Luke Day's Impact On Gamecocks' Football Program Being Felt

South Carolina's Football team has made strides in the weight room this offseason, and head strength and conditioning coach Luke Day is a big reason behind it.

When it comes to who the most crucial coach is on a major college football staff, the answer most people will give without hesitation is the head coach. Right behind the head coach, however, the strength and conditioning coach is arguably the second most vital coach due to the volume of time spent with the players.

Heading into his third offseason at South Carolina, there's little to no doubt that head strength coach Luke Day has found ways to challenge the players in ways that are foreign to them, especially this offseason, something head coach Shane Beamer discussed nearly two weeks ago.

"That's the thing I love about Luke [Day], and his staff is they're very willing to think outside the box," Beamer explained. "He's a very creative thinker, he and his entire staff, and he's very hands-on."

One indicator of how physically strong a team is collectively is injuries, and heading into Spring practice, which started on Tuesday, the Gamecocks went onto the field with few, if any guys dealing with an ailment, something Beamer credited to both the players and coach Day and his staff.

"They did a great job in the months of January and February from a Winter program standpoint to get stronger, which we did, and then also to be a little bit better prepared for Spring practice as well. We did a little bit more running as a team in January and February this year than we did previous years and think it should today as well."

Of course, when it comes to strength and conditioning, the ability to quantify workouts is good for giving the players an idea of where they are regarding their progress. For South Carolina's Football team, the results of the last few months have been remarkable across the board with the team's overall speed and strength numbers.

"Looking at some [offseason] results of what we had, our average bench press on the Football team improved by 34 pounds [on average], 56 of our guys had new top speeds, so we felt we got faster as a football team this offseason as well," Beamer said.

With the gauntlet of a schedule the team has to contend with this Fall, the workouts programmed by coach Luke Day and his staff are adequately preparing the team for what's to come later this year.

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