A Strong Argument for Success

It is as essential to football today as a helmet and shoulder pads, a necessity that keeps players healthy, coaches will tell you.

It’s the weight room and preparation to play football begins there. Although it hasn’t always been this way, its importance seems ingrained in the minds of today’s coaches.

“If you want to be a good football player, you have to train hard in the weight room,” Grant High Coach Bill Foster said. “There’s just no way around it.”

So these gridiron warriors, boys 14 to 18, are pumping iron--squatting, curling, pressing weights to build the bulk that will enable them to block a defender or plow through an offensive line.

It isn’t only size coaches hope to increase in their players with weight training. The weight room, they say, is where boys build strength, power and endurance and, most of all, confidence. Equally important, coaches concur, intensive weight training helps make players less susceptible to injury.

But kinesiology and sports medicine experts do not agree. The old tale that lifting weights in youth can stunt growth has some validity, according to George H. McGlynn, professor of exercise physiology at University of San Francisco.

“Not stunt it, but certainly interfere with it,” McGlynn said.

“Many experts recognize that young boys shouldn’t start lifting heavy weights until about [age] 17 or 18. It can affect the growth of the bone.”

McGlynn points out that heavy weight lifting can damage the epiphyseal growth plates, the ends parts of long bones that are at first separated from the rest of the bone by cartilage but later fuse with it.

McGlynn says heavy weights should not be used by anyone until they have reached their maximum growth. Otherwise, their growth plates may not fuse properly with their long bones and could cause chronic damage, including but certainly not limited to one limb being shorter than the other.

“It’s out of ignorance that these coaches are having these kids lift,” McGlynn said. “Most have never even had a class in exercise physiology. They read some muscle magazine and, not understanding what’s going on physically with these kids, put them on a rigorous program to lift heavy weights.”

Dr. John Cianca, director of sports medicine at a human performance center in Houston, agrees that teenagers who have yet to reach puberty should not be lifting heavy weights.

Less weight with more repetitions is more easily tolerated than fewer repetitions with heavy weight, he said, especially in prepubescent youths.

“I would not recommend that teenagers engage in high-load lifting,” Cianca said. “With high loads, you can crush those growth plates.”

However, Cianca did acknowledge that it usually takes a “high-impact phenomenon,” to damage the plates.

But clearly, not every youth is built the same. High impact in one player may be next to nothing in another. But who determines if and when and how much a player should lift? The coach, obviously, the guy in charge.

Kennedy Coach Bob Francola takes that job seriously. That’s why he doesn’t allow his freshman team to partake in heavy-load lifting. In fact, Francola is a firm believer in less weight and plenty of repetitions.

Francola, it seems, is not one of the ignorant coaches McGlynn says is putting young athletes in peril. Francola graduated from Cal State Northridge with a degree in physical education, so he did indeed have classes in kinesiology and exercise physiology. He also says he stays abreast of medical periodicals pertaining to weight training.

It’s that knowledge he draws from when parents come to him each season, concerned that weight training will stunt their son’s growth.

“I get asked that by parents five or six times a year,” Francola said.

He is always prepared to answer.

“The bone responds to the demands that we put on it and in turn, it stimulates growth,” he said.

Yes, he has heard similar theories to those espoused by McGlynn and Cianca, but he subscribes to his own theory.

“You can line people up on one side of any issue, but I know one thing, we don’t sustain a lot of injuries during the season,” Francola said.

Village Christian Coach Mike Plaisance, who has had his players lifting weights since he took over the program in 1979, said his team cannot afford not to lift.

“I tell these guys if they don’t lift, we’re gonna get killed,” he said. “It makes their bodies stronger to last through a 10-week season. Of course, we had 15 injuries last year so there goes that theory.”

Many players lift year-round if they aren’t playing another sport. Some lift in groups before or after school, others receive credit in a physical education class. Often such sessions are mandatory, but not always. Antelope Valley Coach Brent Newcomb, for example, is not a taskmaster when it come to lifting.

“I don’t force them into it,” he said. “I’m not trying to make weightlifters out of these guys.”

Although Newcomb adds a new lift every year and stays up on what’s happening in college weight rooms around the country, he doesn’t try to strong-arm players to get under a barbell.

Tony Walker, a two-time Times’ All-Valley defensive back who will be a senior in the fall, rarely lifts, Newcomb said. Walker, also a top basketball player, doesn’t want to lose his touch for shooting.

On the flip side, however, is former Antelope Valley star Jermaine Lewis, a durable 5-foot-7 running back who will play this year for UCLA.

“Jermaine Lewis was a prolific weightlifter,” Newcomb said. “He’s a powerful little guy and that’s because of the weights. It might have stunted his growth, but he’s stronger than hell.”

One of the more important aspects of lifting, all coaches agree, is supervision. Coaches are well aware of how lackadaisical players would be with spotting and technique if they weren’t around. Peer competition and lifting too much could lead quickly to injury.

Perhaps the most ideal situation is the one employed at L.A. Baptist. Coach Mark Bates takes care of the X’s and O’s and Dave Washburn takes care of the new 1,600 square-foot weight room--complete with a stereo system, television and VCR--as strength and conditioning coach.

“Dave is more cautious about it than me,” Bates said. “He’s always real worried about too much weight. He wants to make sure they’re strong enough first.”

Although Washburn’s background is in psychology, not kinesiology, Bates is confident his strength coach pays attention to who is lifting and how much.

Despite medical warnings, weight training among teenagers has been increasing in popularity since the late 1960s, and high school coaches, such as St. Bonaventure’s Jon Mack, are investing in the future.

St. Bonaventure recently spent about $125,000 to build a 1,250-square-foot weight room off its gymnasium and stock it with state-of-the-art equipment.

In 1990, when Mack took over the program, players had to drag the weights and equipment out of a storage cage and into the boys’ locker room and shower to work out. At that time, they had one Olympic bar, one squat rack and one universal machine.

In December, the Seraphs moved into their 25-by-50-foot weight room with 20 Olympic bars (with 300 pounds of weight each), 15 Olympic stations, a Nautilus machine and more than a ton of free weights.

“I believe our facility is the best in Ventura [County],” Mack said.

*

Players’ efforts have increased as well. During Mack’s first season, his defensive tackles were bench pressing a modest 135 pounds. A year later the same players benched 225 and 305.

For Mack, weight training is a means to an end-more victories.

“It’s important to protect your players, to prepare them for the physical part of the game,” Mack said. “And as far as winning and losing, I think it’s made a major difference here.”

Sam Benner, one of the best linemen in the state last year for St. Bonaventure, is headed to Stanford on a football scholarship, and his lifting never appeared to impede the growth of his 6-foot-5, 250-pound frame.

“He’s got the background to step right in [at Stanford],” Mack said. “His technique on his power clean [lift] is perfect.

“When college coaches come on campus, they all poke their heads in and they can tell it’s a serious program for weight training.”

Another coach serious about weight training is La Canada’s Jim Clausen, who took over two years ago and made a new weight room his No. 1 priority.

“I needed a centerpiece for my program and that’s the weight room,” he said. “We didn’t start by getting new uniforms, we didn’t start with T-shirts, we started with the weight room.

“Throughout the school the enthusiasm is, ‘Hey, lifting weights is what’s gonna set me apart from everybody else.’ That’s what I’m trying to do here, build some enthusiasm, build their bodies.”

The flooring alone in the 2,500-square-foot, fully mirrored facility cost $6,000, but Clausen thinks the program will pay dividends with better ballplayers.

“I don’t equate it to wins or losses on the football field,” he said. “I just see that we’re gonna be better because we’re gonna be stronger.”

Still, other coaches do equate what they do in the weight room to what their team does on the field. And it’s all about winning.

“If I didn’t [think it helped us be winners], I wouldn’t have the kids lift weights,” Francola said.