Can't get to a weight room? No problem, they'll bring the weights to you.If you've been keeping up with our pictures from practice here in Orlando, you've seen the mobile weight room the guys have been using. It's all hands on deck as the strength staff, equipment staff and even a few football coaches join in to help set up 24 workout stations on concrete outdoor basketball courts at our bowl practice location in Orlando, Celebration High School.
Left: Staff unloading the truck and setting up the weight stations.
"Our approach as South Carolina Strength & Conditioning is 'no stone unturned'," said Craig Fitzgerald, a.k.a. Coach Fitz, the Gamecocks' Director of Strength & Conditioning. "The first year we did this our players were a little shocked and maybe even a little upset when they saw their weight room come from Columbia to our bowl site but now they're used to it and get a good laugh about it."
Each day upon arrival at the school the staff gets to work setting up over 8,500 pounds worth of weights and equipment, including bars, blocks, three different sizes of weight plates, bands, ropes and more. And they're doing it twice - anything that goes up must come down. As soon as the lifting session is over after practice the crew is right back at it loading all the equipment back into the truck.
Assistant strength coach Dan Austin setting up a station
With the bowl practice schedule the football staff tries to keep preparation as similar to a regular game week as possible - same daily meetings, same practices, same lifts. For example, today is Saturday, but it's the team's "Thursday" because we're two days before gameday.
"We usually do two [lifting sessions] for the travel squad for a regular game week," explained Fitz. "We're here for an extra couple days so we actually got three in which I was really happy about and we got three good conditioning sessions in too so we've had a good work week."
"We run off the practice field and come right on to these basketball courts. We had all 110 guys lifting together, cheering each other on, we're getting after it."
The Gamecocks kick off vs. Nebraska on Monday, Jan. 2, in the Capital One Bowl at 1:00 p.m. airing live on ESPN. Tickets remain available through GamecocksOnline.com.
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