Kyle Shanahan had his press conference with Bay Area media on Saturday and was able to finally answer a question I’ve had lingering: The origin of that hill. We discussed yesterday the shiny new toy on the San Francisco 49ers practice field and there was even video of Jed York racing Joe Fann up it.
Mike Singletary had a similar hill of sorts during his tenure. My first instinct was this was a Shanahan move. Turns out, Shanahan was conceding to his staff in implementing this. In his press conference, he said it was actually the work of 49ers strength and conditioning coach Ray Wright.
Shanahan stated some benefits, like the obvious one that keeps you from your normal top speed while working you harder, but the main benefit is that it’s hard to pull hamstrings running up that hill. I’m not sure the difference of an incline vs flat ground in terms of sports science, perhaps someone can enlighten me in the comments. I really don’t know how inclines vs declines work against the muscles.
Wright wanted it, and according to Shanahan, Wright believes in it.
Today, the skill positions were on the hill. Shanahan said his own kids wanted to do the hill and he himself has some reservations on doing it himself (but says we’ll never get to witness it) Mostly he’s concerned with someone sprinting down it (a very bad idea) or them trying to go up it when it may be icy and wet (another bad idea).
Hopefully there’s some common sense exercised when they want to go on a hill run. If it ever were to snow in Santa Clara, I’d love to go sledding down that thing though.