Texas Longhorns Coach Tom Herman Talks What 'Social Distancing' Workouts Will Look Like

The Texas athletic staff is prepared for players to return to campus whenever the Big 12 lifts the ban

Like most head coaches around the country, there's a part of Tom Herman that is chomping at the bit to get his team back in the Texas Longhorn athletic facility, but he and his staff understand that safety will come first. 

Texas has been preparing to get players back in the Longhorns' training facilities quite some time now, hoping to put an end to the makeshift homespun workouts many players have been doing into the fine-tuned, professionally-supervised training the athletes are used to. 

He recently sat down with Pro Football Scoop and talked about the preparations and precautions the program will take once players get back on campus. 

“I feel like if our guys are here in the state of Texas and they’re tired of lifting the Home Depot buckets filled with concrete and working out with resistance bands, they’re going to naturally find a weight room to go to, and why not let it be ours?” Herman said. “Still keep the lift groups under 10, still keep social distancing, but allow them to use the equipment that they’re used to using and be supervised from a health and safety standpoint by our strength and conditioning staff. We’ve got probably a much better plan, I would think, to sanitize things.

“We’ve already planned, June 1, if they allow us to do it, we’ll split the weight room in half, kind of have a Weight Room A, Weight Room B,” he added. “When guys are working out in Weight Room A we can sanitize Weight Room B and vice versa. We’ll have 8-10 lift groups of eight kids or more. That just makes sense to me, right? They’re going to find a weight room to work out in if they’re in a state that public weight room and workout facilities are opening, so why not let it be ours, under our supervision with our resources dedicated to the sanitization of said equipment and space.”

The NCAA ruled that voluntary workouts can resume on June 1, but the Longhorns are still waiting for word from the Big 12 on when its members will be allowed to have players back on campus. 

According to some sources, the league isn't expected to lift the ban until at least June 15. 

Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor seemed to back up that sentiment in a recent interview. 

“We weren’t expecting that, quite frankly,” Taylor said recently on the team's website. “Shane Lyons, who is the athletic director at West Virginia, sits on the management council, and we literally had a call (Tuesday) and he said that he felt (the NCAA Division I Council) was going to come out in their meeting (Wednesday) and say it was going to be a football-only recommendation, and only be a recommendation of if you wanted to go back June 1 you could, but it was going to be up to each conference to make that decision."

Fans, coaches and players alike are all playing the waiting game for now, but it appears the Longhorns staff is prepared to pounce on the opportunity once it's presented. 

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