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- Wednesday, February 15, 2012
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By Emily Ford
eford@salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS — Former Carolina Panther Mike Minter has partnered with the N.C. Research Campus to make state-of-the-art fitness testing available to hundreds of Charlotte-area youth.
About 300 student athletes enrolled in Minter's nonprofit youth program will undergo fitness testing this summer at the $1.5 billion Research Campus.
Minter, who lives in Kannapolis and played for the Panthers for 10 years before retiring in 2007, underwent the testing this week with his sons at the Appalachian State University Human Performance Lab in Kannapolis. ASU is one of eight universities studying nutrition and health at the biotechnology complex.
Older son Michael beat his dad in several tests, adjusted for age and weight.
Younger son Isaiah wasn't far behind.
The lab, directed by renowned exercise scientist Dr. David Nieman, will provide a battery of high-tech tests worth $500 to student athletes for $50, according to a letter of intent Nieman wrote to Mike Minter Enterprises.
Minter, who turned to business development and philanthropy after he left the NFL, launched a youth organization in January dubbed "I Am A Foot Soldier."
The project relies on public school systems to recommend youth participants. The student athletes attend for free. Their school system pays half of the $1,000 tuition and Minter raises the rest through private donations and corporate gifts.
The one-year program incorporates athletic training with mentoring, life skills classes and even entrepreneurism. The goal is to help every student attend college.
The program impressed Nieman.
"To me, he's going down the right road here, and we want to go down that road with him," Nieman said. "We very much respect what he's doing."
Nieman and other ASU researchers and lab technicians spent two and a half hours Wednesday testing Minter and his sons.
Minter said he wanted to go through the testing before sending his student athletes to the Research Campus.
Scientists use four tests in the lab to measure body composition, lower body strength, anaerobic power and aerobic capacity. They also counsel subjects about test results and how to improve their fitness.
Minter, a former all-pro safety who started 141 games for the Panthers and held the team record for most tackles with 953, admitted Wednesday that he's lost some fitness since retiring.
"I haven't run hard in three years," said Minter, whose bad knees forced him to retire.
"I'm 36, but these knees are more like 76," he said.
The owner of a variety of businesses including Minter Properties and Minter Consulting, Minter said he's often too busy to work out.
"No excuses," Michael told his dad.
One after another, Minter and his sons climbed on bikes and treadmills and inside a Bod Pod, performing tests like the Wingate, which measures peak and sustained anaerobic power, and the VO2 max, which determines aerobic capacity.
Nieman recently added the Wingate test to his lab's arsenal when he partnered with NASCAR pit crews from Hendrick Motorsports.
Subjects ride a stationary bike for 30 seconds against tremendous resistance. Dr. Andrew Shanely, ASU assistant professor of exercise science in Kannapolis, compared it to "running with a parachute on."
During the VO2 max, subjects run on a treadmill at increasing speed and incline while wearing a mask to measure oxygen consumption.
Minter said taking the VO2 max test was the "hardest thing I've done since college," where he started for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Already a humble man, Minter shook his head and smiled when Michael, who turns 15 next month, beat him.
"He's amazing," Nieman said about Michael. "He's got a lot of power and endurance on top of it, and he's very lean. His future potential is very high."
Isaiah, 12, who Minter calls "Zeke" after former NBA star Isiah Thomas, also "has great endurance," Nieman said.
The boys have "the whole fitness package," he said.
While Minter's power and strength results were "off the charts," Nieman said, his heart and lung fitness were average.
That's typical for an athlete who excels at short bursts of speed and power, like a professional football player or a pit crewman, Nieman said.
But even those athletes need to increase their cardiovascular fitness to improve their overall health, he said.
Minter once ran the 40-yard dash in 4.2 seconds, weighed 190 pounds and had 7 percent body fat when he played for the Panthers.
Now, he weighs 204 pounds and has 23 percent body fat.
Minter admitted that he drinks sugary soda, and lots of it.
"You gotta stop that," Nieman said.
"I know, I know," Minter said and vowed to return in better shape to take the tests again. "Now I'm motivated."
Minter can safely drop one pound a week by cutting 500 calories per day, Nieman said.
ASU lab manager Dr. Amy Williford and lab tech Dustin Dew conducted the tests.
Nieman, who literally wrote the textbook on exercise science, is accustomed to working with elite athletes like seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and the U.S. Olympic women's rowing team.
"Bottom line, they're just like everybody else. They have health and fitness concerns," he said. "They are just ordinary people, but at a time in their life they had extraordinary drive and motivation to make the most of their physical talent."
Genetics play a role, he said. But so do a strong will and motivation to be the best.
Like other top athletes Nieman has tested, Minter put those traits together and rose to an elite level, Nieman said.
"But the athletic part of it can soon be lost," he said. "Seeing his older son perform better on these tests — I'm sure it's a little humbling for him."
Now, like everyone else, Minter has to work harder to keep his weight under control.
"It's the same problem we all have," said Nieman, who has run 58 marathons.
For 10 days this summer, the ASU lab in Kannapolis will test Minter's student athletes, determining their fitness deficiencies and counseling them on how to improve.
"I want to give them all the best," Minter said. "Who else but elite athletes could have access to this? Now I can give it to kids who are 13, 14, 15 years old and blow their minds."
But athletics comprises only one facet of Minter's youth program. The other two fundamentals are academics and attitude.
Without all three, student athletes can't reach their full potential, Minter said.
When he began coaching football in Concord and directing sports camps last year, "I saw how many kids were not getting it," he said. "I said man, we got to do something."
He's hired an athletic director as well as an educational director for the youth program and has partnered with a tutoring company.
Male and female participants have two eight-week semesters of training, classes and mentoring. They also can attend Minter's summer camps in football, basketball or baseball.
So far, Union, Mecklenburg and Gaston county school systems have joined his program. Minter said he hopes Kannapolis and Cabarrus County schools will join next year.
Ultimately, Minter wants 1 million student athletes enrolled across the country.
"The program is built around getting kids to recognize that just playing sports is not it," Minter said. "They fail to realize that everything is connected."
Minter credits God and his mother for helping him make that realization.
"In the end," Nieman said, "he knows that being a good person is really what counts."
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