We had NO legs

[Realist]

I think the biggest surprise from last night was not that Louisville beat us but the manner in which they did it. We looked so slow out there it was shocking. I figured we would probably need an almost perfect game along with some lucky breaks to beat Louisville but I was NOT prepared for what I saw. If you had simply cancelled the game and had a race it would have been the same outcome. Let the tackles for Louisville line up against the tackles from KY. and run a 40 yard dash. The KY players would have been beaten by 2 or 3 steps and it would be the same position by position. HOW can a 250 pound running back look quicker than anybody on your team? I could understand Bush running over somebody, he's a heck of a running back, but he was running AROUND our guys!

I think I have an explanation for it and it comes down to coaching and team preparation. It's a simple concept. In the old days everybody hammered their players during the pre-season so the effects of fatigue evened out. Two teams who were equally tired would meet on opening day and play a football game, the one with better athletes and game plan would usually win so it wasn't so obvious as to what was going on. Somewhere along the way a few observant coaches realized that you have to be careful with your workout volume and taper off so the players' legs would recover. Bobby Petrino is obviously in this camp. Rich Brooks is not. Guy Morris made the same mistake his first year but fortunately learned from it and eased off before the L'ville game his second year and consequently the Cats won. Coach Brooks is an old school type coach. If he had been lucky enough to be playing another old school coach who had also overtrained his players last night then KY might not have looked as bad.

The modern game of football is all about speed. Most people think of speed as being single faceted, you recruit it, but there's more to it than that. Well, at KY we've been hearing for years how we've recruited more speed and that they guys have made all kinds of progress in the weight room. There are other aspects to athletic speed that Coach Brooks doesn't seem to comprehend. Pardon me for shouting but YOU CAN MAKE ANY FAST ATHLETE SLOW by not being aware of recovery issues. Fast athletes are the most susceptible of all to the effects of overtraining. You aren't training cross country runners, these are sprinters. Give me two weeks and I will guarantee I can slow any athlete in America's 40 time down by a full .2 of a second. It's simple, just run them until they are exhausted and then run them some more. If you need to justify it tell them you're making sure they'll have "staying power in the 4th quarter" like Brooks did 2 years ago..... Hogwash.

What I saw last night was coach who hasn't learned from his mistakes. He put a tired team on the field against a team who was obviously rested and ready to go. If KY hadn't gotten a lucky break or two the outcome would have been even uglier than it was.

Realist

[poodoo]

Somewhere along the way a few observant coaches realized that you have to be careful with your workout volume and taper off so the players' legs would recover. Bobby Petrino is obviously in this camp. Rich Brooks is not. Guy Morris made the same mistake his first year but fortunately learned from it and eased off before the L'ville game his second year and consequently the Cats won. Coach Brooks is an old school type coach. If he had been lucky enough to be playing another old school coach who had also overtrained his players last night then KY might not have looked as bad. QUOTE by Realist

_______

Interesting post, Realist. Too, as I was reading your post, before I read that part of it, I was remembering that Guy Morriss had indeed done the same thing his first year and learned from it and "eased off before the L'ville game his second year,"and the Cats upset Louisville that year. I even remember hearing Morriss talk about his doing that (and his having worked them too hard the previous year).

Perhaps you could call into Coach Brooks'radio show tonight andask about our legs' possibly having been tired. You know, Ihad watched this team'sscrimmage at Fan Day and had noticed so much more speed, something the players themselves have often mentioned. For whatever thereason (and I'm sure Louisville's speed was part of the equation and perhaps our dealing with their schemes and switches), that speed was absolutely NOT noticeable Sunday night on the field. We surely seemed not to have our legs, FWIW.

Again, interesting. I hope some others will contribute to the discussion.

[heatwave13]

Realist, I think you're on to something here. I'm not familiar with UK's strength/conditioning program, but Ipray to heaven above that our staff is not clueless enough to train our guys like cross country runners. I have had an opportunity to speak with Tennessee's stength/condtioning coach and I used totrain for olympic liftingcompetitionswith the former S/C coach at Nebraska and I know that those particular programs train for explosiveness with heavy emphasis on the olympic lifts, squats,and conditioning drills that encourage short sprint and agilitydevelopment. Same for Georgia, FSU, and Oklahoma.

Surely, a division one, SEC program (I'm speaking of UK here)is in the know on effective training methods for football players.

[poodoo]

Only heatwave13 and I have responded to Realist's interesting post. Does anyone else out there have any thoughts on this one? I'm really curious.

[Realist]

Heatwave,

I would hope so too but I don't know if that's the case. I definitely remember Brooks running the linemen for distance a couple of years ago because he "didn't want them to fade in the 4th quarter". Well, for my money, they faded in the 1st quarter this last weekend.

I'm sure they do train for explosiveness and sprinting but if you do too much volume it still defeats the purpose. Sprinters and explosive athletes always walk a fine line with training volume. There's a ton of research out there that supports the fact that fast twitch muscle is very slow to recover. A lot of the old school coaches thought it was all willpower but in reality it's physiology. Carl Lewis only trained about 5 hours a week and a lot of that time was on form, starts, etc.

As to your comment on DI strength coaches knowing effective methods if you'll PM me with your email address I'll send you a paper on the University of Washington's strength program and the number of season and career ending injuries of players due to poor strength training methodologies.

Realistic

[poodoo]

Anybody else? Again, I thought Realist's post made sense. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this one?

Even if it was a mistake on Coach Brooks' part (the mistake Coach Morriss had admitted to his first season here), I would honestly like to think that our not having our legs was the case. That gives me more hope for seeing improvement in the upcoming games, FWIW.

[johnkyblue]

It would be a great question to ask him on the Big Blue Line.

[Dr. H Lecter]

Heck, I saw our receivers running faster and getting behind their "fast guys" for most of the 2nd 3rd and 4th quarters. Burton ran a kickoff back 100 yards on legs that looked pretty fast to me.

It seems like we are looking for way too many things to complain about. JMHO

[Realist]

I watched the first half and didn't see any KY receivers running past anybody by much distance. On the one play where Woodson dropped the ball and then completed the long pass to Burton it looked like the defender hesitated. Plus, you can't determine a trend by looking at a sample of 1 (or 3 or 4 if you want to include other receivers). Of the 40 or 50 guys who saw action for each side Louisville looked MUCH faster and a lot of posters on this forum have commented on it. Here's another question, if KY's receivers were running so open then why wasn't Woodson able to find them? He only completed 37.5% so that doesn't indicate he had a lot of open receivers to me. Our running game only netted 22 yards. Do you have any other explanation that would provide a better fit? It's possible that we have just recruited a bunch of slow athletes but according to everything you hear they are supposed to be much faster than in the past. Is it all due to the offensive and defensive schemes we were running?

[wildcatdon]

Do we have a training table where all of the players have to eat their meals together and the meals are planned etc? Ul has this..They are fed on a very strict regimen and they appear to be in very good shape..

[UedK]

The title of this thread reminds me of a favorite Forest Gump quote; "Captain Dan; You've Got Legs!!"

But alas, we've got no legs and where did they go. I have no idea. I watched some of the UL/UK game on tape (glutton for punishment here) and on some of the replays their offensive line looks like a choreographed dance troupe, like a group of 6'-6" - 320 pound ballerinas. They not only are in great shape, but they are very well coached.

Our boys seem to not be in the best of shape and byour coaches own statements, they are not very well coached. I just read some quotes from Coach Heggins on another board; he said something like: "They didn't know who to block and they didn't even knowhow to get into a proper stance." All the obvious questions can follow from such a statement, but for me it comes back to coaching. If our team was well prepared and we were just getting out-talented our gripes would be taking a different tone here.

[poodoo]

Dr. H Lecter wrote: Heck, I saw our receivers running faster and getting behind their "fast guys" for most of the 2nd 3rd and 4th quarters. Burton ran a kickoff back 100 yards on legs that looked pretty fast to me.

It seems like we are looking for way too many things to complain about. JMHO


Just to make my posts clear on this thread, I certainly did not intend to be complaining. Moaning and complaining are not my thing. I always tell Mr. Poodoo that with all my faults, he at least didn't get a nagging wife. :D

Again, I thought Realist's post here would have been a good question for Coach Brooks' call-in show--just as a serious question. Coach Morriss had it happen to them. I witnessed a much faster-looking team at Fan Day (and the players themselves have commented on the increased speed). It just seemed a logical possibility, something Coach Brooks might want to change next season (as Coach Morriss did)--and notice I said NEXT SEASON--:DIF that were the case.

However, the point about Burton's speed and our outrunning Louisville's secondary is very true, more so as the game continued. So maybe we had our legs. Coach Brooks said that we were just SO SLOW off the snap, on both lines. We were indeed, and I sometimes felt our defense was moving in slow motion, in contrast to what I had seen at Fan Day.

Who knows. I do know that I was not complaining, FWIW! :)I was seriously wondering and curious, wanting it not to happen again. :)Unlike many, I am still convinced that we are a much better football team than what we saw Sunday. I surely hope I am right. :)