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Recruiting Trainer, Mentor Terrence Swift Providing Winning Edge at all Levels in Alabama
When you look on social media and see elite high school prospects, there's often clips of skill positions: quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers.
Those who play the positions are shown perfecting various throws, running routes and working on agility out of the backfield. And because there is so much attention paid to those positions it's become more common to understand the skills that need to be sharpened.
Unlike those positions, however, the battle in the trenches is often misunderstood by the average person. There is a lot of technique that goes into playing on the offensive or defensive line, but it takes someone knowledgeable enough to truly instruct young players on how to succeed in the trenches.
Insert Terrence Swift.
"You look at the offensive and defensive line in high school football, they really just run into each other and collide," Swift said. "You don't see any technique, footwork or hand placement. No get-off or hip explosion. So I just wanted to teach kids the basics."
Swift grew up in the Birmingham area, in one of its numerous smaller communities. He played at Fairfield High School, where he became a three-year starter, and earned himself a healthy amount of mid-major Division I program offers.
Ultimately, he chose to continue playing at Alabama State in Montgomery.
He was redshirted his freshman year, then began the next season as a starter on the offensive line. But it was against Mississippi Valley State that his career took a serious turn.
"I had an injury called a Lisfranc injury," Swift said. "It was really a career-ending injury. I still came back a year later and tried to play through it, but it wasn't the same. I knew then it was time to do something different."
A Lisfranc injury involves broken bones and/or torn muscles in the mid-foot, and an be exceedingly painful. At minimum it often takes an athlete at least a year to come back, but in Swift's case it marked the end for him as a player.
The opportunity to led to was in coaching.
Once he realized college was the end of the road for him playing-wise, Swift began putting more energy and effort into learning the game, including how to teach it and how to develop players.
He credits his head coach, current XFL coach Reggie Barlow, as someone who allowed him to do so. But it was his offensive line coach, former Alabama football lineman Willard Scissum, who showed him how start translating what he had learned into teaching.
Sounds easy, right? It wasn't. Swift graduated from Alabama State with a degree in psychology, and then basically went the mall.
"My first job was at Academy Sports and Outdoors, then I worked at Walmart for a couple of years," Swift said. "After Walmart, I worked at Wells Fargo for five years."
He did break into coaching when one of his old high school coaches brought him on as an offensive line coach at Jackson-Olin High School in Birmingham. It was there that Swift got the vision to train young athletes, and in 2019, he officially began training.
For a while it was a difficult balancing act between being a coach and a trainer while still working at Wells Fargo. Moreover, when Swift began training players from other schools, concerns started rising about if the sessions were some sort of recruiting tactic. Consequently, he decided to leave the coaching ranks and open his doors to players from all over the city.
In may 2021, he left Wells Fargo and went all-in on training athletes.
He quickly built a strong reputation, which ultimately led Swift to creating the official brand of his business: WinningEdge Training.
"When I came up with the name, I just knew I wanted all of my kids to be winners, and would have that edge," Swift said. "They're gonna have that knowledge, that fight, the mindset to win every rep. Even if you don't win, they have the mindset to know what they did wrong so they can come back and get better."
For anyone who's seen Swift in action during a training session, he's a catalyst for bringing the intensity out of his players. He doesn't do anything outrageous, but instructs his kids with passion and discipline, not being afraid to make anyone repeat a drill if it's not executed properly.
"If you train lackadaisical, you're gonna play lackadaisical," Swift said. "The way you train is how you're gonna play. You want to play physically? You got to train physically. You want to play fast? You got to train fast."
While on his training journey, Swift got to know Kevin Brown, a fellow Fairfield alum and, along with Swift, a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. Brown's the owner of Xtreme Fitness and Performance, where Swift trains his players indoors.
"My best friend Demetric Price had a great bond with Brown because they both pledged the same chapter," Swift said. "Price introduced me to Brown and the friendship started from there.
"At first I was training at a park, and he gave me the opportunity, and opened his doors to me. We had the same values and vision."
Brown now does the speed and strength training, and Swift does the position training. They consider it a balanced partnership.
Regarding the players he trains, the age range is pretty wide, from middle school kids to top high school prospects, to current college players and even NFL guys like Daron Payne and Phidarian Mathis.
Of course, the training is different for the pros, but for his middle school and high school kids Swift makes sure they all have a strong foundation.
"The first thing is I want to see how they move," Swift said. "Lateral movement, how they run, how they bend, are they flexible in the hips and their explosiveness."
Once that's identified, the goal is to teach the techniques that will maximize a player's athleticism.
"My technique was bad," said Adrian Griffin, a 3-star lineman who signed with South Alabama. "I was a dog, but I didn't have the technique. Coming to Swift showed me how I can develop as a player and continue growing.
"It was honestly a great experience because he cares about the guys he trains."
Those same fundamental aspects are what college coaches look for too, especially among linemen, but at a higher level.
College coaches do occasionally stop by to see the players Swift trains, and while the exposure is nice, its reflective of the way Swift's role has grown the most: In college football recruiting.
Trainers like Swift spend a lot of time with players, sometimes even more than their high school coaches. He develops bonds, and when a player comes to him with a question about the process is someone who will provide a direct and straightforward answer.
He's someone that won't just speak from the heart, but from experience.
Swift had several offers, with some Power 5 programs among them including Louisville, but in part because he waited too long a lot were eventually pulled.
Now he helps guide the next generation, being the kind of person he wishes would have been in his life when going through the process.
That's what the winning edge is all about.
"I just ask my players what are they looking for," Swift said. "I never really pushed a kid to a school; when I went to school, I had to make that decision on my own. I can give you some information on what may be best and what things to look at. But when it comes to making a decision, that's solely on them."
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