The key point I took from the article (and to prevent a possible 'Is this HN?' comment) was this (my emphasis):
"The players who end up making the team and having a sustained career in the N.F.L. are the ones who can process these details and apply them quickly."
So very relevant to any pursuit. If you can learn and change with agility (pun somewhat intended) you have a much greater chance of success.
It's surprising how much technique is emphasized. I had no idea these guys actually spend more time with a projector reviewing technique than they do training.
Aside from perhaps the boot-camp aspects, the rest seemed vaguely familiar to how other ambitious, high-performance groups work--constantly pushing to improve, an emphasis on getting it right to the expense of protecting anyone's pride, and often very long hours of very hard work.
Probably it was more common in the days of the peacetime drive (1953-1965?) but various NFL players had been in the Rangers (Grabowski) or had been jet jockeys (Max McGee). Rocky Bleier was not in an elite formation, but did have to recover from wounds received in Vietnam.
I'm thinking specifically about how the physical and mental demands of NFL training camp compare.
F'rinstnace I was reading on Wikipedia just now that at Ranger School soldiers are fed a very restricted diet that results in weight loss of 20-40lbs, I imagine the NFL guys would consider that counter productive.
You can definitely push military personnel harder--NFL players are unionized, service members aren't, and law and society wouldn't look very kindly on any private enterprise doing some of the harsher things seen in military training.
For an extreme example, consider SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training. This is an extensive course intended to prepare personnel for everything that can go wrong behind enemy lines--how to survive off the land when separated from friendly forces (downed aircrews, for instance), how to evade capture, and what to do when one is actually captured (the "resistance" and "escape" portions). While the early portions of the course cover comparatively "fun" subjects, the later portions involve being subjected to captivity and abuse. The intent is to train people to resist torture and escape from enemy POW camps.
HBO's Hard Knocks is about as candid a look that you can get about the experience the writer describes. This season with the Jets was particularly interesting - management dealing with a holdout of possibly the best defensive player in the NFL, what to do about a veteran who inspires and mentors the younger player who will replace him...very soon, if not this season, and the glimpse of everything the writer experienced. You see week after week players on that bubble - will they make it, do they ever have a chance, can they prove themselves. As reality television goes (granted a damn low standard) it is impressive.
It's interesting to see how these players experience such highs and lows during a season, they often get to the point where they would just quit but somehow manage to keep going. Great motivational book.
There are high school teams that do this too. Crazy, but when you're 16 it's actually kind of fun since the aches and pains aren't quite as bad. Two practices and a film meeting every day makes for rapid visible improvement.
I played high school football and this is what my august was like from 8th grade until senior year. Crazy were the farm boys who worked in the field all day between morning and afternoon practice.
> There are high school teams that do this too. Crazy, but when you're 16 it's actually kind of fun since the aches and pains aren't quite as bad. Two practices and a film meeting every day makes for rapid visible improvement.
I've never heard of a high school team that didn't have two-a-days and film every day in the pre-season. In fact, judging by this article, my high school's football team spent a lot more time practicing on the field than the pro's do. I'm sure those long practices helped with strength and conditioning, but I wonder if their technique and skills would have improved more quickly with more recovery time.
Probably not much. Anyone playing sports at this level is genetically predisposed to it; you can see that they're big guys, but what you can't see is that they recover from training more quickly than the average person too. The ones that lack this ability already burnt out before getting to this level.
I read a couple of books in my long-distant youth about the training camp ordeal. It played up the military boot camp aspect of it. This article is surprisingly intelligent and well written compared to those.
American football is as violent as it is because of the pads. When you can throw yourself at a guy and not get badly injured yourself, that'll start happening. It doesn't happen in rugby -- there, you tackle to bring the guy down, not to knock him senseless. Forward passes encourage that kind of tackling as well.
"The players who end up making the team and having a sustained career in the N.F.L. are the ones who can process these details and apply them quickly."
So very relevant to any pursuit. If you can learn and change with agility (pun somewhat intended) you have a much greater chance of success.