Today's Tidbit... Weight Training and the 1963 San Diego Chargers

Oct 17, 2024

Innovators innovate. They try new stuff and get a lot wrong, but they keep pushing the envelope. Some of their innovations prove helpful and become the norm, leading us to wonder how we survived without them.

People can argue whether Don Coryell or Sid Gillman fathered the modern, forward passing game, but Gillman is among the most influential figures in the style of football played today. Less appreciated is Gillman's contribution to weight training in football.

Sid Gillman was the third-year head coach of the San Diego Chargers when he hired professional football's first strength coach. Strength training is so ingrained in football today that we struggle to think of the game without S&C programs. Still, football existed for nearly a century before weightlifting received significant attention.

Conditioning, but not strength training, has been a core part of football since its start. Evert top college had multi-sport trainers who helped the crew, track, and football teams condition themselves.

Strength was a different story, and to the extent it became a concern, they addressed it with sport-specific drills like pushing the charging machine, which evolved into blocking and similar sleds.

Charging machines built strength and character just after the last century turned. (Yost, *Football for Player and Spectator, 1905)*

That attitude began to change in the 1950s as American weightlifters and Olympic athletes saw Europeans outcompete them, many of whom trained differently, including lifting weights.

The Chargers weight training facility at their training camp in Escondido.

One individual involved in the weightlifting mix was Alvin Roy, and he became one of the first Americans to advocate for weightlifting in football. Roy had success at Istrouna High School in Louisiana and then at LSU. Istrouna won the state football championship, and LSU won the national title. It certainly helped that Billy Cannon played for both teams, but both also had Alvin Roy.

Following Roy's success in Louisiana, Sid Gillman hired him to work for the San Diego Chargers before the 1963 season. Gillman initiated strength training in professional football, encouraging others to jump on board. Among his tools to inform and promote strength work among high school and college coaches was the book, World Champion San Diego Chargers Strength Program, "In And Out" Of Season, published after winning the American Football League championship in 1963.

Gillman was an offensive genius who had the sense to add Chuck Noll to his staff in 1960 and promote him to defensive coordinator in 1962.

Roy and Gillman used strength training techniques we consider suboptimal or counterproductive today. Still, they got the ball rolling, so everyone who spent time in a weight room should acknowledge their contributions.