I got a call recently from Dr. Robert Ruffalo wanting to use me to do Functional Movement Screens for some of the best young football players in the country.  I said where is this at?  He responded by saying it is at Football University FBU’s Top Gun school which is being held at Dublin Jerome High School, 10 minutes from me.

If you’ve followed me for awhile, you know that I am a certified FMS instructor and fully believe in what the Functional Movement Screen can do.  In a nutshell, this screen can identify muscle and flexibility imbalances that can be an indicator of a potential injury for someone down the road if they do not get these issues addressed.

I had never heard of FBU and Rob is a heck of a salesman, so I said sure I’ll do it.  He also had contacted two other local FMS testers who I knew and we went to Jerome high school this past Thursday to screen these football players.

Just because you are an elite athlete doesn’t mean you move efficiently.

I’ll explain FBU and Top Gun in a minute, but this 3 day camp at Dublin Jerome was the top 15% of football players in the nation for their age group.  Rob had sold the President of FBU Rich McGuinness on the merits of FMS, so here we were performing these screens at FBU’s biggest event, Top Gun.

There were over 700 participants at this camp and being the first time doing it and not knowing how to run them efficiently, the FMS was only offered to people who had purchased a particular program.

Between the 4 of us, we ran 72 athletes ages 14-16 through FMS and 10 received a passing grade.  Meaning, they could probably continue on with a good strength training program to better themselves as an athlete.

52% of the athletes we tested did not get a passing grade.  So what does that mean?  They either felt pain on a particular movement and that needs to be addressed.  They scored some asymmetries or non-passing scores on some of the screens.  Or their total score was not where it needed to be.

These are the elite high school football players in our country (well some from Canada and Europe).  For those guys who didn’t get good scores, just think what they can do once they do corrective exercises and get their muscles firing properly.  How much better will they be able to play?

Today, we will be doing FMS for the elite 6th through 8th graders in the land.  I’ll be interested to see how they compare with the high schoolers.

FBU is where you want to be if you are a rising football star.

Rich founded FBU in 2000 and basically it consists of 40 regional 3 day camps throughout the country.  He has brought in some of the best football coaches (many with NFL experience) to teach our youth how to play football the right way.  Thus hoping to be the best football player possible.

What I really liked about this camp was that the parents were encouraged to stay and watch everything.  If they had a question, they were encouraged to ask.  On the flip side, the coaches constantly told the athletes to thank their parents for this opportunity and were establishing an atmosphere of discipline and respect towards others.  I don’t know how many kids said to me, “Yes sir,” in some fashion or another.  Trust me, I don’t hear that too often.

Each athlete is evaluated at these camps.  The instructors get together and pick the top athletes at each camp to go to Top Gun where they can compete against the best of the best and get more instruction.  These camps though are invitation or nomination only.  You can nominate yourself, but these regional camps are about 200 athletes.  Basically, 10 players per position.  So you get great instruction.

FBU is tied into the U.S. Army All-American Bowl and the NSCA athletic recruiting, so if your athlete shines, he will have ample exposure to the best colleges out there.  There were 2 FBU alumni drafted in this year’s NFL draft in the first round – Eric Reid of LSU and Sharrif Floyd of Florida.  So they are making waves.

If you are a football player and you think you have some talent, I would suggest trying this out.  You want to make an impression on coaches that can help pave the way for your future?  FBU seems like the place to be.