Fathead Insider – James Laurinaitis

So finishing up on what it’s like on the road – you want to get on the flight and sit down and go. I don’t really have a preference of window or aisle because usually the middle seat is available so you’ve got room in the middle regardless. On the window, you’ve got that side that you can rest your head on and go to sleep though I don’t really sleep well on planes and on the aisle you can get up and down without bothering anyone.

My flight routine is kind of depends. First off – you hope there’s a good movie. If there’s a good movie that takes precedence with me over other stuff because it makes the time go faster and it entertains you during the flight. We watched X-Men Origins with Wolverine going to Seattle. That was good action movie.

Next for me it’s reading a book, magazines not so much, books captivate me more so I like reading books. When you’ve got that feeling that you’ve read too much I usually take a break with the iPod. I usually put on some soothing country music at a moment like that and just listen to the stories a good country song would have, also maybe a little rock or some smooth R&B, music that you can use to just relax and go off in your own little world and hopefully fall asleep to that. So overall it depends on the mood but it’s usually a combination of those three things.

Time zones…
I usually just go with the flow; I don’t really set my watch to the city we’re flying into if there’s a difference. You just try and get to bed earlier because it might be early in Seattle but it’s mid-night in St. Louis so in a sense you’re waking up earlier. The main difference in time and time-zones is Pre-season most of our games were at night so you have to adjust to regular season because you go from those night games to those 1:15pm games and you have to be adjusted to that and ready to go. But overall time zones don’t bother me that much.

Unfriendly Territory…
So we land in the opposing city and jump on another set of team buses that are waiting for us. We go right to the hotel and get checked in and everyone has a room-mate. Back at Fall Camp you get a choice of a couple of people that you might want to room with and through pre-season if those guys were still on the team then you’d probably stay with those guys through the season. I’m fortunate to room with Larry Grant, who’s from Ohio State too and a line-backer so with a fellow Buck-eye I can’t go to wrong, you know. Well, it’s time to hit the field for practice. Later.

Hey Fathead Nation, did you ever wonder what an away game is like for a NFL player? Here’s a slice of what it entails….1st up flight training…
For a Sunday game, we usually go out on Saturday; it depends on the team we’re playing that week. Playing in St. Louis, we have the advantage of being in the middle of the country and for the most part we can get to the away game the day before. At Ohio State, sometimes we would go out a couple of days earlier because we were playing in Los Angeles to get adjusted to the time zone as opposed to now – flying from St. Louis to Seattle or Washington is a much shorter distance.

We meet at the practice facility on Saturday and do meetings in the morning to go over last minute stuff while you’re still on home turf. I might get a little contrast workout on the body, which is some hot and cold tub to try and get those bumps and bruises out from the week before you don’t have that available flying into another team’s city and the schedule once you get there.

We leave together from the facility and go to the airport and board the plane. You have to make sure to wait for the vets to be seated because as a rookie you don’t really want to sit in one of the vets seats – even though there aren’t really assigned seats. So as a rookie you just kind of sit there ready to get up or just stand and wait until the vets are situated. You kind of have to sit down gingerly because you don’t want to be that guy that takes somebody’s spot.

Once you get that first flight out of the way and the teams are set for the season, you get a good understanding of where everyone likes to sit. It kind of goes back to the school bus thing back in the day when we were kids. There’s kind of an understanding of who sits where and it is what it is. You hope that the seating stays the way it works out because as a rookie you don’t want to worry about finding a new spot every time. You want to settle in and get comfortable. Speaking of comfortable – time for me to relax a little – hit back later.

What’s up Fathead! Let’s talk about fun stuff…so there were really no Rookie pranks my 1st year- the Rams keep it very professional. The only thing the Rooks had to do was sing a song in front of the rest of the team and you couldn’t sing your college fight song and you didn’t have any background music but you could play your iPod and sing along. You had to go up and introduce yourself and say where you’re from and sign a song of your choice. The key to it was you had to sing a song that the rest of the team would know and if it was a classic so much the better.

If you pick a nice slow R&B song that the rest of the team knows – that would get the job done. If all the guys knew the song then they would help you out. But it had to be one of those songs that everyone knows and if it comes on in the car their singing that song by themselves at the top of their lungs. The worst thing you can do is go up there and sing a song nobody knows and they’re all looking around like…huh???

So I went up there and sang a little old school Keith Sweat from back in the day, the song was “Nobody” – you might have to look it up on YouTube.lol. It went pretty well, I had the team as background singers and the Vets went crazy. There were some good performances and there were some that, well, let’s just say needed a little work. It’s just something you have to go through as a rookie. You have to walk that line with the Vets and make the cross over. Next year when the rookie class comes in it will be 2nd year guys that get the rooks up there, singing for us and the rest of the team. I’m out…later!

Hey Fathead!  I’m back and blogging…most of you know I’m a Buckeye and playing for Ohio State definitely helped me adjust to coming into the NFL as far as preparation, conditioning and meetings.  Ohio State definitely had a lot of regiment and meetings.  One thing that I looked forward to coming into the NFL was the fact that we didn’t have class.   I don’t mean from the point where I didn’t like going to school, I’m talking about it from the point of being able to devote all the time you would normally be in the classroom to now being able to studying film of your opponent.

That’s something that I really look forward too.  Because when you’re in college you have to get up extra early to watch film and then you’d have to go to class and then to practice.  Now you have more time on your hands to do extra film study of your opponent on your own so you could be totally prepared for game time – where as in college, you had a lot of meetings but we had to keep a rough schedule because all the players had classes as well.  In the NFL you don’t have the class issue – so when the guys are on their own – sure it’s fun to have that extra free time but I’m like, “Hey I don’t have any classes so I’m going to go study some film on my opponent”.  

Another thing that was great about being a Buckeye was that Coach Tressel does a great job at Ohio State making the players realize they call it a student athlete for a reason.  Student comes before the athlete in that phrase because if you weren’t going to class Coach Tressel constantly had somebody checking on you for the 1^st 30 minutes of the class and again at the last 30 minutes of class.  Some guys might have thought they were smarter than the program and they would get checked at the beginning of class and when the checkers left these players would try and leave – well the checkers were there at the end of class again to make sure you were still there. 

Attending class was something you had to take that very seriously and with great responsibility if you wanted to play for Ohio State.  You had to be in the classroom!  And getting good grades and your degree was just as important as playing football.  It was important to me and it was important to a lot of the guys I graduated with that are now playing in the NFL.  Now – this is my job and I get paid to do this, so the work ethic and understanding that using the extra time you have to do well in college definitely helped with the transition to the NFL when it actually becomes part of your job.

Alright, on my way back to practice. Talk to you next week!

It’s good to be blogging on Fathead.com.  My uncle sent me a big Ohio State Buckeye Fathead back in the day for my apartment my Jr year so I’ve always known what a Fathead was.

The folks at Fathead just let me know my Fathead is now up at Fathead.com!  I’ve seen all the commercials so when Fathead told me I was going to be “Fatheaded” – that’s pretty cool.  I’ll definitely have to get mine and give one to my Mom and Dad.  The Fathead designers asked me what pose I would like to see as my Fathead.  I had to think about it for a minute because I really try and stay away from looking at pictures of myself but I guess it would probably be something in a stance or something like me blitzing.  Some of those Fathead actions photos are pretty cool.  When you have a linebacker blitzing and you can tell he’s in pursuit of making a tackle, that would be a pretty cool Fathead, also that classic linebacker stance can be very intimidating.

I wanted to give Fathead FanNation a sense of what a typical day of training camp was like, so let’s get into a two-a-day practice to give you a sense of the intensity the players go through.

Imagine the alarm clock goes off at 6:30am and you’ve got to get going because you have to get over to breakfast because there’s a certain time you have to get to practice.  Especially being a rookie, you have realize, you have get there before the veterans to get taped before practice because if a veteran player comes around and needs to be taped and you’re not done being taped you’re going to lose your spot to the vet.  So there’s a set time you have to get there after eating breakfast.

My breakfast for a two-a-day is egg white omelets with some ham, onion and tomatoes in there and – no cheese- got to keep the body fat down.  No cheese!  Usually some fruit; strawberry, bananas something like that – something where you’re putting food in your stomach but it’s not too much to the point where you’re going out to practice and you’re still full 2 hours later, it’s got to be a happy medium – but you definitely have to get breakfast in – that’s the most important thing to keep you going for the 1^st part of the day. 

You hit practice hard and then break for a short lunch and then some meetings in-between there.  It depends on the day then you have some recovery time before the 2^nd grueling afternoon practice and then more meetings and film session.  When you’re finally done for the day you head to dinner, usually around 6 – 630 with a 2-a-day.  You cap of you night with your snack around 9pm.  Their long days and you’re definitely working hard all day but it’s necessary and you eventually get use to the schedule. 

I’ll check back in later and give you some more inside stuff from my perspective.