In between: Another reason to root for Kyle Orton

In a recent interview, Josh McDaniels was very candid about the Broncos plans for Kyle Orton. His immediate future involves a heck of a lot of time in the weight room, the training areas and in the film work. Kyle Orton, for the first time since high school, is actually going to have a coach who drives him, teaches him and improves him. Those who want to assure each other that Orton can’t ‘carry’ a team may want to rethink their logic. Orton loves to work, is highly coachable and has yearned for decent training – something that his time in Chicago lacked severely.

There are two things, the saying goes, that you cannot coach. You cannot coach size and you cannot coach speed. Orton already has the size. While coaching size seems to require more in the way of either appropriate drafting or of pharmaceutical chemistry than it does coaching, the evolution of modern sports training, based on an ever-deeper understanding of neuromusuclar physiology, has made it apparent that we can, in fact coach speed as well as balance, power and endurance. There is a matter of degree involved, certainly, but it is now also possible to coach both quickness (explosion) and overall footspeed while improving balance and power. The basis of the solutions lies in the quest for Olympic Gold, and national respect.
 
Back in the mid 1980s, a delegation of trainers from the United States was taken to visit the then Soviet Union. Specifically, as part of the trip the trainers were able to visit with their Soviet counterparts and to learn why it was that the Soviet Union’s track and field competitors were able, at that time, to dominate in that area. As one US trainer would later say, “I wanted to learn how they got all of those white guys to run so fast.” They saw a form of conditioning that they had never imagined. The Soviet athletes were strapped into a harness that was connected to a device not unlike a car winch and they were ‘reeled in’ while attempting to continue to run. The basis behind this strange approach to training was described as the development of ‘overspeed’.

What is overspeed? Oddly, this concept has always been around in one form or another. Children use a basic form of it naturally when they run madly downhill much faster than they can run on a level surface, and without falling. Every parent has wondered at some point why it is that they don’t fall more often when they do so. The answer to that lies in a series of neurological ‘sensors’ that lie in our joints. They kick in to improve our balance, and they can be trained to do much more than that. The basic ability to maintain the balance is called ‘proprioception’. In this example, it is used to increase speed. You can do the same thing in running the 40 yard dash by leaning forward slightly farther than you would normally be comfortable doing. Given time and practice, you can ‘imprint’ the body’s neurology to run faster by fooling it slightly in this way during practice. This simple basic theory has a vast array of applications.

To demonstrate the concept for yourself, walk over to the nearest doorway. Place the backs of your hands against the door frame, face forward and begin to press into the frame with the backs of the hands, pushing on the door frame as hard as you comfortably can. Hold that pressure continuously for 30 seconds, and then relax. Step out of the doorway and stand, relaxed, with your hands at your sides, but do not hold them there. You will feel the arms begin to lift on their own accord. You have used a certain form of resistance effectively to teach your body to make a movement without conscious effort. That is, in its simplest essence, one of the concepts behind the development of overspeed.

What you have done is very simple: You overloaded the neuromuscular connections in the arm. In addition to simple resistance, you created a situation where the muscles were trying to work beyond their abilities. When the resistance is removed, they begin to ‘work’ on their own accord. This seemingly simple concept has some far-reaching ramifications.
 
For example, runners have been using overspeed to train at high levels for decades now. If you carefully watch a tape of Carl Lewis running the 200 meters you will see that at about the halfway point he will suddenly begin to draw away from the other runners, as if he is reaching another ‘gear’. He’s not – what is really happening is that most of the athletes are automatically beginning to switch over from their fast twitch muscle fibers firing, which they have trained themselves to use in the beginning of the race, to slow twitch muscle fibers firing, the ones that we use in endurance. Doing so will slow you slightly from your optimum level of speed. Lewis, like many great athletes, had a larger than normal preponderance of fast twitch fibers. Even more unusually, he was able to use them consciously throughout the entire event. Long ago (when there was still a Soviet Union), by starting with that simple level of understanding, the Soviets decided to attempt to teach their athletes how to use their fast twitch fibers, and to use them more efficiently. The effectiveness was tremendous. Since this concept was, at that time, usually used in track and field, the Soviets in the late 60’s through the early 80’s had begun to dominate world track and field events.

When the US delegation was visiting the Soviet Union, they were teaching the use of overspeed by attaching the runner to the kind of winch that you bolt to/near the grill or back end of a vehicle. They then literally cranked their athletes back in while the athlete strove to overcome the force. More modern approaches using resistance bands and similar devices have since been developed, but whatever the technology, the ability to develop overspeed is an essential piece to maximizing athletic performance.

When the body learns a movement, a neuromuscular ‘pathway’ is developed. With repetition, it gets smoother, more fluid. Through the use of certain forms of resistance, you can teach the body to perform that movement more efficiently. That’s the basis of most physical training. What set the overspeed concept aside was that the advanced use of resistance taught the body how to develop that pathway more effectively and to maintain it’s fast twitch response throughout the exercise.

Remember that many other techniques, such as plyometrics, take advantage of the same neuromuscular re-patterning as overspeed. The techniques of such world-class trainers as Loren Seagrave, Smith and many others are essentially linked on this level, although there are individual differences that may benefit certain athletes. In all of them, the physical explosiveness is improved by establishing neuromuscular pathways that permit faster and easier muscular firing. That increases explosiveness, but is only the 1st aspect of the training. Secondly, the body is ‘fooled’ into accepting the process of continuing fast-twitch muscular firing throughout certain activities (such as the 40 yard dash) instead of switching to slow-twitch muscle activity, as the body is generally inclined to do. This creates an increase in speed throughout the activity, not just at its start. Seagrave, for example, takes this myth on directly with his Speed is a Skill training series. http://www.nwaswimaths.com/programs/VIDEOS2.pdf

Chip Smith was with the original delegation to the Soviet Union and has been one of the pioneers of overspeed training in the USA. He claims that he can add two or more repetitions on the bench press, two inches of vertical leap, 4+ inches on the broad jump and cut .2 seconds off of any player’s time in the 40 yard dash just by appropriate training in overspeed. His results over the years have shown that his players do improve by that much, a fact that earns him full classes of pre-Combine college football athletes year after year.

Major improvements in explosiveness, power, speed and balance can all be taught to anyone in their twenties or thirties using modern applications of overspeed and related training techniques. While you will always be working against the limits of human genetic abilities, you really can coach speed. In Orton’s case – you can increase use these types of approaches to improve his mobility, balance, strength, endurance and power. He can strengthen his ankles, but also develop the combination of strength and balance within his movements to prevent him from going down from a ‘shoestring’ tackle. He will never look like a Michael Vick leaving the pocket, but that’s not his job anyway. His job is to be able to get through the season with less injury, more velocity on the ball when he wants it and a better ability to move – in or out of the pocket. Those are very realistic goals.

The idea that some have suggested, that Orton is somehow too ‘old’ to develop different skills is inaccurate, based on three things – NFL history (this has happened too many times to be ignored), medical fact and my own history of teaching adults. If you want to consider NFL history, start with Bill Walsh’s career and move on from there. Several QBs in their mid to late 20’s thrived under him. People forget that Orton is quite young in NFL terms. He will not become a scrambler, but that’s not the offense. We need him to move better in the pocket and to hold up better when hit. Both are reasonable and attainable goals.

Keep something in mind: Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are two of the best QBs to ever play the game. Neither is particularly mobile. Both, however, move their feet quite a bit within the pocket. You probably heard someone claim that during the Super Bowl, Manning developed ‘happy feet’. That was a nice observation, but it was also completely inaccurate. What was being seen is that he moves his feet often so as to be able to throw with decent to excellent mechanics in any direction that he may suddenly require. That’s one thing that Orton is certainly going to work on.

He’s always had the reputation of being early to the weight room and late to leave, so that part won’t be new. He will probably learn something that John Elway’s teammates always knew, however – for Elway (and Brady had to have a key made for him, as when he reached the Pats he often arrived and/or left before and after the janitorial staff – and that’s not a joke), training was a year-round experience. He was usually in better shape than players much younger, often bigger and generally faster. His workouts were legendary around the training facility and a lot of players couldn’t handle them. Orton will learn that kind of training from Josh McDaniels and from Rich Tuten, who is finally being permitted to train players the way that he has wanted to for quite a while. That’s a great combination.

Orton will use these and many other types of techniques increase his strength, endurance, balance and power over the next few years. Power, in this case, is the ability to take that strength and balance and transform it into effective action, whether that action is running, holding within the pocket or throwing. In addition, he’ll have another year at the least to work on mechanics, footwork and his analysis of the defenses. It’s very difficult to look at the improvement that he made in a single partial year under McDaniels and not see that he’s going in the right direction. Instead of a rookie QB with a high price tag and an uncertain future ability to move up to the NFL level, Denver has a starting QB who is excellent ‘material’, has a very strong work ethic and is finally getting the coaching that he has needed for a long time to turn potential into performance.

I’ve read comments claiming that “If Orton hasn’t developed those skills by now, he never will.” Such comments are based in an essentially negative viewpoint of the world and/or an utter lack of understanding of human training capabilities and curves. Since Aaron Rodgers, after putting up great numbers in 2008 spent the entire offseason just on footwork and mechanics (while maintaining strength and flexibility) and since both Drew Brees and Peyton Manning worked on developing aspects of their game that they and the coaches felt were less than optimal in that same offseason, and if McDaniels and Belichick both laugh when people talk about Tom Brady’s game (prior to the injury) as being somehow fully developed since neither or them (nor Brady) considered it to be anything of the kind, it’s obvious that this belief is singular to those who don’t know as much about professional football and training athletes as those coaches and players do. It’s great for fans to hold opinions. I think that it’s even better if they study the facts that those opinions would otherwise be based on, but that’s just my perspective.