"Shoulders, shoulders, get your shoulders!" Penn strength and conditioning coach Jim Steel bellowed.
Clipboard in hand, Steel marked down the members of the football team as they entered the weight room and began their lifting routine.
Practice wasn't over when the team jogged off the Franklin Field turf. Rather, an hour of bench presses, free weights and push-ups awaited.
At the conclusion of each season, coach Al Bagnoli and his staff sit down and evaluate areas for improvement in the program. Coming off a 4-6 finish, the coaches decided some off-field aspects needed tweaking.
"One [area] was weight and strength attrition in the season," Bagnoli said. "And one was more body strength and flexibility, because we'd get plagued with a million hamstring pulls and tweaks. And you're always looking for functional speed, so we did that."
Starting with the winter workouts, the lifting groups got smaller and the regimen was more tailored to individual positions.
Bagnoli also asked Kim Cover, a nutritionist in the Penn health system, to give presentations on how to maintain body weight throughout a long season, complete with sample meal plans based on foods that could be found in the dining hall.
"Sometimes as a coach, you take things for granted - that kids understand about weight gain and weight loss more than they really do," Bagnoli said.
For Bagnoli's last two target areas, Steel recommended involving Jamie Cook, Penn's assistant men's track coach with a degree in Kinesiology and background in speed training.
Cook took the specialty players -- running backs, wide receivers and tight ends - and developed exercises that would focus on their posture, coordination, force application and neuromuscular training.
Cook woke up around 5 a.m. most mornings last spring to make it out for football practice and then tackle his track duties later in the day.
"You take the sport to its core," Cook said. "It's where they want to be lined up and where they want to go."
He felt that by understanding the physics behind the sport, the players could move better on the field.
As the benefits became apparent, Bagnoli asked Cook to involve the whole team. Cook developed a 25-minute warm-up routine that the Quakers carried through summer practice.
"We always went on two early morning runs," senior safety Jordan Manning said. "One run was more of a conditioning grunt run and we'd come out exhausted. So we were excited that Jamie was coming in to work with us."
Although the team didn't do the stretches as a group before last Saturday's game at Villanova, Manning did them on his own with a couple of other players.
Last week against the Wildcats, Manning said he felt better throughout the game and thought the conditioning paid off as the contest went into overtime.
Cook, who said he'd also be willing to help out other teams in the athletic community, must be pleased.
"My goal," Cook said, "is trying to get as much out of their bodies as possible."
