I went up to Allen to shoot a story on the football team, and their off-season workouts. It continues to amaze me how much time and dedication it takes to be a varsity football player. It's a year-round sport for sure.

The Allen school district actually hired a company - Performance Course - whose job it is to train athletes. The company works with several schools, including Southlake Carroll, Highland Park, and Flower Mound Marcus. They don't just train football players, it's for any athlete that wants to participate. And they start young - parents will send their kids there to begin athletic training.

The owner of Performance Course, Geno Pierce, said something interesting that I'm not going to be able to use in the story that airs on TV. He mentioned that when Eastern Bloc countries pick the best athletes, the first thing they do is train them to be better athletes, and then the work on the skill sets that are specific to whichever sport they are doing. Pierce said in America we have it backwards; we grow up playing sports first, but never really learn proper techniques for running, jumping, stopping, starting, etc.

Earlier this summer, I did a story on a few Prosper high school football players working out at the Michael Johnson Performance center. This is basically the same thing, except Performance Course doesn't have a home base - they do their training from the school's facility.

After shooting the story this morning, it got me thinking about my off-season workouts, back when I played high school football in Aurora, Illinois. I remember going to the summer weightlifting program between my freshman and sophomore years, and I just stood around doing nothing, because I wasn't sure what to do. We didn't have much hands-on coaching, even to teach us how to lift weights. The athletes up at Allen this morning were very regimented, they knew exactly where to be and what to do at every moment. It was a very efficient operation.

Feel free to share your experiences as a high school athlete. Where did you play high school football? What were your off-season programs like?

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