Page 7 - Healthbeat March 2015

HIGHLY CONDITIONED ATHLETES WITH A
LOT OF STRENGTH AND SPEED AND ENDURANCE ARE LESS LIKELY TO GET HURT.
DR. WILLIAM HEFLEY, ORTHOARKANSAS
teammates: “Luck happens when opportunity meets preparation.”
“You can’t get lucky if you aren’t prepared or you aren’t in the right position,” Meadors said. Hill, who is now president of Arkansas Bap- tist University, said Meadors’ work ethic was
“outstanding.”
“J.J. was so explosive as a student athlete,”
Hill said. “He was a great track athlete. He won the 100-meter championship in Louisiana, and that’s a phenomenal feat.”
Hill added that because of Meadors’ prepa- ration, the fact that he was 5-6 when most re- ceivers at the college level were 6-0 and above didn’t matter.
“He was a coach’s son, so he brought those intangibles,” Hill said.
The key in Meadors’ football career was simply to get the ball into his hands. Hill and former Arkansas quarterback coach Rocky Felker designed plays specifically for Meadors to put him in enough space to use his speed to make plays.
“We ran a 3 or 4-yard hitch and put the ball in his hands,” Hill said. “He produced because once he got in space, size wasn’t a factor be- cause he was so fast. Once he got the ball in his hands, at that point it was [the opposing team’s] problem. You couldn’t tackle him in a telephone booth.”
Hill credited Meadors’ unmatched work eth- ic to track.
“Track athletes are a little different in con- ditioning and preparation,” Hill said. “He knew how to play with a little injury, where some- times track guys don’t run if they don’t feel good. His preparation and conditioning were superior to any wide receiver I ever had at the University of Arkansas. He ran those stadium [steps] with the vest on because he knew he had to be prepared.”
The preparation helped in his health. The only injury Meadors suffered was in his shoul- ders because of the contact he sustained in his first season playing football in the South- eastern Conference. From there, Hill said, Meadors committed to train his upper body just as he did his lower body as a runner.
Former Hogs receiver and teammate An- thony Lucas described Meadors as a “beast” in the weight room.
“He was at a disadvantage because of his height and size, so in the offseason, it was amazing to watch him work,” Lucas said.
WILLIAM HARVEY/ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Former Arkansas receiver J.J. Meadors works with aspiring professionals like former Univer- sity of Central Oklahoma quarterback Adri- an Nelson who hopes what he learns from Meadors will not only get him on the football field, but keep him healthy enough to stay on the field.
“He did so much extra stuff.”
Meadors’ calling to train athletes came
when he was living in Dallas and working as a pharmaceutical representative. That’s when former athletes whom he knew asked him to help their kids in speed training. At that time, it was a lucrative part-time income, but when Meadors was laid off by the pharmaceutical company, he decided to turn his side business into his full-time occupation.
“[Sports-performance training] was an op- portunity to stay around sports and do what I love, and do it every day,” Meadors said.
Some could say he has been mentoring since that stellar senior season. Lucas said he continually looked to Meadors for guidance.
“He was like the top receiver,” Lucas said. “He felt like he was at a disadvantage because of his height, but that didn’t stop him. I always watched him and how he handled himself on the field so I could set my game up, take pieces of his puzzle and add it to my game. His ap- proach toward the game and his work ethic were big for me.”
Meadors’ client base includes athletes as young as seventh- and eighth-graders up to adults. When he reflects on the likes of Hill and Brown, Meadors said, he hopes he wasn’t just an athletic performance trainer, but a mentor.
“I hope I was a part of the type of young men they are today,” Meadors said. “The kids benefited a lot from the training, but they ben- efited more from the knowledge of the mis- takes I made.”
Either way, the goal for athletes will always be to get better — and walk off the field as healthy as they walked onto it.
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