Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Angry

The Oregonian is reporting at least three Oregon Ducks football players are in the hospital following a series of “grueling strength and conditioning workouts” last week at the university. Multiple sources told the paper that players had to finish the same workout this week, with one witness saying it included up to an hour of continuous push-ups and up-downs.

Up to an hour of continuous push-ups and up-downs.

If you don't know what an up-down is, just watch this (it's a stupid commercial, but you can see how it's done).

Let me be clear: this is criminal.

This is not conditioning. Football is a an anaerobic sport, consisting of plays that rarely last longer than 10 seconds. Continuous conditioning for an hour is not only conducive to performance on the football field, it's actually counter-productive.

This isn't about football. It's from the same mentality that beating your children "builds character." It's not character building.

It's abuse.

How long are we going to let this happen? Why do we put men in positions of authority who use that authority in sadistic ways? More importantly, why doesn't anyone stop them?

Don't think this is a big deal? Read this:
Poutasi’s mother, Oloka, said that her son complained of very sore arms after the workouts and had been diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, a syndrome in which soft muscle tissue is broken down with “leakage into the blood stream of muscle contents,” according to the NCAA medical handbook. Depending on the severity, it has the potential to lead to damaged kidneys.

This isn't a one-day stay in the hospital for some lump who's fat and out of shape. It's highly-conditioned athletes winding up in the hospital for up to a week or longer, with potentially permanent damage, because an individual has grossly misused his authority.

Like I said, this should be criminal.

Plus, this coach is 100% incompetent. That's an idiotic way to train. So he should be fired, too.

None of this will happen, of course. They'll circle the wagons and say he's a man of such high character, and they'll trot out of some football players under duress who will say he's the best trainer they ever had.

It's sickening, and almost no one seems to care.

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