I did it. I solved the mystery of why the Houston Texans suck. It’s something that none of the newspaper writers (sorry Mr. Justice or McClain or any other Houston Chronicle writer, I figure it out before you) or any talk show callers figured out.

Want to take a guess what the secret is?

Nope, not David Carr’s fault.
Charlie Casserly? No
No offensive line? Nope
The offense? deffense? special teams? Nope, nope, nope

Oh I got it, passing on saviour Vince Young? Not even close.

The reason is…………..

THEY HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO RUN! Wait, don’t stop reading, this is good stuff.

In my neverending quest for knowledge on training I ventured over to the Houston Texans website which had their Training Manual. Being a high paid NFL team I expected a gem of a traning manual with lots of good info. I’ve even listened to their trainers radio show occasionally, so good things were expected. Instead I found this:

“Any vertical lift will force you to spend more time in the air, less on the ground, and slow you down. Eliminate the vertical component and you’ll increase speed. “

I immediately took a double take and read that sentence about 4 times. I decided to continue reading on hoping, praying that there was some justification for this comment. Instead I found more…..crap….

“Fast runners often appear to run effortlessly. Their heads remain level once they have reached the upright position. “

It doesn’t get much better. throwing the knee forward, an incomplete backswing, shoulders back, and on it goes.

They then use the age old justification that football running is different than regular running…..Ya that’s great logic…. They are right though, apparantly Texans football running is slow and WRONG!

TO keep this from being an entire trash on Texans fest, they did get the right idea that you should not reach for the ground and you should put the foot down near your Center of Gravity. THANK GOD for that!!!

I could take several paragraphs and tear all of that stuff apart, but frankly I’m tired of doing that for today, so I’ll that for a later rant. However, the vertical displacement thing really got me. I mean, have they EVER watched someone sprint. I agree that too much vertical displacement is bad, but trying to eliminate it and stay flat?! That’s just stupid. No way around it. You have to come up off the ground. You cover ground in the AIR. It’s like the old HS physics question. If you shoot a cannonball with a very small angle, trying to keep it flat, it isn’t going to go very far.

MEMO to TEXANS: GO WATCH SOMEONE SPRINT. They have a vertical displacement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO there’s the answer. Your Houston Texans have no freaking clue how to run, which may be why all of our cornerbacks and Safetys get absolutely BURNED by every team….

You’d think an NFL team would know the basics of how to run correctly.

AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, ignorance kills me.

Rant over.

Get My New Guide on: The Science of Creating Workouts

    2 Comments

    1. Anonymous on May 5, 2007 at 6:13 am

      I don’t know about that. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmnrWJbIyVg. 200m World Record. Look at Michael Johnson’s head. It does nott go up or down at all.

    2. stevemagness on May 6, 2007 at 2:27 pm

      Give me a break man, If you can tell anything from that video you have the best eyes of any human ever. When analyzing video, the angle has to be better and you have to be able to look at it frame by frame to notice anything.

      Anyways,Go look at the research.

      All of it shows that you undulate. On average, it’s about 6-8cm.

    Leave a Reply to stevemagness Cancel reply