Pittsburgh Steelers "Tomlin made the right decision with Polamaulu"

Jerry Rice, widely considered the greatest wide receiver to ever play in the NFL, was famous for more than his unbelievable performance on the football field. He was also quite renowned for his legendary workouts.By legendary, we mean hard.Rice used to do two hours of 43 Polamalu black jersey
cardiovascular training in the morning and three hours of strength training in the afternoon six days per week. Within his cardio routine, the former Super Bowl MVP used to do a hill-running workout that makes you tired just hearing about it. Anyone willing to say that Rice should have followed whatever routine the San Francisco 49ers had recommended instead? Didn’t think so.So when Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu, on his way back from knee surgery and further injuries last season to his ribs and the oblique muscles in his abdomen, asked for permission to return to his own individual workout routine in California rather than resuming spring practices on Tuesday with the team, head coach Mike Tomlin had to consider it. Soon after, Tomlin gave Polamalu permission to pursue his plan."It probably works for him because he's sold on it, and that's part of it," Tomlin said last week. "The reality is he's recovering from an injury, he's unable to participate in organized team activities, so it provides an opportunity for him to do what he feels good about."The bottom line is that Tomlin made the right decision regarding his star safety.First, as was indicated earlier, some of the workouts that these players do outside of camp have proven to be just as good as (or better than) the workouts they would’ve been doing with the team. Such is likely the case with Polamalu, who plans on working out with Marv Marinovich at his sports lab in Orange County, Calif. Polamalu began utilizing Marinovich and his training techniques back when he was with the USC Trojans. Interestingly, he did not train with Marinovich the past two seasons, both of which could be construed as somewhat injury plagued. Second, as Tomlin aptly pointed out, Polamalu is sold on the workouts he does with Marinovich, which is important. In fact, it’s hugely underrated when it comes to training. Players simply must believe in what they are doing.Third, Polamalu wasn’t going to be able to participate in team activities anyway, so his decision to train in California is likely going to be much more individually focused than what would’ve happened had he attended spring practices.And finally, Polamaulu is a true standout player 4 Brett Favre White jersey
and a leader through example for the Steelers. In other words, he deserves the benefit of the doubt.Thus, Tomlin’s decision to let Polamalu miss spring practices so he could train out in California was clearly the right one. It will be interesting to see if Polamalu will be able to stave off the injury bug in 2008. If so, expect him to get the green light on similar activities in the future.