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Chron reports Texans' Strength Coach & Trainer not offered new contracts

Interesting. The one year we finally stay healthy - they cut the S&C coach loose. Heh. Not that it has THAT much to do with injuries... it's just kind of funny.
 
I wonder what criteria are used to evaluate such positions in firing a guy AND hiring another. Players like or dislike maybe?
 
I remember suggesting (and took a lot of flaming) that Riley should be gone given the number of injuries and players placed on IR. People continually argued that he is so well respected, blah, blah, blah, and that injuries weren't his responsibility (and yes some of those injuries were unavoidable), blah, blah, blah.... Well, it looks like the FO realized that having back to back seasons with 17 guys on IR is more than a coincidence.
 
Anyone else notice that once we switched to dancing exercises or yoga or wahtever the hell it was, our injuries plummeted?
 
i thought our starters remained fairly healthy. Amobi, Diles, Adibi, Johnson, Brown and Green all had issues at one time but that's about it. We had the offense in tact all season once Green was out. Alot of the personel on defense switched cuz they were trying out different people to see if something clicked. We didn't loose anybody for a substantial period of time other than C.C. and Diles if I'm remembering correctly.

I'm not totally convinced there is a major correlation between these firings and injuries. Maybe stamina. That I could see.
 
If you are looking at each staff member and their contributions over time, you have to wonder about the S&C staff and the training staff.

The Texans have had slow early starts of seasons and finish strong.

Here's some of what I wrote about Riley in November in my post called My Houston Texans roadmap: What the Texans need to do short and long term. It was my attempt at talking about what sorts of changes needed to be made short term and long term. An interesting read in retrospect given how the season progressed.

2. Evaluate Strength Training: Another person who has been with the franchise from the beginning is strength and conditioning coach Dan Riley. Very personable guy who has been in the league for a long time. That being said, I'm not sure that the techniques he uses for strength training as he has publicly described them prepare the players well for the season.

He is a high profile proponent of High Intensity Training techniques. (pdf link) To simplify what he advocates(pdf link), it is basically lots of lifting using machines and then having players work on the activities they use for their skill positions. He believes in keeping the same weight program throughout the year to maintain strength.

And I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on weight training, but at least in my experience, lifting weights focusing on individual muscle groups doesn't mimic the explosive balanced power you need when doing sporting activities.

You can be gym strong without being sports strong.

If you look at the most physical players on the Texans, all of them came to the team that way. Andre Johnson participates in the Texans workouts but has done his own workouts for years.
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I got flamed for suggesting the changes that Smithiak have made this offseason. It needed to be done.

Only one more to go (Greir) & the offseason will be complete.

Out with the old in with the new is the theme for this offseason.

Almost all of the CC regime is gone & it's about time.
 
Since I've learned about the techniques used (and unused) by our S&C staff, I've been very down on them. Too much non-functional foo-foo fluffball 1980's crap.

Hopefully, we'll get someone a little more up-to-date on training regimens and techniques.
 
I think that both Vinny and Painkiller both were pretty negative regarding Riley's strength generating techniques a few months back. Pretty much that Riley does not believe in the most "state of the art" techniques. I'm sure they'll weigh in at some point.
 
Smith and Kubiak were fair to give these recent fires at least a chance to improve. They didn't, and now they're gone.
 
well I sure hope this new "strength coach" has as good a source for anabolic steroids as the Steelers "strength coach"......

seriously.....not kidding here.
 
Silver Oak said:
Smith and Kubiak were fair to give these recent fires at least a chance to improve. They didn't, and now they're gone.
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It's not just that. If you fire everybody at once when there is change, it results in chaos. By delaying the firing of some, you get the following benefits:

1. Not accidentally firing someone who wasn't a problem. Some times it is difficult to identify what is a problem and what is the solution to that problem. I talk about that some in this recent blog post.

2. Getting the people you really want. If you don't have someone better in line, you might have to settle for someone you didn't really want. So then you replace a problem with a problem. Sometimes it takes a while to get the right candidate in the coaching ranks.

3. Choosing your change. There are only so many hours in the day. You have to prioritize your problems. If you try to tackle too many things at once, you might end up doing everything bad just because you don't have enough focus on the biggest problems.

4. Remaining team members deal with incrimental change easier. You change everything, you have no more anchors.

5. Even if a staff member is not ideal, they carry institutional memory that might be helpful to know.
 
barrett said:
I'm not totally convinced there is a major correlation between these firings and injuries.
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Neither am I.

They wait until they have a season where there's not that many injuries before they fire him?

How much sense does that make?
 
I wonder if this had anything to do with loosing a player for using banned substances? I'm not suggesting that they were handing anything out, but simply that supliments should fall under these two right?
 
Marcus said:
Neither am I.

They wait until they have a season where there's not that many injuries before they fire him?

How much sense does that make?
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Helping prevent injury(as much as possible) is only one part of the job for those guys. If the players are not increasing thier functional football strength or not in good enough condition to perform at peek levels then the coaches are missing other important elements of their job.
 
da Bull said:
I think that both Vinny and Painkiller both were pretty negative regarding Riley's strength generating techniques a few months back. Pretty much that Riley does not believe in the most "state of the art" techniques. I'm sure they'll weigh in at some point.
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Wow some people have good memories. I had some inside (non football, personal trainers) people tell me, that Riley did not do explosion work, and from my untrained eye, that is one of the biggest part of football playing.

I like Riley on the radio, and he seems to be a nice man who cares for his guys. But it was time for the move.
 
I remember plenty of anti-Riley threads too, I think this is a good move, after as long as Riley has been with the team it is easy for things to get stale and one of the keys to continual improvement athletically is constantly changing stimulus.

I don't think this solves the injury problem in itself but it will be interesting to see what the new staff does for the athleticism of the team.
 
Part of the problem could be that the our last 2 first round picks are slowed in their development due in part to the S&C program. Amobi doesn't have ideal NFL DT strength to hold the point of attack even marginally well and Duane Brown had to rotate with Salaam because he wasn't in NFL shape.

That and since our inception we usually get physically manhandled in most games.
 
kiwitexansfan said:
I remember plenty of anti-Riley threads too, I think this is a good move, after as long as Riley has been with the team it is easy for things to get stale and one of the keys to continual improvement athletically is constantly changing stimulus.

I don't think this solves the injury problem in itself but it will be interesting to see what the new staff does for the athleticism of the team.
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Typically, injuries regress to the mean. That is if you have one really bad year, the next year tends to be not that bad. (certain exceptions, such as the Browns on-going staph infection issues.)

I think there was some legitimate surprise relating to Schaub's knee injury and how long it would take to come back. That originally there was huge pessimism that wasn't shared publicly, and then not so much.

I think the biggest issue with the strength and conditioning is that the strongest, most conditioned guys on the team are the ones that came fully formed that way (Mario, AJ).
 
I think they got fired because they weren't improving our players physically in any regard.

I can't think of one Texan who has shown an obvious improvement in their overall physical condition since joining the team...

We bring in rookies and from yr. 1 to yr. 2 to yr. 3 they don't seem to make marked improvement in their strength or speed....Coming out of college program into an NFL program (especially if you're coming from Lane College) you should show some signs of improved physical condition.
Amobi as a 20 yr. coming in should have shown an obvious improvement in his strength after being in the NFL for basically two off-seasons...

Most of our big, strong, fast guys were big strong and fast before they got here...
 
infantrycak said:
Or, they haven't been impressed with the development of the strength and conditioning of the players.
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I think that when you talk about the development of young players Position coaches have a lot odf the blame, but the strength and conditioning coaches certainly figure in. Our Young players aren't progressing as quickly as they need to be son these coaches had to be looked at. Also the slow starts each season could be sen as a partial conditioning problem.
 
Marcus said:
Neither am I.

They wait until they have a season where there's not that many injuries before they fire him?

How much sense does that make?
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You do realize his position was STRENGTH and conditioning right? Just because this is the first time in 3 years we haven't had a ton of injuries doesn't mean he was doing a bang-up job this season.
 
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As a strength coach myself I can say this is good news for the Texans. His program is more suited for bodybuilders then NFL players. If anyone wants I can get as specific as you'd like, but despite what Justice thinks this is a good thing. Riley seems like a great guy but we can do better.
 
otisbean said:
As a strength coach myself I can say this is good news for the Texans. His program is more suited for bodybuilders then NFL players. If anyone wants I can get as specific as you'd like, but despite what Justice thinks this is a good thing. Riley seems like a great guy but we can do better.
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Go ahead and get specific. Factual/techical discussions lead to a better understanding on the environment surrounding this position, not Justice's opinion, "he's the best, because.......because....because, I like him".
 
otisbean said:
As a strength coach myself I can say this is good news for the Texans. His program is more suited for bodybuilders then NFL players. If anyone wants I can get as specific as you'd like, but despite what Justice thinks this is a good thing. Riley seems like a great guy but we can do better.
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I'm just a PLer and I couldn't believe the program he had these guys on. It almost looked like old Arthur Jones HIT type of stuff and that's like... what... 20 years out of date at this point? No OL moves, very few multi-joint exercises. I heard he dismissed plyometrics and other full-body dinosaur types of methods out of hand.
 
The Pencil Neck said:
I'm just a PLer and I couldn't believe the program he had these guys on. It almost looked like old Arthur Jones HIT type of stuff and that's like... what... 20 years out of date at this point? No OL moves, very few multi-joint exercises. I heard he dismissed plyometrics and other full-body dinosaur types of methods out of hand.
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Where can I take a peek Riley's program? Y'all have got me curious.
 
drewmar74 said:
Where can I take a peek Riley's program? Y'all have got me curious.
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He had some articles on the main site but also people who had toured the facilities talked about what they had seen in some threads last off-season. Basically, he prefers using machines to use free weights. He likes to "concentrate" on individual muscles instead of working as a functional unit. He doesn't believe in periodizing and thinks everyone should be doing the same routine offseason that they do during the season. He doesn't believe in doing olympic lifts or in plyometrics because he doesn't think they mimic real life movements (but how he goes from that to machines, I don't know.)

There may have been other things I didn't like that were discussed in those old threads.

Basically, the only thing we agree on is that it's good for people to work out. :)
 
I am ok with this. Except for 2008, our injuries were top of the pack. Can't prove it was these guys but something ain't right. This year was an aberration imo not good training.
 
The Pencil Neck said:
He had some articles on the main site but also people who had toured the facilities talked about what they had seen in some threads last off-season. Basically, he prefers using machines to use free weights. He likes to "concentrate" on individual muscles instead of working as a functional unit. He doesn't believe in periodizing and thinks everyone should be doing the same routine offseason that they do during the season. He doesn't believe in doing olympic lifts or in plyometrics because he doesn't think they mimic real life movements (but how he goes from that to machines, I don't know.)

There may have been other things I didn't like that were discussed in those old threads.

Basically, the only thing we agree on is that it's good for people to work out. :)
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That's a good summary. He very much believes in evidence based work. So unless someone did a study that proves something works, then he isn't interested in it. Of course, there are limitations on creating evidence of what works on the NFL level because there are only 32 teams.
 
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