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BAILEY'S
TAKE ON PIRATE SPORTS
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From the
Anchor Desk
Tuesday,
January 25, 2010
By Brian
Bailey |
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Coming soon:
Physical makeover for Pirates
By
Brian Bailey
©2011 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
Jeff Connors helped design
the weight room in the Murphy Center at East Carolina.
Now, he has an office
there.
Connor inked his
deal to return to ECU at the end
of last week. He replaces Mike Golden, who left Greenville for Tampa and
a reunion with former Pirate coach Skip Holtz.
Connor’s reunion was with
the Pirate program.
“I had conversations with
a lot of friends and former players,” Connors said on his first day on
the job. “I’ve always had an interest in coming back to Greenville for a
lot of reasons. My wife and daughter are living in Morehead City, so I’m
much closer now.
"There were just a lot of
factors that played into this decision.”
Connor’s program appears
to be just what ECU coach Ruffin McNeill and offensive coordinator
Lincoln Riley are looking for.
McNeill and Riley are
always talking about up-tempo practices and work habits. That fits
Connors to a tee.
“The players have to get
used to the tempo,” said Connors. “They have to get used to the fact
that we lift weights quite a bit longer than the last regime. This is
different, because we have a two-hour block where we are working high
tempo the entire time.”
The work began Monday for
Connors, who has already laid out his program to his staff. He returns
to East Carolina as a man on a mission, and that mission is laid out in
front of this Pirate football program.
Connors plans to meet with
each player on an individual basis and that begins this week. He’s
already made some adjustments to the workouts, and many more are on the
way.
“We want to test the
players in 12 different areas,” he explained. “We want to give them
points from 1-10. We want to standardize those points in relationship to
their positions. We want to give them awards when we do our tests.
"We want to give the
athletes feedback and give the coaches feedback as to where we are going
into the spring and what we need to do this summer to get ready for the
fall.”
Coach Connors and I became
good friends during his first stint at ECU.
Connors was so confident in his abilities, he took me on as a client. My
weight had swelled to close to 270 pounds, and Connors decided to help
me get some of it off.
I lost about 45 pounds
with Coach Connors but there was still something bugging him.
He didn’t like the fact
that no matter how hard we worked, I couldn’t get rid of my double chin,
which I’ve had since birth.
He said he would do some
research on the matter.
At our next meeting,
Connors said I was out of luck, that there was nothing he could do.
“That chin is hereditary,”
Connors snickered. “We can only blame your Mom.
We both laughed and then
continued to work.
As for this new
assignment, Connors concentrates on the several similar ideas.
“The program is based on
speed development, power output development, flexibility development and
those types of things,” he explained. “There is no question that we are
working to have speed, but with speed endurance with a great
conditioning foundation behind it.”
And these players don’t
have to worry about an extra chin.
BB
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