Saturday I had dinner and visited with Jim Radcliffe in Seattle. Jim is a very good friend and a consummate professional. As many of you know he is the head strength and conditioning coach at the University of Oregon. He is in charge of football and also works with baseball, women’s basketball and is extensively involved helping with track and field with both the collegians and post collegians. He does not have a large staff; in fact his whole staff for all sports is smaller than most DI programs have for football alone. This does not compromise the quality of the work. Football has been consistently in the top 25 the last 15 years. He emphasizes training athleticism. All components are trained appropriate for the demand of the sport. It is not a one size fits all program. Whenever we get together we always seem to talk about how we have seen things change over the years, how fads and quick fixes have trumped good teaching and progressions. We are both strongly influenced by Bill Bowerman. He was a generalist and we both agree that his influence is a big factor in our approach of looking at the big picture. Bowerman taught us that progress in athletic development takes time, there are no quick fixes, good sound training with proper progression yields consistent results.
We are presenting together at the NSCA Convention in Las Vegas on Coaching Excellence. It will be a different talk than we usually give in that it will focus on philosophy and area that we both agree the younger generation needs to hear. Jim will also be teaching at the GAIN Apprentorship in June on strength and power development. We are all looking forward to that. It is great to have a friend and professional colleague like Jim. He has taught me a lot over the years and had been a consistent sounding board.