Aaron Wellman Pleased with Indiana's Attitude during Fall Workouts

Aaron Wellman views this fall as an opportunity to make Indiana football's roster even better.

Dylan Wallace | Sep 2, 2020

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Like most of the players, Indiana's senior assistant athletic director for football performance Aaron Wellman was disappointed when he heard the news that the Big Ten postponed fall football.

With the NCAA granting teams that aren't competing this fall 12-hour weeks to workout, Wellman will be spending a majority of his time with the players.

So, he immediately flipped his attitude. Wellman fired off a tweet about resetting, refocusing, responding, and, Tom Allen's mantra for this season, not blinking.

We Reset
We Refocus
We Respond...
But We NEVER Blink.#iufb
— Aaron Wellman, PhD (@coachwellmanphd) August 12, 2020

"Like our players, I was disappointed, but if we're focusing on things we can't control, a lot of us are going to be unhappy and stressed with life," Wellman said. "So, the decision was made, and I immediately said, 'OK, how do we take this opportunity and get better?'"

Wellman arrived in Bloomington in March. At that point, there was no spring season and all the players were off campus.

He views this fall as sort of a "second offseason" — a chance to make up for missed time.

"It just feels like an offseason with a flipped calendar," Wellman said.

The team comes into the weight room and works out four days a week — Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Wellman said he has been pleased with the team's attitude and effort throughout the week, not hanging their heads that they aren't playing, but just going to work and trying to improve.

In terms of the freshmen, many of them arrived in late June or middle of July, so Wellman said they haven't had a lot of opportunity to work with them so far. Because of that, Wellman said it's too early to tell how they are responding to the training from a physical standpoint.

But mentally, he's been impressed with what the young players have shown.

"Freshmen, sophomores, juniors all the way to the seniors, the attitude they bring to work every day, their work ethic, how hard they train, they show up on time and they bring great energy," Wellman said.

The biggest challenge this fall is Wellman doesn't know what exactly the team is preparing for. They have no idea when the next time they will take the field is.

The rumors are endless. From playing in early January, to potentially starting around Thanksgiving, to even playing in October, the lack of answers creates an unknown for Wellman's training methods in terms of planning it out for a season.

"One thing that we know is that we cannot rush physiology, so just because we say that the season is four weeks away and we just started training… four weeks is probably not enough, or six weeks or whatever it is, that is just an example," Wellman said. "We cannot rush physiology.

"We need to develop some chronic training and right now the best training program we can be on is one that is consistent and one that we can consistently complete on a weekly basis to start building these loads with our players with uninterrupted training."

Despite never being in a situation quite like this, Wellman believes his experience in the NFL has helped him tremendously over the last few months.

Wellman has made it a point of emphasis to not focus on what he can't control. Right now, all Wellman has control over is making Indiana's roster better, for 12 hours each week, four days a week.

"I think we got a resilient bunch of guys. We got a great group of guys, and whenever adversity hits, opportunity arises," Wellman said. "We don't know what's looming. But we do know the focus right now is how strong can we get? How fast can we get? Let's make improvements on all these physical qualities."

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