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Study examines differences in strength by position among football players

LAWRENCE — Even casual football watchers could tell you there are different body types based on the player’s position. Linemen are big with a lot of body mass, and wide receivers are smaller and faster, for example. But a new study from the University of Kansas investigated if there are more subtle differences in fitness and strength characteristics by position that are not obvious, even to the trained football eye. Researchers worked with NCAA Division II football players for the study, published in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology.

Rick Couldry selected as School of Pharmacy distinguished graduate

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Pharmacy has selected Rick Couldry, vice president of pharmacy and health professions at The University of Kansas Health System, for its 2025 Distinguished Graduate Award. Couldry earned his Master of Science in Hospital Pharmacy Administration from the KU School of Pharmacy in 1996 while completing a two-year residency in pharmacy practice and leadership at KU Medical Center. Couldry will accept the award Jan. 15 when he gives the keynote presentation, “Principled Leadership in Healthcare – A Lighthouse in a Storm of Change,” at the 40th Mossberg Honors Symposium.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings

Study examines differences in strength by position among football players

LAWRENCE — Even casual football watchers could tell you there are different body types based on the player’s position. Linemen are big with a lot of body mass, and wide receivers are smaller and faster, for example. But a new study from the University of Kansas is setting the stage to determine if there are more subtle differences in fitness and strength characteristics by position that are not obvious, even to the trained football eye.

If coaches and trainers could point to data that shows linebackers generally have higher upper body strength, while tight ends have a high level of flexibility or similar measures, that could lead to position-specific training to put athletes in their most optimum positions to succeed. Quincy Johnson, assistant professor of health, sport & exercise science, led a study that used state-of-the-art technology to assess key performance indicators within a group of college football players that found significant differences in body type, muscular strength and power, though not flexibility, by position type.

Offensive and defensive linemen, “big skill” positions such as linebackers and tight ends, and skill players such as quarterbacks, wide receivers and safeties were the focus of the study. Researchers conducted a battery of tests with 16 starters from a NCAA Division II football team. All were free of musculoskeletal injuries and had regularly taken part in strength and conditioning training.

“Even within the same sport you have different body types and different needs for the position they play,” Johnson said. “Speed, mobility, flexibility all play a part in your ability to play football. Strength and power also play a huge role. We found significant differences among position groups in muscular power, as well as muscular strength. However, we didn’t find a difference in flexibility.”

Players in the sample were separated into offensive and defensive groups and were tested for body composition, including height, body mass and lean body mass. Then, further key performance indicators like movement capacity, muscular strength and power were measured. Technology including markerless motion capture and force plates measured movement capacity during squats, strength via isometric mid-thigh pulls, power via jumping exercises and other similar measures.

As hypothesized, the researchers found significant differences in body composition, with linemen having more body mass than other big skill players. And the latter positions jumped higher and more efficiently transferred force during jumps, exhibiting different types of characteristics of athleticism between the positions. Movement capacity, however, did not prove to have significant differences by position.

Specific measures of muscular strength and power also varied between position groups, but measures of peak force did not, the researchers noted. That finding emphasizes the importance of developing absolute strength, they added.

Johnson, a former collegiate football player and strength and conditioning coach, described the study as a call to action. By showing that different body compositions, movement capacities and types of strength and power are scientifically measurable, it could set the stage for research that can maximize desired characteristics in the name of improving performance long term. Further research is needed to determine how best to develop the necessary characteristics by position.

Written by Johnson, Yang Yang, Dimitrije Cabarkapa and Andrew Fry of KU; Shane Stock, Dalton Gleason, Kazuma Akehi, Dayton Sealey and Clay Frels of the University of Nebraska-Kearney; and Douglas Smith of Oklahoma State University, the study was published in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology.

“I hope to help answer questions coaches have and hopefully move the field in some new directions,” Johnson said. “The big question is, ‘Can we assess abilities in this group of athletes?’ Once we have this information, can we analyze it in a way that over time improves performance?”

Johnson, who began playing football at age 5 in his native Oklahoma, had questions about training camp when he reached the collegiate level, including why the first few and last few days of training camp seemed to be the most strenuous and taxing on the body. While he never suffered serious injuries, he saw teammates who did or quit the sport for various reasons. By bringing a sport science approach to such questions, he hopes to help athletes, coaches, trainers and others use data to answer those and others about how to maximize performance. Such data could contribute to training regimens designed specifically for defensive backs to reach their full potential or to help linemen stay on the field or avoid injuries, for example.

Future work will examine data from Division I football players and those in other sports as well.

The authors write that the findings can also help those beyond athletes and coaches, including strength and conditioning professionals, sport scientists, sports medicine professionals, nutritionists and registered dietitians.

Johnson’s research is part of the work by the Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory, a member of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance. The alliance works to transform and improve human health through the understanding of peak performance. While the majority of understanding of human health comes from the study of disease, the research at KU and partners studies peak athletic performance to help people achieve optimal health and well-being.

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Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”

a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.

https://kansaspublicradio.org/podcast/when-experts-attack

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Contact: Brad Stauffer, School of Pharmacy, [email protected], @KUPharmacy

Rick Couldry selected as School of Pharmacy distinguished graduate

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Pharmacy has selected Rick Couldry, vice president of pharmacy and health professions at The University of Kansas Health System, for its 2025 Distinguished Graduate Award. The award annually recognizes an alumnus of the school’s graduate programs. Couldry earned his Master of Science in Hospital Pharmacy Administration from the KU School of Pharmacy in 1996 while completing a two-year residency in pharmacy practice and leadership at KU Medical Center.

Couldry will accept the award Jan. 15 when he gives the keynote presentation at the 40th Mossberg Honors Symposium. His keynote title is “Principled Leadership in Healthcare – A Lighthouse in a Storm of Change.” Couldry will share his thoughts on leadership in an ever-changing health care environment that he suggests must include humility, fostering a great work culture and maintaining services that produce high-quality health care.

“When I started my career, we only had to know hospital pharmacy,” said Couldry, who now oversees departments such as Pathology and Laboratory Science, Respiratory Therapy, Rehabilitation Services, Clinical Nutrition, Pulmonary Function, Sleep Center and Biomedical Engineering, which collectively employ about 1,900 staff members.

“As the Health System grew and the pharmacy market grew, we had to learn, and that has been both the challenge and a big part of the fun. I believe pharmacists are uniquely trained and positioned to be successful and contribute to health systems.”

“Rick Couldry exemplifies the excellence in practice and leadership that we strive to instill in all our students,” said Brittany Melton, interim chair and professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice. “His three decades of leadership have helped exponentially grow the pharmacy footprint at The University of Kansas Health System, and he has been a role model and advocate for countless pharmacy students. We’re pleased to recognize him for his outstanding contributions to the pharmacy profession, teaching and health care leadership at the highest levels.”

Couldry credits his KU education and many colleagues for helping him to succeed in his leadership journey. His studies included classes in the School of Business, the School of Medicine (Public Health) and the School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmacy Practice.

While he’s responsible for a multimillion-dollar operation today, he’s perhaps most proud of his role as a mentor and his time directing pharmacy residency programs.

“I always enjoy helping people achieve or realize their potential,” Couldry said. “I still have five or six people I have coffee with every few weeks in a mentoring relationship. It’s rewarding and fulfilling.”

Couldry grew up on a farm in northwest Missouri and received his Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. After his pharmacy residency at KU, he served as residency program director at the University of Kansas Hospital and then helped transform the hospital to The University of Kansas Health System, where he has served as assistant director of pharmacy, director of pharmacy, executive director of pharmacy services and his current role as vice president of pharmacy and health professions.

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KU News Service

1450 Jayhawk Blvd.

Lawrence KS 66045

[email protected]

http://www.news.ku.edu

Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]

Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs

From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu

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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman

Film aims to build support for trauma care in Africa

LAWRENCE — In his work with University of Kansas colleague and Oscar-winner Kevin Willmott, Matt Jacobson has focused on social justice in an American racial context. In Jacobson’s new project — a documentary about a KU Medical Center doctor’s effort to improve trauma treatment in Africa — the professor of film & media studies explores social justice in a far different realm affected not just by one nation’s struggles but by geopolitics.

A 30-minute version of the film, “Trauma: The New Epidemic,” will premiere Jan. 10 as part of the Great Wonders Uplift Film Festival in Joplin, Missouri. Jacobson has also submitted the film to the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, and he hopes to screen a longer version at this year’s Free State Festival in Lawrence.

Meanwhile, his co-director on the project, KU FMS graduate Backer Hamada, has been using footage from the documentary to create clips for use on social media sites, including Instagram and Facebook.

It’s been a couple of years since Dr. Archie Heddings, associate professor of orthopedic surgery, reached out to Jacobson about his idea to help fellow physicians in Africa treat a crushing load of trauma cases driven by rapid industrialization and lack of safety regulations.

“There’s a lot of mineral and other resources that both the West and China want to get out of the country,” Jacobson said. “So they’re putting in roads and other large-scale infrastructure for moving goods, but there’s very little money being spent for safety or hospitals. If you’re doing construction and have rickety bamboo scaffolding on the sides of buildings, and nobody’s using safety gear and somebody falls, you’re going to have a sharp spike in trauma cases from that. It has become a major cause of death and injury — much more so than some of the diseases like AIDS and malaria that, in the 20th century, there was this hue and cry about dealing with.

“But there are many, many more cases of trauma going on – a huge spike in demand for medical services.”

Heddings had previously taken part in a medical mission to Ethiopia sponsored by a faith-based group. But the physicians he met in Africa told him that, while they appreciated the visitors’ efforts, what would help even more would be more African physicians and fully equipped, modern surgery centers.

That’s a tall order, but Heddings has already achieved certain miracles, coming back from paralysis and blindness caused by a car crash to become a board-certified traumatologist.

So he started by establishing a fellowship, the African Trauma Initiative, that has brought two African physicians for each of the past three school years to KU Medical Center to train in treating trauma.

But that is not enough, as far as Heddings is concerned. A follow-up visit to his trainees in the Ethiopian capital drove home to Heddings that, despite a skyline that rivals any American city, Addis Ababa has just two trauma-center hospitals to serve a nation of 120 million. Go the ER with an arm broken in a car crash, Heddings said, and doctors inform patients that they are “5,000th on the waiting list” and to “go home and wait for a call about treatment in a year or two.”

“They are completely overwhelmed by trauma,” Heddings said. “There is no substitute for the surgical infrastructure.”

KU has contributed know-how from several different academic units to help Heddings’ mission succeed.

Heddings’ operating room nurse, Lauri Spiresweet, pitched in by establishing an ongoing fellowship within the KU School of Nursing for African nurses that parallels the physician track. In 2023, she traveled to Ethiopia with two student nurses from KU.

In addition to Jacobson, Jacobson’s former student and now the film’s co-director and director of marketing, Hamada, and three other students also joined that year’s trip to film the documentary that they hope will be key to publicizing – and addressing – the problem.

Frank Zilm, a lecturer in KU’s School of Architecture & Design and a specialist in health care facilities, has worked up a plan for outfitting an existing building in Addis Ababa that was designed but never finished as a hospital.

And students from the School of Business have been working on a sustainable financial plan to operate such a trauma center.

But that will only be possible if Heddings can raise the millions necessary. So to support the entire enterprise he formed a nonprofit, the International Orthopedic Trauma Collaborative. He said he is already looking to help people in poor and developing countries beyond Ethiopia.

He said he hoped the film will bring at least some dimensions of the problem home to Westerners. For instance, Jacobson’s crew was recording when a power failure plunged an Ethiopian operating room into darkness.

Jacobson said he hoped the film will drive awareness of – and support for – the project to a new level.

“That’s why we titled the documentary ‘Trauma: The New Epidemic,’” Jacobson said, “because that’s the way that we want people to start thinking about it. We’ve had great success in dealing with yellow fever and malaria and dropping the incidence of AIDS. Now let’s start to deal with some of the other things that are resulting in shortened lifespans in that part of the world.”

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KU News Service

1450 Jayhawk Blvd.

Lawrence KS 66045

[email protected]

http://www.news.ku.edu

Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]

Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs