on things in your game you want to improve going into the season, so that’s what I’m looking forward to at this time.”
Addazio’s main goal was to establish the Rams as a tough, physical team, and in the current state of the country, it’s a process which was put on hold. He liked what he saw over the course of seven practices, but the eight additional ones could have put a glorious final touch on the process.
Even still, the message was received, one which can help carry the players through a time of uncertainty.
“I would say Coach Addazio did a good job of establishing what he wanted and the mentality he wants us to have,” McBride said. “It’s unfortunate we didn’t get all of our practices in, but it was nice that we were able to get in what we got in, and he definitely made a point of how he wants us to play and how physical he wants his team to be. From the first seven practices, you can definitely tell that’s the mentality he wants us to have.”
Keeping an optimistic eye on the season ahead is their current motivation. Without that hope, the players agree the focus could wane. Older players are holding their younger teammates accountable, not only during team and position meetings, but in the side chats they are having with each other.
That’s in every sport at Colorado State. The message is clear: Get your work in, however you can get it done. No idea is a bad one, though some will work out better than others.
“There’s not a whole lot you can do staying at home. Luckily, I live with my brother, so we’ve been doing a lot weighted pushups, weighted stuff like that,” McBride said, referring to his brother, Toby, a senior defensive lineman. “I actually tried bench pressing him a couple of times, but he’s a little heavier than I expected. I mean, you just do everything you can, go outside and going on runs. You have to do what you can, but the coaches have been good at sending us workouts and sending us stuff to get prepared for the season.”