Why the BFS program has proven to be the choice of champions

Football Experience Why the BFS program has proven to be the choice of champions Heritage High School won its first-ever state championship in 2009 after adopting the BFS program. y the time this magazine gets into the hands of most high school football coaches, their seasons will have concluded. This is when coaches reflect on what they did right and what they could do better. One thing that is strongly on their minds is their strength and conditioning program. If their school hasn’t been using the BFS Total Workout Program, this is the time a coach seriously considers becoming BFScertified by setting up a clinic at their school.

This was the case with Heritage High School in Littleton, Colorado. When interviewed for our March/ BApril 2010 issue, Mike Griebel had been coaching football at Heritage High for 28 years. His program had had many great teams in those three decades as well as a tradition of finishing in the top half of their conference, but in 2005 the team was struggling. “I needed something fresh, something new,” says Griebel. “We’d just gone 1-9 and 2-8 – we’d never had that happen to us before – and then we had only four wins in 2006. We’ve always been at least .500, so I said, ‘We’re going in the wrong direction.’ As a result, I needed to do what a new coach would do if he came in here.

I knew that BFS had a good program, but I’d never felt the need to try it because our system wasn’t broken.” Changing direction and going with BFS was a great decision. In 2007 Heritage won 10 games and made it to the state quarterfinals, and the following year they once again won 10 games and made it to the state quarterfinals. In 2009 they reeled off 13 straight victories and won their first-ever state title. In contrast to veteran coach Griebel’s pre-clinic experience, Brian Pottinger faced a different challenge. At the time Pottinger accepted his first A BFS clinic is an amazing learning experience for both athletes and coaches.

FEATURE STORY head coaching job at Reedsburg Area High School in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, the football team was on a 0-33 losing streak, and the previous two years they’d won a total of only six games. So Coach Pottinger held a BFS clinic and a Be an 11 seminar, and he made a commitment to hold a BFS clinic every two years. The result? During his first two seasons (2006 and 2007) his teams won a total of eight games. In 2008 they finished with 10 wins and finished second in the state, and the following year they won 11 games and the state championship. Says Pottinger, “We truly feel like BFS has given us the mental and physical edge to compete at a high level.”

In the year following a BFS clinic, schools that have had a clinic average two more football wins per season and reduce injuries by half. Amazingly, over 350 high schools have won state football championships after their BFS clinic. BFS helps teams achieve these results by getting all the athletes and coaches from every sport on the same page. When a school unifies all sports under one total strength and conditioning program, the football program benefits, and so does every other sport.

In contrast, in a high school situation that is not unified, after a football season the athletes often move into other sports programs and may participate in a weight workout that is radically different from whatever was used before and during the football season. Some sport coaches, especially in basketball and baseball, do not bother with weight training at all, preferring to spend their time on sport skills. Although BFS is a program for athletes of high school age and younger, college coaches recognize the value of BFS.

Here is what Chris Carlisle, former head strength coach at the University of Southern California, has to say about BFS: “I was lucky enough to see Coach Shepard in Nebraska when I was coaching in Dodge, Nebraska, back in 1985; and BFS Coach Jim Brown from Poplar Bluff came and helped me when I was at Blytheville. I think the BFS program is organized in such a way that it is instructive and constructive for the high school situation. If you want to add bells and whistles, that’s when you go to the colleges and pick up parts of their program. But I think that as far as a high school program goes, BFS is tremendous.

In fact, if you look at your program and you look at my program, there are a lot of commonalities – we even do the Dot system that was developed by BFS.” Dr. Greg Shepard, BFS Founder/ CEO, started doing clinics back in 1976. Even today, BFS clinics remain the backbone of the company. Dr. Shepard has seen a lot of workouts for high school football games come and go, but none have enjoyed the success of BFS. With 35 years of championships, you know BFS is here to stay!

Character education and team building are the unique aspects of a Be an 11 seminar.

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From BFS Magazine — November/December 2011. Part of the BFS Magazine Archive (1980–2014).