The white Suburban slowly made its way up the street, a few feet at a time.

Colton Vatne was going as fast as he could, but when you’re running while pulling a car, it’s not a quick sprint to the finish line.

Video of Vatne’s feat can be found on his Twitter page. It includes a message from the Flower Mound junior defensive tackle to his followers.

“You’ve seen people push cars. Have you seen someone pull a car?” Vatne said. “The grind doesn’t stop. You need to make do with what you’ve got.”

That last sentence sums up the attitude of high school football players throughout the Dallas area during this unprecedented time when the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has shut down sports in America.

Schools and gyms are closed, so normal weight room equipment isn’t available. But the creativity is off the charts when it comes to concocting strength workouts, as athletes try to one-up each other while being quarantined.

All Vatne needed was a weight belt, which he clipped to a chain on the front of the car.

“My mom was like, ‘You need to get outside and get a workout in.’ So I said, ‘Can I have your keys?’ ” said Vatne, listed at 6-2, 248 pounds. “I pulled it once down and back. It was pretty difficult. I just never gave up.”

Fort Worth Nolan defensive end Kaleb James didn’t have a football sled to push. So the freshman pushed his dad’s truck, a 2012 Tundra CrewMax, about five times.

“It was pretty hard. I’ve never pushed a truck,” James said.

James also squatted his parents. Each got a turn on his back.

“Dad was no joke,” James wrote on Twitter when he posted the video.

“We have had a challenge — ‘Do it better than me,’ ” James said. “You make your own challenge, and you challenge one of your teammates. Some of my teammates did push-ups with their little brother [on their back].”

James’ Nolan teammate Vincent Paige, a sophomore defensive end/outside linebacker, added a ladder to his workouts and posted a video of him doing squats and an overhead press, with the ladder replacing the weights. That was all while wearing two backpacks filled with encyclopedias and shoes for added weight.

“I like to up the challenge, so I do more than what they expect,” Paige said. “It makes me better and ups the game for my teammates. I think our team is pretty unique.”

Others are raising the bar, too.

Justin Northwest honorable mention all-state linebacker Cooper McDonald has an elaborate weight room in his garage. But the 6-3, 225-pound Washington signee incorporated the family’s tractor into his regimen, doing pull-ups every day with the hay spikes that are shoulder length apart.

W.T. White sophomore linebacker/running back Kenderic McMillian fills a backpack with books, dumbbells, bags of rice and flour and does overhead crunches, squats, lunges and curls. Teammate Emiliano Mendez pushed his family’s Tahoe truck about 20 yards and repeated that several times. The father of W.T. White junior offensive lineman Gustavo Guzman built a weight lifting bar for his son by shaping two thick pieces of concrete into blocks and connecting them with a pole.

“Not everybody has access to weights,” W.T. White coach Tony Johnson said. “It’s impressive to see their desire, their creativity. I can’t tell you how proud I am of the ones that are doing whatever it takes to keep going.”

The UIL announced March 23 that during statewide school suspension, remote learning/coaching of UIL activities is allowed through electronic, video or teleconferencing type methods. Schools must limit instruction for UIL activities to a maximum of eight hours per week per activity, in addition to a maximum of 60 minutes per day Monday through Friday, while sports that are out of season are limited to a maximum of 60 minutes of remote instruction per day, Monday through Friday.

Teams use Zoom, Google Classroom, Remind and Twitter to provide daily at-home strength and conditioning workouts — some have even made them accessible through Xbox and PlayStation for those who don’t have a computer — and there are options for those with weights and those without. Jesuit utilizes a software program called TeamBuildr, Fort Worth Trinity Valley prefers the TrainHeroic app, and Melissa uses Performance Course.

“We have some kids with weights at the house, but not many,” Frisco coach Jeff Harbert said. “We posted our standard workout they can do based off of their maxes, using barbells or dumbbells, but then beside each exercise we posted a bodyweight exercise they could do as an alternative. The bodyweight exercises have links to demonstration videos. We have a similar setup for cardio.

“Additionally, we’ve posted some workouts shared by Performance Course and Baylor Scott & White Performance Center. We have also recommended BeachBody.com and the Down Dog yoga app for other at-home workout platforms.”

Frisco’s lower-body workouts include dumbbell Romanian deadlifts, goblet squats, hex bar deadlifts, Russian hamstring exercises and Bulgarian split squats. Don’t know what all of those are? That’s OK.

Many schools have a coach post a daily video explaining how to do each workout.

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The Texas High School Coaches Association has done its part to help by providing free access to the sportsYou app. Coaches can find innovative home workout routines, character education curriculum and lecture videos, and tips from a certified nutritionist to share with their athletes.

Even though districts are continuing to provide free lunches for students while school buildings are closed, nutrition is a point of emphasis for many football programs. Life Oak Cliff asks its players to use the MyFitnessPal app and provides sample grocery lists and tips on how to meet daily calorie and macronutrient (fat, protein, carbohydrates) goals.

Flower Mound has a recipe book with sample meals/snacks for athletes that is continually updated by coaches in a Google Doc. The team asks players to log their daily sleep and hydration patterns, as well as record their weight once a week.

Lancaster was in the midst of its annual boot camp — four to six weeks of intense mat and weight room workouts that prepare the athletes for spring football — when school was closed. The UIL hasn’t announced if teams will be allowed to hold spring football this year, but Lancaster coaches are making sure their athletes are maintaining strength by posting workouts on Twitter that include squats, pull-ups, close-grip push-ups, lunge jumps, planks and mountain climbers.

“Right before spring football is when we hit it the hardest. This is the time where [normally] most of them gain a bunch of strength and their bodies begin to change,” Lancaster coach Chris Gilbert said. “The best that we could do is give them certain things that if they have no equipment, this is what we’ll do.

“Everything is almost like old-school, police academy, military training, where everything is bodyweight. If you do enough of them, it’s very sufficient. You can always work on your core. The core is probably the least trained part, if you ask any strength and conditioning guy in high school. A lot of these exercises give you a chance to focus on that area.”

The Twitter page for the Texarkana Texas High football team took that thinking to the extreme on Friday. It challenged athletes to do 500 push-ups, 750 sit-ups, 250 pull-ups and 15 sprints a day, and it provided a link to an article called “The Herschel Walker Workout.”

In discussing the unorthodox training program of the former Dallas Cowboys running back, it says, “Walker’s legendary, granite-like physique was built not by lifting weights but through bodyweight exercises — lots of them. On the order of 2,000-3,000 push-ups and sit-ups every day.”

WORKOUTS AROUND THE AREA

LANCASTER

MANSFIELD LAKE RIDGE

W.T. WHITE

FRISCO WAKELAND

ARLINGTON

FRISCO

LIFE OAK CLIFF

Home Training Template

Pick Between 2 Options (Bodyweight and Resistance) Both are Total Body and should be done 3x a week

If you have no resistance, backpack, weights, etc. then do 1st lift Pick One exercise from each of the following categories: Push, Pull, Squat, Hinge, Core, Movement, and Mobility

Option 1: Bodyweight

Push: Push Up 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR Push Up 3x15

Pull: Chin Ups (Palms Towards You) 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR Pull Up (Palms Away) 3x10

Squat: Squat (Arms in X on Shoulders) 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR Front Squat 3x12

Hinge: Good Mornings 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR RDL 3x12

Core: Bear Crawl Hold 3x30 seconds OR Side Plank 2x30 seconds each side

Movement: 3 40′s Max Speed, 3 Min. Recovery OR 3 20 Yard Flys Max Speed, 3 Min, Recovery

Mobility: 90/90 Rotations 2x6 each side OR Lying Hip Circles 2x8 each side

If you have a backpack that you will up with books, can, or if you have weights then do this lift Pick One from each of the following categories: Push, Pull, Squat, Hinge, Core, Movement, and Mobility

Option 2: Resistance

Push: Push Up 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR Push Up 3x8

Pull: Chin Ups (Palms In) 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR Pull Up (Palms Out) 3x6

Squat: Squat (Arms X on Shoulders) 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR Front Squat 3x8

Hinge: Good Mornings 3x5 (4 Seconds Down) OR RDL 3x8

Core: Bear Crawl Hold 3x30 seconds OR Side Plank 2x30 seconds each side

Movement: 3 40′s Max Speed, 3 Min. Recovery OR 3 20 Yard Flys Max Speed, 3 Min, Recovery

Mobility: 90/90 Rotations 2x6 each side OR Lying Hip Circles 2x8 each side

FRISCO LEGACY CHRISTIAN

Monday, March 16/23, 2020

Dynamic Warm-Up:

Stride/Long-Skip 30 ea.

KTL to Tin Soldier 10/10

Lateral Lunge 5/5/Stride

A-Skip 20 // Hi Knees 10, Stride 10

Back Pedal 20 // Backward Run 20

Low Lateral Shuffle 20 ea. // HK Carioca 20 ea.

Falling Start Lt Lead 20 // Falling Start Rt Lead 20

Lift:

*Squat-4x10@55%

*DB Lunges-3x8 per Leg

-Great Form, NOT too heavy

*DB Shrugs-3x10

*DB Squat Jumps-3x10

-Squat as LOW as you can and Explode as HIGH as you can

*Hang Pulls-3x10

Core:

1. Push-Ups 1x8

2. Front Plank 1x30 sec

3. Hip Lifts 3-3-3

4. Side Plank 1x25s ea

5. Push-Ups 1x5

6. Front Plank w/ ext. 1x20 sec

7. Side plank leg raise 1x20s ea

Run:

6x100yd Build Ups (walk back line in between)

(Build up 1st 30, full speed 40, coast 30)

Static Stretch

Tuesday, March 17/24, 2020

Dynamic Warm-Up: *Same as Monday.

Lift:

*Bench Press-4x10@55%

*1/4 Squat/Push Press-3x8

-Use DBs if needed…sit back on your heels

*Tri Cable Pushdowns -3x10

-Sub Dips if needed

*DB Shoulder Press-3x10

*Incline Press-3x10

Plyo: (*If no boxes, just do squat-jumps.)

1. Box 2-Leg Jump & Stick 2x4

2. Lateral Jump & Stick 2x3 ea.

3. Lateral Jump-Respond-Stick (L-R-L) 1x3

4. Lateral Jump-Respond-Stick (R-L-R) 1x3

Run:

6x20 yd. Accelerations (full recovery in between)

(Get to 10 fast, maintain speed through 20.)

2 Belly Starts, 2 Sprinter Starts, 2 FB position starts

*Track Sprinters add 1x400 at 60-70 seconds pace.

Static Stretch

Wednesday, March 18/25, 2020

Dynamic Warm-Up: *Same as Monday.

Lift:

*Hang Clean/Front Squat-4x10…Great Form

*Box Step Ups 3x10 per Leg

*Upright Rows 3x10

*Power Shrugs-3x10

-From the ground and EXPLODE up off of the ground, finishing with a Shrug

*One-Arm Rows-3x10

Core:

1. Push-Ups 1x10

2. Front Plank 1x35 sec

3. Hip Lifts 3-3-3

4. Side Plank 1x30s ea

5. Push-Ups 1x5

6. Front Plank w/ ext. 1x20 sec

7. Side plank leg raise 1x20s ea

8. Push-Ups 1x3 *Hold at bottom

Run:

8x100yd Build Ups (walk back line in between)

(Build up 1st 30, full speed 40, coast 30)

Static Stretch

Thursday, March 19/26, 2020

Dynamic Warm-Up: *Same as Monday.

Lift:

*Close Grip Bench-3x10@50% of Bench max

*Tri Cable Pushdowns-3x10

-Sub DB Laying Extensions if needed

*DB Incline-3x10

*Hang Pulls-3x8

*DB Bench-3x10

Plyo: (*If no boxes, just do squat-jumps.)

1. Box 2-Leg Jump & Stick 2x4

2. Lateral Jump & Stick 2x3 ea.

3. Lateral Jump-Respond-Stick (L-R-L) 1x3

4. Lateral Jump-Respond-Stick (R-L-R) 1x3

Run:

4x10yd Sprints

3x20yd Sprints

2x30yd Sprints

1x40yd Sprint

(Full Recovery in between, work at/near top speed)

(Know your body/muscles)

*Track Sprinters add 1x400 at 60-70 seconds pace.

Static stretch