University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: McKinney Works Heels In Offseason
June 2, 2003 | Men's Basketball
June 2, 2003
By Adam Lucas
It might be the offseason for the basketball Tar Heels, but it's prime season for strength and conditioning coordinator Thomas McKinney.
Now entering his third year with Carolina basketball, McKinney works out all the returning players who are in Chapel Hill four times per week.
"You want to have them weight train as hard as they can at this point," McKinney says. "You're really training their legs as hard as you can because you want them to recover from the long season, and this is the time to make some very good gains in lower body strength, which is critical for these guys."
It didn't take long for word of several rigorous Roy Williams-led workouts to circulate among the Carolina fan community. Those less than 30-minute sessions left players' tongues wagging and also showed them they'll have to be in optimum shape for what is likely to be a depth-shy 2003-04 campaign.
McKinney, who has experience working with a variety of sports in his previous jobs at Columbia University and the University of Virginia, knows that basketball players are a unique breed.
"One thing you can't factor in is the amount that they go out on the court and play," he says. "With a football player, for example, they might go do their running and lift and then they're done in two hours. With our alumni coming back in the summer, the players want to take advantage of that, so our players will lift and then go out and play for two or two and a half hours."
UNC workout for Monday, June 2
Warmups: hamstring and oblique work
Core development (stability ball, single-leg jacknife)
Medicine ball work
Total body exercise focusing on explosive power
Quickness drill
Heavy work, including upper-body bench press and balance drills
Hip mobility drill The above represents McKinney's schedule for Monday, a fairly typical lifting day. Tuesday's workouts will include a substantial part of the session devoted to leg training.
Every player who is attending the first session of summer school works out regularly with McKinney, which means he sees everyone at least four times a week except Damion Grant, who is spending the summer at home in New Jersey. Once Grant recovers from offseason surgery, he'll be in constant contact with McKinney so that his conditioning progress--including his most pressing need, improved lower body strength--can be evaluated.
As McKinney has learned, the progress of all his charges is a topic of high interest in Chapel Hill.
"My first year here, I didn't really understand the magnitude of what I was getting into," he says. "I was at the deli section of the grocery store and a guy asked me, 'You getting the guys strong over there?' It was surprising. My wife is amazed by it, because she's not really a sports freak."
To try and save Thomas some time in the deli section, here's his quick rundown of a few of the returning players and their weight room goals for the summer:
Jawad Williams/Jackie Manuel: "My first couple of years with them, we talked a lot about weight. By doing that, I didn't reward them for the things they were improving on. All my records show that they are getting stronger. It's very hard to gain weight. Jawad and Jackie are two of our leaders in the weight room, and we've gotten to the point that they'll stick their heads in and tell me the scale is moving forward. A year or two ago, they wouldn't do that."
Damion Grant: "In the past, he's suffered from poor lower body strength. The biggest thing is for him to get his lower body in shape so that he can physically handle the pounding a seven-footer takes running up and down the court."
David Noel: "Without a doubt, he's the strongest guy pound-for-pound on our team. He makes it look easy in the weight room. We want him to continue to get stronger, because every athlete wants to do that. But how much is enough strength? The biggest thing we can do is improve his performance and help him with injury prevention. We want to do things that improve his athleticism, like single-leg work or stability ball work. I'm very careful with him, because you hear about guys who get lost in the weight room and forget basketball. Everything we do in the weight room is concerned first and foremost with how it will help us on the court."
Sean May: "From a personal standpoint, he had a frustrating year for me, because I judge success by one hundred percent of the players being healthy one hundred percent of the time. Right now, for him it's just about healing. He gives me a hard time about the weight room because he feels like he has spent his whole life here."
Melvin Scott/Rashad McCants: "They're probably two of our most competitive guys in the weight room. They'll both look over and see someone doing something and take that as a challenge. And Melvin, with his personality, he'll talk a little bit of trash. He likes to call people out."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
