Former ASU player Peters aims to reduce head injuries.
Peters has plan to reduce concussions using jiujitsu
INDIANAPOLIS - The first light bulb for Scott Peters went off while he was getting whupped by men half his size and twice his age. The thought he kept coming back to: How is this possible?
He stood 6-foot-3. He weighed 300 pounds. He made his living as an NFL offensive lineman. He’d grown tired of riding the stationary bike in the training room, waiting for his bum ankle to heal, so he took a chance.
He walked into a jiujitsu gym and promptly got the crap beat out of him.
“These guys were bankers, in their 50s!” Peters remembered, still in awe. “I’d never gotten worked over that bad before, not even by NFL defensive linemen.”
Next time, he brought a few teammates along. Same results. It got ugly.
“These 150-pound guys are just destroying these NFL players,” said Peters, who played at Arizona State and spent time on the Cardinals practice squad. “It was ... really enlightening.”
Enlightening — and painful, to be sure. But those beatings opened Peters’ eyes, and that jiujitsu gym changed everything for him. It altered the way he’d thought about the game he’d played his whole life, and shaped his next career.
The second light bulb for Peters went off after his first season infusing football players with mechanics born of the martial arts that helped those bankers whup him and his teammates back in that gym.
The University of Washington had hired him as the football team’s strength and conditioning coach. He’d stolen bits and pieces from jiujitsu, embedding its methodology into the players’ workouts, reshaping their movements almost from the ground up.
Above all, the Huskies had to unlearn football’s greatest vice: leading with the helmet.
This result didn’t stun Peters: UW went on to have its best rushing season in program history. This one did: Not a single player on the roster, over the course of 13 games, suffered a concussion or a neck stinger. The trainers told him they’d never seen anything like it.
That’s when he knew. Peters sold the mixed martial arts gym he’d opened outside of Phoenix and went to work.
The aim was both noble and ambitious: save the sport of football.
That pursuit led Peters to Indianapolis recently, where he shared his Safe Football gospel with Colts coaches and players. He worked with the offense and defense for three days, running through demonstrations, answering inquiries, imploring players to think differently, work differently, perform differently.
The leader of the Colts’ offensive line took a liking to Peters’ unconventional approach.
“It’s based on leverage, on generating power and using your hips, and it makes a lot of sense,” said left tackle Anthony Castonzo, a seven-year veteran. “The coolest part was that he had a reason for everything he was teaching us. It’s all based on evidence.”
And that evidence is grounded in the principles of Brazilian jiujitsu.
Put simply: Peters’ approach asks players to use their hands, not their heads. Sounds simple, right? It’s not. Players are being asked to unlearn skills they’ve developed over a decade. Most are competing for roster spots, and don’t have the practice time required to rework such a significant part of their repertoire.
But, performed correctly, Peters contends, players will reap the very rewards those average Joes used to knock him over in that jiujitsu gym all those years ago. It’s a more efficient way of generating power — “A mechanical advantage we can create for ourselves,” is how he describes it.
Think of how often helmets crash into one another along the line of scrimmage.
And think of how much safer players would be if that element of the game could be drastically reduced — or even removed.
“I’m not sure if you’re ever going to be able to fully remove the head from the game,” Castonzo said. “But if we’re able to get all parties on board and minimize (its impact), that’d be a great start.”
That’s why the Colts reached out to Peters. He’s already worked with the Redskins, Browns, Cowboys, Cardinals and Bengals. His company’s slogan — “Save the brain, save the game” — is spreading like wildfire in a league grappling with a generation of ex-players whose bodies and minds are breaking down.
As the concussion crisis threatens football’s future, and the league continues to pour buckets of money into research to combat it, Peters’ crusade, at the very least, could become a catalyst.
“We’re not saying in theory this works; we’re saying we know it works,” Peters said after leaving the Colts’ practice facility, noting players “generate 90 percent more power” when leading with their hands as opposed to their heads. “We’re giving these players a competitive advantage.”
Peters lasted seven years in the NFL as a guard and center, making stops in Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Carolina and Arizona, before retiring in 2009 and opening up a mixed martial arts gym in Scottsdale. Back when he played, he said, players called concussions “headaches.”
“We didn’t really know what we were dealing with, not with the symptoms or CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) or any of that,” Peters said. “We had no idea how severe it was. But concussions aren’t the only problem. It’s information. We have to get the right information out there. We have an obligation to help kids ... because, at the end of the day, we want to see football flourish.”