Announcer: Good evening. And welcome again to "Pumping Up With Klaus & Mouse", the informative training program for the serious weightlifter.
Mouse: Hello! We're back!
Klaus: I am Klaus.
Mouse: And I am Mouse.
Together: And we just want to.. Pump.. [ clap ] ..you up!
Klaus: Alright. But before we can pump you up tonight, we have to answer a piece of viewer mail.
Mouse: Ya. Ya. This is a letter we received from a Max Univers. I'll only read an excerpt, so I don't go into his loser details. "Dear Klaus & Mouse: I have recently seen your.. mo-.. mo-"
Klaus: Moronic.
Mouse: "...Your moronic show, and have wondered why you don't open your own gym to train basketball players. Maybe you are too stupid." [ crumples letter ] You know, maybe you thought this letter would make us angry; but it only makes us sad.
Klaus: Really, ya. We are sad, you know, because anyone who calls us "stupid" is really just jealous. Because their coach looks at us, then looks at his players, and realzies his team is full of little girly-men!
Mouse: Ya. Ya, girly-men. Hear me now and believe me later - but don't think about it ever, because, if you try to think, you might cause a flabalanche!
Klaus: Ya!
Mouse: Poor little girly-men, alone in their hilltop girly-gym!
Klaus: Sorry, Mr. Girly-Man, but here's a treat for your fans!
[ Klaus & Mouse flex their muscles egotistically ]
Klaus: Alright.
Mouse: Oh, and thank you so much for the letter. [ puts crumpled letter in his mouth and swallows ]
Klaus: Ya! Ya, don't think for a minute he's not eating it, because believe me he is!
Mouse: That was one delicious piece of girly-man.
Klaus: Ya! You know, but we're not here to eat. We're here to...
Together: Pump.. [ clap ] ..you up!
(Based on an original script from Saturday Night Live)
*****
An ongoing concern for Jays' fans has been the team's strength -- namely, their ability to get stronger so that they don't get pushed around by every team they play. And its not a state secret that the basketball program went years and years without their own strength coach or weight training staff. The situation is so bad that two of the best players in the Altman era paid out of their own pocket for weight training supervision during the offseason. Kyle Korver and Nate Funk both worked with the strength coach from Creighton Prep on their own dime.
My cheesy Hans & Franz sketch might have been sad and pathetic, but no more pathetic than a college basketball program's players not being able to get what they need within the confines of the program -- and seeking out a HIGH SCHOOL coach. That's funnier than anything Hans & Franz ever said. Actually, its not. Its sad.
The team has traditionally used the weight and strength professors in the school of physical therapy as their resource. Someone I trust told me there have been four different strength coaches just in the last year! Worse, last summer, the head of that department left Creighton, and the team was on their own all offseason. Now, imagine college kids being asked to do something but knowing that no one would check up to see if they were doing it, knowing it couldn't be required because there was no one to verify their attendance. Some will go anyway. Some won't.
It would be outstanding if the team was full of driven guys who would go work out on their own, but that's not the case. And even if they were, its an awfully big assumption that the players would know what sorts of training programs to do. Its not as easy as going in and maxing out on the bench press -- they need to build and enhance their explosiveness too. That's why you need structure and a program in place so that players know how to accomplish those things.
All of which makes the article in Wednesday's Omaha World-Herald very strange. In it, Dana Altman is quoted as saying some things that sound like he woke up in the middle of the night with a premonition.
"We have to have a great offseason," Altman said. "We have to get more physical, and the only way to do that is to gain more confidence. We have six months here to get ourselves built up again, and we really have to take advantage of it."
...
Altman admits that the staff has tried some different approaches to offseason conditioning in recent years. The results haven't been to his liking.
"We're going to take a step backward and try some of the old-fashioned stuff," he said.
The players got a taste the last couple of days as they began what will become a four-day-a-week regimen between now and the end of school.
Did that just occur to him now? We have to get stronger! Supervised strength training by an actual staff! That's like waking up in the middle of the night and realizing, "Taco Bell is a Mexican McDonald's!" or "Mini donuts are miniature versions of regular donuts!"
Pardon me if I'm not terribly excited. Its pathetic that two of the best players in school history had to hire outside help to get them the training they needed. Absolutely a shame.
I'm not really upset at the players or coaches, so don't get the wrong idea. They're doing the best they can given the resources available, I'm sure. Those last two paragraphs reads more harshly than I intended.
More from the article:
"A lot of making this work is the guys' dedication to it. The leadership is important. You have four of the six months when guys are pretty much on their own. There has to be a lot of self-discipline and a lot of leadership."
Maybe we need to organize a fundraiser to pay for strength and conditioning! Pass the buckets up and down the rows at the Open House next fall. Hell, I'd contribute. If it led to fewer moments of Jays players getting pushed around like girly-men, it would be money well spent. If one fewer bag of mini-donuts for yourself lead to one more big rebound late in a game for the Jays, wouldn't you chip in? I would.
You bet.
