The misery of training camp

We talk all the time about the physical impact of NFL training camps. It starts with special teams drills at the beginning of practice all the way through individual drills, inside run period, 7-on-7 and finally, the team period to wrap up the morning session.

Only to be followed by a quick lunch, a short nap (if you can manage it) and then a jaunt over to the training room to get taped and put back on the practice field — to do it all over again.

APMarshall Faulk

It’s brutal in every sense of the word for players now that camps are in full swing around the league.

But as much of a pounding as your body takes on the field, the mental strain that you go through is just as detrimental to your success as a player -- if you don’t know how to manage it.

As a rookie on the Rams, I committed the ultimate sin by hanging a calendar on the wall of my dorm room at Western Illinois University (a lovely place in August with some great drinking spots) and proceeding to cross off the days until we broke camp and head home to St. Louis.

Bad move, rookie.

I was like a 7-year-old with an Advent calendar in front of me during the month of December — taking a small, hard, processed piece of chocolate from behind the little swinging doors of each day on the calendar leading up to the 25th — when Santa would finally come down the chimney.

It was painful waiting for Christmas back then as a child. It was tough work, and I just didn’t understand why the days moved so slowly.

Training camp is no different. Instead, you are a grown man living in a dorm room.

So how do you do it? For me, or for any young player out there, you watch the veterans — the great veterans — and learn.

APKurt Warner

In Macomb, Ga., that was Marshall Faulk, Kurt Warner and cornerback Todd Light for me. They never got too high and they never got too low — no matter what type of practice they had. And they were always prepared to practice, no matter how humid the conditions were.

Yes, they were tired and near exhaustion, and probably wanted to be somewhere else. But every play was important, as was every drill and every meeting.

As a player, you can only focus on the next practice, the next meeting or the next meal — because when you look ahead, your mind begins to wander and turn to mush, and you find yourself stuck in days that never end.

The hardest part is not looking forward to that afternoon nap or the end of practice. Your focus has to be on the next play because that’s how you survive. In the film room, you have to focus on what you’re doing wrong because that’s more important than what you’re doing right.

And at meals, you have to focus on what you put into your body because it will help you get through practice in the afternoon or the next morning.

But most of all, you have to keep the focus straight ahead — and think about football.

Sure, if your body feels good, you can trot out to practice and go through two hours of violent contact and come off the field smiling. Well, that only happens on the first morning of camp because after that, you feel like you’ve just been in a car accident — except that there’s no one to take care of you.

And that’s why most rookies struggle. Mentally, they can’t get through the next practice or film session. They lose focus because they’re tired or sore or hurt (because everyone plays hurt in August), and they get beat — play after play.

Doubts start to creep into their heads, and they begin to fall behind, slide down the depth chart and disappear in the coaches’ minds — because camp eats them up.

It happens to veterans, too, because, well, what the players are going through right now is miserable. The alarm clock rings, you feel like you just went to bed and you can barely get out of the army-style cot in your room.

It’s time to practice — again.

Follow me on Twitter: MattBowen41

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