D3football.com Podcast 407 Extra: David Blake, Bethany (W.Va.) [20:08-25:08]

of our athletic facilities, up the gym, run down that across the steps, down the other side of the steps, power back through the building, through the indoor, you know, and once we get back to the indoor, we do push-up setups, whatever, jumping jacks, a lot of jumping jacks, you know, lunges, leap frogs, you name it, bunny hops. And so we want, basically, we want to break the guys down all the way and then build them all the way back on. And it was one of those things that was the best of times it was the worst of times for the boys. But on the back end of it, though, we started there, of course, we're in West Virginia. So we found a really, really nice, steep, long hill where, you know, we got a lot of good working on that hill. And so when we brought new coaches on staff, they had to do the hills well. Because if you were going to be in the mud, these boys, you had to be in the mud with the boys. Wow. And so that's how we did it. That's, you know, then, as the weather got better, better, you know, when we got outside, we started getting the barbecues and everything else with them and it's been a different kind of camaraderie. Did you lose guys in that process, I assume, guys, you know, wash out or whatever? The opposite. Yeah. Wow. You know, it took over a roster of 38, finished spring ball with, you know, put over 90. Yeah. So how did you, some of that is like re-recruiting guys off your campus? They're obviously re-recruiting guys and guys right too. Yeah. Yeah. Portal guys, you know, did a nice job in the portal off the rip and then, you know, we've been pretty quiet, you know, this is actually the first time I've mentioned it publicly, you know, how we've been recruiting and, you know, you know, I got a large social media flying. So a lot of people assume that I was going to be pumping this stuff out all the time. Yeah. Nope. Black flags, column buttons type stuff, you know, we're just, we're working. Okay. Right. That was one of the things that definitely I think popped right off the page at me when the announcement was that you were hired and this is what back at the end of December, I guess, right before the holidays is like the, right, the number of followers you bring to the conversation and it's interesting to hear you say that you're leveraging them maybe in a different way than one might expect. Absolutely. We let the, you know, kind of the hills and the streets do the talking right now. And, you know, in the other thing, we, you know, kind of talk about how guys were bought in. We did a lot of auditory queuing throughout our practice cycle, the way we practiced. So everything we did, the teach in our point and purpose, how we want to practice. And so when we go out each morning, you know, for our spring ball practice or our morning workouts for our different phases, right? We would have, depending on what the period was in the tempo of the period, the music would reflect it. And then so on a certain type of music would come on. That would be that period of practice. Okay. So if we're doing a, you know, let's just say our start out with our pre-practice ending. They asked, limbering up a little bit, a little bit of country music, a little bit of southern rock, that kind of thing. Okay. And then we go into our group period, you know, offensively on that side, working their plays defensively on this side, working their plays, you know, you know, stuff on trash cans, that kind of work just, you know, routes on, you know, offense on air, defense on air, just don't work on trash cans kind of thing. During that, we'd be playing symphony music, we'd be playing, you know, Mark Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, that kind of thing, we'd get into, you know, Godfather soundtrack, last of the Mohican soundtrack, you know, that type of deep, psyche, you know, intense thought-type music, thought-provoking music. Okay. So they're really just queuing into what was going, being taught within the schematics of the offense or the defense. And then we'd go into our pre-practice stretch and stretch, that becomes more up tempo, you know, it is a, you know, just a little bit of party music. Guys are getting loose, guys are stretching out, the periods are starting to go. And then we would do a tempo teach period, right off the rip, to teach our offense and our defense, how we want the guys to get lined up to the speed. Okay. So as we had this period going, how quickly we wanted guys just to get lined up and get set for the next play, we're playing music with over 160 beats per minute. High intensity, techno, music, that kind of thing. The kind of stuff that guys like me who are old and fat and slow want to run to in order to try to keep their pace up, right? Yeah, yes indeed. Yeah. You know, but we had that boombox right behind our quarterback. So he's trying to get a signal from the, from our OC and we're just trying to do everything we can to mentally scramble in a little bit. Okay. And we come out of that, we go into a special teams period. And, you know, depending on what we're doing, getting guys, you know, running lanes, you know, firing off, you know, you're, you're, your net system on a punk team that those type of looks, we're just playing like hardcore death metal, just the angriest sounding music possible just to get guys violent. Okay. And then, you know, continue on through the different periods back to Andy. This is more, more country music, a little bit, you know, and still moving around a good