A couple of years ago I picked up a book called One Great Game by Don Wallace, it was about a game about De la Salle High School from Concord California against Long Beach Ploy high school from Long Beach California. The account of the De La Salle program left me amazed and wanted to know more. For those of you that don’t follow it De La Salle owns the record for consecutive wins at 151 games. I also saw them on a nationally televised game against a far superior team and they were amazing with their quickness. A year or two later I found another book on a year with the De La Salle program When the Game Stands Tall by Neil Hayes, a man named Mike Blasquez who was their athletic trainer and conditioning coach figured prominently in the book. This last weekend I met Mike Blasquez who is now the head strength and conditioning coach at University of California Berkeley. We went to dinner and talked for three hours on training. The two things that stuck the me the most about what he did at De La Sale was that the incoming ninth graders spend a year acquiring what I call foundational strength, the ability to handle and control their bodyweight. The second thing was they continued to work two to three days a week in-season and continued to do significant speed development work in-season. It is always fun to meet professionals like this; you bet I am going to watch the Cal programs because with this man’s influence they certainly will be more athletic.
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