1963 San Diego Chargers

This is a link to an article from the ESPN and the Outside the Lines report
on ESPN. It is a good introduction to the beginnings of the drug culture that we
have today in sport and serves a poignant reminder that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=3866837The
focus is on two people Sid Gillman, the head coach of the San Diego Chargers
and Alvin Roy, the first strength coach in pro football and a person many acknowledge
to be the first strength coach in football at LSU in 1958. Both were
progressive thinkers and innovators. Unfortunately some of their innovation was
centered on giving the players Dianabol to supplement their weight training, a
practice I do not condone.  Anabolic steroids
were legal at that time. They were very prevalent in the power lifting community
and just getting into track & field with the throwers.

I think it is shame
that the ESPN reporters did not balance out the story with the innovative training
they were doing. Lifting weights was still considered taboo for athletes at the
time, but they were lifting in training camp and in season. They had a systematic off season
strength training program that would rival many of today’s programs. As
football player in the sixties I tried to get my hands on anything Alvin Roy

wrote. The lifting methods and his training methodology made sense to me. I certainly
was naive about the drug aspect of the training until I began training and
competing for the decathlon in 1969. If you have access to a copy of Gilman and
Roys book – “The San Diego Chargers Strength Program In and Out of Season” it is worth reading. (It is out of print) I
religiously followed one of the programs in the book that helped a player gain
50 pounds of muscle and I lost five pounds! I was missing one ingredient 15 mg
a day of Dianabol.  None the less as a
young athlete interested in going into coaching the non drug lessons of the methodology
were a big influence on my training ideas.