Mike Gentry to Retire

Yeah, I was thinking more about Conte's comment about Gentry being a big reason he came to Tech, I know once they are here they will spend a lot of hours with the guy, just never imagined recruits thought about that so much in the decision making process.

The Stanford model is pure crap.

I've posted this before, but the reasons why we've had so many ACL tears, and the reason other programs, both in the NFL and elsewhere is due to the predominance of favoring training that focuses on the quads, like front squats and high bar back squats, when they should have the athletes doing low bar back squats.

So lets look at knee anatomy. What does the ACL do? The ACL holds the tibia (the shin bone) to the femur (thigh bone) in a way that prevents it from being pulled out and away from the joint like you would a drawer. This this is how they quickly diagnose ACL tears on the sideline, they simply pull in the shin bone to see if it has any forward give, some give indicates a sprain while a lot indicates a complete tear.

Now what are the functions of the quads. The quads cross two joints, therefore they have two functions in our skeleton. At the hip, they are known as hip flexors. This is their weakest area as you have 4 different, small attachments to different areas of the pelvis. As the quads get closer to the knee they form a common attachment to a single, large and powerful tendon known as the quadriceps tendon. This tendon passes over the knee cap and becomes the patella tendon, this then attaches to the front of the tibia. These series of attachments work to extend the knee, or simply it works to pull the lower leg up, and to do so, it pulls all of the kinetic force on the tibia. It's pulling against the ACL.

Now the hamstrings, since it crosses two joints, it also has two functions. It's minimal function is to flex the knee while it's primary function is to extend the hips. However, we're talking about the knee. The hamstring inserts on the tibia from behind and acts as a counter force against the pulling of the quad. Both the ACL and the hamstring prevents the tibia from moving forward.

At this point, it should be obvious that when you neglect the hamstrings, and focus on the quads, you then, by simple physics, put a lot of strain on the ACL because of the muscle imbalance.

Now, when you low bar back squat, what happens is that your back angle must become more horizontal to be able to properly maintain the center of gravity over your middle foot. This back angle loads the hamstrings (as well as the adductors, the glutes and external hip rotator muscles) and results in a lift that is one that is primarily due to hip extension rather than one that focuses mostly on knee extension. During a properly performed low bar back squat, the hamstrings work to extend the hips while the quads work to extend the knee. A high bar back squat has minimal hip extension due to horizontal back angle.

Also, another issue is that by a large, a whole lot of strength and conditioning coaches allow or even endorse shallow or partial squats, this also completely takes the hamstrings out of the lift and focuses all of the stress onto the knees and the quads.

This piece by Mark Rippetoe also does a good job of summing up the problems with training at this level.
https://www.t-nation.com/training/current-state-of-sc-coaching

But imagine if it was, our women's volleyball team would be feared nation-wide.

He was the Director over all the sports, but Terry Mitchell is the main person over Olympic sports and Dave Jackson is over the basketball teams. The guy from Memphis is most likely the guy coming in with Fuente and the other football S&C guys will be on a probationary period in which they will know if they get retained past that time period. Most likely you will see a split similar to Hokie Vision in that football will only deal with football. Dave Jackson will oversee Basketball and Terry Mitchell will oversee Olympic Sports. That really isn't all that different from now other than that Dave and Terry report to Gentry. Instead the three will now individually report to Ballien.