April 5, 2018

The work never stops for CFL players

Charleston Hughes’ off-season doesn’t include many off-days.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders defensive end starts training right after one CFL season ends in preparation for the next one.

In Hughes’ case, 2018 will be his 11th campaign in the league.

“Most of the time, I get right back into it (shortly after a season ends),” says Hughes, 34. “I feel like if you take time off, you get lazy — and getting used to getting lazy is easy.”

In other words, football season doesn’t really end for Hughes or his counterparts. A team’s season may last from training camp in May to the playoffs in November, but a player’s work schedule usually covers the other months of the year.

Fans may not realize how much effort goes into the off-season, but Roughriders defensive end Willie Jefferson hopes they appreciate it.

“When they see me during the regular season, I hope they don’t think I was sitting at home in the off-season eating popcorn waiting for the season to come around,” Jefferson says. “I was at home working out, running and getting my body right to play for them.”

For Hughes, it has been that way for years.

Football players face what he calls “extreme temptations” during the off-season, but they also have to meet the obligations of their profession. One of those responsibilities is preparing their bodies to take the physical pounding associated with a full season in a collision sport.

Not surprisingly, that can be difficult.

“A lot of people don’t realize that you’ve got to wake up every morning and work out whether you feel good or not,” Hughes says. “You could be sick and have the flu, but it’s like, ‘Man, I can only have the flu for so long. I’ve still got to go work out.’

“Most people are down and out when they have the flu and they’re tapped out for three days. For me, I can only be tapped out for a day and then the next day I’ve got to work out, no matter what.”

•••

Roughriders offensive lineman Brendon LaBatte is feeling good as he heads for his 11th CFL season.

In the early days of his career, LaBatte would head to Arizona to train with players who were going to scouting combines and who thus were focused on becoming better overall athletes.

Years later, LaBatte realizes he was doing things incorrectly.

“I looked the best I’ve ever looked and was moving as well as I’ve ever moved, but I went out to the field and none of it transferred,” recalls the 31-year-old product of Weyburn. “I was struggling because I didn’t put the effort in on the technique.

“That’s the toughest thing in the off-season: There are only so many hours that you can physically work your body and you’ve got to try to balance everything. There’s technique work. There’s cardio. You have to find that happy medium where you’re touching everything and making gains in everything. You’re not just abandoning one to try to shine up another.”

LaBatte’s off-season training program changed in early 2016, when he moved from Radville to Regina.

Instead of working out by himself like he had been doing in small-town Saskatchewan, he had teammates in Regina who could push him out of his comfort zone. Also helping in that area was Roughriders strength and conditioning co-ordinator Clint Spencer, who favours a weightlifting program that LaBatte says is “pretty aggressive.”

“At first, I thought I was wearing my body out, but it’s helping out quite a bit to lift heavier weights more often,” the 6-foot-4, 320-pound LaBatte says. “I was getting to that complacent point in a guy’s career where you just lift within your normal safety boundaries. Clint really kicked me out of that and it has been a good thing.

“It hurt a lot for the first off-season and then in the last two off-seasons it has been really good.”

LaBatte feels a difference in his ankles and knees and an improvement in his range of motion as a result of Spencer’s program. The veteran O-lineman has set personal bests in all of his lifts since working with Spencer — and after some humble beginnings.

“When I first went in there, Clint was spotting me with one hand, not even watching me lift,” LaBatte says with a chuckle. “That’s pretty degrading. You’ve been an O-lineman for eight years of professional football and you don’t even have this guy’s attention to put both hands on the bar.

“You start at ground level and keep working away at it. I think it’s going to add some years to the end of my career if I keep doing this stuff. It forces you to stay young. It’s always thought that lifting heavy is a young man’s game, that ‘Once we get out of college, we don’t do it anymore.’ But there are a lot of benefits to doing it, I know that. I’ve felt them.”

•••

LaBatte does some new exercises, but the majority of the things on his to-do list have been done by football players for decades. Squats, cleans and bench presses remain his meat and potatoes.

Hughes also follows what for him has become a familiar path.

“My off-season hasn’t changed much,” the 6-foot-1, 246-pounder says. “I try to remain consistent and figure out what I need to do to get better as a player. Most of the time, that’s what I stick to (in the off-season).”

Hughes works out five times a week, the same frequency at which he has trained since breaking into the CFL in 2008. Changes in technology haven’t affected his regimen, nor have different ideas about what’s effective.

“You’ve got to do what got you there,” says Hughes, who has led the CFL in sacks three times in his career — including each of the past two seasons. “If how I’m successful and how I keep performing year in and year out is because of what I’ve done in the past, then I’ve got to stick to what I’ve done before.”

Jefferson has changed with the times, at least to some extent.

He used to train five times a week and get rehab twice a month, but now he has moved to four workouts and one rehab session per week. The 27-year-old also has found a gym where he can do everything in one place and a personal trainer whom he trusts.

“It’s pretty much the same stuff I was doing when I was younger; it’s just more advanced and more organized,” says the 6-foot-6, 245-pound Jefferson, who’s entering his fifth CFL season.

“I was always doing bench, squat, lunges and that kind of thing. Now it’s more full-body workouts, like plyometrics, box jumps, resistance bench and things like that. I condition a lot better and I train a lot better — and I eat a lot better, too.”

For the most part, Jefferson does the things he has done throughout his career. Now, however, he follows a different timetable.

“It’s always going to be quick and it’s going to be effective,” says Jefferson, whose typical daily workout was featured in a CFL.ca video in March. “It’s never going to be long and drawn out.”

Whatever workout a player prefers, its effectiveness will be determined in the coming months. And that proof won’t be found in a gym.

“Like we say in the racing world, ‘Run what you brung and hope you brought enough,’ ” says LaBatte, an avid race-car driver. “That’s really what it is: You work five or six months in the off-season to get yourself to the best version that you can be and then you see where it stacks up come May.”