Couch: What happens when a 30-something columnist joins MSU football's summer workouts

This column was originally published on June 8, 2013. 

EAST LANSING – The steps at Spartan Stadium seemed endless.

Meanwhile, my legs — and whatever internal mechanism keeps a person from throwing up — had almost nothing left.

"Three more," Ken Mannie yelled.

As in three more trips up the lower bowl steps. Every step. As fast as could be done. With a football player, albeit a kicker, racing up behind me.

Just don't fall and don't vomit, I thought to myself, as I gingerly headed back down on wobbly legs for another climb. Or worse, don't tumble into your own vomit.

I had asked for this. To come back for Thursday's conditioning workout with Michigan State's football team. Tuesday's workout — focusing on running mechanics and mobility — left me with an inflated ego. That and the kind words from MSU's head strength and conditioning coach regarding my athleticism and fitness.

I knew better. Mannie's compliments were relative to low expectations and what I faced Tuesday was as doable for a 33-year-old layman as it gets in the world of major college football.

Thursday took every last ounce of the back end of my athletic prime to pull through.

If you're going to write about someone or a group of people — be it with praise or criticism — I believe you ought to do your best to understand their experiences.

This was only a snapshot — two of their afternoons in a long summer of preparing for a violent grind. But it was legit. A genuine heart-, leg- and gut-felt look at what MSU's players go through in hopes of winning on Saturdays in the fall.

I'll forever be grateful I missed Monday afternoon's conditioning session — 10 300-yard timed near-sprints with little recovery — on the first day of seven weeks of summer training.

Such a workout was exactly my fear in the week leading up to Tuesday. Playing full-court hoops two or three times a week doesn't prepare a person for the worst of these workouts. I'd learned this during a similar conditioning challenge six years earlier while covering Western Michigan University. That, however, was on the other end of my athletic prime.

The better end.

In the seven days after getting the go-ahead from MSU, I did all I could to prepare. I was the guy running 80-yard sprints at Marshall Park in Lansing last week; and Monday, at Huskie Stadium in DeKalb., Ill. (on assignment for another story), sprinting across the Northern Illinois University field. Security there is superb.

Tuesday, I was happy to see my level of physical fitness and athletic ability was enough not to embarrass myself or slow MSU's players.

"You're actually much more agile than I thought you were going to be," Mannie said after my initial workout. "You're actually more quick-twitch than I thought you were going to be. You certainly have a level of fitness higher than I thought it was going to be.

"Now, am I going to say you're a Division I-type athlete? That might be pushing the envelope a little too far. But I will tell you this, you were impressive."

That quote was destined for this column and, someday, my tombstone.

No defensive back

Tuesday began with cornerback Darqueze Dennard grinning and saying — and I'm paraphrasing — "You're with us."

There are lots of positions I am not in football. Defensive back is probably at the top of that list.

Through agility drills (with cones), footwork stations (with a painted ground ladder) and running, turning and jumping through the sandpit, I sort of kept pace. Being with the DBs boosted my swagger and, aiding my cause, the kickers, punters and long snappers were part of our group.

All of it was interesting, calculated and occasionally tiring. But not meant to test lung capacity.

The idea, for Mannie and his staff, is not to burn the players out. It's to help them win in three months. It's to build their speed, endurance, strength, flexibility, shorten their needed recovery time and test their limits of mental toughness.

To get there, grueling conditioning days are followed by tempo and technique days, followed by rest days, followed by more pushing the heart and lungs and then, lastly, a power day. In the old days, Mannie said, his conditioning programs were 8-10 weeks, five days a week and it was "a brutal grind."

In Mannie's 19th season, nutrition, sleep and recovery are emphasized and understood more than ever and implemented as a significant part of the preparation.

Heeding this advice, I definitely over-recovered on Wednesday.

From June 2015 (two years later):  Couch: 5K run provides humbling truth about fitness

A true test of fitness

It's interesting how fear interacts with self-discipline.

My only pre-workout meal on Thursday: plain oatmeal (no sugar, or honey, or berries, or hearty combination of all three) and about a gallon of water.

If I could capture that sense of nervousness every day, I'd look different. So would the contents of my refrigerator.

I knew Thursday would be more difficult, a true test of my fitness and delusional refusal to accept age as a factor.

MSU's players lift weights before these runs. Some do so as early as before 6 a.m., so they can work from 8 a.m.-noon, before coming back for another workout.

These summer days are when teams are made. Not just in strength and conditioning, but in fellowship built with trust and respect.

In just two days, as an outsider, I could feel that.

I ran with the "skill" guys again on Thursday. Naturally.

On this day, that was the defensive backs, wideouts, quarterbacks, running backs, linebackers and, most importantly, again, the specialists — the guys who keep me from being paired in a foot race with Bennie Fowler.

The workout began with sprints up a ramp at Spartan Stadium.

No issue there. And, for a moment, I began to think I belonged. That 33 years old and 21 weren't so different. That speed (and probably strength) was all that separated me from these high-major Division I athletes.

Then we hit the steps — two lines, a stadium section apart.

I can't remember how many times we ran to the top — sometimes hitting every step, sometimes hopping up the first few, a couple times skipping over one or two — but I remember the moment I realized I might puke.

And I recall being thankful for the words of assistant strength and conditioning coach Lorenzo Guess, standing near the top, telling me, as I remember it, not to slow down. And for the woman, at the bottom, who kept setting up the water bottles. And for Mannie, who critiqued my footwork as if I mattered. And for redshirt freshman kicker Kevin Cronin, behind me, encouraging me to keep moving and reminding me I could make it a few more climbs.

I'm not sure I believed him — or he believed it — but it was a nice thought. And needed.

Even as my legs and stomach felt less steady, even after hearing, "Three more!" from Mannie, I didn't regret coming back. This, in essence, was what I was seeking. This understanding, however slight. One that can only be had if it's felt in the gut.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.