Long Days for Strength-and-Conditioning Staff

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)

CHARLOTTESVILLE – The lazy days of summer are anything but for Brandon Hourigan. UVa’s director of football training and player development tries to be in bed by 9 o’clock and asleep by 10 on weeknights.

“My wife thinks I’m 90 years old,” Hourigan, 37, said with a wry smile Tuesday evening.

The Massachusetts native’s desire for rest is understandable. During the week, Hourigan has 5 a.m. meetings with his staff at the McCue Center. An hour later, the first wave of players shows up for weighlifting.

More will arrive at 8 and at 10 a.m., and then in the early and late afternoon. Hourigan’s workday usually ends after 6 p.m., at which time he trudges home, where his wife, Amy, and their children, Brandon Jr. and Ava., await his return.

“This is a grinder,” Hourigan said, “but I’m used to it.”

He and his assistants have a straightforward assignment: Get Al Groh’s players, here for summer school, ready for the physical rigors of training camp, which begins Aug. 7. The players’ organized summer workouts end Thursday morning with a conditioning test.

With the veterans, the challenge has not been as great for Hourigan. The returning Cavaliers have all been in the program for at least a year. They know Hourigan, and they know what’s expected of them.

With the incoming recruits, who train together in a separate group, the challenge has been greater. It has taken them some time, Hourigan said, to understand the level of conditioning required in college football.

There are some exceptions, he added, pointing to Perry Jones, Tim Smith, Javanti Sparrow and Quintin Hunter, who were still out on the field, tossing a football around. Overall, though, the first-year class’ conditioning lagged well behind that of the veterans.

His goals for the freshmen, then, had to be less ambitious. Hourigan said he tried to teach the newcomers how “to run correctly, how to work and how to get themselves in condition. We only have four weeks with them, and the most important thing for them is to be in shape for camp. Can they survive a camp?”

Ideally, of course, they’ll do more than just survive. “I want these guys to be able to persevere through it and keep going and keep challenging some of these older dudes,” Hourigan said.

He’d like to see all of the freshmen in “attack mode,” as he put it, but Hourigan is realistic. “That’s hard to really get at when they come in and they have no idea,” he said. “They’re huffing and puffing, and this is just the warm-up. I tell ’em, ‘I got news for you, fellas. This is just the warm-up. We haven’t even gotten into the bread and butter yet. This is just an appetizer.’”

Still, Hourigan pronounced himself pleased with the team’s progress this summer and the way the players have bonded. He’s varied their workouts. They’ve run up Observatory Hill. They’ve trained in a sand pit, doing ability drills, running suicides and having tug-of-war contests.

“That thing’s brutal,” Hourigan said of the pit. “It’s just a bear with the sand. You can displace energy, but it’s not going anywhere.”

Hourigan, who still speaks with a distinct New England accent, came to U.Va. in January from the University of Richmond. He spent four seasons as head strength-and-conditioning coach for the Spiders’ football team, which won the FCS national title in 2008.

At UVa, Hourigan replaced Matt Balis, who left in December for Mississippi State. Their philosophies differ.

“His is more high-intensity reps,” Hourigan said, “how many reps you can get in a certain thing. Mine is more working on more or less the power aspect of it, explosive power from the Olympic lifts. We Olympic-lift. We do cleans from the floor. [Under Balis, the players] were doing hang cleans, where they go mid thighs. We’re actually going from the floor, generating power from the floor.

“I think also, too, the flexibility stuff wasn’t [a priority]. Guys were stiff, bound up. Big, muscular, but not fluid. And I tried to really work on making sure that every day, at least 10 minutes out of the day, we always stretched.”

Hourigan teaches static stretching, in which stretches are usually held for at least 30 seconds.

“We did a lot of static-stretching in the beginning,” Hourigan said. “We still do. I put it in my workouts all the time, and they didn’t really do that before. It’s a huge factor … The pressure and tension that’s built up, you’ve got to release that stuff.”

Hourigan and his staff work with the players year-round, but once training camp starts, Groh and his assistants have the most influence. NCAA rules limit how much hands-on work coaches can do with players out of season, however, so Hourigan’s role is magnified in the summer.

“They see me every day excluding Saturdays and Sundays,” he said. “We’re around them 24/7.”