University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Conditioning Continues
September 23, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Marcus Paige sat in the Smith Center on Monday afternoon and pondered the six sessions of preseason conditioning the Tar Heels will go through in the two weeks leading up to Late Night with Roy Williams on Oct. 3. The team had already completed three, and was staring at another one in less than an hour.
Which workout, the junior is asked, is the toughest?
"It's the one we're about to do," he said with a resigned smile. "Today is the circuits and 33s day. It's really just a test of how tough you're going to be throughout the whole day. Having the 33s at the end is tough, but the stations are definitely the hardest."
The stations in question were eight exercises set up by Jonas Sahratian around the floor of the Smith Center. They included:
-The "quarter eagle," in which the players stood on a foam-type mat and did repetitive quarter-turn jumps
-Elastic bands tied on one end to the basket support and on the other end to the player participating in that station
-A stationary bicycle
-Another bands station, this time requiring the player to move in the opposite direction from the previous station
-Up and backs, in which the player had to sprint from the baseline to the free throw line, then quickly backpedal to the baseline
-A sprint from one corner of the court around the three-point line to the opposite corner, and then back again as many times as possible
-What old school athletes would probably recognize as suicides, with the player starting on the baseline, running to the free throw line, going back to the baseline, then sprinting to midcourt, then back to the baseline, then to the opposite free throw line, then back to the baseline, and finally full-court before returning to the original baseline.
Each station was completed in a quick 30- to 45-second burst, with players constantly rotating to the next stop. What quickly became apparent was how difficult even the simplest station could become. Riding a stationary bike, for example, doesn't seem that challenging. But it's a little tougher when Sahratian instructs you that you have to keep it over 125 rpm and then stands over you yelling, "Let's go, Theo! 125! Come on, Theo!" as he did when freshman Theo Pinson took controls of the bike.
After a complete rotation around every station, the team assembled for a 90-second run--"do this at 80 percent," Roy Williams told them--around the perimeter of the court. No one was exempt; the head coach tackled the battle ropes while his team was running.
That set the stage for a series of six 33s, the dreaded running mentioned by Paige that features three crossings of the court in 33 seconds. From one baseline to the other and then back again counts as just one crossing.
Players ran the 33s in three groups organized loosely by height, with the big man group predictably containing the most drama. Coaches were assigned to carefully watch and make sure every single Tar Heel touched the line on each end of the court, and a handful of players found themselves in the unenviable group that had to repeat a sprint for missing a line. When he heard his name called among that group, Pinson raised his hand.
"I'll go first," he said, thereby granting the other repeat runners a welcome 33 seconds of extra rest. The Greensboro native completed his seventh 33 running alone, his teammates gathered at one baseline cheering on each subsequent runner until they completed the task.
Conditioning concludes with the annual Carolina Mile.
