Since the season's over already - thought I'd share a story about my brief time with the Jets.
In the offseason of 2007, I got the opportunity to a do a strength and conditioning internship with the Jets as part of my final semester at Hofstra in their exercise science department. I was there from March to July, right up to the players breaking before training camp. In the world of strength and conditioning for football, the offseason program is arguably the most important time the SC staff has with the players, in terms of the ability to truly build the athletic properties they’ll need for the season. This is where the highest/heaviest volume of lifting and running is done, and the major portion of building the foundation that will [hopefully] get the players through the season as healthy and close to peak performance as possible.
This job entailed getting to the weight room at 5am every day to set up for the first of 3-4 workouts groups that would begin at 6am, and then aiding the full time staff in some elements of coaching/logistics within each workout. Each group would be broken down roughly by size – so OL/DL, WR/ CB, LB/TE/RB/FB. Guys would come in and lift then run, or run then lift, depending on what we were specifically doing for the day. Each session was usually 90 or so minutes, leaving enough time for us to scramble to reset the room up for the next group who was coming in. After the draft, there was a rookie group that was also incorporated into our schedule. That year, the rookie group featured Revis and Harris (and even Danny Woodhead now that I remember) – which was pretty cool.
When OTAs started, the team would go out and practice in shells a few times a week, which the strength staff would then work the off the field workouts around accordingly. Before every OTA practice, there would be a 5-10 min walkthrough, which would be a few different half speed drills that would often see the coaches and other team personnel jump in to fill a few spots. I remember getting to throw a hat on, and run a few routes against Revis who was jamming me at the line. Other times I would keep myself busy during those practices shagging balls for Mike Nugent and Ben Graham. As an unpaid intern on the strength staff, I didn’t have any direct responsibilities once those practices started, so it was more stay out of the way and look busy at all times. As soon as practice ended, it was right back into our workout schedules for the rest of the day.
Couple of highlights that stick out to me:
A young Justin Miller coming up to myself and Rick Lyle (asst SC coach at the time) in the cafeteria one Monday telling us about his weekend that involved him, Cadillac Wiliams, Ronnie Brown and some other guys dropping 50k in a strip club. The look on Rick’s face hearing that story, shaking his head and telling Justin “save your money dude”still sticks out to me to this day.
Dan Quinn coming into the weightroom to drink a s***ton of preworkout drink before practices to get himself fired up. Bryan Cox was his asst DL coach and an absolute riot. I remember one day the rookie DL got into some trouble and had to run a few laps because they were given a trivia question by Quinn and Cox to name the 4 members of the Sack Exchange. They asked Rick for help, and he told them my name instead of Abdul Salaam lol.
Mangini on the treadmill in the mornings running at a moderate pace (trying to lose weight during that time) while an extremely unathletic Mike Tannenbaum walked slowly on the treadmill next to him.
Getting to meet Curtis Martin and show him how to do a few exercises on this piece of equipment called blast straps.
Thomas Jones was there that year. Guy was an absolute brick s***house – although I remember at the time being a little disappointed with his strength relative to how jacked he was. Guy didn’t eat any sugar, which was impressive considering the whole facility is covered in Gatorade product, and the cafeteria had all the garbage in it you could want.
Brick and Mangold were both great dudes. They were rookies the year prior. Brick was from a few towns over from me so we knew some mutual people. Nick and I would always communicate in Will Ferrell movie references. There was a stretch of time where my responsibility before every OL/DL workout was to find Brick and make sure he was eating a rice crispy treat and drinking 2 muscle milks. They were desperately trying to thicken him up and eventually it worked.
Leon Washington, Erik Coleman, Eric Smith and Brad Smith were the best athletes on that team, and IMO hardest workers in the weight room.
Bryan Thomas – massive, massive, massive dog. Guy would legitimately find ways to physically walk out of the building during workouts, and come back a few minutes later in order to miss out on some of his ‘work sets.’ It became like a joke. One day we caught him, and the head SC (Sal Alosi) just goes “what happened to you man? You used to be a hard worker.” Thomas looks at him just shakes his head and goes “I got paid.”