By John Scanlan
That rant played over and over in my head. During the summer of 1974’s two-a-days, our new Head Coach had corralled us in the gymnasium, with that declaration being one of his major talking points. As if that statement wasn’t obvious enough that Mr. Perry Griffith was an advocate of lifting weights, the short sleeves of his Polo shirt strained to contain his biceps and his whistle hung in a valley between well defined pecs.
However, at the time, I couldn’t help but also notice the scar on his left knee. Was he preaching to save us from a hard lesson-learned?
Now it was the spring of 1975 at Logan Elm High School near Circleville, Ohio. By now, I had heard Mr. Griffith’s outbursts on lifting weights over and over, because he had also been my wrestling coach over the winter. Well, I didn’t run track or play baseball, so I figured that I would delve into Mr. Griffith’s recommendation.
But what was I to do? Logan Elm’s weight room was a tiny cracker box located off the corner of the basketball court. Inside was a rinky-dink, Universal weight machine possessing five stations: a bench press, an inclined sit-up board, a seated shoulder press, a seated leg press, and a lat pull-down. That was it. There were no barbells or dumbbells or free weights or anything of that nature in this so called “weight room”.
Mr. Perry Griffith hated weight machines.
Due to the cables being constantly broken, lost pins, and rust running amuck, nobody ever lifted on that Universal machine. Instead, kids used to sneak in there and smoke because they were always getting caught in the restroom. Eventually, the administration put a padlock on the weight room door.
Later that spring, Mr. Griffith pulled off a major coup. Somehow—and I emphasize somehow—he talked the Board of Education into a two-pronged plan that involved, one: buying thousands of dollars worth of bars, dumbbells, and weights; and two: turning the Typing classroom into a weight room.
Enter Mr. Steve Barney—Logan Elm’s typing teacher. Being a former all-state running back, he had also been the Junior Varsity Coach and Friday night Scout under the previous Head Coach’s regime. Now Coach Barney was nothing under the helm of Perry Griffith.
Furthermore, Mr. Barney’s Typing classroom was expendable. Located on the high school’s stage, it had moveable wall sections that locked into place to separate it from the basketball court. The fact that Logan Elm had just recently bought several mobile classrooms certainly aided Mr. Griffith’s plan. Shaped like double-wide mobile homes, they could easily accommodate Mr. Barney and his typewriters.
Essentially—in order for his football players to lift weights—Mr. Griffith threw Mr. Barney under the bus. It was my first observation of real-world, inter-office politics.
Secondly—just by blind luck—my sophomore spring schedule finished the day with an eighth period study hall. Thus, I was able to respond to an odd request that came over the P.A. system one day: “WOULD ANY AVAILABLE FOOTBALL PLAYERS PLEASE MEET COACH GRIFFITH IN THE OLD TYPING ROOM?”
I strolled down the hallway, thinking “I wonder why he needs us?”
Consequently, I was there when UPS delivered a bunch of boxes that were really, really, really heavy.
And as Mr. Griffith ripped open those boxes, he was like a kid at Christmas.
They contained all kinds of plates, bars, and dumbbells, so I helped Mr. Griffith set up and organize his new pet project.
Yet it didn’t stop there.
Dave Dean was last season’s starting left offensive guard, and his father owned a company called Circleville Metal Works—a metal fabricating company in town. Well, Circleville Metal Works made two padded, metal, weightlifting benches and donated them to the new gym.
Mr. Perry Griffith had died and gone to Heaven.
Now, with Logan Elm possessing a brand, spankin’ new weight room, came the hard part—getting the football players to use it.
Here, Perry Griffith ran headlong into his pet peeve. All he ever heard was the same lame excuses—and erroneous misconceptions—that were commonly espoused by country boys who played high school football:
“I don’t need to lift weights. I work on our farm.”
“I don’t need to lift weights. I handle bags of feed all day.”
“I don’t need to lift weights. I spend all summer baling hay.”
Mr. Griffith abhorred such paltry justifications. Somehow, he had to devise a plan to motivate his football players to lift weights.
But then, that same spring, Mr. Griffith’s efforts were further impeded by Circleville opening a Nautilus franchise.
In the late sixties, a Mr. Arthur Jones invented the Nautilus machine—at the time called the “Blue Monster”—with the intention of creating a fitness machine that actually accommodated human movements. The company’s name was later changed to Nautilus because the spiral cam, which was integral to the machines, resembled the shell of the Nautilus mollusk.
Circleville’s Nautilus franchise quickly became all the rage because its machines were like lifting weights without really lifting weights. Everybody loved it! Plus, that was where all of Circleville’s football players were going—in addition to their cheerleaders. Thus, the Circleville Nautilus quickly became the place to see and be seen. There was more standing around and talking than lifting.
Mr. Perry Griffith despised Nautilus.
And he was no idiot. He understood the competitive ego belonging to teenage boys. So he employed the one tactic that guaranteed Logan Elm’s football players would flock to his weight room: the possibility of humiliation in front of your peers. No boy wanted that!
On the wall of the new weight room, Mr. Griffith placed a huge, white, cardboard placard. Down the left side, he wrote the names of every potential football player for the 1975 season. Then across the top, he divided the placard into three columns depicting the basic power lifting exercises: the bench press, squat, and dead lift.
Then each of those three columns was further sub-divided down into two more columns labeled with dates: Thursday, May twenty-ninth—the last day of school—and Friday, August first—the first day of football practice. Mr. Griffith required every name on that placard to report to his gym prior to May twenty-ninth and perform an inventory maximum repetition in those three lifts. Then those students would have to do the same thing on August first. Thus, on a placard that was visible to the world, every player could see weight totals showing the improvement—or lack thereof—that each boy had obtained over the months of June and July. Brilliant!
The new Logan Elm weight room was constantly packed full of pubescent boys trying to achieve bragging rights.
Mr. Perry Griffith was as happy as a pig in poop.
There are certainly more factors that contribute to a successful football campaign than off-season weight training, but I’m sure that Mr. Griffith’s foresight was a major reason in the Logan Elm Braves finishing the 1975 season as Mid-State League co-champions with an eight and two record.
More importantly, there were no serious injuries.
Oh, by the way . . . I later learned that the scar on Mr. Griffith’s left knee was the result of an injury and a follow-on operation that ended his college football career.
“WHEN YOU LIFT WEIGHTS, IT’S LIKE STRAPPIN’ METAL AROUND YOUR JOINTS!”