Ballou Returns to IU Weight Room with Innovative Approach
1/17/2018 2:57:00 PM | Football
By Andy Graham
IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - It is an uplifting memory. Literally.
For the guy now orchestrating the uplifting going on in Indiana's football weight room.
David Ballou first came to IU in the autumn of 1996 as a fullback out of Avon, a member of what ended up being coach Bill Mallory's final recruiting class.
As such Ballou was at West Lafayette that Nov. 23 as the Hoosiers broke open a close game after halftime to romp home with the 33-16 Old Oaken Bucket win over Purdue that capped Mallory's remarkable coaching career.
That day provided Ballou with the first recollection from his playing career that came to mind while meeting the media Sunday as the Hoosiers' new strength and conditioning coach.
"For a single memory that probably stands out, it's Coach Mal's last Bucket game, and carrying him off the field," Ballou said. "To this day, I remember that vividly. We lifted him up, carried him off the field and into the locker room and celebrated our butts off.
"It was almost like we'd just won the Rose Bowl, because we were just so happy to be able to send him out on that note. We still talk about that. I've had a lot of guys call me the past couple of weeks, since the news broke I was coming back to IU, and that comes up."
Ballou also mentioned an abiding and more general memory from his Hoosier career – watching Antwaan Randle El play quarterback.
"The guy was 185 or 190 pounds playing option quarterback in the Big Ten," Ballou said. "Some of the things he did on a football field, from an athletic perspective ... I just remember saying, 'Wow,' pretty much on a daily basis. Not just in practice, obviously, but on game day.
"You talk speed, change of direction, toughness. Watching that kid play was awesome. He changed direction better, at game speed, better than
I've ever seen from anybody else. Obviously, that transferred over into the NFL, too. The kid was a special talent."
So there is that uplifting memory of Mallory. And perhaps even more illustrative to what Ballou now brings to the IU program are the memories of a great athlete with dazzling speed, quickness and durability.
Because Ballou and colleague Dr. Matt Rhea were brought to IU by head coach Tom Allen for a lot of reasons, but most certainly in keeping with a primary Allen emphasis regarding this off-season:
Speed.
Allen put a premium on speed with his 2018 recruiting class, 23 members of which were announced during the December early signing period. And he wants to make those fast guys faster.
"Absolutely," Allen said Sunday. "We addressed speed with this class. And we're really excited about that. Because if you want 'em fast, recruit 'em fast. If you want 'em big, recruit 'em big. We really focused on size a year ago, by design, and we focused on a lot of speed with this class, by design.
"But, once you get them here, you obviously want to develop that speed – you can always get faster. That's where coach Ballou and Dr. Rhea come in. It's a speed game. The game is played in space, and it continues to grow in that area, and I don't see that changing."
Ballou and Rhea pioneered a science-based, data-driven approach to athletic development, strength and conditioning while working together at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. – a place Ballou characterized as a "Disneyland for athletes."
IMG, funded in part by the William Morris Agency, attracts elite athletes from youth, prep, college and professional ranks. Among a great many things, it harbors a boarding school and fields its own competitive prep teams, four- and five-star prospects culled from across the country. It trains NFL players, and NFL Draft prospects headed to the NFL Combine.
While sharing office space there, Ballou and sports scientist Rhea developed techniques showing that empirical methodology could effectively boost speed and overall performance while also preventing injury.
"IMG was almost like a huge science lab for us," Ballou said. "You get the best of the best guys, and the resources to go try these things out and see what works."
IMG's prep football team went from zero players running close to a 4.5-second 40-yard dash to having seven running under that time in one year under Ballou and Rhea. And 21 of the 22 players who started the 2016 season opener at IMG also started the season finale.
Then Ballou left last year for Notre Dame, where he helped the Irish spend a much healthier and productive fall in 2017, going from a 4-8 season to a 10-3 campaign capped by a Citrus Bowl win over LSU.
"You go to a place like Notre Dame and you use those things and it's, 'Yeah, this works at a high level.' " Ballou said. "So I'm excited. And, obviously, I want this (IU) team, this program, this university to win. I feel a sense of urgency, coming here, to help get this thing done.
"We're already off to a good start. The guys are coachable. They have good attitudes."
Indiana's players are already learning, and IU fans will likely start getting to know, terms such as "GPS" and "Catapult" applied to athletic development.
It's perhaps somewhat akin to what IU folks are already seeing from the virtual-reality, cutting-edge computer broadcast technology being pioneered at the school's Mark Cuban Center.
Catapult Systems is an Australian company that specializes in wearable technology for athletes. Whereas GPS technology provides external sensors to precisely gauge where athletes are, in terms of positioning, Catapult augments and complements that with inertial sensors – accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes – small devices that send up to
800-900 data points per second into the analytics engine.
The Catapult algorithms are independently analyzed. They seem to work.
"You're able to come up with strategies and techniques that, from an analytical standpoint, a data standpoint, measure things you're trying to get done," Ballou said. "So when we got to IMG, we kind of went crazy on it. And I think I was able to develop a system.
"I was able to work with the head of sports science, Dr. Matt Rhea, who I brought here. When Tom called me, I called Matt. I made sure we got him on board. I went out and got the smartest, best guy regarding human performance I knew to bring to the university that I love, to help us win.
"Matt has spent the last two decades, 20 full years, studying speed. How to improve speed. How to attack speed. And what a lot of people don't understand is that speed is fixed, the majority of time, in the weight room. The things you do, how you program, in the weight room."
And the lavish weight room in which he now works is far cry from the one Ballou knew as a Hoosier player. It's five times bigger, for one thing.
The 25,000-square-foot facility that occupies a chunk of ground-floor space in Memorial Stadium's North End Zone Complex features 150 equipment stations and, among a host of other equipment, 40 tons of free weights.
Soon to come on-line, also, is the South End Zone Complex. When completed by next fall, it will fully enclose what IU is calling its "Circle of Excellence" designed to meet every need of student-athletes within the inner sanctum of the stadium. It will provide further and enhanced facilities in terms of academics, medical treatment, nutrition and other areas.
It should all provide a congenial context for Ballou and Rhea.
"Having the facilities and infrastructure to help you dive into those things (we do) is critical in this day and age," Ballou said. "We will have numbers to gauge it and we will track it.
"We will rank our guys. We know where a high-level college athlete, a high-level football player, should be at. Our guys are going to know exactly where in position they fall in line, with what these modes are. We are going to use a lot of data and kind of paint a picture for our guys of where we need to go."
Ballou elaborated a bit, in terms of specifics.
"We'll look left-to-right, left leg to right leg, for example," Ballou said. "We'll put them in different performance tests, and we'll measure power output form the left leg to the right leg.
We'll be able to tell if you have a 12 to 15 percent deficit in your left leg, then we're going to find out why. Not only find out why, but we'll know how to go fix it.
"When you go fix these things, you can get the ratio perfect and performance drives up. Then speed goes up. You're able to stay injury-free. These are things, if not attacked, then you get to Week 6, 7, 8, 9 of the season and it starts rolling on top of each other, and now you're injured. Now you're beat up and you don't have what you had in Weeks 1, 2 and 3."
That sounds like music to Hoosier ears, especially after an injury-ravaged 2017 season, remarkable for both the number and variety of physical maladies dealt with by IU players.
"By fixing these weakness and flaws, that in turn drives up performance, but it also helps keep these guys injury-free," Ballou said. "I think that's one of the things I've been most proud of these last three seasons, at IMG and at Notre Dame, is our guys have been able to stay in the game more and stay active till the end of the season."
But now Ballou is especially proud to be working for his alma mater and for Tom Allen, who he got to know during 14 years as a strength coach at Avon while Allen was head coach at
Ben Davis in Indianapolis.
And the personal ties to Bloomington are extensive. Ballou married Bloomington native Leah Horn in 2002. She was the 1998 Monroe County Fair Queen and a track standout at both
Bloomington High School North and IU.
"It's good to be back home," Ballou said. "I consider this home. Grew up in Indianapolis, but was fortunate enough to get a chance to come to school here, play here. I met my wife here.
"So we consider Bloomington our home. I love this university. So when Tom (Allen) called, it was a no-brainer for me."
Ballou made that decision fast.
And that's what he now intends to make IU's football team.
And all the better to make some lasting memories.
IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - It is an uplifting memory. Literally.
For the guy now orchestrating the uplifting going on in Indiana's football weight room.
David Ballou first came to IU in the autumn of 1996 as a fullback out of Avon, a member of what ended up being coach Bill Mallory's final recruiting class.
As such Ballou was at West Lafayette that Nov. 23 as the Hoosiers broke open a close game after halftime to romp home with the 33-16 Old Oaken Bucket win over Purdue that capped Mallory's remarkable coaching career.
That day provided Ballou with the first recollection from his playing career that came to mind while meeting the media Sunday as the Hoosiers' new strength and conditioning coach.
"For a single memory that probably stands out, it's Coach Mal's last Bucket game, and carrying him off the field," Ballou said. "To this day, I remember that vividly. We lifted him up, carried him off the field and into the locker room and celebrated our butts off.
"It was almost like we'd just won the Rose Bowl, because we were just so happy to be able to send him out on that note. We still talk about that. I've had a lot of guys call me the past couple of weeks, since the news broke I was coming back to IU, and that comes up."
Ballou also mentioned an abiding and more general memory from his Hoosier career – watching Antwaan Randle El play quarterback.
"The guy was 185 or 190 pounds playing option quarterback in the Big Ten," Ballou said. "Some of the things he did on a football field, from an athletic perspective ... I just remember saying, 'Wow,' pretty much on a daily basis. Not just in practice, obviously, but on game day.
"You talk speed, change of direction, toughness. Watching that kid play was awesome. He changed direction better, at game speed, better than
I've ever seen from anybody else. Obviously, that transferred over into the NFL, too. The kid was a special talent."
So there is that uplifting memory of Mallory. And perhaps even more illustrative to what Ballou now brings to the IU program are the memories of a great athlete with dazzling speed, quickness and durability.
Because Ballou and colleague Dr. Matt Rhea were brought to IU by head coach Tom Allen for a lot of reasons, but most certainly in keeping with a primary Allen emphasis regarding this off-season:
Speed.
Allen put a premium on speed with his 2018 recruiting class, 23 members of which were announced during the December early signing period. And he wants to make those fast guys faster.
"Absolutely," Allen said Sunday. "We addressed speed with this class. And we're really excited about that. Because if you want 'em fast, recruit 'em fast. If you want 'em big, recruit 'em big. We really focused on size a year ago, by design, and we focused on a lot of speed with this class, by design.
"But, once you get them here, you obviously want to develop that speed – you can always get faster. That's where coach Ballou and Dr. Rhea come in. It's a speed game. The game is played in space, and it continues to grow in that area, and I don't see that changing."
Ballou and Rhea pioneered a science-based, data-driven approach to athletic development, strength and conditioning while working together at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. – a place Ballou characterized as a "Disneyland for athletes."
IMG, funded in part by the William Morris Agency, attracts elite athletes from youth, prep, college and professional ranks. Among a great many things, it harbors a boarding school and fields its own competitive prep teams, four- and five-star prospects culled from across the country. It trains NFL players, and NFL Draft prospects headed to the NFL Combine.
While sharing office space there, Ballou and sports scientist Rhea developed techniques showing that empirical methodology could effectively boost speed and overall performance while also preventing injury.
"IMG was almost like a huge science lab for us," Ballou said. "You get the best of the best guys, and the resources to go try these things out and see what works."
IMG's prep football team went from zero players running close to a 4.5-second 40-yard dash to having seven running under that time in one year under Ballou and Rhea. And 21 of the 22 players who started the 2016 season opener at IMG also started the season finale.
Then Ballou left last year for Notre Dame, where he helped the Irish spend a much healthier and productive fall in 2017, going from a 4-8 season to a 10-3 campaign capped by a Citrus Bowl win over LSU.
"You go to a place like Notre Dame and you use those things and it's, 'Yeah, this works at a high level.' " Ballou said. "So I'm excited. And, obviously, I want this (IU) team, this program, this university to win. I feel a sense of urgency, coming here, to help get this thing done.
"We're already off to a good start. The guys are coachable. They have good attitudes."
Indiana's players are already learning, and IU fans will likely start getting to know, terms such as "GPS" and "Catapult" applied to athletic development.
It's perhaps somewhat akin to what IU folks are already seeing from the virtual-reality, cutting-edge computer broadcast technology being pioneered at the school's Mark Cuban Center.
Catapult Systems is an Australian company that specializes in wearable technology for athletes. Whereas GPS technology provides external sensors to precisely gauge where athletes are, in terms of positioning, Catapult augments and complements that with inertial sensors – accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes – small devices that send up to
800-900 data points per second into the analytics engine.
The Catapult algorithms are independently analyzed. They seem to work.
"You're able to come up with strategies and techniques that, from an analytical standpoint, a data standpoint, measure things you're trying to get done," Ballou said. "So when we got to IMG, we kind of went crazy on it. And I think I was able to develop a system.
"I was able to work with the head of sports science, Dr. Matt Rhea, who I brought here. When Tom called me, I called Matt. I made sure we got him on board. I went out and got the smartest, best guy regarding human performance I knew to bring to the university that I love, to help us win.
"Matt has spent the last two decades, 20 full years, studying speed. How to improve speed. How to attack speed. And what a lot of people don't understand is that speed is fixed, the majority of time, in the weight room. The things you do, how you program, in the weight room."
And the lavish weight room in which he now works is far cry from the one Ballou knew as a Hoosier player. It's five times bigger, for one thing.
The 25,000-square-foot facility that occupies a chunk of ground-floor space in Memorial Stadium's North End Zone Complex features 150 equipment stations and, among a host of other equipment, 40 tons of free weights.
Soon to come on-line, also, is the South End Zone Complex. When completed by next fall, it will fully enclose what IU is calling its "Circle of Excellence" designed to meet every need of student-athletes within the inner sanctum of the stadium. It will provide further and enhanced facilities in terms of academics, medical treatment, nutrition and other areas.
It should all provide a congenial context for Ballou and Rhea.
"Having the facilities and infrastructure to help you dive into those things (we do) is critical in this day and age," Ballou said. "We will have numbers to gauge it and we will track it.
"We will rank our guys. We know where a high-level college athlete, a high-level football player, should be at. Our guys are going to know exactly where in position they fall in line, with what these modes are. We are going to use a lot of data and kind of paint a picture for our guys of where we need to go."
Ballou elaborated a bit, in terms of specifics.
"We'll look left-to-right, left leg to right leg, for example," Ballou said. "We'll put them in different performance tests, and we'll measure power output form the left leg to the right leg.
We'll be able to tell if you have a 12 to 15 percent deficit in your left leg, then we're going to find out why. Not only find out why, but we'll know how to go fix it.
"When you go fix these things, you can get the ratio perfect and performance drives up. Then speed goes up. You're able to stay injury-free. These are things, if not attacked, then you get to Week 6, 7, 8, 9 of the season and it starts rolling on top of each other, and now you're injured. Now you're beat up and you don't have what you had in Weeks 1, 2 and 3."
That sounds like music to Hoosier ears, especially after an injury-ravaged 2017 season, remarkable for both the number and variety of physical maladies dealt with by IU players.
"By fixing these weakness and flaws, that in turn drives up performance, but it also helps keep these guys injury-free," Ballou said. "I think that's one of the things I've been most proud of these last three seasons, at IMG and at Notre Dame, is our guys have been able to stay in the game more and stay active till the end of the season."
But now Ballou is especially proud to be working for his alma mater and for Tom Allen, who he got to know during 14 years as a strength coach at Avon while Allen was head coach at
Ben Davis in Indianapolis.
And the personal ties to Bloomington are extensive. Ballou married Bloomington native Leah Horn in 2002. She was the 1998 Monroe County Fair Queen and a track standout at both
Bloomington High School North and IU.
"It's good to be back home," Ballou said. "I consider this home. Grew up in Indianapolis, but was fortunate enough to get a chance to come to school here, play here. I met my wife here.
"So we consider Bloomington our home. I love this university. So when Tom (Allen) called, it was a no-brainer for me."
Ballou made that decision fast.
And that's what he now intends to make IU's football team.
And all the better to make some lasting memories.
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