New Strength Coach

[Esfand]

I personally did Coach Mel's Summer Workout program on my own this summer after I was done playing and went up 40 pounds on my Bench Press and gained 15 pounds while becoming faster and more explosive. I'm 290 pounds at about 20% bodyfat, his program works.

[SMU404]

it needs to be Pat Coleman, the current assistant.

Please STOP! His 2 incompetent assistants are as bad or worse than he is. Thankfully his whole group will be among the first to be shown the door when a real staff is hired. Not only incompetent, they are arrogant, mouthy punks from what I hear.

Read Mel's bio on our website and try not to laugh.

Good riddance to these buffoons!

while i will agree that most of the assistants Mel has had over the past have had their heads so far up their butts they can't see the light of day, Pat is the exception. He is actually knowledgeable and doesn't put up with any slack. He'd definitely have my vote

[RGV Pony]

it needs to be Pat Coleman, the current assistant.

As always, appreciate your input

[JasonB]

I personally did Coach Mel's Summer Workout program on my own this summer after I was done playing and went up 40 pounds on my Bench Press and gained 15 pounds while becoming faster and more explosive. I'm 290 pounds at about 20% bodyfat, his program works.

I'm no expert in weight training, by any stretch of the imagination. But I think the general concern is that Mel is "old school" in that he focuses on the bench and pure strength and has a one size fits all program. Whereas "new school" practices have specific programs for different position players, aren't focused on bench press numbers, and have more of a lean towards agility.

I have no idea if the majority of the team supports or is in disagreement with Mel's philosophies. But I do know that at least some of the players are very opposed to the approaches and have hired their own trainers on the side.

[footballdad]

I personally did Coach Mel's Summer Workout program on my own this summer after I was done playing and went up 40 pounds on my Bench Press and gained 15 pounds while becoming faster and more explosive. I'm 290 pounds at about 20% bodyfat, his program works.

WOW 290 lber. If you would have made that kind of progress throughout your 4 year career you would have been a guaranteed first round pick! And on your own in the summer.....WOW.

Is that you Mel?

Come on Pat, no hard feelings, you just keep studying for that CSCCA certification!

[floridianstang]

Put Basketball's strength coach in the meantime. Maybe have LB give a pep talk before the A&M debacle and sprinkle moody magic.

[Esfand]

I personally did Coach Mel's Summer Workout program on my own this summer after I was done playing and went up 40 pounds on my Bench Press and gained 15 pounds while becoming faster and more explosive. I'm 290 pounds at about 20% bodyfat, his program works.

I'm no expert in weight training, by any stretch of the imagination. But I think the general concern is that Mel is "old school" in that he focuses on the bench and pure strength and has a one size fits all program. Whereas "new school" practices have specific programs for different position players, aren't focused on bench press numbers, and have more of a lean towards agility.

I have no idea if the majority of the team supports or is in disagreement with Mel's philosophies. But I do know that at least some of the players are very opposed to the approaches and have hired their own trainers on the side.

You're right, a few of the players have done that. But those are players that aren't buying into the program. If you don't buy into the program it's not going to work, plain and simple. I did Coach Mel's workout 100% to by the book and ate correctly and the RIGHT AMOUNT... I know plenty of guys, myself included who just don't eat enough and a lot of that has to do with the fact that student-athletes didn't have meal plans until just now. I went from 280 to 270 pounds during 1 month of Spring Ball and I was eating more crap than I had had in maybe my entire life, on top of drinking 10 scoops worth of muscle milk collegiate(more calories) a day. The biggest problem really is that it used to be too hard to eat enough to sustain yourself before, especially if you didn't have a meal plan.

And yes, while Coach Mel's workout increases your bench it helps with everything else too. I didn't want to go into too much detail but by the end of the summer I ran a 5.1(-.4) 40 yard dash, jumped 26.5(+1.5) inches and a 4.5(-.3) short shuttle, 3 reps of 550 on Squat, 31 reps of 225 on Bench, and I just got my body fat tested and I am 290 pounds at 20.77% body fat, so I technically somehow lost about 2% body fat while gaining 15 pounds

I personally did Coach Mel's Summer Workout program on my own this summer after I was done playing and went up 40 pounds on my Bench Press and gained 15 pounds while becoming faster and more explosive. I'm 290 pounds at about 20% bodyfat, his program works.

WOW 290 lber. If you would have made that kind of progress throughout your 4 year career you would have been a guaranteed first round pick! And on your own in the summer.....WOW.

Is that you Mel?

Come on Pat, no hard feelings, you just keep studying for that CSCCA certification!

I was a walk on in the Spring and hurt my neck. We were so stacked at noseguard with nine guys and I only had one year of eligibility left, and with the injury concerns they asked me not to return for the Fall. I was not upset, I understood the business side of them and I'm still on good terms with everyone, no hard feelings.

I've been trying to walk on every semester since I've been here on campus, it was always my dream to come to SMU and play ball here (call me crazy), but we haven't had try outs, only preferred walk ons. They finally let me on in the Spring because they knew I was a good guy that wasn't going to cause any headaches through my involvement with FCA and Coach Mel was one of the people who vouched for me because he knew I looked good in the weight room. So you could say I have some personal bias here, but I've seen the results and that's through me putting my faith in his program and buying in because he had faith in me.

[couch 'em]

The complaints heard about him here were also made in Hawaii too.

[JasonB]

Esfand,

Thanks for sharing your personal story. It takes guts to put yourself out there like that. I think the frustrations with Mel were probably exacerbated by the talk DJ gave at the kickoff luncheon when he praised the cowboys for adopting modern techniques.

A couple of questions for you, having been near the system recently:

1) Do you agree with the philosophy of putting everyone on the same program, regardless of position?
2) Do you think the meal plan is enough or does more need to be done in the program nutritionally to ensure we can have top tier athletes in the program?

[fifty]

yes, welcome to the board. i suggest you read the article i posted about what our former S&C coach is doing at FSU. this is a business my friend, and i don't mean to sound callus, but we, as SMU fans, are concerned with winning, not someone's wonderful family. i'm sure Mel's a great guy, and i'm sure his family is wonderful if you say so, but unless those two factors are going to help reduce fatigue injuries, and get our players in optimal physical condition, then i'm sorry, they don't weigh in on his job qualifications.

So now the problem is that we don't have a 100k catapult monitoring system? If FSU was wearing PowerBalance bracelets and sterling necklaces from QVC, there would be articles saying that's the secret.
That being said, 100k is nothing. We probably spent that much money on that green helmet padding. We have a 20million dollar tennis complex for fux sake.

[RednBlue11]

We need captain planet

[Esfand]

Esfand,

Thanks for sharing your personal story. It takes guts to put yourself out there like that. I think the frustrations with Mel were probably exacerbated by the talk DJ gave at the kickoff luncheon when he praised the cowboys for adopting modern techniques.

A couple of questions for you, having been near the system recently:

1) Do you agree with the philosophy of putting everyone on the same program, regardless of position?
2) Do you think the meal plan is enough or does more need to be done in the program nutritionally to ensure we can have top tier athletes in the program?

Thanks, I appreciate that.

1) Yes, very much so. In football there's so many different roles and positions which require different techniques, sure, but that doesn't mean guys don't use the same muscle groups. Being stronger can never hurt you or being faster can only help you regardless of your position. A great example is someone like Jeremiah Gaines. The kid is a beast (and one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, honestly), he's a sophomore, 6'2" and a lean 230 and he plays receiver and he's got some serious wheels for a guy his size. He's fast for, given his size, running a low 4.5 and is very explosive and can jump about 40 inches on his vertical.

Whether or not he's 230 or 200 it doesn't matter what he weighs as long as he can run fast enough and jump high enough to play receiver. With proper training, you're only going to get faster and stronger when you put on muscle weight and if you're as heavy as he is you're going to be able to outmuscle them in addition to being able to run and jump so well.

2) The meal plans are a massive step in the right direction, they really are. The guys were all really excited when every player, including walk-ons, could receive meal plans now... but it's not perfect. There is some weird time restriction on them that can be kind of annoying, like they can only go to a certain place to eat food during certain times of the day. It's definitely much better than what it used to be, but they should have just given them standard unlimited meal plans as opposed to these... "limited unlimited" meal plans.

If anything they could (and probably should) have done it with the restriction of not being able to use it during allotted practice time for the respective athlete's sport. That way you can't argue the integrity of it and say that athletes could potentially give their swipe to a non-athlete or an athlete of a different sport.

[RednBlue11]

Don cheaddle(sp?) would do fine

[Esfand]

I really hope we do not replace Coach Mel. I understand there's football and this is a business, but since Coach Mel has been here is when we started really turning the program around, and there's not a single person still on the record boards from before Coach Mel was here.

And more than just football, I'm a former player, and even though I didn't play for very long I can tell you first hand Coach Mel is such a great guy and with such a wonderful family. I'll be really upset if he is replaced.

yes, welcome to the board. i suggest you read the article i posted about what our former S&C coach is doing at FSU. this is a business my friend, and i don't mean to sound callus, but we, as SMU fans, are concerned with winning, not someone's wonderful family. i'm sure Mel's a great guy, and i'm sure his family is wonderful if you say so, but unless those two factors are going to help reduce fatigue injuries, and get our players in optimal physical condition, then i'm sorry, they don't weigh in on his job qualifications.

I read the article, and it's very interesting to me, I'm a Computer Science major... But it doesn't show anything other than our lack of resources. Which we don't really lack, but it's the way that it's allocated that's hurting us.

This is a topic for another day, but I'm going to just vent because it's on my mind. The fact that we do not have an Indoor Facility is completely befuddling to me. I was in the first graduating class at a brand new 3A High School just up the road and we had an outstanding indoor facility built well before I graduated. Why are we building that new tennis complex in what would be the PERFECT location for a multipurpose athletic facility!? If you REALLY wanted to, you could have put the tennis courts INSIDE of that because it could have been a multipurpose building for Mens and Women's Soccer, Football, Tennis, and I can't think of any other field/outdoor sports we have. And to justify building it even more... There's only 3 sports teams using that field during the day, you could even have Intramural sports play in there during the evenings and turn the current intramural field into a second parking garage right next to the other one for gameday parking that way student's won't have to move their cars away from the dorms to the opposite side of the campus!

Sorry, just got off topic on a tangent. I don't really understand how everything works... But it seems very bizarre to me why what I said wasn't what was done.

[RednBlue11]

You know guardians of the Galaxy was a good movie too!