More muscle, more problems: How one metric could change NFL training

[ladypanther]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/04/26/nfl-draft-training/

 Holway was working as a personal trainer when he attended a lecture on an obscure topic in his field: muscle-to-bone ratio, or MBR, which quantifies how much muscle mass a skeleton is carrying. To Holway, it sounded like a revelation. 

 He realized the skeleton was the human chassis, and muscle mass — not body-fat percentage, the focus of many dietitians and their clients — would drive performance. MBR helps athletes determine their optimal muscle mass so they can reduce injury risk and reach their peak physiques.

After the lecture, Holway learned how to calculate MBR. He used specialized tools to measure his clients — logging femur length, pelvic width and other metrics — then plugged 20-plus variables into an equation. His earliest measurements produced the same results he would replicate over the next two decades in thousands of elite athletes across many sports, including judo, soccer, weightlifting and boxing: In men, each pound of bone can support a maximum of about five pounds of muscle. In women, it’s slightly less.

Basically, the body hits that five-to-one ratio, and after that it only adds fat, not muscle. Bigger doesn’t always mean better.

....... has helped spread belief in MBR to the unlikeliest of places: the NFL, where it could revolutionize player production, injury-risk mitigation and talent identification.

.... they measured hundreds of football players around the country and made several discoveries. White players’ average maximum MBR (5.5) was lower than Black players’ (5.9). Typically, defensive linemen had the highest MBR (5.5) and wide receivers the lowest (4.9).

One of their most important findings was that maximal didn’t necessarily mean optimal. Players with higher MBRs than their position’s normative range seemed to struggle more with soft-tissue injuries. “Nine times out of 10,” Wellman said, when he encounters a wide receiver with an MBR of 5.1 or higher, coaches tell him stories about how the player battled such injuries.

“Guys that are 4.8, 4.9, there’s not as many stories,” he said. He paused. “I’m not ready to sit here in front of you and say, ‘Yes, when you get to this ratio, you’re going to be injured.’ I don’t know if we’ll ever say that. But I will say there’s too many anecdotes to ignore. And if we ignore this, I think we’re making a mistake.”

Though there will always be intangibles in talent evaluation — character, intelligence, attitude, work ethic, football IQ — MBR could provide valuable insight about the body underpinning the player’s performance. For medical and strength staff, MBR could revolutionize training programs and injury-risk mitigation. For general managers, it could revolutionize the talent evaluation process.

If a GM is scouting a dozen 6-foot-6 offensive tackles, MBR would tell him who could gain muscle and who is already maxed out, only able to add fat, which sometimes can help linemen but most often degrades performance. For cornerbacks, a GM might look at shoulder-to-hip ratio, which strongly relates to how fast a player can rotate his hips.

Further study could shed light on some pressing questions. What percentage of NFL players are significantly above their position’s MBR normative range? If all of those players went down to a normal MBR, would the rate of soft-tissue injuries plummet? If they did, and the league got healthier — and perhaps even smaller — could a prospect’s skeleton become as important to his draft stock as his results at the combine?

So far, Wellman said, about eight NFL teams have tried using MBR. In the coming months, Holway plans to meet with at least two more. In a league with players who have been growing larger for decades, how will a philosophy that sometimes contradicts that trend fit?

It’s too early to tell. But if MBR is as big as Callaway and Wellman believe it to be, and if Holway’s methods continue to produce discoveries, then in a league with unparalleled parity, it could provide a winning edge.

Hope the Panthers are on board...especially as they try to add to the frame of the likely new QB.

[Ricky Spanish]

Love this kind of stuff. 

Great article. 

It's always fascinating to see the progress of knowledge about the human body - How much we know, what we don't know, and what we think we know. 

[rayzor]

i'm curious what kind of injuries they are thinking could be happening. i mean i do have my suspicions and it largely has to do with what we saw in CMC. he stayed healthy for most of his career, but then he started trying to bulk up because one of the knocks against him coming into the league was this belief that he was too small and not strong enough to run between the tackles. 

then every year we see him jacked up much more than he was the previous year, but then he also kept getting non-contact injuries that would sideline him for much of the seasons. 

i don't think that the two are unrelated. i think it was more power than his frame could safely handle.

[Paa Langfart]

15 minutes ago, ladypanther said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/04/26/nfl-draft-training/

 Holway was working as a personal trainer when he attended a lecture on an obscure topic in his field: muscle-to-bone ratio, or MBR, which quantifies how much muscle mass a skeleton is carrying. To Holway, it sounded like a revelation. 

 He realized the skeleton was the human chassis, and muscle mass — not body-fat percentage, the focus of many dietitians and their clients — would drive performance. MBR helps athletes determine their optimal muscle mass so they can reduce injury risk and reach their peak physiques.

After the lecture, Holway learned how to calculate MBR. He used specialized tools to measure his clients — logging femur length, pelvic width and other metrics — then plugged 20-plus variables into an equation. His earliest measurements produced the same results he would replicate over the next two decades in thousands of elite athletes across many sports, including judo, soccer, weightlifting and boxing: In men, each pound of bone can support a maximum of about five pounds of muscle. In women, it’s slightly less.

Basically, the body hits that five-to-one ratio, and after that it only adds fat, not muscle. Bigger doesn’t always mean better.

....... has helped spread belief in MBR to the unlikeliest of places: the NFL, where it could revolutionize player production, injury-risk mitigation and talent identification.

.... they measured hundreds of football players around the country and made several discoveries. White players’ average maximum MBR (5.5) was lower than Black players’ (5.9). Typically, defensive linemen had the highest MBR (5.5) and wide receivers the lowest (4.9).

One of their most important findings was that maximal didn’t necessarily mean optimal. Players with higher MBRs than their position’s normative range seemed to struggle more with soft-tissue injuries. “Nine times out of 10,” Wellman said, when he encounters a wide receiver with an MBR of 5.1 or higher, coaches tell him stories about how the player battled such injuries.

“Guys that are 4.8, 4.9, there’s not as many stories,” he said. He paused. “I’m not ready to sit here in front of you and say, ‘Yes, when you get to this ratio, you’re going to be injured.’ I don’t know if we’ll ever say that. But I will say there’s too many anecdotes to ignore. And if we ignore this, I think we’re making a mistake.”

Though there will always be intangibles in talent evaluation — character, intelligence, attitude, work ethic, football IQ — MBR could provide valuable insight about the body underpinning the player’s performance. For medical and strength staff, MBR could revolutionize training programs and injury-risk mitigation. For general managers, it could revolutionize the talent evaluation process.

If a GM is scouting a dozen 6-foot-6 offensive tackles, MBR would tell him who could gain muscle and who is already maxed out, only able to add fat, which sometimes can help linemen but most often degrades performance. For cornerbacks, a GM might look at shoulder-to-hip ratio, which strongly relates to how fast a player can rotate his hips.

Further study could shed light on some pressing questions. What percentage of NFL players are significantly above their position’s MBR normative range? If all of those players went down to a normal MBR, would the rate of soft-tissue injuries plummet? If they did, and the league got healthier — and perhaps even smaller — could a prospect’s skeleton become as important to his draft stock as his results at the combine?

So far, Wellman said, about eight NFL teams have tried using MBR. In the coming months, Holway plans to meet with at least two more. In a league with players who have been growing larger for decades, how will a philosophy that sometimes contradicts that trend fit?

It’s too early to tell. But if MBR is as big as Callaway and Wellman believe it to be, and if Holway’s methods continue to produce discoveries, then in a league with unparalleled parity, it could provide a winning edge.

Hope the Panthers are on board...especially as they try to add to the frame of the likely new QB.

Unfortunately I read in an article some where that one NFL GM said bryce Yound has a "frail" frame.  I don't know if that was just sour grapes talking or what, but I guess we are about to find out. If Young is the pick I am hoping for the best but, we should remember that Young is shorter than Armanti Edwards was at draft time and about the same weight.

[NAS]

Just now, rayzor said:

then every year we see him jacked up much more than he was the previous year, but then he also kept getting non-contact injuries that would sideline him for much of the seasons. 

I actually think he was less jacked last year than the previous year when we saw him more ripped than ever and likely contributed to his soft tissue injuries 

[*FreeFua*]

I like my MBR the same way I like my T/E ratio…

6:1 baby

[KatsAzz]

("Basically, the body hits that five-to-one ratio, and after that it only adds fat, not muscle. Bigger doesn’t always mean better.")

If this is factual, then the NFL, as well as all the teams, need to get on board and  do their own research pertaining to MBR for both safety  and performance reasons.

[shaqattaq]

19 minutes ago, rayzor said:

i'm curious what kind of injuries they are thinking could be happening. i mean i do have my suspicions and it largely has to do with what we saw in CMC. he stayed healthy for most of his career, but then he started trying to bulk up because one of the knocks against him coming into the league was this belief that he was too small and not strong enough to run between the tackles. 

then every year we see him jacked up much more than he was the previous year, but then he also kept getting non-contact injuries that would sideline him for much of the seasons. 

i don't think that the two are unrelated. i think it was more power than his frame could safely handle.

This is the first thing that popped into my mind as I was reading this.

[bigpoppa]

This is very interesting and it makes sense. However, Im not sure I agree that at a point the body can only add fat and not muscle. Look at bodybuilders that add huge amounts of muscle to what is sometimes a small frame.

But it makes sense from the weight standpoint as well as stresses that a player is applying to bones, joints and ligaments. Keeping below that ratio keeps the muscle as the weak point. Overbuilding the muscle makes the ligaments, joints and maybe even bones the weak point.

[Brooklyn 3.0]

Makes sense. Muscle imbalance. Bodybuilders, wrestlers, hell even machine-looking freaks like Giancarlo Stanton of the Yankees. Too much muscle.

[Mr. Scot]

I mean, there's a reason why bodybuilders don't play football

[Dave Gettleman's Shorts]

1 hour ago, rayzor said:

i'm curious what kind of injuries they are thinking could be happening. i mean i do have my suspicions and it largely has to do with what we saw in CMC. he stayed healthy for most of his career, but then he started trying to bulk up because one of the knocks against him coming into the league was this belief that he was too small and not strong enough to run between the tackles. 

then every year we see him jacked up much more than he was the previous year, but then he also kept getting non-contact injuries that would sideline him for much of the seasons. 

i don't think that the two are unrelated. i think it was more power than his frame could safely handle.

along with the fact that our coaching staff would run 20 hb dives up the gut per game and then have his legs fall off by week 3

[ladypanther]

1 hour ago, bigpoppa said:

This is very interesting and it makes sense. However, Im not sure I agree that at a point the body can only add fat and not muscle. Look at bodybuilders that add huge amounts of muscle to what is sometimes a small frame.

But it makes sense from the weight standpoint as well as stresses that a player is applying to bones, joints and ligaments. Keeping below that ratio keeps the muscle as the weak point. Overbuilding the muscle makes the ligaments, joints and maybe even bones the weak point.

There has been a lot of research and they continue to do more.  I only quoted a few highlights.  Long article.

.....“I’ve got more [MBR] data on American football than anyone else on planet Earth,” he said, and that has forced him to reconsider one of the most fundamental principles of the field to which he has dedicated his life. “Five years ago, as a strength coach, I would’ve told you that as long as you’re gaining muscle mass, performance will increase. I don’t believe that anymore.”

....

Holway measured all of the Exos prospects. Several had MBRs above 5.7, including a linebacker at 6.1. They had so much muscle on their skeletons that, Callaway said, it was as if they had put a 700-horsepower engine in a Ford Fiesta.

“You watch them move, and you’re like, ‘They should be faster than that,’ ” Callaway said. “But the body doesn’t want all of the horsepower that the muscle can produce.”

Callaway told a few prospects they had too much muscle on their frames; they could be unknowingly compensating for it and increasing their risk of injury. Many believed him because they felt sluggish at such heavy weights. But at the same time, it felt wrong to want to be smaller.

....

The advent of MBR also has led Callaway to think differently about players he has trained who looked like superheroes but couldn’t perform like them.

“[One year, a player’s] agent was always on me, like: ‘Why isn’t he faster? Look at him,’ ” Callaway said. “And I’m like: ‘I know. I’m doing the same thing with him that I’m doing with everybody else, and he’s not making the same improvements that everybody else is.’ But I guarantee you, if we went back and measured [him], he would have a small skeleton.”