Shaq Is Slow
By Alex On August 18, 2009
Under Uncategorized
It’s late Tuesday night and I just had some recent motivation to write a quick post here. I was watching this new show on ABC called “Shaq’s Big Challenge”….not gonna lie, I was entertained.
I was watching it with my Dad, who is notorious for his Shaq-hating. This of course made it even more interesting since this is a man who once said he would rather have Kwame Brown on his team than Shaquille O’Neal because “at least Kwame doesn’t actually think he’s Superman!”
As we were watching the show, it wasn’t the final competition that captured my attention, but Shaq’s sprinting. They had him run a 40-yard dash, and if you didn’t see it, well, put it this way: it was so slow, there’s a chance you might still be able to watch him running right now, since he still hasn’t finished it!
Jokes aside, it made me think about what I would do with Shaq if I had to make him run a faster 40-yard dash.
So I put together a list of things I would focus on with him to get him running a sub-ten second 40:
- Feet- Shaq’s feet look heavier than my car. I would start from the bottom up with him, gettin all of the dysfunction going on down there taken care of, then slowly but surely continue to make his feet quicker and stronger, while being careful not to overdo anything since, well, he does weigh nearly 350 lbs.
- Posterior Chain Strength- Shaq has a history of knee problems over his career. Obviously his weight and the amount of pounding his knees have taken over the years because of it have played a role, but he is also impressively quad-dominant. By packing on some serious muscle mass to his glutes, hamstrings, lower back and calves, he’d not only improve his speed, but take a TON of pressure off his brittle knees.
- Flexibility- The dude’s tight, plain and simple. Get his hip flexors loosnsed up, his overly tight rectus femori stretched out and his tight calves working properly is going to make a bid difference for the Big Aristotle.
- Technique- I don’t like coaching technique, because as you already know, all I care is about REAL speed (heck, you are the official Game Speed Insider Blog). But in this case, since it is ONLY for the 40pyard dash, I’d work with him on his start, since it had A LOT of room for improvement.
- Mentality- He was mouthing off with Big Ben WHILE running his forty! I’d much rather him stay focused during the sprint, then AFTER he kills it, go mouth off to Ben Rothleisberger, Kobe Bryant, Pat Riler and anyone else Shaq has beef with.
Put all that together and I think we’d have the Mr. O’Neal moving a heck of a lot better.
Now what’s cool about this list is these are 5 of the most common problems I see with athletes who are still too slow for their own good.
So, based entirely on intuition and your own experiences, I want to hear from YOU which of these things is your biggest problem right now, and what you’re going to do to SQUASH it.
Talk to you in the comments section,
-Alex