Carolina's strength and conditioning coach Mark Smith was recently interviewed about how Summer workouts were coming along. Glad to have the last two years behind him, here is what he had to say about this year's Gamecock squad:
"This year is 10 times better and it's where we needed to be," Smith said. "The participation rate is close to 100 percent. You're always going to have some guys who have to go out of town for something or some guy may oversleep. Right now it's just about 100 percent."
"Now we have the type of individuals who know what we want and what Coach (Spurrier) wants and what he'll accept and what he won't accept," Smith said. "The winter program was excellent and it's just carrying over to summer right now. They know what's expected."
"We really push these guys," Smith said. "People don't understand. Ask a player how hard we push them. The harder we push them, the more they put into it, the more they invest right now, it will be harder for them to give up when it's a game situation. They think about what they've been through. It just makes them want to work harder."
"Right now, if a guys doesn't go as hard as he should, the other players will get on them," Smith said. "You hear guys all the time saying to each other to pick the pace up or you need to get with it. You need to come hard. Players will definitely get on each other. That's accountability."
"I think the players are more motivated," Smith said. "I don't think they're going to be satisfied with just winning more than we lose. They understand that we came close in certain situations. We can get over the top and compete. We had Florida beat last year. But we shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times and we didn't execute the kicks."
"The players realize if we execute and play hard, we'll be right there. The guys can see that. It's just a matter of time, in my opinion."
On winning the SEC: "We preach that every day, we talk about it every day", said Smith, a two-year starter and team captain at North Carolina State (1983-87) whose association with Spurrier began in 1998 when he was named Strength and Conditioning Coordinator at Florida.
"Coach talks about it, we talk about. It's not going to be easy. You have to work and you have to prepare yourself. That's what I'm trying to get the guys to understand right now. We're always preaching what other teams are doing. We can't allow other teams to outwork us. We don't want to be beaten in the fourth quarter. We want to be the best conditioned team."
On the past summer workouts: The first year after we got here was bad," Smith said. "It was bad as far as people participating. Some guys would show up, some guys wouldn't. We had some guys who were consistent but not enough guys. They weren't accustomed to doing things the way we do it with the early morning runs. I don't know how they did that before. We get up early, get started and get it over with. Then we have the lifting throughout the day. The second year was actually better but it still wasn't where we wanted it to be. This year was how we wanted it to be."
Sounds like that's a pretty significant improvement. I'm really starting to get excited about his season and the way that the Gamecocks are headed!
