Brockers taking his game to a new level

Rams DT Brockers taking his game to a new level

June 15, 2015

By Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/rams-dt-brockers-taking-his-game-to-a-new-level/article_336f3a86-c0bb-5e84-a9f3-d74ce56051c8.html

Say what you will about Michael Brockers, but the Rams’ defensive tackle leaves no stone unturned when it comes to trying to improve his game.

A couple of years ago, he hired a personal chef to make sure he was eating right. Last season he showed up lighter in an attempt to improve his quickness and overall effectiveness.

As for this offseason, he has taken up mixed martial arts training in an effort to use his hands better on the football field and keep opposing blockers’ hands away.

“In life, I think every day you have to learn something,” Brockers said. “If you’re not learning, you’re not living. So definitely for the most part, I try to ‘up’ my game. There’s never a time where I feel like I know it all.”

Line play at the NFL level isn’t only about strength, power, and quickness; it’s also about leverage and technique. Usually, once an offensive lineman gets his hands on you, it’s over for a defensive lineman.

“It’s about getting that man’s hands off you, especially playing defensive tackle and nose guard,” Brockers said. “It’s all about physicality, and not trying to let them get their hands on you and grab you and stuff like that.”

The most interesting aspect of Brockers’ fray into martial arts is his teacher. It’s none other than Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame defensive tackle Randy White.

Brockers made the hookup through his agent Scott Casterline, who also represents White. Prior to the start of the Rams’ offseason conditioning program on April 20, Brockers made regular weekend visits to work with White in Dallas.

Brockers, whose permanent residence is in Houston, would make the four-hour drive to Dallas on a Thursday and stay there working with White until returning on Sunday.

“It’s been a slow process,” Brockers said. “He’s been doing this stuff all his life, for all his career. So learning from him I’m starting to get like the steps down. I’m trying to implement it a little bit in my game, trying to use it for 2015.”

Brockers grew up a Cowboys fan in part because there wasn’t a football team in Houston between 1997, when the Oilers left for Tennessee, and 2002, when the expansion Texans started playing. Brockers, still only 24, is too young to have seen White play but knew who he was before the martial arts tutoring begin.

“I knew a lot about some of the history about Dallas and knew he was part of it,” Brockers said. “So for the most part when I learned he wanted to work with me, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s go.’

“It’s cool because of the fact that he’s a Hall of Famer and you think that they carry themselves a lot higher than they do. They’re at the top of the top. But he’s a real chill guy, cool, down to earth. So that’s the reason why I really like working out with him, because he’s a great guy to talk to and he listens and tries to really help my game.”

White was introduced to martial arts training in 1976, his second year in the NFL, by then-Cowboys strength and conditioning coach Bob Ward. In that sense, Ward and the Cowboys were way ahead of their time.

“Bob had the vision of incorporating the martial arts into our football,” White told the Post-Dispatch. “I enjoyed doing it and really took to it. It really helped my career.”

Even after his career ended following the 1988 season, White continued his martial arts training. And he started training others, from elementary school-age youths up to NFL players.

One of his past “students” was six-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle La’Roi Glover, who spent three of his 13 NFL seasons with the Rams (2006-08) and is currently the Rams’ director of player programs.

(White met Glover at an arm-wrestling tournament, where Glover was a participant and White was doing commentary.)

“I’m not the great guru but I’ve got something to offer,” White said. “Something they can look at. If they like it, they can add it to what they do.”

White, now 62, has found Brockers to be a very willing pupil.

“Michael really is a very intense guy,” White said. “And is hungry to get better and be better. I’ve spent some time with him. I don’t know how many times we’ve trained. Quite a few.

“He really picked it up and he saw the value of what I was showing. It takes just a little bit to really grasp how you apply it. You develop sensitivity. We do hand drills and develop sensitivity.

“Most players, right off the bat they want to know, ‘Well, if he does this, what do I do?’ I can show ’em that, and I can show ’em a counter for a specific way a guy is trying to block you or attack you.”

But eventually, it’s got to come instinctively.

“When you’re on the football field, you don’t have time to be thinking about what move am I gonna use,” said White, who is training Brockers for free. “You’ve just gotta feel it. So you keep working the drills and develop sensitivity, and I show ’em all the different options that I know to make themselves effective as far as rushing the passer, pursuing a play.”

Just like learning more traditional defensive line techniques, Brockers knows it will take lots of repetition to take his martial arts techniques to that instinctive level. So once the Rams’ offseason program started in Earth City and he could no longer make the weekly trips from Houston to Dallas, Brockers studied videos to try to stay sharp.

“I even practice with my wife sometimes,” Brockers said.

(Now that’s a devoted wife.)

“Just hand movements,” Brockers said. “It’s not like I’m really throwing her or anything.”

The drills with White are strictly hands and footwork. The sessions last two to three hours, with a break thrown in here and there.

Once the Rams complete the final week of OTA practice sessions next week, the veterans have a five-week break before the start of training camp. Brockers plans to spend at least a couple of those weeks working with White in Dallas.

Once camp starts at the end of July, White might drop in at Rams Park to watch Brockers in practice, seeing if he’s applying the martial arts techniques on the football field.

“He wants to be the best he can possibly be,” White said. “And when you’ve got a guy that’s got that attitude, and he’s got the ability he has, he’s gonna be successful.”