Saturday June 28
I SPENT THE MORNING working solo with Bo Harrington. He hadn’t allowed Ridge to practice with me. He said he wasn’t taking on any more clients, and there was nothing wrong with how Ridge was playing quarterback. I respected Bo for not taking Ridge’s money if he couldn’t help him.
We practiced for four hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. My arm was ready to fall off when he was done with me. We made a plan for me for the next two weeks. We agreed to get together in Houston a day early. He said he had a couple of other guys who might be joining us. I grabbed a taxi and left for home.
MOM PICKED ME UP AT the airport. On the ride home, she told me what all she’d been doing to get the new cancer foundation going. They planned to start small and work with the local hospital to see if there were gaps in service where she could be helpful. I promised I would go with her to meet some of the patients. She said several were fans who asked about me every time she went.
When we got home, Mom did something weird.
“Leave your bags. I’m sure everything needs to be washed. I want to show you something,” she said as she led me up to my apartment.
She made me go up the steps first, and I about had a heart attack when I opened the door and everyone yelled, “Surprise!”
Mom blocked my exit. I absolutely hate surprises, and my first instinct was to bolt. Tami grabbed my arm and pulled me into my newly decorated apartment. Angie got on my other side and started showing me everything.
“You know how I showed you a bunch of different concepts?” she asked.
I nodded.
“We were trying to figure out what you liked. You tended to like Art Deco and Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired designs,” Angie told me.
My eye was drawn to the kitchenette area. The cabinets were a black lacquer. They had found a candy-apple red, fifties-looking refrigerator. I opened it to find it was new and full of Gatorade and Mountain Dew.
“Where did you find this?” I asked.
“eBay,” Angie told me.
The toaster and microwave matched the fridge. The red really popped against the black cabinets.
The wall behind the couch had half-inch vertical columns relief, and my photos were all hung between them. There were half-inch deep columns behind the sofa about four feet apart. My photos were artistically arranged between the columns. At the end of the couch was a five-foot lamp with a stained-glass shade. I loved the simple clean lines and masculine feel the room gave off. I gave Angie a hug. She had hit it out of the park.
“I love it. Thank you all for helping. This is exactly what I wanted,” I said.
I even enjoyed the two hours it took them all to tell me in detail how they found each piece of the puzzle that was now my living room. Normally I would have been ready to pull my hair out, but I was enjoying my remodeled apartment too much to complain.
Chapter 11 – Birthday Week Festivities Begin
Tuesday July 1
TODAY I WAS MEETING with my speed training coach at the gym. There had been some hassle to get him in because they didn’t like outside trainers. They ended up making me pay for a guest pass to let him use the facility. I met him at the counter at the entrance. He was a young man in his twenties who looked like he worked out—a lot.
“Chris?” I asked.
“You must be David. Bo told me you were in shape. I hear you need to make some quick improvements in your speed before next week,” Chris Case told me.
“If you can, I’ll be grateful. The long-term goal is to work towards being fast enough to compete at the next level. I need speed and agility, not just a short-term fix.”
“Let’s go get changed, and we’ll do your normal workout. Then we’ll take it outside and see you run.”
He spotted me while I lifted. Like every trainer I’d worked with, he had some good ideas on how to do a workout to get the most out of it. He then took me over to the free weights. He showed me a piece of equipment I’d seen but never used. It was called a trap bar. A normal bar is a straight length of metal. A trap bar you step into. On the ends, where the weights are, it looked normal. Then it split with bars in front of and behind where you would stand. It had handles on each side, a little further out than shoulder width.
“We’re going to be doing deadlifts. The reason I use this is that it helps distribute the weight so it’s more centered instead of in front of you. This helps prevent lower-back injuries,” Chris taught me.
Lincoln High planned to get a new set of free weights. I would talk to Coach Hope have them add a trap bar.
“We’re going to start with light weights and work on form. The trap bar is fifty pounds instead of the normal forty-five of a regular bar. So keep this in mind when you put weight on it. You need to account for the extra five pounds.
“Now watch me. Notice I’m keeping centered, I’m not leaning over like I would with a regular bar. I keep my head looking up and I explode up, and then exhale and set it back down.”
He showed me five reps and then I did it. He started me off with three sets of eight lifts. Chris warned me at heavier weights to do more sets with lower reps. He suggested four sets of three. He then took me over to some boxes the gym had; I never knew what they were there for. Chris picked out two. One was just below my knee height and the second just below my waist. He put them about four feet apart.
“The first exercise is a seated box jump. I want you to sit down on the smaller box. I don’t want you lifting your feet off the ground or swing your arms. I want you to explode up and jump onto the other box.”
He then showed me. He had me do three sets of six. The next exercise he taught me was to sit and jump on the same box. The motion was straight up. The third exercise had me hop over the first box and then jump onto the higher box. I did three sets of eight for both of those.
We went outside so he could work with me on running exercises.
“I’m going to show you how to be more explosive on your starts and cuts. You, as a football runner or defender, can make your biggest improvements in cuts up field. You find your hole and you cut and burst through it. That’s what this first exercise is all about. I want you to start on one knee,” Chris showed me.
We would run south and he was faced west with his left knee on the ground and his right leg up.
“Now I want you to power off your back leg. This is to teach your body how to do power-ups and allows you to feel the moment of a cut. You plant your foot and go, no hesitation or choppy steps. I want you to sprint fifteen to twenty yards as hard as you can.”
He then showed me at half speed. Chris came up, pushed off his back leg, turned ninety degrees, and sprinted down the field. He then had me do it.
“Good, but I need you to stay lower. You popped straight up and then went. I want you to stay low and then go. You don’t run standing straight up in football unless you want to get yourself killed.
“Something else I wish you’d to do is to end your run by stopping on a dime. The great players seem to be able to stop and then to burst in another direction. You can’t do it unless you practice it.”
He had me do three off my right leg, I turned around and did it off my left leg. I could feel it in my thighs and hips. I used my muscles differently, and they told me about it. The next drill he called pop-up sprints. He had me on my knees, sitting on my heels. He had me swing my arms and pop up into a squat position like I would when I played linebacker, and then I’d sprint twenty yards.
The first time I tried it I was a little off balance and about killed myself. He laughed at me.
“It’s going to feel weird. Just make sure you land softly, and then go.”
I did it again and it was better. He worked with me on my lateral movement next. He made me stand on one side of a yard line, hop over it, and then back as fast as I could. He instructed me to keep my feet together, so I bounced back and forth.