All I can say is, "HOLY COW!!!"

This a little break from all of the Vick talk. Check out this article:

Mick's Bag: Weight and See
July 20, 2007
Mick Mixon
special to Panthers.com
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If you have a question for Mick's next Q&A, send it to [email protected].

Let me talk with just the women for a second.

Girls, are you aware that while watching a sporting event with virtually any man, the man looks at the great athletes on the field and sees...himself?

Grady Sizemore’s diving catch in the outfield for the Cleveland Indians? “Oh that was totally me in the 1996 Church League Softball playoffs.”

Tiger Woods holes out from a greenside bunker. “I hit the exact same shot in the member-guest at Occaneechee last summer. Center cut, right in the jar.”

Jeff Gordon takes the checkered flag. “Shoot, if my instructor hadn’t been asleep at the wheel at the Richard Petty Driving School, I’da gone twice that fast!”

What about the speed, the agility, the endurance and the 100 pounds of pure muscle that we lack? Look, let’s not cloud the issue with facts.

You see ladies, were it not for that knee injury in high school or that coach who, failing to recognize our talents, steered us away from the NBA and toward a career as an insurance adjuster, we could have had it all, baby.

So how would your weekend warrior husband fare if he were to wake up tomorrow morning as a member of the Carolina Panthers?

First, let’s get some shorts and a t-shirt on ol’ Top Jock and take him down to our weight room at Bank of America Stadium for some tests.

Can he load the bar with 410 pounds and then bench press it? Good. That puts him in the middle of the pack…of our running backs.

That’s right. The average bench press of all Panthers running backs is 410 pounds. That average jumps to 440 pounds for the defensive line and 450 for the offensive line. The strongest can push up about 100 pounds more than that! Defensive backs? They average 335 pounds.

How about the pull-up station, where players grab tightly taped towel ends, clamp a death grip on it and begin lifting their own body weight.

(Towel pull-ups are much harder than regular pull-ups because both grip and pulling strength and endurance are tested.)

If your hubby can do 10 in a row, he’s all-conference down at the YMCA. Panthers strength and conditioning coach Jerry Simmons would not be impressed, however. Our running backs and wide receivers average 30. We have a linebacker that can snap off 29 and an offensive lineman that busts out 25. The quarterbacks average 27!

Coach Simmons tests vertical leaping ability in the strictest way possible. Players are not allowed a step to gather themselves. It is just crouch and spring, period.

Panthers quarterbacks average 32.5 inches, enough to dunk a basketball. The top QB in this area has a vertical jump of 34 inches. The running backs average 35.5 with a best of 39.5. The wide receivers average just over 34 inches with a best of 40.5. The defensive line averages 31 with a best of 40.

“Considering the way we test, those are real good numbers,” said Coach Simmons.

All that hollering and yelling? That’s coming from the squat rack, one of the most intense and demanding of all football exercises.

The squat lift is simple and torturous. Players step under a weighted bar, center it on their shoulders and do a deep knee bend with it.

The strongest running back in this category squats 782 pounds. The top offensive lineman…886 pounds. Defensive line? 800 pounds. The strongest linebacker? 835 pounds.

“We have guys who squat 525 12 or 15 times,” said Coach Simmons, matter of factly.

“I’m always on them to get to parallel on their squats, because that is where you play football…low.”

So ladies, if the man in your life played even one down of high school football, he’s almost certainly courageous, competitive and a fine athlete.

NFL games, however, are played by supermen.

 

25 from an offensive lineman on the towel pull up is impressive

 

Im guessing Pep had the 40" vertical for the DL

 

you'd have to help me with the LB who was squatting 800+, given that we have almost nothing but short, small LBs

 

That would be an improvement over his 36.5 inch Pro Day.

http://probowl.superbowl.com/draft/2002/DL_ratings.html

 

I'm pretty certain it's Kemo.

 

Mathis?

 

Morgan -- fresh out of the hyperbaric chamber.

 

My guess would be Seward.

 

Being short helps immensely on squats.