University of Hawaii football team will continue to be early risers

Of all the concerns relating to the Hawaii football team’s upcoming season, rush-hour traffic will not be one of them.

“I believe in getting up early,” head coach Todd Graham said. “We’ll start meeting in the early morning, and we’ll practice in the mornings. … You need structure in order to have discipline. I think people who are successful in this world are people who get up earlier than everybody else. Training in the morning is something I think is vital.”

Morning practices have been common practice the past two decades under former UH coaches June Jones, Greg McMackin and Nick Rolovich. Norm Chow experimented with afternoon practices before moving exclusively to morning workouts. Graham has been used to morning practices since 1995, when he was Allen High’s head coach and athletic director. He continued that schedule during his previous head coaching jobs at Rice, Tulsa, Pittsburgh and Arizona State.

But unlike previous UH schedules, Graham’s plan is that mandatory football-related activities will only run through the end of each morning practice. He said there will not be any afternoon walk-through sessions or meetings.

“Once they’re done with football every day, then they’ll eat lunch, and then they can focus on their academics the rest of the day,” Graham said. “Everything is in the morning. It allows them to compete in the classroom. They don’t have to go back and forth. They’re able to focus on their academics.”

Graham will adhere to a personal timetable of reporting to the office at 5 a.m. He said the goal is for his staff to complete their work by 7 in the evening.

“Our coaches can get rest and spend time with their families,” Graham said.

For the players, Graham said, each in-season practice will be organized and set at a fast clip.

“We’ll spend time stepping through and walking through (plays), then practice will be extremely fast (paced),” Graham said. “We won’t be out there more than two hours. We’ll be very efficient. … The key to practicing fast is getting repetition, mastering what you’re doing. We go fast because our training and development is about elite discipline. It allows us to operate faster and more efficiently than the opponent.”

When Graham was hired as UH head coach in January, he reached out to Kody Cooke, who was a member of Virginia Tech’s strength/conditioning staff the past several years. Cooke had played and coached under Graham at Tulsa, and was on Graham’s Arizona State staff. Graham hired Cooke as the Warriors’ head strength/conditioning coach … and assistant head coach.

“It’s very unique,” Graham said of his Cooke’s title, but added, “he’s involved in everything we do. He’s the guy I speak to every single day when we design our practices and workouts, and how we decide and phase those workouts, and how we practice football. He’s involved in every bit of that. … He understands the foundation of our program is training. That drives our scheme. We don’t hire coaches who run whatever scheme they want to. Our training dictates our scheme.”