How Vikings players use multiple sports to power their football success

Chris Reed and C.J. Ham — with many of their Vikings teammates already settled in warmer climes — piled their families into cars for a trip to Mankato on the second Saturday of the offseason to see if they could put the shot as far as they once did.

They'd first become acquainted over January indoor track and field meets at Minnesota State Mankato. Reed won two Division II national championships at MSU, with career bests that put him just short of U.S. Olympic trials qualification, while Ham was the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference runner-up in the shot as a senior for Augustana.

Since then, they've both beaten the odds in football, as undrafted free agents from Division II schools who'd earned lucrative contracts and NFL pensions.

"If I wasn't doing track, I don't know that I would have pulled it off," Reed said. "Because I know I got my strongest when I was throwing, and that translated to football."

Reed and Ham are part of a lineage of Vikings players who grew up as multisport athletes and remain outspoken about how the skills they honed in other sports made them better football players. Of the 71 players on the Vikings' current roster, 62 competed in at least two high school sports. Nine — including Kirk Cousins, Brian O'Neill, Eric Kendricks, Harrison Phillips, Dalvin Tomlinson and Harrison Smith — were three-sport athletes. Three players (Adam Thielen, William Kwenkeu and T.J. Smith) competed in four.

Track and field (30) and basketball (23) were the two most popular second sports, but the list included seven others: baseball, wrestling, soccer, rugby, cross country, lacrosse and golf, where Thielen won a state championship with Detroit Lakes in 2008.

Reed and Ham squeezed in a pair of 90-minute throwing sessions at Concordia-St. Paul the week of the Mark Schuck Open, then made their way to Mankato to compete Jan. 28 as unattached competitors. The day came with more fanfare than Reed or Ham ever experienced as college athletes: a recording of the Vikings' "Skol" chant boomed over the field house speakers during their final attempts, and their competitors lined up for pictures with Reed and Ham at the end of the meet. Reed won and Ham finished third; they laughed afterward about the nerves they'd felt during their first shot put attempts in years.

"It's fun to just compete," Ham said afterward. "I missed that feeling of, 'It's just you in that ring.' It's awesome."

The trip hadn't just been for nostalgia: Reed wants to chase his dream of qualifying for the Olympic trials in 2024 or 2028, and both Ham and he knew the balance, coordination and force production they trained in the shot put ring could help them on the football field.

"I was at my most explosive when I was [throwing in track and field]," Ham said. "Doing these types of movements makes me a better athlete."

'Just be a kid'

Even as professionals, a handful of Vikings players incorporate other sports into their offseason training; pickup basketball remains popular, while Phillips returns to his high school wrestling mat each offseason and Cousins has picked up tennis. Running back Dalvin Cook said he once drove by a park near his house and did a double-take when he saw Justin Jefferson playing in a pickup soccer game.

"A lot of [sports] is just trying to get them thinking you're going one way and then going the other," said Jefferson, who first learned some of the footwork he uses against defensive backs while trying to mimic Allen Iverson's crossover in pickup basketball games with his brothers. "My parents told me, 'Just try to do as much as possible; just try to learn as much as possible. You never know which sport is going to help out with another.' You don't have to worry about one sport all the time. Just be a kid, and have fun."

The fact so many Vikings players grew up playing multiple sports cuts against the growth of single-sport specialization, as club teams and competitive youth travel teams exert greater influence and parents steer children toward one sport.

Two studies presented at the 2018 American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons annual meeting showed 54.7% of parents encouraged children to focus on a single sport. Thielen, who's opened up a series of sports training facilities around the Midwest with his trainer Ryan Englebert, said "it's pretty much a guarantee" he brings it up or fields questions from parents about it at every grand opening.

"Parents are very curious about the thoughts of people who have been through it," Thielen said. "If you asked a lot of people in strength training, sports performance, high-level athletics, a majority would probably say they encourage you to play multiple sports, because of that injury prevention: different movements, and not just doing the same thing over and over. If you do have an awkward movement in a game [and you specialize], your body's not used to that."

The Vikings players who grew up playing multiple sports say they're grateful for their backgrounds.

"You don't realize how big it is," Reed said. "I feel like a lot of my stuff [from different sports] working together is why I was able to go to the NFL."

Different skill set

NFL rosters incorporate athletes with a wide range of skill sets and body types, from 195-pound receivers with 37 1/2-inch vertical leaps like Jefferson to 300-pound linemen like Phillips, who turned heads at the 2018 NFL combine when he bench pressed 225 pounds 42 times.

The list of skills Vikings players developed in other sports is equally broad.

Track and field helped throwers like Reed, Ham and Patrick Jones — who was on a high school team with 2020 Olympic silver medalist Grant Holloway — learn to transfer force from their lower to upper bodies, and refined raw speed for perimeter players like Patrick Peterson, K.J. Osborn, Jalen Nailor and Jefferson, who ran the 200- and 400-meter dashes while competing in the long jump and triple jump. It's perhaps appropriate that Smith, who's gone to six Pro Bowls as a do-everything safety in the NFL, was a state champion decathlete in Tennessee.

The Vikings' top two defensive linemen, Phillips and Dalvin Tomlinson, were both heavyweight state wrestling champions. Tomlinson, who turned down a chance to wrestle at Harvard so he could play football at Alabama, estimated he borrows something from his wrestling background "almost every other play" on the field.

"I remember one time, I came off a block and dove for somebody and I was like, 'I just did a single-leg takedown,'" Tomlinson said. "A lot of different times, you'll come out and it feels like you're on the wrestling mat all over again. Especially when you're going up against two 300-pound people, the amount of leverage it takes to stay up in there, it feels like a long overtime wrestling match."

Thielen said, "If I didn't play basketball, I don't think I'd be where I am," because of the body control, spatial awareness and high-speed change of direction he learned on the court. When he returned punts and kicks in college, he said, his experience as a center fielder in baseball helped him track balls in the air.

Even his golf background, he said, can transfer to football.

"I think of the mental side of the game — you kind of have to flush it, move on and go to the next shot," he said. "I think you can learn a lot from that, and that's really helped me."

Still competing

Vikings players have entered the time of the year when they're largely training on their own, often with personal trainers. While much of that work is to build pure speed and strength, some Vikings players still mix multisport approaches into their training even now.

Cousins, like Thielen, has paused playing pickup basketball during his NFL career, out of concern he could get injured. He's replaced it with tennis, where he can incorporate some lateral movement and get his shoulder some light work while serving.

Phillips sometimes returns to his high school (Millard West in Omaha) for offseason conditioning on the wrestling mat with anyone on the team who "wants a shot at the title." He said he typically shows up with a large stack of cash and offers it to anyone that can score a point on him.

"No one's ever scored a point," he said. "It's been working out in my favor."

As for Reed, who turns 31 in July, an Olympic trials bid would likely be more serious once he's done playing football. His best mark of 65 feet, 10 ¹⁄₄ inches — set in a meet he won at Myers Field House in 2014 while Ham finished third — was less than 2 feet short of the standard for the 2020 trials. Almost as soon as he signed with the Vikings last April, he started talking to Ham about throwing in some meets this offseason, when they both would be in Minnesota. He's planning to compete in several more this spring to see how serious a shot he might have at the 2024 trials. Next offseason, he said, he could train more consistently and link up with a coach.

Even if he's not yet making a full investment in his Olympic dreams, he knows whatever time he spends in the shot put ring can benefit his work in the middle of the Vikings' offensive line.

"It trains spatial awareness — when your body's moving fast, knowing where your body is in space," Reed said. "I use sports psychology a lot for shot put, imagery and all that stuff, so that transfers to football. It's great strength training for offensive linemen, because at the point of attack, everything happens in a split-second. You're training speed and explosiveness. It kind of is a good, well-rounded training."