Story of New England Patriots Secret Strength Training

By: John Scherger D.C.

Beginning in mid 1980's and through the 1990's I lead a project to understand and develop proper training and treatment for the spinal column. Of special interest was the lower back.

Others involved included: Jennifer Stone, ATC 24 years Athletic Trainer Director, United States Olympic Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Bob Beeten, ATC 26 years director of the United States Olympic Sports Medicine and Research Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Dick Smith, Olympic Weightlifting Coach, York Barbell, York Pennsylvania. Ron O'Neil, ATC Director New England Patriots Football team. 26 years in NFL as Athletic Trainer.

It was common knowledge in professional football that the players with the big lower back curved spine were the best athletes. The ones that possessed the big curves were the quickest had the most endurance, flexibility and hit the hardest. As season progressed and players accumulated trauma, backs began to lose the curve, become stiffer and weaker.

Also as season progressed the players lower back would hurt more and they would experience more readily apparent medical conditions. These typically included diagnosis such as stenosis, bulged or other disc conditions, and the vertebra and or their discs moving out of place to pinch the spinal cord or nerves exiting the spine.

The vertebrae moving out of place or partially dislocating typically always accompanied the above conditions. Professional footballs world of hard reality called for training that would overcome the accumulated trauma to not only enhance and preserve the global curve but also restore and preserve the segmental posture of the individual vertebral joints, thereby correcting the bulged disc, pinched nerve or stenosis problem.

By 2000, the sit up and pelvic tilt exercise and a special exercise device, the Powercushion tm, were developed and were being used with success in the Patriots medical training room. The Sit-up exercise enhanced, restored and preserved the global posture and the pelvic tilt the segmental posture.

By 2002, the exercises were moved to the weight training room for strengthening and conditioning purposes. The Patriots have continued to use the exercises and Powercushion tm through 2008 season. They are the only ones besides now the *Giants in the NFL  that are aware of the training and the only ones that employ it. (*Now Giants as Marcus Paul, a strength coach previously with the Patriots, left them and took the powertraining with him to the Giants team.) Our vision of fielding a superior physical winning football by producing the better global and segmental posture as the season progresses while the other teams are getting worse appears to be working, as the Patriots and Giants as the season progressed appear to physically dominate all the other teams in NFL.

During this time all our findings were consolidated into two home study courses and submitted to the National Strength and Conditioning Association for peer review for academic correctness. In 2003 the course work after over 1 year of open peer review finally received acceptance by the NSCA. It took that long because the courses contained technology that the world had never seen and all theories were accepted only after proofs were demonstrated.

Current technology for instance could not explain why when going head to head, as linemen do in football, why the individual with big curve would overpower and push back the individual with the flat back. The truth that had to be known and demonstrated was why did the curved back possess a better "mechanical advantage" over the flat lower back. The answer was found in comparing the two musculo- skeletal joint lever systems in the act of producing leverage. A comparison of two postures in the act of producing the physics musculo-skeletal leverage had never been attempted before and the technology had to be created.

The courses contained all our relevant findings. For instance why did the athlete with the proper lower back curve possess the greatest power, why did they run faster, jump higher and possess more endurance? Answers were demonstrated in musculo-skeletal leverage terms and proofs for instance of the human in upright posture producing "energy expenditure" and "effective momentum".

You can read more about how the exercises work, how to make your own powercushion tm for free and why the proper global and segmental posture of lower back is necessary to produce the superior athlete at spinalfitness.com.

John Scherger Ridgefield WA