"They were dying. They'd say that was the toughest one yet, but at the same time, they liked the challenge."
It’s 6:15 a.m. on a summer morning in Davenport, Iowa, and Josiah Lorentzen, of Quad City CrossFit, along with the Moline High School football team, have just started the workout. Just 15 minutes later, some of the athletes rethink breakfast.
“This was a whole new type of conditioning,” Moline High School head football coach, Crick Sant Amour, says. “Usually we run back and forth and do sprints. Lorentzen and his trainers came in and had the kids lunging across the field while holding 45-pound plates overhead, stopping and doing burpees every 10 yards.”
The overhaul of the high school football fitness program started two years ago when Sant Amour heard that Lorentzen opened a gym around the corner from the football field. After talking, he decided to incorporate CrossFit into the program.
Lorentzen was eager to give back to his high school, so he carved the early morning hours out for the team, and gave the coach a deal: $20 per athlete per month.
“Football was a huge part of my life,” Lorentzen says. “It was rewarding to be able to help out and work with some of the coaches who helped me.”
And Lorentzen took more than a little enjoyment out of programming the workouts. His high school conditioning was, as he recalls, “long and tedious.”
“I absolutely dreaded it, so I was excited to make conditioning short, intense and fun for the team,” Lorentzen says.
For the last two seasons, Lorentzen has coached the team for the eight-week preseason. Within the first three weeks, the team sees massive improvements in stamina.
“We got into our first game (two seasons ago) and I had never seen our team in as good a shape as they were,” Sant Amour says. “So I said to Josiah, ‘For next season, let’s put all the conditioning and weightlifting with you guys.’”
Since he is training specialists, Lorentzen tailored the CrossFit training to the players’ positions.
For example, he asked the linemen to arrive early. As a group, the linemen would go short and heavy. Later, the backs and receivers would do the same workout, but at lighter weight, with the goal of going faster.
However, he varied the tasks so all players’ weaknesses were challenged, too.
“They just kept finding different ways to challenge our kids: buddy carries for 200 yards, banded runs,” Sant Amour recalls. “Every day those kids walked into that gym they were challenged, and when they left they were exhausted.”
Lorentzen varies the movements, but keeps everything relatively low skill. “Your typical CrossFit met-con, power cleans, plyometric stuff,” Lorentzen says.
A recent workout included five rounds for time of a 200-meter run, 10 power cleans and 20 lateral bar hops.
He also focused on the team’s weakness: stamina. “I knew I only had them for two months, so conditioning was our main focus,” he says.
“They’d never been involved in a strength or conditioning program that pushed them as much as this,” Sant Amour says. "They were dying. They'd say that was the toughest one yet, but at the same time, they liked the challenge."
And that’s not the skewed perspective of the coach. The players agree.
“I loved that it was a different workout each time we went in,” 17-year-old outside linebacker, Devin Earnest, says. “That way we were not used to any of the workouts and we were pushed to a different level each time. I feel like CrossFit taught me and my teammates that when things get tough, you have to become tougher.”
