The trouble with training: Pandemic forces athletes to get creative with workouts
West Greene linebacker Corey Wise found four old tires and a metal bar lying around his garage to create his own weightlifting set. Wise uses the makeshift creation to deadlift.
Canon-McMillan running back Ryan Angott straps a harness to his back to pull this 910-pound lawn roller around his family’s 13-acre property.
South Fayette wide receiver Charley Rossi balances himself while working out with a tennis-serving machine as part of his preparation for the upcoming high school football season.
Charley Rossi focuses on catching the ball released from a tennis machine while balancing himself on a exercise saucer. The workout is part of his preparation for the upcoming high school football season.
McGuffey’s Evan Wright uses a fence post and concrete blocks to do squats.
Donovon McMillon uses a plastic broom handle to affix his weights for a makeshift workout in preparation for the high school football season.
The levels of creativity for West Greene football player Corey Wise and Canon-McMillan’s Ryan Angott vary.
Wise is battling for a starting spot and trying to fill the void in the Pioneers’ backfield with the graduation of Army recruit Ben Jackson and productive Kolin Walker. Wise was second on West Greene’s defense with 69 tackles from his linebacker spot last year.
A second-team all-conference running back in Class 6A last year, Angott is trying to build off a strong season.
Entering their junior seasons with aspirations of eventually playing college football, Wise and Angott know how important the upcoming year could be in achieving that goal.
And not only has the coronavirus pandemic prematurely ended sports seasons, it has also interrupted offseason workouts for local athletes at school facilities, public gyms and other go-to workout spots.
Being creative isn’t a luxury these days, it’s a necessity.
“It’s hard on us,” Wise said. “Out here, we really don’t have all that kind of stuff. We have to improvise with what we got.”
What Wise had in the family garage was four old tires, a metal bar that had no current use and some duct tape. Just like that, he had a deadlift station to go with the agility work he’s done by running around rural Greene County and the tricep curls he’s done with cinder blocks.
“I’m not really much of a creative person,” Wise said. “I figured to try it and see if it worked. We have a football chat group on Facebook and workouts are posted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Most of it is agility stuff. The junior year is the year you prove yourself. I have to work on getting faster and stronger.”
Angott, also a running back, has a bench press and dumbbells in his basement, but that didn’t stop him from using his natural creativity. For a full-body workout, Angott straps himself to a harness that is connected to a 910-pound lawn roller that he pulls around his family’s 13-acre property.
“Whatever burns the muscles,” Angott said. “The first time I tried to pull it I couldn’t. I’ve been working out more than I usually do and have eventually gotten the point of jogging and running with it.”
Angott eclipsed 1,000 all-purpose yards for Canon-McMillan last season and was a big reason the Big Macs made the postseason for the second consecutive year.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Canon-McMillan football coach Mike Evans invested in an app called TeamBuildr, a strength and conditioning software program that can be used with a cell phone. He recently sent out a Google survey to evaluate what equipment his players had available to help design workouts to both meet their needs and understand the current limitations.
“What we are trying to do is get the most out of their capability,” Evans said. “We have kids who have everything, kids that have some stuff and others that don’t have much. We are just trying to give our kids the best opportunities.”
Tires and chains
Mac Church was not caught flat-footed.
In his basement is all the workout equipment he requires to stay strong. He would prefer to have some company but understands the restrictions required because of the pandemic.
Church has built a reputation as a workout warrior and pound for pound is one of the strongest on Waynesburg’s wrestling team, despite his freshman status.
“I have these lifting tapes that I do, I run all the time and I do these shadow drills by myself because I don’t have a (workout) partner,” said Church, going over his daily routine. “In the summer, I go lift with Jimmy on more Olympic training stuff. He gets his lifting workouts from an Ohio State lifting guy.”
The Jimmy he is referring to is Waynesburg’s assistant wrestling coach Jimmy Howard. If you have ever been to one of the Raiders’ dual meets, he is the one with arms as thick as sequoias. The offseason workout program is in his hands.
The biggest hurdle right now?
“Being together. A lot of the kids have equipment at their house,” Howard said. “The season just finished so we’re not in a strict program yet. The kids are just using what they have at home for lifting until we’re able to get together again.”
Under circumstances like the pandemic, the wrestlers have to improvise.
“We used tires – tractor tires,” said Howard. “I got this chain from a mine a couple years ago and if you ever saw them, one link weighs about 17 pounds. A (weighted) wheelbarrel will give you a good workout. I have a farm so we do things like carrying posts and bale hay.”
Howard said the offseason lifting program runs from mid-April until November, the start of the wrestling season.
“You can see it’s paying off,” he said. “You can see it’s working.”
Howard said the emphasis is sometimes on building bulk with the weightlifting and at other times building strength. The program he uses can be tweaked or altered to fit a wrestler’s needs. Howard is always looking for different ways and different things to incorporate into the program.
He’s even gotten some help from one of his teammates in high school at Jefferson-Morgan: Cary Kolat, who recently hired as the wrestling coach at the Naval Academy.
Nutrition and training
Whether or not a pandemic rages through the country, Donovan McMillon of Peters Township consumes nutritious meals as part of his preparation for the football season.
Noting his mother, Shelley, always makes him a “big breakfast,” McMillon gulps down six pieces of French toast. “She makes the best,” he said, then quickly adds “of course” maple syrup is an essential condiment.
Lunch on this day is a croissant with bacon coupled with a dish of apple sauce and a peach.
Dinner could be fish, maybe, cauliflower and broccoli for vegetables and as many as six biscuits.
Then there are snacks. “A bunch,” McMillon said with a large laugh. “I eat a ton of calories.”
McMillon after all is a growing teen. The 6-2, 185-pound junior is also a 4-star safety. He already has 49 major Division I scholarship offers.
While the coronavirus crisis is putting a damper on the recruiting process and his ability to visit college campuses, it has not hindered his training.
Though he is unable to practice with teammates or visit the high school to use the extensive array of equipment and weights, McMillon has gotten creative with his workouts. He fills a duffle bag with books and does curls and pulls. He attaches 14.3-pound weights to an old plastic broom that he uses as a barbell.
“Trust me, I’m doing everything imaginable,” he said.
McMillon does 500 situps a day in sets of 50 to 75. He sets up cones outside and works on his footwork. He even employs his siblings, Darius, 13, Dane, 10, and Davin, 7.
“We are having fun with it,” McMillon said of his attempts to cover his brothers during defensive back drills. “There’s nothing like running around chasing them. We are making it so that it’s fun.”
In reality, though, McMillon said, “I’m trying to stay as sharp as possible.”
McMillon attempts to make his workouts interesting by varying his training. He said that he does something different every day, including running or sprinting. He spends approximately three hours outside and does push-ups throughout the day.
“There’s no specific time and it’s not just one thing,” he said. “It varies.”
Concrete blocks and yard signs
When McGuffey High School was closed last month, for what began as two weeks and became the remainder of the school year, Evan Wright and his younger brother, Tyler, kicked their worrying minds into overdrive.
How were the Wright Brothers, both members of the Highlanders’ football team, expected to stay in shape if they couldn’t use McGuffey’s weight room? After all, the saying goes that teams get better during the season but players get better in the offseason. And high school football players are smack in the middle of their offseason training.
“Being a rural school, the high school becomes a hub of the community because the players don’t have easy access to gyms as they would in the city,” McGuffey coach Ed Dalton is quick to say. “Two days after classes were stopped, we had 25 to 30 kids show up at the school to work out. That’s not good for social distancing. We had to stop that.”
So what’s a rural kid supposed to do?
The Wrights decided to go on a bit of a scavenger hunt at home, looking for anything that could be used for weight training or spark a creative idea. It didn’t take long before finding some things on the family farm: a digging post, some concrete blocks, a tractor and yard signs, to name a few. The first three, it was decided, can be used as weightlifting equipment.
“We found a five-foot digging bar in a shed,” said Evan Wright, who will be a senior guard and nose tackle next fall. “It’s used to dig around fence posts so they go in the ground easier. We also recently built a building and had some concrete blocks left over from that. My brother and I thought they would make good weights to put on the bar.”
Alex and Tyler, the latter a rising sophomore center and defensive tackle, were on to something.
“We were able to make a mini-gym in our pavilion,” Alex said.
There was one problem, he said.
“The digging bar was wasn’t long enough to do squats with,” he explained. “But we were able to find a seven-foot fence post and we use that for squats. We use the tractor to rest the posts on when doing squats.”
That was good for weightlifting but what about cardio work?
“We have a gas well road that runs through our property. We can run on the road for about a mile and a half, so that covers the cardio work,” Alex Wright said.
The yard signs? No, they weren’t used to advertise the new-style lifting program. The Wrights used them as part of an agility ladder.
Dalton and his coaching staff make sure the players who don’t have access to home gyms can do workouts that are less involved than what the Wrights are doing. McGuffey also uses TeamBuildr to send workouts to each player.
“Two days each week the workouts are lifting and three days they are running,” Alex Wright said. “The lifting workouts are bodyweight exercises. … I definitely think what we’re doing is helping. We’re able to do more every week.”
“This group has embraced training more than any I’ve seen,” Dalton added.
Tennis balls and water jugs
Charley Rossi doesn’t play tennis but the rising South Fayette senior is using that sport’s equipment to make a racket on the football field this fall.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Rossi, like most of his teammates and opponents, have been confined by Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home orders and the PIAA’s restrictions to not allow formal workouts until at least July 1. Hence, Rossi has resorted to some homespun training methods.
For example, there is the tennis drill. While balancing himself on an exercise balance saucer, Rossi catches tennis balls shot from an apparatus much like a pitching machine.
“It’s to improve hand/eye coordination,” explained Rossi.
The machine is usually housed at the school but because his father, Joe, is the football coach as well as an educator in the school district, he brought it home where it sits in the garage. Rossi says he has used it every day. While his workouts vary, Rossi estimated his minutes have increased exponentially because he has “so much free time” to train now that he’s not in school.
Rossi led the Lions to an eighth straight undefeated conference title, an 11-2 overall record and an appearance in the WPIAL Class 4A semifinals in 2019. He had the game-winning TD reception in South Fayette’s 31-24 win over Thomas Jefferson as a sophomore in the 2018 WPIAL championship game at Heinz Field.
So Rossi is hard at work on his training for his senior season. He is doing plenty of running. He had that already factored into his plans as he would have competed in track this spring. He looked to lower his 40-yard dash speed to 4.5 by racing in the 100-, 200- and 400-meter dashes as well as relays.
“That would have been beneficial to me,” he said.
Alas, the PIAA canceled spring sports.
In addition to his sprint workouts, Rossi does endurance running around the steep hills near his home.
“Because we have no access to weight rooms and the track at the school, it’s hard,” Rossi said. “So I’m doing all sorts of things to maintain agility and quickness.”
Rossi lunges up hills, utilizes resistance bands and belts in his speed training and he performs change-of-direction drills to replicate the short movements he is required to make on the field. While Rossi has a set of weights with a few dumbbells, he sometimes fills jugs of water for lifting.
“There are ways to improvise,” he said. “Kids are getting creative everywhere so there is no reason to make excuses or drop off with workouts. We are all in the same situation. So we have to focus on the positive.”
O-R sports editor Chris Dugan, assistant sports editor Joe Tuscano and The Alamnac sports editor Eleanor Bailey contributed to this story.