PHILADELPHIA _ Everybody sees the finished product, the combination of athletic gifts and skills, game-planned strategy, and improvisational magic that Donovan McNabb brings to football.
Only a few people see the work that goes into it or can appreciate the focus of the Eagles' third-year quarterback.
'He's a maniac,' said Tim McClellan, an Allentown native who is one of those people.
As director of performance training at Rehab Plus in Phoenix, McClellan is partly responsible for devising the punishing exercises and offbeat drills that help McNabb look like a superhero on the field.
'Donovan is one those guys who is never going to rest,' said Warren Anderson, executive director of the facility. 'He just thrives on competition. From January to July, except when he's at minicamps, he's here, working his butt off.'
Sure, that No. 5 on his chest looks suspiciously like Superman's 'S,' but there is no phone booth that McNabb can step into for a quick change. Instead, there are months and months of hard work during an off-season in which there is almost no time off for him.
'You have to do the things everybody else does _ the lifting, the running, those things,' McNabb said. 'But I really like to go beyond. I like to do things that will really help me out in the game. We focus on footwork, on hand speed, on reaction time.'
There is plenty of standard conditioning work. McNabb's workday starts early. After 45 minutes of 'core' work _ for abdominal and back muscles and so on _ he goes out to the field for 90 minutes or so of work in the desert sun. Then there are weightlifting and, in the afternoons, pickup basketball games. Mixed in are some interesting training exercises.
'Everything,' Anderson said, 'is designed to relate to the player's functions as a football player.'
'You could go out and run four or five miles or run 400 (meters),' McNabb said. 'But I like to do things that pertain to playing football. I run 40-yard sprints with a recovery time of 15 seconds, then run again. That's like having the play clock running down and you have to scramble again. I want to do things that will help me in the football game.'
And those things can get pretty strange.
Anderson founded Rehab Plus 15 years ago. Most of its business over the years has been standard physical therapy. But Anderson and McClellan, who came along three years ago, also have created a high-performance center for elite athletes. They are calling the center MakePlays.com now, using the Web to raise an already high national profile. The attraction is a comprehensive program that covers nutrition, conditioning, reflexes, and even sports vision training.
That's right. McNabb spends part of his off-season working out his eyes.
'The idea,' McClellan said, 'is that the eyes are controlled by muscles. Just as you can develop your pecs or your biceps, you can develop the muscles that control your eyes. There are very specific things you can do to improve your vision at a certain depth or to improve your ability to see the whole field.'
McClellan said that such baseball players as Mo Vaughn and George Brett were proponents of vision training. For McNabb, it's all about improving his peripheral vision. That's something to keep in mind the next time he appears to see a defensive lineman closing in from behind and moves away.
'You focus on things happening on the outside,' McNabb said. 'That definitely helps when it comes to seeing what's happening on the back-side rush. We also do this quick-paced foot drill and they throw a tennis ball at you. You have to catch it, and then he'll ask you something like `What's 2 times 2?' and you have to answer quick. It all helps with your reaction time.'
To work on McNabb's balance, McClellan has him throw the ball from a balance beam. To improve McNabb's reflexes, McClellan breaks out the dog toys.
'I just go to PetSmart and buy a bunch of dog toys,' McClellan said. 'Basically, they're a bunch of asymmetrical balls that bounce irregularly. So you put the player in front of a (hockey-type) goal and then throw the balls. It's a little like hitting ground balls to an infielder with a fungo bat. It gets pretty competitive out there. You'll have a bunch of players yelling and screaming and trying to outdo each other.'
If it all sounds a little strange, relax. McClellan and Anderson stay in touch with the Eagles' training staff. Brad Childress, the Eagles' quarterbacks coach, has flown out to Phoenix to check out the program.
And it's not as if McNabb is the only guy there. Other NFL players, including the St. Louis Rams' Aeneas Williams, are regulars. Olympic athletes and college players preparing for the NFL draft train there, too.
'We don't get too many underachievers here,' McClellan said. 'And we have guys who come out and it just isn't for them.'
McNabb found the place through former teammate Charles Johnson. The program was one that Johnson signed up for after the 1999 season. McNabb, just finishing his rookie season and looking to take his game to a higher level, moved to Phoenix for the off-season and actually lived with Johnson and his family.
McNabb liked the program so much, he was back in Phoenix this January, immediately after the Eagles' season ended. If the team had a minicamp from, say, a Thursday to Sunday, McNabb flew back to Phoenix on Monday. Wide receiver Freddie Mitchell, the Birds' first-round pick, joined him there for a stretch, trying to cut down on the time it will take him to learn the pro game and get used to his new quarterback.
McNabb even went back to Phoenix and its 105-degree mornings after the June minicamps, for those last few precious weeks before training camp began.
'The weather is hotter, and you're working on different things,' he said. 'You throw so many balls with the different receivers. It's like I've already been in training camp by the time I get back here to practice. And then, in our camp, we have fast-paced drills against our defense so that, by the time you go out there for the games, it seems easier.'
So when he's faster than a speeding safety or leaping tall linebackers in a single bound, McNabb is really doing what he has been doing all year. It just that he's doing it in front of millions of viewers.
'People do things like this to be the best,' McNabb said. 'I do things that I believe will propel me into that position. I want to be that guy who is working the hardest.'
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(c) 2001, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
