NFL players, prospects training at Michael Johnson facility

Michael Johnson is best known for his sprinting days, memorably becoming the face of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

The Dallas native competed in three Olympics — 1992 in Barcelona; 1996 in Atlanta; and 2000 in Sydney — winning four gold medals. In Atlanta, he earned the title of “Fastest Man in the World by winning a historic 200/400 Olympic double.

Now, he’s running the Michael Johnson Performance Center where athletes from every sport train. That includes football, and he’s been busy the past several weeks preparing a handful of guys for this week’s NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.

Among the several NFL prospects and combine invitees working out with Johnson is Arkansas defensive end Trey Flowers.

A handful of NFL players are also using the facilities.

Former Dallas Cowboys practice squad defensive end Michael Sam, who is attempting to become the first openly gay player in the NFL, is spending his off-season there, as well as Kansas City Chiefs safety Husain Abdullah and Cleveland Browns linebacker Craig Robertson.

Sam, who was drafted by St. Louis last year and spent seven weeks on the Cowboys’ practice squad, is working toward the NFL’s first veteran free agent combine on March 22 at the Arizona Cardinals’ Training Facility in Phoenix.

How would you describe this training? What we’re doing here with these guys and have been doing over the last several weeks is preparing them comprehensively for what they’ll have to do at the combine. So all the drills — the skill-position drills, the 40-yard dash of course, also the 225-pound bench press, 5-10-5 (shuttle run), all the drills that they have to do at the combine.

Is there more of an emphasis on speed because of the way the NFL has evolved? It’s always been about speed in the NFL. The 40-yard dash has always been the most prominent and the most focused event at the combine. But our approach has still and always has been — we’ve got to prepare these guys for everything. I don’t want any guy to leave any rep on the bench. I don’t want any guy to not have a great 5-10-5 or broad jump or vertical jump. It doesn’t really matter to us at the end of the day what the NFL is trending towards doing in terms of schemes and what type of offenses they’re running. The combine remains the same and these guys have to go up there and have good performances. We continue to make sure guys are prepared as best they possibly can be to have good performances.

How impressed have you been with Trey Flowers’ athleticism? He’s very athletic. His start is very good as well. You wouldn’t expect a guy of his size to start the way that he does. He’s just extremely athletic and we’re seeing more and more of that with NFL guys, guys who come in here with the weight they can carry and move it in a much more athletic way than we used to see many, many years ago. That’s something we’ve always prided ourselves on here is to be able to train the guys regardless what size they are. Train them to move biomechanically more efficiently, and thus quicker.

What’s the difference between getting a lineman and a skill guy ready for the combine? Preparation is pretty much the same. There are obviously a little bit of nuances, but we’ve had great luck with guys like Ndamukong Suh and Michael Oher. We’ve had lots of linemen in here before and the preparation is basically the same for those guys. Sometimes some of the weight guys need to lose a little weight, and we’re prepared to do that as well.

How has Michael Sam looked? He’s in our NFL off-season program, so he’s training just like those guys would be. These guys, the combine guys, are training for specific drills. To this point, [Sam] has been training more general conditioning, increasing speed, power and strength, which will help him for his veterans combine. We’ll probably focus on more specific things for him as he gets closer to that.

This story was originally published February 16, 2015 at 5:07 PM with the headline "NFL players, prospects training at Michael Johnson facility."