Day 4 Air Force Academy

Alright so here we are on day 4 and what a day it was. We started out with a trip to the United States Air Force Academy. Before I go any further I just want to state that this place is enormous. We met with Buck Blackwood who is the head of the Strength and Conditioning Department. He took us on a tour throughout the athletic facilities and showed us what the athletes of the Academy had at their disposal.
Stat-wise there are 4,000 cadets at the Academy ad roughly the male to female ratio is 3:1. The cadets have a course load of 20-23 hours on top of military priorities and then athletic practices. These athletes are extremely devoted and have a lot on their plates. The Academy also doe snot give out scholarships and competes in Division 1 athletics.
On their grounds they have three athletic weight rooms, a ice rink, two basketball courts, wresting room, indoor track and football practice field, and a human performance lab. These are the main rooms on the complex. they have numerous smaller rooms but this blog is not big enough to contain all the different rooms and services that the Academy offers.
We also got a tour of the athletic training facility and our AT students were blown away. The part that I got the biggest kick out of is that they had a hydro-recovery pool on site and it was bigger than our pool that we had at the hotel. I thought that was funny. The AT's here operate on a more laid back environment than most other AT's do. This is a good thing because they have more time for individualized attention for the athletes and they can provide the best services for athletes from fencing to football regardless of skill and talent.

The last place we stopped was the human performance lab. Here we talked with a coach who trained the vision of the athletes. This was probably the most interesting part of the training. The instructor told us that by training the vision the athletes performance increased dramatically and it showed on the field. We were able to play with the tests the athletes took. One of the boards resembled something you see in a doctor's office but you had to hit the lights and they gave you feedback on your strengths and weaknesses. This was a fun but educational experience and opened our eyes to other forms of training that maybe considered "outside of the box".
Overall we gained a lot of useful information from Buck himself when we had a question and answer with him. The most interesting part of the discussion was how the athletes train. A lot of the the training that Buck does with his athletes requires the use of water filled implements. They had specially designed dumbbells, strongman logs, and kegs filled with water that the athletes do various exercise with. The method behind this was that by lifting the water-filled implements the athlete has to balance them and use more of their core and stabilizer muscles than if they lifted with a stationary weight.
After talking with Buck we were able to take numerous training methods and exercises to incorporate into our conditioning programs. As the days go on we keep adding to our knowledge base and this is crucial to us because a majority of us want to go into fields that require a knowledge in the strength and conditioning field. The more exposure we get to these professional settings the more we feel that we want to go into this field and contribute something to the field once we are there.
In the end we enjoyed ourselves at the Air Force Academy. A couple of us were jealous of what their athletes had to work with and others were envious of the laid back attitude of the coaches and AT's. Nonetheless we learned a lot from them and looked forward to our exploration of Pike's Peak later that day. So until then talk to you later!