More with Veltkamp

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• By Richard Davenport
• 6:00AM on June 20th, 2008

Tuesday’s column featured Arkansas’ strength and conditioning Coach Jason Veltkamp. I touched on his role in recruiting and the improvements he sought and received for the Razorbacks’ highly regarded weight room.

Veltkamp spent the previous four years at Louisville, with three of them on staff with Coach Bobby Petrino during his stint with the Cardinals.

Veltkamp said one of the reasons he wanted to reunite with Petrino is because he utilizes him and his staff as the “other assistant coaches” when Arkansas hosts recruits during official visits.

“That’s why I’m here today because that’s what I loved at Louisville,” Veltkamp said. “That includes more hours because of things like that but I’m here to win and win a lot and part of winning a lot is getting great kids in here.

“If that means me and a couple of my assistants have to come and go to dinner Saturday night and walk a kid and show him around, we’re going to do that because we want to win. That’s our reason for being here.”

When a recruit is on campus, Veltkamp emphasizes the importance of teammates relying on one another.

“You’re not going to be the best you can be as a running back here unless this offensive lineman comes here and works as hard as he can and gets out in front of you and knocks guys down,” he said.  “I spend a lot of time talking to recruits on that. That’s a theme we carry through the entire year.

There’s a natural tendency for young athletes not to see the big picture and just think about the immediate and not look towards the future. Veltkamp tries to help guide players to better themselves in life as well in the weight room.

“You have to play and work like it’s your last day,” he said. “Sometimes kids have a hard time looking into the future. They tend to see what’s at the end of their nose. Sometimes it’s easier to make bad decisions on and off the field or in the weight room or in the class room . It’s easier to make bad decisions when you’re short-sighted.

“When you look at the big picture that tends to guide a kid’s decisions a little better — ‘What do I want to do for my family when I leave this place’”

He continues: “I’ve seen great players start as freshmen and I’ll ask, ‘What are your goals?’ You probably won’t be as great as you should be if you don’t figure that out. Get kids to realize that and learn to set goals for themselves. Look
at the big picture: Where do I want to be in five years? Where do I want to be in 10 years? Where do I want to be when I have a family of my own? And start to think about those things today and don’t waste today.”
Veltkamp believes team unity produces a camaraderie that allows team members to recognize a teammate’s personal issues better than a coach.

“Coaches can’t always do it. You (teammates) might know what his personal problems might be or you guys know what his family background is a little better than us,” Veltkamp said. “So for you to get in his ear and say, ‘Hey I’m with you,
let’s go’ or ‘Hey, you need to turn around, you need to pick the pace up,’ That’s completely different than when it comes from a coach so we really try to draw that out of our kids.”

The adage “be a leader not a follower” is an attribute  Veltkamp tries to instill in the Razorbacks.

“Everybody’s a leader you just have to step up and do it,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be the three seniors that are your best players; it should be every single guy who wants to see the next guy next to him better.”

Something recruits won’t see is an abundance of motivational sayings posted on the walls of the weight room. But the room does feature the weight program’s motto.

“Our one motto that’s on the wall is ‘Iron Sharpens Iron.’ When I said I spend the first 10 minutes
talking about our philosophy, I spend time talking about Iron Sharpens Iron,” Veltkamp said. We’re only going to be the best if we make each other better. I spend a lot of time on that.”

On the college level, Veltkamp’s first stint as a graduate assistant strength coach was at Utah State from 1997-98. He then moved on to Utah 1999 in the same capacity and was promoted to director of strength and conditioning in 2001 at the University of Utah and worked there until 2003.

Veltkamp has plans to erect in the weight room a huge picture of Donald W. Reynolds stadium with a clock in the middle displaying the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the next big challenge for the team.

He hopes it promotes a sense of urgency.

“It will count down all summer to the first practice time at 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “Once we hit that first practice, it will count down to game time against Western Illinois. And each week we reset the clock. So every time they walk into this room they see exactly how much time they
have and they know you can’t waste one second because they’re working on the other end and we better be working here. We will refer to that clock every single day at least once.”

Veltkamp was a four-year starter for Coach Bob Petrino Sr. at Carroll College in Montana in the ’90s and team captain during the 1994 season. He cites similarities between the Petrinos.

“With both of them, tempo is the name of the game,” Veltkamp said. “That’s the way old coach Petrino was, everything was about tempo, tempo, tempo and perfection and asking more of kids. It’s funny a kid can make a great catch but be taking down by a shoe-string tackle. A lot of coaches will pat on the back and say ‘Great catch’ instead of ‘You should have broken that tackle and gone to the end zone.’  That’s what old Coach Petrino was about.”

Petrino Sr. was a man of few words and demanded the utmost for from his players, traits that Veltkamp has picked up and adapted.

“He wasn’t into talking any talk,” said Veltkamp, who was a two-time All Conference selection in college. “He was speak softly and carry a big stick and go out and perform. There’s always more. You always have more in you than you think you do. Obviously growing up that way, Coach Petrino learned that from his dad. I got to be around his dad as a player and a couple of years as a coach and I definitely took that from him. He was one of those guys that you loved him or you hated him, sometimes it was both.”

Playing for the elder Petrino proved to be too much for some of his players and quite a few didn’t finish their careers but many life lessons were learned, according to Veltkamp.

“A lot of guys left but if you made it to the end of your career you saw the value and the lessons he taught you and they stay with you the rest of your life. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for him and I’m not just saying that because of Coach (Bobby) Petrino. I separated away from them; my first strength job was in a completely different environment but I was using things I learned from Coach Petrino.”