Eagles' new strength and conditioning coach wants players teeming with power

WHEN THE Cowboys physically dominated the Eagles up front in those back-to-back blowouts that killed what had been a promising 2009 season, the Birds didn't bring in a whole bunch of bigger, stronger offensive and defensive line starters. That kind of change is hard to effect overnight.

They did change their strength and conditioning coach, and the philosophy behind their offseason workout program.

Mike Wolf had been in that spot for 15 years, and was named NFL strength and conditioning coach of the year in 2001 by his peers. But you started hearing last season about players going to outside trainers and touting the results - several were working with Steve Saunders in Cherry Hill - and then when the Eagles got pushed around by a team they are going to have to play twice a year every year, well, change was in the air.

"To be honest with you, coaches, I guess, felt like some of the games we lost, we got outphysicaled," wideout Jeremy Maclin said yesterday. "We weren't going to do that this year. That's one of the things we wanted to kind of focus on, and I think we definitely hit that."

Barry Rubin, an assistant to Wolf the past two seasons, took over the head job in January with a mandate to move more toward the free-weight strength program Rubin ran when he was the Packers' strength coach, from 1999-2005, and away from fancy weight room machines.

Neither Rubin nor anyone else around the team is willing to directly fault Wolf or his approach, but the fact remains that a change was made, for a reason.

"Mike did a phenomenal job the 11 years he was with me," Eagles coach Andy Reid said yesterday. "Barry uses a little more free weight. The one thing, the influx of young players that we've had here, I thought we'd change and do a little more with the free weights. I'd just say it's a combination of things, with the influx of these young guys, knowing that they're going to get an opportunity to come in and play for us, and then the younger players we [already] had on the team, their increased strength. That's really the direction we're going with.

"It's what I did as a player [at Brigham Young] and then as a coach in Green Bay. At the same time, Wolfie had great success here. But I just kind of wanted to get back to that."

Rubin, 53, presides over a weight room reconfigured to his specifications, dominated by seven big lifting platforms, each adorned with an Eagles logo set into a hardwood surface, below a barbell rack. The back area of each setup features a bench for free-weight pressing.

"Those things, you can bench, you can squat, you can power-clean, you can lat-pull. Those things have pretty much everything; it's like a home gym in a little box," center Jamaal Jackson said.

"I feel like I get the most power out of the free weights," right tackle Winston Justice said.

"Ninety percent of our work is done in this area," Rubin said yesterday, standing at one of the new stations. "I don't really want to talk about the difference between what was here [and the current program], because Mike did a great job, and I worked with him. He was a fine person. My belief is, you want to simulate in the weight room, as close as you can, what they do on the football field.

"We do some explosive lifts, which is some form of Olympic lifting, power cleans, snatches . . . Say, when a wide receiver jumps for a pass. It's that extension and that thrust they get - those Olympic lifts simulate that, and it's resistant, so you can get more powerful and stronger. We did a lot of squatting, different variations of it."

Rubin characterizes his approach as "common-sense training."

"It's not rocket science," he said. "If it was, I don't believe I'd be doing it.

"My foundation is some Olympic lifting, some form of squatting, and then pressing and pulling, and, of course, low back and hamstring work. And you'd better put core work in there, too; that's such a buzzword. You pepper in other things, too."

Over the years, the Eagles have experienced various levels of participation in their 14-week offseason strength and conditioning program. Former starting quarterback Donovan McNabb, for example, only did the daily winter-spring drill at NovaCare in years when he was coming off a serious injury, preferring to work in his own setup out in Arizona. This year, the team emphasized everyone coming in and working with Rubin, though, of course, NFL teams can't make players attend. Only punter Sav Rocca, who lives in Australia, and iconoclastic corner Asante Samuel stayed away.

"I think it was more than just the Cowboys that spurred the change," Justice said. "I think a lot of players were going other places to get what they needed . . . The team wanted the players to stay here, and build that camaraderie that they had [this] offseason. Before, players were going here, there . . . the players [who stayed] were just trying to get through the workouts. Now, people kind of enjoy going in, doing shoulders, doing bench press to try and improve."

"I want 'em here, don't want 'em going anywhere else," Rubin said. "They need to be here, because our program is going to be a football-specific program. That's the big thing we're going to do. It's not going to be just powerlifting or bodybuilding . . . Not to say there's not good people at those other places, but if a guy does something here and then goes there and does the same thing, he's just asking for problems. You start getting into overtraining."

Rubin said players have been "very compliant - that's a huge key to any program - they showed up and they worked hard and they competed and they tried to get better. And they did that as a whole. They did a really nice job. This bunch that we have has done the best job in my 14 years."

Rubin said he attributes that to the players "being a young group, and the backing I get from coach Reid and the other assistants is great." He also emphasized the contributions of his assistants, Ken Croner and Eugene Chung.

"We all three try to be as hands-on as we can," Rubin said.

"I think with Barry's program, it'll allow us to stay fresher longer, throughout the season," Jackson said. "Most of the workouts, although they're intense, they don't break down your body as much."

That sounds good, but Reid said he can't say right now that the team is any better off from the strength change.

"I think it's too early to tell," he said. "Up to now, the guys look like they're in great shape, and they're strong. But I can't tell you that's not the way it was before. A better evaluation on this will be toward the end of the season," which ends, by the way, with a Jan. 2 game against Dallas.

For more Eagles coverage and opinion, read the Daily News' Eagles blog, Eagletarian, at www.eagletarian.com.

Follow him on Twitter at

http://twitter.com/LesBowen.