Gamecocks open up summer workouts

After a week of planning and parent meetings to start off June, the New Brockton Gamecocks football team finally got summer workouts underway on June 8.

New Brockton coach Zack Holmes said that during parent meetings last week he stressed the differences in this year’s summer workouts with the AHSAA’s new guidelines.

“I told the parents there is a lot more transitions built into these workouts than ever before,” Holmes said. “There’s going to be a lot of moving around and staying in those static groups and socially distanced out. There’s just more to it, more transition this year.”

Holmes said that New Brockton would not be using the locker rooms at all – players have to come to workouts dressed out and ready to go – and temperatures will be checked as players arrive every day.

The Gamecocks will be broken up into different groups with only 12 in the weight room at one time. There will also be other drills going on in Gamecock Stadium, as the groups rotate going into the weight room.

“It allows you to do some more things with speed training and agility that probably would have just been a football practice in the past,” Holmes said. “We can do more player development stuff, which is good.

“Another I hope that will be a (positive) side effect of this is it will add some rest time in between the different sessions. It’s important that we take care of our kids and approach it to where it’s sort of a gradual increase as we go.”

Holmes said acclimated his players back to the heat is a big focus early on in workouts.

“It’s not so much about conditioning as it as about getting them back into the groove of the movements and building back up that muscle memory and then move into the conditioning phase,” Holmes continued. “We have to get them acclimated back to the heat and being outside and that’s going to be really important.”

Holmes said that the Gamecocks will practice three weeks in July and then take the week of the Fourth of July off and return for three more weeks in July with fall camp opening up on July 27.