Former NFL head coach helps guide Adrenaline
Stew Schrauger, AZ Adrenaline/Courtesy

PRESCOTT - He's coached under and against Vince Lombardi. Coached alongside Tom Landry. Drafted Dan Fouts. And formed the famed Fearsome Foursome for the Los Angeles Rams.

Toss in eight years as a player for the Rams and New York Giants and Harland Svare has a pretty impressive resume.

But talking football with the 77-year-old nowadays is more like pouring over x's and o's with a registered kinesiologist.

That's just what Svare was doing Sunday at Heritage Park, where Adrenaline head coach and longtime friend Andrew Moore brought him in to impart years of wisdom to young football players trying to make their mark on the sport. It's a wisdom that Moore plans on using as much as possible during the 2009 season.

For nearly 20 years Svare headed up the "Harland Svare Sports Training Method" in San Diego, which seconded as an NFL strength and conditioning camp that put less emphasis on raw weight training and more on what he calls "anatomical alignment and its direct relationship to athleticism."

"Because of the culture of television, computers, video games and all, the modern-day kid doesn't develop his structural muscles correctly," said Svare, who employed Moore at his beach-front facility shortly after Moore was released by the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1997.

"You can tell by the poor posture that so many kids have today. The muscle chain in your body runs from the back of your neck down to your heels, but it gets the least amount of action and needs to be developed properly."

To do that, Svare developed a course that he called "The max course" while training a group of Torrey Pines High School players at the Del Mar Race Track's equestrian center in San Diego.

"Just for fun I told them to 'jump over that stump,' Svare remembers. A training method was born and one of those reaping the benefits was John Lynch, a nine-time Pro-Bowl defensive back who played at Torrey Pines at the time.

"Lynch told me, 'I don't know what it is about this workout, but I feel so much straighter and quicker," said Svare who, in 1962 became the youngest head coach in NFL history (31) with the Rams before Lane Kiffin broke the age barrier with Oakland in 2007. "I feel that it's because those muscles have to be developed in a natural way. Weight room work isolates too much and doesn't address quickness and lateral movement like you need for this sport. Weightlifting has made today's players a lot bigger, but it can have a negative effect if not done properly."

Svare admits that he's never seen an indoor football game in his life, but is ready to observe the nuances, stress the fundamentals that he learned from his Lombardi days and pass the knowledge to Moore as much as possible in 2009.

"He's my mentor," Moore said of Svare. "I have tremendous respect for him. He's coached under Vince Lombardi and others and is a genius when it comes to training athletes. We're just blessed to have him helping us out."