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Football coaches get creative to continue strength and conditioning without school

Online videos provide suggestions for athletes
Posted at 10:03 PM, Mar 18, 2020
and last updated 2020-03-18 22:03:03-04
Coaches get creative with remote strength and conditioning

Seasons are suspended and weight rooms are unavailable.

Still, high school football coaches want athletes to stay active and get stronger so they are trying to come up with original ways to accomplish those goals.

At Comstock Park, they had strong turnouts in the weight room prior to school being closed.

"Even before I was hired there were 30 or 40 kids in the weight room at 6 a.m. which is pretty unheard of," new Comstock Park football coach Doug Samuels said. "So I felt like the worst thing we could do was cut all those guys loose and say hey we'll see you in three weeks so we had to get creative to find some ways to keep them engaged."

Samuels and his staff took to social media to give kids examples of how to work out on their own.

"We decided to prescribe workouts and stuff like that," Samuels added. "Stuff you can do at home that was kind of our approach. We wanted to capitalize on the momentum going forward."

But knowing who is actually doing the workouts it difficult.

"The kids that are super committed are going to do it but there is no way to really tell, Samuels said. "We started a hashtag, #GoldBloodedCP so now when kids do their workout they can post it on social media and use that hashtag and now we can kind of reflect back on that and see who has really bought in to the change we are trying to make here."

Another variable for Samuels and his staff is being new to Comstock Park.

It becomes harder to get to know the kids when there is no school or meetings.

So Samuels and his staff are posting meet the coach videos.

"We've got some virtual clinics setup on huddle," Doug Samuels added. "Our defensive coordinator Darren Smith came up with the idea, in order to install some of our defensive stuff we came up with the idea just to put together a Hudl clinic and we will share it with the kids that way and that way they are getting to know the expectations that we have moving forward."

Most area high school football programs have 7-on-7's and team camps scheduled over the summer.

At this point they are not sure whether or not they will be able to proceed with those either.