Indiana University Athletics
A Day at Camp: Justin Frye
8/8/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 8, 2006
As the Hoosiers started their second day of practice Tuesday, Aug. 8, senior offensive lineman Justin Frye took a few minutes to talk to IUHOOSIERS.com about his preseason routine.
We got the knock on the door this morning about 6:12, and the first thing you think is `oh my gosh, it's here already.' We ate breakfast, and I had some eggs, biscuits and gravy, and waffles. They have a nice waffle machine (at the hotel).
Then we went to film study. That took about two hours this morning. There weren't a lot of freshman orientation activities that disrupted us, so we got a lot done.
After watching a lot of film, we took a two-hour break when players could go to class.
Everyone came back for lunch at noon. After lunch, we went over and watched more film, going through the playbook some. I watched footwork across the board. It's difficult on the first day, because we're not in pads and we're not hitting, so it's a lot of technique. We only had two periods we could watch, so it wasn't anything too big.
After that, we met again. The O-line was the only group to meet at two. Guys were coming through the locker room about two o'clock and (the O-line) is getting taped and ready to go, while everyone else didn't get there until four. Everyone was asking what we were doing. We have a lot of young guys, with seven freshmen. Our seven `blocks of limestone,' as we call them right now. We want to mold them into `sheetrock' so they're not crumbling, so we had the extra meeting.
At four, we met with special teams. We had meetings for about six hours total today, and are going back again after practice.
We had a good practice today. It was high tempo. It's hard to adjust without pads. You try to do things, but the defense can do more because we're not able to block as much without pads on. The practice is more of a quick pace than a grind. We worked on a lot of passing drills, since going to throw the ball a lot. We do a lot of pass blocking and went 1-on-1 with the defense in our cone drill, which is really good because it's a drill which is a little technique but a lot of toughness.
At the end, we had our toughness drill with Coach Johnson. O-line is more of an attitude than anything. You don't have to be the strongest or the fastest, sometimes it's just who wants it more. The toughness drill is more of a pride and attitude drill that we do. Coach tries to rough you up, and he sees how much you fight back. It's a good character judgment drill more than anything. You don't have to be talented or quick, you just have to be fiery and tough.
