As players get older, they usually lose their speed and ups. In the case of veteran Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Ike Taylor, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Thanks to a levee-like structure that Taylor and his trainer Tom Shaw built in Florida at the Wide World of Sports Complex, the 12th year cornerback has been able to better his vertical jump.
“He gained that half-inch back,” Shaw said Friday from Taylor’s 11th annual “Face Me Ike” youth football camp in Gretna, LA, according to Christopher Dabe of The Times-Picayune.
Not only has Taylor increased his ups, he’s also bettered his speed.
“He is running as fast as he did when he first came into the NFL,” Shaw added. “That’s big for him.”
At Louisiana-Lafayette’s 2003 Pro Day, Taylor reportedly ran 4.18 in the 40. I doubt very seriously that he’s still that fast, but it wouldn’t shock me if he could still run a 4.4 after all of these years.
As for using the levee-like structure, Shaw said it’s an old method they decided to use this offseason and one that Taylor is familiar with.
“We went back to the things we were doing on the levee,” Shaw said. “We built a hill in the woods of Disney’s Wide World of Sports. Now we have our own little levee out there and we do backpedaling drills out there that we used to do. We’ve gone back to the old-school method.”
Taylor keeps himself in incredible shape and while 2014 is the final year of his current contract with the Steelers, it doesn’t sound like he’s ready to have a farewell tour during the season.
“Everybody wants to put a timeline on when your career should end,” Taylor said. “But that’s on you. That’s why I try to keep myself in shape all the time.”
