Marshall's Entire Football Team Set Personal Records In The Weight Room #Gains

HERD ZONE – It took 12 years for James Rouse to equal Chris Massey’s 500-pound bench press record for the Marshall University football program. It took one offseason for three current players to knock them out of the shared top spot.

It was a banner offseason for the Thundering Herd strength and conditioning program, which is spearheaded by first-year coach Luke Day. Offensive lineman Nate Devers set the new bench press standard at 525 pounds, preventing defensive lineman Gary Thompson and linebacker Davon Durant from becoming the new record-holders at 505 pounds.

Those are three of 37 fresh marks set by the football program last month in six categories: bench press, power clean, pro bench (number of repetitions at 225 pounds), squat, vertical jump and broad jump.

There were so many players who bested the minimum qualifications to make the board that they’ll never see their names listed in the weight room. The bar to qualify in the top five at each position and in each category has been pushed higher than ever.

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Ironic that this story came out right after I posted one of my most favorite sports related internet clips ever, the Marshall strength and conditioning coaches lighting paddles on fire then breaking them over each other’s backs.

Marshall Football redefining #Gains this off season.

Here’s the way it works: MU strength coaches update two big boards in the weight room that list the all-time record-holder, regardless of position, followed by the top five performances in three different position groups. Offensive and defensive linemen are judged together; fullbacks, tight ends and linebackers compete; and quarterbacks, receivers, running backs and defensive backs are pitted against one another.

That’s 16 total names on the board for the six aforementioned categories. That means 37 lifts and jumps were good enough to place in the top five all-time for each of those categories.

“It’s crazy the strides we’ve been making,” said Devers, a 6-foot-3, 275-pound redshirt sophomore who also lost seven pounds from last year’s listed weight. “A lot of it is mental. If you think about how much weight is on that bar, you’re not going to get the reps.”

Here’s the entire list of every team record that fell – it’s like 10 paragraphs long, including:

In the squat, there were seven lifts good enough to qualify in the top five performances. Redshirt junior running back Tony Pittman, who added nine pounds to push his weight to 212, squatted 610 pounds – the all-time record for skill position players (Aaron Johnson, at 600 pounds, set the previous standard in 2007).

…In addition to Devers’ all-time bench mark, all three position records fell in that category: Devers for the linemen, Durant for the fullbacks-tight ends-linebackers and McManus (460 pounds) for the skill positions. McManus’ record edged a 14-year-old mark held by Butchie Wallace (550 pounds). That was the second-oldest record to fall next to Massey’s bench mark, which he had held or shared since 2001.

You want a sleeper team for this season? How about the one who had literally every single player on the roster transform their body into a fucking machine?

“Those guys are clearly on a mission.” Day said.