I feel like these visualizations do a poor job at accurately displaying combine performance.
The filling-in of the color makes it seem like area under the curves is what we should be looking at, but often times the area is somewhat arbitrary. Look at Weaver's for example, if you switched his Bench Press and his 40, there would be more area under the curve, just based on which categories are next to one another.
I know they look cool, but a bar chart is probably a lot more honest about the data.
they're not supposed to be accurate though, just a heuristic. The area under the curve gives a rough idea of how many areas the prospect excels in, respective of other prospects. Even if you rearranged Weaver's to maximize the area under the curve, qualitatively speaking his will still look much smaller than others'.
Let me start by saying my memory does NOT always serve me as well as I’d hope.....but when Weaver was recruited, wasn’t he a weight room FREAK? I remember something like a deadlift of 450? How’d that translate to a 3rd percentile in the bench press? Was his last arm in a sling?
Also, rewatched the 2nd half of the Big Game last night which included that awesome INT by Hawk......a thing of beauty!!!!
S&C had two groups last year - Agility and Strength. Weav focused on Agility last year. Not saying that translated into low bench press reps, but I'm not shocked.
Perhaps, and they surely know that. The bench press is a really dumb athletic metric. Do you know which upper body movement has the highest correlation to on the field athletic performance? Pullups, which they don't test. It's really remarkable how slowly these old stodgy organizations adapt to reality.
Short arms translate well to a strong bench but make deadlifting harder. (And FYI 450 is a shite deadlift.) It's just all about leverages. Broad jump is another key indicator. Evan is tall, has sure, heavy hands, and performed well in the shuttle, cone, and broad jump. The bench and weight can be trained up. The shorter arms are the key liability, because that makes it easier for linemen to get their hands into his body and harder to fight them off without overwhelming strength.
pullups have a huge potentially for variability based on the prospect's arm length and body weight. They use barbell exercises for standardization. So overhead press or rows may be a better metric.
Rows are good. For metrics we use pullups for strength and inverted rows for endurance. We also use bodyweight bench for reps in 20 pound increments up to 225 (165, 185, 205, 225) for strength and pushups for endurance.
Even if you think bench is silly, thats a REALLY bad bench number. That +shorter arms= he's going to get bullied by NFL linemen if we're being honest. Im surprised he scored so bad, he had been dieting/training better his last year
Yeah, it is a bad bench. It can be fixed. I have no insight whatsoever into the Cal S&C program and what Evan did, but it appears that his focus paid off with better than average (NFL combine) metrics where they matter and shedding some fat. Also keep in mind that it is difficult to get stronger while getting leaner, and pressing seems to suffer more than the other lifts.
Well, the 450 (again, we're going off of MY memory, so talk slow....) was in HS. I remember it (whatever the number was) being some HUGE number and an indication of how awesome a recruit he was.
Okay, but if he HAS short arms, why wasn't his bench reps higher? I'm a little confused, but that's alright.
More importantly, can you explain why pullups are a better indicator? Seems the bench press motion is more common on the field than the pullup motion, but...... Thanks.
Ok, 450 would be good for high school but not great.
Let's step back though, athletics is not lifting weights. And lifting weights is not athletics. More like weight lifting augments athletics. The best athletes have the best body control, coordination, and reaction times ... Jerry Rice. Them being stronger and faster will help, so long as we don't inujure them in the process of improving those metrics, and there is a diminishing return with adding any quality beyond a point.
The strongest guys on teams may not even be the starters, and there is a lot that goes into this. First of all, Evan played in every game and played almost all defensive snaps over the last two years. That's 4-5 months each year where he is basically too beat up to train heavy or at all. (Nor should he train heavy during the season, because training heavy come with its own risks.) Some lose significant weight and strength over the season. The first 4-8 weeks post season may be spent rehabilitating injuries ... just to get ready to train. So, ballpark, a high rep guy like Evan may only have 6 months of actual strength training. That's 3-6 training cycles depending on the strength coach. And I would have guys stop any training over 80% effort 2 weeks prior to practice. The guys that play get beat up and thus have significantly less strength training time.
About his short arms and bench, I don't know. Maybe he is just a shitty bencher. Maybe he has been hurt and unable to train upper body. Maybe he has intentionally focused on lower body training and drills since football season since all of that is so much more important and benching is dumb. I really don't know, and it really doesn't matter. Bench pressing is a quite unnatural movement and is the most dangerous movement in the gym. (It literally kills more people than all other movements combined. For anyone reading this, NEVER use clips or locks on the bar if you are benching; you won't be able to dump the load and can asphyxiate yourself.) Dog damnit I hate bench pressing.
Regarding bench pressing being useful, somewhat. Incline benching is better and and overhead pressing is best. Todd Steussie was one of the strongest guys to ever put on a Cal jersey. Once in the NFL, dude incline bench 520 for 10. Unreal.
If I recall right, he was inclining 375 for reps at Cal. The reason the more vertical pressing is better is because it directly emulates on the field movement. No matter how strong your bench is, the other guys hips are stronger. So if you are pushing horizontally, you are probably out leveraged already and have thus lost the play. Oversimplified, but basically true. Technique beats strength.
Show or go? The "show" muscle are what you see in the mirror. The "go" muscles are posterior, what you don't see in the mirror, and they are where strength and power come from. Pullups are (one of) the simplest metric(s) for posterior upper body strength. Furthermore, the posterior muscles are the platform from which all anterior strength is based. As in one needs a strong, stable upper back to build a big bench press. One needs strong glutes and hams to squat a ton.
Thanks! That's a TON of info!!! Yikes! Where's the Wikipedia version instead (just kidding, for GB49's benefit....)??
I hear what you're saying about the season, training in the weight room, etc., but still; 3rd percentile seems mighty low.
What you're saying about posterior muscles makes a lot of sense!!!
Cheers.
PS - I was supposed to be at Memorial on Saturday, but my work trip got canceled due to the impacts of the CVirus on the folks I was working with (all told to work from home, etc.). So someone else cheer for me!!!!!
Well hell! I can cite The Beer above as an expert! Dude knows his shit (and isn't rude about it....sorry, couldn't resist; just yanking your chain.....)! : )
I feel like these visualizations do a poor job at accurately displaying combine performance.
The filling-in of the color makes it seem like area under the curves is what we should be looking at, but often times the area is somewhat arbitrary. Look at Weaver's for example, if you switched his Bench Press and his 40, there would be more area under the curve, just based on which categories are next to one another.
I know they look cool, but a bar chart is probably a lot more honest about the data.
they're not supposed to be accurate though, just a heuristic. The area under the curve gives a rough idea of how many areas the prospect excels in, respective of other prospects. Even if you rearranged Weaver's to maximize the area under the curve, qualitatively speaking his will still look much smaller than others'.
I hope all three of these former Bears get a good look. Both Davis and Weaver will be drafted but Hawkins may be a UFA.
Let me start by saying my memory does NOT always serve me as well as I’d hope.....but when Weaver was recruited, wasn’t he a weight room FREAK? I remember something like a deadlift of 450? How’d that translate to a 3rd percentile in the bench press? Was his last arm in a sling?
Also, rewatched the 2nd half of the Big Game last night which included that awesome INT by Hawk......a thing of beauty!!!!
S&C had two groups last year - Agility and Strength. Weav focused on Agility last year. Not saying that translated into low bench press reps, but I'm not shocked.
Perhaps, and they surely know that. The bench press is a really dumb athletic metric. Do you know which upper body movement has the highest correlation to on the field athletic performance? Pullups, which they don't test. It's really remarkable how slowly these old stodgy organizations adapt to reality.
Short arms translate well to a strong bench but make deadlifting harder. (And FYI 450 is a shite deadlift.) It's just all about leverages. Broad jump is another key indicator. Evan is tall, has sure, heavy hands, and performed well in the shuttle, cone, and broad jump. The bench and weight can be trained up. The shorter arms are the key liability, because that makes it easier for linemen to get their hands into his body and harder to fight them off without overwhelming strength.
pullups have a huge potentially for variability based on the prospect's arm length and body weight. They use barbell exercises for standardization. So overhead press or rows may be a better metric.
Rows are good. For metrics we use pullups for strength and inverted rows for endurance. We also use bodyweight bench for reps in 20 pound increments up to 225 (165, 185, 205, 225) for strength and pushups for endurance.
Even if you think bench is silly, thats a REALLY bad bench number. That +shorter arms= he's going to get bullied by NFL linemen if we're being honest. Im surprised he scored so bad, he had been dieting/training better his last year
Yeah, it is a bad bench. It can be fixed. I have no insight whatsoever into the Cal S&C program and what Evan did, but it appears that his focus paid off with better than average (NFL combine) metrics where they matter and shedding some fat. Also keep in mind that it is difficult to get stronger while getting leaner, and pressing seems to suffer more than the other lifts.
Well, the 450 (again, we're going off of MY memory, so talk slow....) was in HS. I remember it (whatever the number was) being some HUGE number and an indication of how awesome a recruit he was.
Okay, but if he HAS short arms, why wasn't his bench reps higher? I'm a little confused, but that's alright.
More importantly, can you explain why pullups are a better indicator? Seems the bench press motion is more common on the field than the pullup motion, but...... Thanks.
Ok, 450 would be good for high school but not great.
Let's step back though, athletics is not lifting weights. And lifting weights is not athletics. More like weight lifting augments athletics. The best athletes have the best body control, coordination, and reaction times ... Jerry Rice. Them being stronger and faster will help, so long as we don't inujure them in the process of improving those metrics, and there is a diminishing return with adding any quality beyond a point.
The strongest guys on teams may not even be the starters, and there is a lot that goes into this. First of all, Evan played in every game and played almost all defensive snaps over the last two years. That's 4-5 months each year where he is basically too beat up to train heavy or at all. (Nor should he train heavy during the season, because training heavy come with its own risks.) Some lose significant weight and strength over the season. The first 4-8 weeks post season may be spent rehabilitating injuries ... just to get ready to train. So, ballpark, a high rep guy like Evan may only have 6 months of actual strength training. That's 3-6 training cycles depending on the strength coach. And I would have guys stop any training over 80% effort 2 weeks prior to practice. The guys that play get beat up and thus have significantly less strength training time.
About his short arms and bench, I don't know. Maybe he is just a shitty bencher. Maybe he has been hurt and unable to train upper body. Maybe he has intentionally focused on lower body training and drills since football season since all of that is so much more important and benching is dumb. I really don't know, and it really doesn't matter. Bench pressing is a quite unnatural movement and is the most dangerous movement in the gym. (It literally kills more people than all other movements combined. For anyone reading this, NEVER use clips or locks on the bar if you are benching; you won't be able to dump the load and can asphyxiate yourself.) Dog damnit I hate bench pressing.
Regarding bench pressing being useful, somewhat. Incline benching is better and and overhead pressing is best. Todd Steussie was one of the strongest guys to ever put on a Cal jersey. Once in the NFL, dude incline bench 520 for 10. Unreal.
If I recall right, he was inclining 375 for reps at Cal. The reason the more vertical pressing is better is because it directly emulates on the field movement. No matter how strong your bench is, the other guys hips are stronger. So if you are pushing horizontally, you are probably out leveraged already and have thus lost the play. Oversimplified, but basically true. Technique beats strength.
Show or go? The "show" muscle are what you see in the mirror. The "go" muscles are posterior, what you don't see in the mirror, and they are where strength and power come from. Pullups are (one of) the simplest metric(s) for posterior upper body strength. Furthermore, the posterior muscles are the platform from which all anterior strength is based. As in one needs a strong, stable upper back to build a big bench press. One needs strong glutes and hams to squat a ton.
Hope that helps.
Thanks! That's a TON of info!!! Yikes! Where's the Wikipedia version instead (just kidding, for GB49's benefit....)??
I hear what you're saying about the season, training in the weight room, etc., but still; 3rd percentile seems mighty low.
What you're saying about posterior muscles makes a lot of sense!!!
Cheers.
PS - I was supposed to be at Memorial on Saturday, but my work trip got canceled due to the impacts of the CVirus on the folks I was working with (all told to work from home, etc.). So someone else cheer for me!!!!!
Well hell! I can cite The Beer above as an expert! Dude knows his shit (and isn't rude about it....sorry, couldn't resist; just yanking your chain.....)! : )