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Camp comes up on you fast. I spent my entire summer thinking about it, working for it, looking forward to it; as soon as it arrives, however, I want it to be over sooner than an old school Roy Jones Jr. fight. The grind that football puts on my body — especially on my knees — gets put in the express lane as soon as camp begins.

I definitely feel older off the field. Last year, I spent my time in between practices and meetings watching episodes of Dexter and hoping for ungodly amounts of lightning. Now I sleep pretty much any chance I get, which is part of the reason that this blog has been dry for weeks.

It didn’t help that I had to miss a couple practices early on in camp due to a concussion resulting from a head-on collision with this guy. Now that the headaches are gone, I’ve been trying to enjoy the little things in camp, like times in meetings when Coach Pedersen says something like this:

“Guys, when is breakfast tomorrow?”

“6.”

“What are we hoping for?”

“Scones.”

“What are we gonna do if there aren’t any scones?”

(Silence)

“Bagel it up!” (Accompanied by writing “BAGEL IT UP” on the white board)

I consider myself lucky to be part of a team that can work extremely hard but still cut loose and laugh every once in a while. Offensive line meetings contain plenty of instruction, but we don’t forget to take time to laugh at Coach Hollibaugh for engaging in Child’s Pose to stay out of the camera’s way during one-on-ones.

More than anything, I’m focused on trying to be a leader. As a team captain, it’s up to me to pick guys up when there’s a lull in practice, even if the lull is in part due to my frozen molasses running speed. I’m also trying to help the freshmen get acquainted to their new setting, since I know what it’s like from having had to do it twice.

Ultimately, camp will always be a physical and mental grind, no matter what school you’re at. I consider myself blessed to be going through it with this group of players and coaches.

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Above: Lifting belts help me keep from crapping out my spine while squatting.

As last week came to a close, so did a summer of editing segments for the NFL Network and lifting with guys who closely resemble Mike “The Situation” from The Jersey Shore. It was a very productive summer for me, and it seemed to go by too fast; I always wish I had more time to prepare for camp. After my last day, I packed up my belongings and prepared to head westward for my third college football camp. The hard work I’ve put in since last season has made me a much stronger, more powerful football player. But that doesn’t denote a lack of pain.

I’ve heard NFL players say before that they “age in dog years”, and anyone who has seen John Elway recently would agree. Even though I am significantly younger than most NFL superstars, I feel as though my body ages at the rate of Robin Williams in Jack. My frame was not meant to support 265 pounds, even though it is 265 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. For over half my lifetime, I’ve spent every fall playing offensive line and every offseason undergoing hard lifting and running. It’s made me much more physically dominant — today I found a neoprene knee sleeve I used for middle school wrestling, and it now works as a pretty nice elbow sleeve. There is a price I have paid, though, especially in my joints.

I would describe my knee condition as “Rice Krispie knees”: any time I move them, I can feel snaps, crackles and pops. My cartilage has slowly worn down, resulting in a grinding pain that gets worse as the season goes on. It doesn’t affect my performance at all, and that’s because I’ve spent nearly as much time taking care of my body as I have trying to make it better on the gridiron.

For starters, I smear on my knees a hodgepodge of arthritis cremes that are marketed towards people three times my age.  I take glucosamine twice a day to fight the effects of gravity and blunt force trauma on my joints. Ice is applied liberally to my knees and my shoulder, which has had nagging bursitis since February. I’ve also periodically done acupuncture to keep my body properly tuned for carnage.

My gym this summer offered free yoga classes, so once a week I downward-dogged and warriored my way to better flexibility and core strength for increased performance and injury prevention. I tend to be somewhat of an outlier in yoga classes, seeing as I (a) am a male, and (b) outweigh every other participant by at least 100 pounds. But I take personal pride in being just as flexible as anyone else in class, thereby exhibiting the offensive lineman’s status as a true athlete.

I feel like I’ve done a pretty decent job combating the increasing levels of pain caused by football-related activity. I wouldn’t have transferred to Grinnell in the first place if I wasn’t completely committed to becoming the best football player possible. So at the end of the day, I’m willing to put up with the pain to continue my attempts to win a Midwest Conference championship and become a Division III All-American. Despite my joint problems, I feel poised for my best season yet.

Ultimately, when I feel my knees snap, crackle and pop when  I’m 50, I won’t grimace and curse myself for continuing my football career as long as possible. The pain serves as a reminder of all the hard work I’ve put in for a noble cause, and of all the great memories I’ve made playing the game that I love. Sappy as it may be, the more my body aches and breaks, the happier I’ll be on the inside.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at chris [at] thed3experience.com. All original material copyright © 2008-2010 Chris Jarmon.

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The reality of this statement has yet to sink in for me. I’ve spent the summer working my tail off at NFL Films, as well as in the weight room. My squat, hang clean and incline bench are at all-time highs, as is my confidence. Time, however, slips through my fingers at a torrid pace, and I feel as if I need much more of it to truly be ready for the season.

For whatever reason, I never feel prepared for the horrors of camp. Last year’s experience was especially difficult for me, as I often found myself filled with anger due to the fact that I wasn’t playing with my Colorado College teammates. I played pissed off, and while it helped me perform on the field it left me empty of my humanity. I would find that the source of my anger also served as a source of healing, but it didn’t change the fact that camp last year was a struggle in every possible sense of the word.

The 300-yard shuttle epitomizes that struggle.

High school and college programs from coast to coast implement conditioning tests at the beginning of camp to see what their athletes have been up to over the summer. The most common of these tests is the 300-yard shuttle. Players are subjected to a shuttle of various distances according to each coach’s accepted level of sadism. For example, last year at Grinnell we ran it in lengths of 25 yards, meaning that we had to run 25 yards and back six consecutive times. More trips in a shuttle result in a significantly higher level of difficulty for the athlete, as it is more physically taxing to constantly stop and start versus running the entire 300 in one length.

A target time is given for each position, which attempts to take into account various body type discrepancies among the different positions such as higher donut intake for offensive linemen. It’s all very technical. It would be easy enough to reach one’s target time by running hard for one shuttle and getting it over with, and that would certainly be the best method if there was only one shuttle to run. The standard number, however, is two shuttles with a minute of break in between. If you’re not in amazing shape, taking a minute of rest after a 300 is the cardiovascular equivalent of pissing on a forest fire. When the coaches line you up for that second shuttle, it’s another dimension. Your legs respond based on only the most basic primal level of control, the peripheral nervous system’s green light generated by coaches and players screaming at you to run.

I’ve never been chased by someone trying to kill me - mainly because when I’m in New Jersey I stay away from Camden - but I imagine that it wouldn’t be too far off from running a 300. The thinking goes that the player who actually completed the workouts succeeds, while the player who spent the summer wasting away in a filth of empty pizza boxes and Spongebob reruns pukes his brains out and is subsequently rewarded with 5:00 AM conditioning every day of camp. You don’t want to be the second guy.

Despite all my hard work, true success in the 300 eludes me yet. I made my time last year exactly by coming in about 10 seconds under the target time in the first shuttle and 10 seconds over in the second one. I was dangerously close to earning myself some extra helpings of suffering, and I had prepared very well for the test. Several of our players, in efforts to make their time and avoid the extra conditioning, injured themselves during the test and missed the beginning of camp.

This year, with a new head coach comes a new approach to the 300. We’re doing it in 50-yard increments, fantastic news since it means only 3 trips back and forth. When I asked Coach P for the o-line target time, he said “It’s an eyeball test, not a stopwatch test.” I originally thought this would be an improvement on last year, but I have since changed my mind. Last year, I made my time but I consistently looked like I was about five seconds from suffocating. This year I have to be able to keep up with the other linemen (no small feat when Joe Sinwell weighs only 200 pounds) and maintain the steely composure of a Kenyan marathoner while I do it.

Training for such a test presents its own difficulties. I must first get over the reservations I constantly have about the test. For example, In what situation would any football player run 50 yards, turn around, run back, then back and forth twice more? I guarantee any play in a game requiring this of any player would automatically be SportsCenter’s play of the year. I try to focus on training for the test to please the coaches and show my teammates that I’ve been working hard this summer, but at the same time focus on things that get me in true football shape. A 300-yard shuttle isn’t the same as an 80-yard drive in a game, but then again, nothing really is.

At the end of the day, the 300 test is just a different part of being a college football player: the part you have to do on an empty stomach.

I caught some lucky breaks in the last month. In addition to getting good grades, I also managed to land a good summer job. I had planned for months on returning to NFL Films as an intern, but at the last minute things fell through. To make a long story short, the state of New Jersey is cracking down on unpaid interns who come back a second time, because to them it’s basically the same thing as slave labor.

Somehow, my bosses at NFL Films came through and found some money in the budget to hire me as a per diem Production Assistant. Lou Holtz once famously said of football, “The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is most likely the one who dropped it.“ While in this situation I did not drop the metaphorical football, it bounced directly into my hands; like any fat lineman would, I decided to run with the thing until the point of physical exertion.

Since NFL Films is by and large the coolest place I’ve ever worked, I figured it would be the best opportunity for my young career. I packed up my crap into my 4-cylinder Toyota Camry yet again and headed out to the land of hoagies and people who can’t decide on a collective accent: New Jersey.

It’s been a much quicker transition into my east coast alter ego than it was last summer, namely because before last summer I thought all “east coasterners” were basically the same person: chain-smoking divorcees who work at a deli. I know how to navigate the trademark regurgitated spaghetti pattern of New Jersey roads, and I know how to order a sandwich at the Wawa.

I’ve been holed up in NFL Films’ War Room - a high tech man cave which sports an entire wall with the depth chart of each NFL team - editing segments for NFL Network’s show NFL Playbook. I did a little bit of editing during my internship last year and my bosses liked what they saw, so they were willing to pay something other than Monopoly money for my services this time around. So far it’s been nothing short of a dream job; any time I get frustrated with something, I look around and realize exactly how cool the job is. Honestly, every day here feels like Friday.

Things have been going well for me football-wise, as well. I liked the weight room I worked out at last year, but arrived this time around to find the place boarded up and evidently bankrupt. Apparently my twenty dollars per month wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. It all worked out nonetheless: I’ve been working out at LA Fitness with Chris Sabo, a cool dude who plays O-line at Hiram. After Dick Celeste dropped a Dick Bomb on us at Colorado College, Coach Rivera went to Hiram and coached Sabo. Upon hearing that Sabo was interested in video stuff, Carlos put Sabo in touch with me. I helped Sabo through the application process and now we’re New Jersey bros trying to get a couple sets of bench in with all the guidos around.

The other day, Sabo and I stopped by Steve Sabol’s office to say hello; last year he recounted stories to me about his time at Colorado College and was very supportive of my decision to transfer and keep playing football. When I saw him the other day, he asked where I had ended up and was one of the few people who I talk to who knows where Grinnell College is. He’s going to get Sabo and I onto some shoot lists for NFL Organized Team Activities this summer so we can observe the speed of the game and therefore improve ours.

I’ve already been very focused on improving my game. Between work, working out and sleeping there isn’t much time to do anything else. Coach Pedersen’s workout plan has me feeling pretty confident about my strength and power development this summer, and I can’t help but feel even more confident than last year now that I’m headed back to the same school for once. If I can continue to balance my football-related job and football itself, I feel that I can be pretty successful this year.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at chris [at] thed3experience.com. All original material copyright © 2008-2010 Chris Jarmon.

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