Recovery helps athletes more than you know. This year, Greenville’s football team has focused more on the recovery process of their athletes, keeping them healthy and fresh throughout the season. Many people are not aware of how much these student-athletes use their bodies on a daily basis whether it’s lifting, conditioning, practice, or performing on game days. Coach Schomaker, the head coach of Greenville’s football team, made it a priority for the players to recover after practices and games. Coach Schomaker wants his players’ bodies and minds to feel the best they possibly can through extra sessions of stretching the muscles and educating his players with the importance of nutrition. Mike Peppler, the university’s athletic trainer, plays a big role in the recovery process, letting the athletes know what procedure to take on in order to heal their bodies. This process will help the offensive players under Coach Flannery and the defensive players under Coach Bell to enter every game feeling as fresh as they possible can.
There are different phases to the recovery process that many would assume is something you do only after a game, but there is much more than that. Greenville football coaches brought in Coach Schomaker Sr. to inform the team on the foods they should be putting into their bodies before and after any physical activities. Other aspects of health he taught the team are how much rest they should get every night and what types of fluids they should put in their bodies. Schomaker Sr. always talks about the importance of sleep and nutrition. One thing that the football team is doing differently this year is rescheduling meetings to a more convenient time. Last season, there were team meetings every Tuesday that began at 9:30 pm and ended at 11:30 pm. The meeting are now shifted to 7:00 am, and the reason for that is to purposely give the players more time to get things done and gain more sleep. The coaches believe that the amount of sleep you get the day before will determine the amount of energy you will bring into everything that you do. For the Greenville Panthers, this is a big transition from the season before due to multiple players getting injured. Coach Schomaker said, “The reason for us as a program to focus a lot more on recovery and taking care of their bodies is because many players last year had major injuries that had a huge impact on the outcome of the season, and those injuries could of easily been prevented if we focused more on recovery work. Now we can only learn from that and make the corrections; everything is a process.” Below is an interview with Coach Schomaker Sr. about the importance of recovery and the daily fuel we put in our bodies everyday. He explains what the football team will be doing this season with recovery and nutrition in order to keep the team as healthy as possible.
Mike, good interview!