Coach Garrett Mueller has turned Stewartville High School (MN) into a powerhouse, securing back-to-back state championships in 2023 and 2024. His secret? A radical departure from traditional “grind” culture in favor of the “Feed the Cats” approach—a sprint-based philosophy that prioritizes high performance, recovery, and athlete joy over volume and exhaustion.
By treating football players like racehorses rather than plow horses, Mueller’s program emphasizes that speed is the tide that lifts all boats.
Garrett Mueller: Building a Successful Sprint Based Football Program
The “Feed the Cats” Pillars
Popularized by track coach Tony Holler and adapted for the gridiron, the system rests on three main ideas:
- Prioritize Speed: If speed is the most critical asset on the field, it must be trained when the athlete is 100% fresh.
- Tired is the Enemy: You cannot train maximum velocity while fatigued. Practices are shorter, high-intensity, and focused on quality over quantity.
- Rest and Love: Recovery is a requirement, not a luxury. The goal is to make football the best part of a kid’s day, preventing burnout and keeping the “cats” hungry.
Why the Traditional Weight Room is Failing Speed
Speed expert Chris Korfist (consultant for the NFL and top NCAA programs) argues that many traditional lifting programs actually make athletes slower.
- The Displacement Myth: Traditional squats and deadlifts are stable, neutral movements. Sprinting, however, is a chaotic, unbalanced projection of the center of mass.
- Force vs. Direction: Lifting heavy weights teaches the body to “stand up.” Sprinting requires the body to project forward. If the weight is too heavy, the athlete reverts to “powerlifting recruitment patterns,” which can be detrimental to sprint mechanics.
Video: Why the weight room isn’t working
Redefining Core and Sled Work
Korfist emphasizes that the core must be dynamic. It isn’t just about “abs”; it’s about the ability of the spine to maintain a “stable bridge” so that force generated by the legs can be transferred to the ground without energy leaks.
When using sleds, the focus should be on First Step Projection. If an athlete’s spine lags behind their hips, they lose the ability to project forward. Sleds should be used to overload the “lean” and “shin angles” required for elite acceleration.
“We need speed. Greasy fast speed. To get it, we have to stop doing the ‘stuff’ that makes us slow.”
Video: Use sled more effectively
