All Pumped Up

Muscle heads remember this scene from the movie "Pumping Iron," the '70s-era bodybuilding flick that made Arnold Schwarzenegger famous. Arnold saunters over to The Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, who is doing some last-minute biceps curls before the Mr. Olympia competition, and says, "Lou, you can stop now. You are big enough."

After the Jets were eliminated from the 2002 playoffs in Terminator-like fashion by the Raiders, their spindly coach, Herman Edwards, came to an entirely different conclusion. As a team, the Jets might have been big enough, but they certainly weren't strong enough. The physical dominance imposed on them by the Raiders led to subtle yet important changes in the team's strength and conditioning program.
 
Enter John Lott, the most important and longest-tenured member of the Jets' coaching staff, whom you've probably never even heard of until today.

"I learned one thing a long time ago from a man," said Lott, invoking what sounded like a Bill Parcells phrase last week in his first extensive interview in at least four years. "There's one thing all mankind responds to, and that's pressure. Some favorably, and some not."

This Lott guy is a piece of work. His gravelly voice got that way from screaming at everyone from Vinny Testaverde and Curtis Martin to Carl Lewis and Leroy Burrell. His resumé included a slew of Olympic gold medals and world records as the strength and conditioning coach of the famed Santa Monica Track Club when Parcells hired him to pump up the Jets in 1997.

On orders from Edwards, Lott restructured the team's offseason workouts this year, hoping to make the players fresher at the start of the season and stronger at the end. Two key changes made all the difference, according to several of the team's workout warriors. First, spring practices were moved to the end of the offseason, allowing the lifting program to progress uninterrupted. Also, Lott scrapped the previous schedule of four consecutive days in the gym to a four-day split - two on, one off, two on. "If you have a rest day on Wednesday," Lott said, "you feel like a million bucks on Thursday."

But if Edwards wanted a more physical team, why would Lott institute a program that caused so many players to lose weight? The results enjoyed by Chad Pennington, Anthony Becht and Santana Moss show there's a method to Lott's madness.

"I worked on my quickness and speed . . . and kept my strength with my weight down," said Becht, who dropped seven pounds to 263 and had what Lott called the team's best offseason.

Moss, a speedy yet injury-prone receiver and punt returner, needed to get stronger so his 5-9 frame could endure a whole season of punishment. He reported to camp weighing 185 pounds, about seven pounds lighter than last year. But Moss' bench press - 275 pounds four times - is "the strongest he's ever been," Lott said. When Moss lines up on Opening Day, he'll feel as though he were running routes last season with a 10-pound plate strapped to his back.

Then there is Pennington, who at 6-3 has gone from 229 pounds with 14 percent body fat as a rookie three years ago to 219 with 10 percent body fat today. He played at 223 last season. Like the others, Pennington is lifting the same or more at the reduced weight. His power clean - lifting a barbell from a squatting to standing position - is up slightly to 285 pounds four times. He's squatting 405 pounds, bench-pressing more than 300 and doing shoulder presses with 60-pound dumbbells. "We're splitting hairs here," Pennington said of his gains under the new workout schedule. "But these are the things that can give you that extra edge."

By altering the program, Lott now has every defensive lineman but one - Josh Evans - power cleaning more than 325 pounds. Same goes for the offensive linemen, with Kareem McKenzie leading the way at 385 pounds four times. More than 30 players on the team are cleaning more than 300 pounds.

"Those are freakish numbers," Lott said. "If you can get a guy with stamina and endurance squatting and cleaning a lot, he'll carry that over to the field because he'll be so explosive in his hips."

The changes in the weight room were viewed as a way to complement Lott's already world-class speed and endurance program. Many of the drills that Lott unleashed on the likes of Lewis and Burrell during the heyday of American track and field show up in his football workouts. It's been a natural progression for Lott, an All-American offensive lineman at North Texas who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1987.

He uses parachutes and bungee cords for resistance running and is a firm believer in plyometrics. The one- and two-legged leaping movements enhance balance and the explosive contraction of muscles while also emphasizing lengthening and stretching. Sprints and distance running are out; Lott combines elements of the two to minimize injuries. "Instead of going on a three-mile run, we'll run one lap around the football field," Lott said. "We'll do intervals, where I'll try to get their heart rate up, drop it, get it going again, and drop it. When you say guys are losing weight, they are, but we're not doing distance work. We're doing high-intensity work."

Not only can the players see a difference in the mirror, some say they can feel it after the first week of two-a-day practices. "Right now I feel as good as I did the first day, and you just don't do that," Pennington said. "My recovery time has been much better."

Indeed, the recovery time after the playoff loss in Oakland has been well spent.

Weight Watchers

Many Jets players have trimmed down in John Lott's revamped offseason conditioning program. Here are the biggest losers, all of whom have maintained or added strength at their new weights:

Last Year This Year Difference Anthony Becht 270 263 -7

Santana Moss 192 185 -7

Shaun Ellis 290 285 -5

Chad Pennington 223 219 -4

LaMont Jordan 229 225 -4