Developing the Future
By Christy Cabrera Chirinos
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Christian Williams arrived at Miami as an All-American, a consensus four-star prospect and as one of the most highly recruited cornerbacks in the nation.
He walked into the weight room for his first workout as a Hurricane confident he was in shape and ready to play high-level college football.
It didn’t take him long to realize that he was, in essence, starting from scratch.
“It was a big shock,” Williams said with a laugh. “Coming from high school, where a workout is maybe 30 minutes long or an hour long, we came in the first day and we’re watching them warm up and I thought that was the workout. Then I saw them come back into the weight room and an hour later, they still weren’t done.
“It was a big shock, but I was glad it was like that. I knew that would get me better.”
Over the course of the last five months, that’s exactly what Williams says has happened.
While working with David Feeley, Miami’s Director of Strength & Conditioning, and 38 of his teammates as part of Miami’s developmental training group, Williams says he’s noticed that he’s become stronger, faster, leaner and more flexible – all things he knows will help him compete for playing time when the Hurricanes return to the practice field ahead of the 2020 season.
He isn’t the only one in Miami’s developmental group – a mixture of first-year and redshirt players who go through early-morning workouts together – who feels that way.
Like Williams, defensive tackle Jason Blissett, Jr. has embraced the workouts that have helped him reshape his body and lose 25 pounds. Linebacker Zach McCloud, who dealt with a wrist injury all through spring football earlier this year, has bulked up and improved his numbers in both the vertical and broad jump. Meanwhile, defensive end Jahfari Harvey has added 22 pounds of muscle since enrolling at Miami in January.
And Feeley believes those numbers, along with those of the other players in the developmental group, will only keep improving in the coming weeks before the offseason officially arrives.
But his players’ bodies aren’t the only things that change during Feeley’s workouts.
Minds do, too and bonds are formed.
“You want to find out if they want to be a Cane and really, the road to easy street goes right through the sewer. That’s what you want to put them through. They need to find out who wants to be here and who wants to be a great teammate and pull the other guys along,” Feeley said. “That’s really advantageous for us, to find out how this group will bond and how much they want to work for each other. This needs to be a cohesive group that will fight tooth and nail for each other and they are doing just that.”
Adds Blissett, “We have our own little group. We call ourselves ‘The 5:45 Group’ because that’s when we work out and things like that. … We chant that during practice, we chant that during lifts. We keep each other going because if you don’t have that, you’re not going to make it through it all. You have to have that camaraderie to be part of this group.”
Working through the developmental program is the first phase of a three-step process Feeley has created for the Hurricanes since he, too, joined Miami earlier this year.
Once new players arrive on campus, they are evaluated by not only Feeley and the rest of UM’s strength and conditioning staff, but the Hurricanes’ medical staff.
During their first year on campus, players go through the developmental program, where they learn to lift and get their first taste of what is expected of them in the weight room and beyond.
After that, the goal is to build on what the former newcomers gain.
“Years two and three are really the years where they take what they’ve learned and use it to live up to the expectations we have for them from a performance standpoint. And they work incredibly hard at it. They’re still in the growth phase,” Feeley said. “And then in year four, they’re now in their peak performance phase. That’s where we’re going to make them the most explosive and fastest version of themselves they can possibly be.”
All of that work, Feeley believes, will translate into success on the field. And he expects that come spring, the players who emerge from Miami’s developmental group will make their presence felt and contend for playing time.
“They’ve just trained for 16 weeks and the results that were gained in that time were nothing but positive,” Feeley said. “This developmental group is like a volcano. It keeps building and building and sooner or later, it’s going to erupt. There’s no way to stop it. And that’s the goal for all of the players who will come through our developmental program. Developing our players to their fullest potential is our No. 1 job and a significant priority for Coach [Manny] Diaz.”
Said Blissett, “Just amongst each other, we’ve been talking about it for a long time. Through this program, we know we’re going to be special … We’re excited. We see each other getting on the field, getting stronger, faster and moving better. … It’s just really exciting. We can’t wait. We’re really fired up.”
