What’s Been Happening During This “Break” at Arizona?

With the short break between the season’s conclusion and the bowl game the team hasn’t had time to sit around and twiddle their thumbs. The two or three weeks leading up to the bowl game are crucial in the development of the physical conditioning of a team.

While students are preparing for their Christmas break by studying for finals, the football team can be found in the weightroom and the indoor practice facility. The time between the Utah game and the bowl game is utilized by the coaching staff for reconditioning the team and beginning the process of building up the body—after the long and brutal season.

Throughout the regular season the team will have scheduled weight-lifting twice a week. Those lifts are primarily used to keep the body from becoming atrophied. As the year goes on you simply aren’t able to maintain the muscles mass which is built throughout the developmental periods -the winter and summer months.

Bowl games provide a team the time to “get back into shape.” Don’t get me wrong the players are still “in shape,” but football shape is different from conditioning shape.

I could play in a full 75 play game and still have enough for overtime, but if you put me in the weightroom and said, “lift that weight"—which you lifted 15 times two and a half months earlier—I would of barely been able to do it eight times. It’s the job of the coaching staff, in collaberation with J. Omer to keep the team's strength up during the season, while still insuring that players aren’t causing any unnecassary fatigue to their bodies.

The development and lifting is another reason a bowl game is really important. It provides a team with additional practices -with coaches- so players can continue to develop in preparation for spring practice/next fall.

In college football there are no down times. Throughout the year players have limited time to “be on vacation.” If a coach wants his team to be any good in the fall he’ll do everything the rules will allow to keep players working hard through these perceived breaks. Insuring that when their team hits the field in December and April they are physically and mentally prepared to continue the momentum generated from a solid season and a bowl win.