☕️ S&C Daily — Look Good for TV

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A new Wall Street Journal story went inside Florida’s offseason physical transformation. The Gators added a combined 14,443 pounds to their max lifts, with training centered on the power clean, bench, squat and deadlift. It started when first-year head coach Jon Sumrall, 44, found that many of his players couldn’t lift as much as he could.

The staff turned the racks to face each other, so every session was a head-to-head matchup: O-line vs. D-line, running backs vs. safeties. Running back Jadan Baugh squatted 600 pounds before the staff stopped letting him add weight. Florida was outgained on the ground by 206 yards last season. Through their first three games, the Gators averaged 246 rushing yards a game.

Sumrall still lifts with strength coach Rusty Whitt, and they save biceps and shoulders for the end of the week. “We’re trying to get the arms to look good for TV on Saturday,” Sumrall said.

A new study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at 96 hamstring strains in Division I football players, all imaged at the time of injury. Along with grading the muscle, researchers tracked how far the swelling reached toward the sciatic nerve. It reached the nerve in 78.1% of injuries and completely surrounded it in 41.7%.

That group was out longer. Players whose nerve was completely surrounded missed 33.7 days on average, compared with 21.5 for players with no nerve involvement, and the gap held after accounting for muscle grade. Partial contact made no meaningful difference. The authors say nerve involvement belongs in the assessment of an acute hamstring strain, not just the muscle grade.

Bills defensive tackle DeWayne Carter lost his second season to a torn Achilles and spent the rehab in Orchard Park with head strength coach Will Greenberg, running sets of 100 leg extensions, pushups and situps with his foot in a boot. The first time he stepped on a scale after the offseason, he was 333 pounds, more than 30 above his combine weight. Eighteen of those pounds, he says, are muscle.

At Duke, strength coach Dave Feeley, whom Carter calls “literally nuts,” would tell everyone to stop lifting and shut off the lights for max attempts. A whistle blew, a boxing bell rang, and every eye was on the lifter. “That’s where you compete,” Carter said. “So it’s you vs. you, but also you’ve got all your guys behind you.”

Seahawks safety AJ Finley tore knee ligaments in training camp in 2025 and is now all the way back from reconstructive knee surgery. He credits a line from his Ole Miss strength coach, Wilson Love, for how he handled it: “So what, now what?”

Bob Pettit, the two-time NBA MVP who died last week at 93, discovered Alvin Roy before he got to LSU. Roy was a Baton Rouge weightlifting guru who went on to become pro football’s first strength coach.

The Chicago Bulls promoted Justin Irwin to assistant strength and conditioning coach after he served as S&C coach for the G League Windy City Bulls. Chicago also hired Dionne Calhoun as assistant athletic trainer after more than 20 seasons with the Dallas Mavericks, most recently as head athletic trainer since 2019.

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