Blue-collar approach shows up in Purdue's strength program

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No one can hide.

Not with two wall-sized boards permanently attached to one entry of Purdue’s massive weight room in the Football Performance Complex.

The metallic boards, set up like a grid, serve as an accountability chart, listing every football player’s name along the left-hand side — there’s one board for defense, another for offense — with slots for reward pieces to be added, if requirements are met.

Across the top, each week of spring ball is listed, followed by each week of summer training. Once the season starts, that’ll change and the top will be accompanied with the opponent. There are 16 “weeks” across the top.

That means 16 games, potentially.

Teams are guaranteed only 12, without postseason.

And that was done on purpose.

Purdue players have said they think it’s a realistic goal this season to battle for a division championship and, then, a Big Ten championship. And beyond.

The Big Ten title game would add a game and winning that could mean Playoffs.

For that to actually happen, players need to perform on a variety of fronts, which is exactly what Justin Lovett is trying stress. And the team’s director of strength and conditioning is working to put pressure on each athlete to achieve. The board is one way to do that: He wants everyone to know where each players stand — the “everyone” being more than just players’ teammates.

“We like it when NFL personnel, the AD, boosters, the head coach can come in and instantly (look and say) you’ve got an opinion on that guy. And that’s it,” Lovett said.

Players earn a hammer if they train like a champion. They get a helmet if they’ve improved their football performance outside the weight room — attending position meetings, training table, meeting about nutrition, going to treatment, etc. They get a railroad track if they can check off academic requirements, like attending study hall and classes.

Coach Jeff Brohm always is working to incite competition, and the accountability board certainly achieves that.

“The players really fight (with us), ‘Hey, why you’d take away my hammer?’ ‘Well, because you got pinned by the weight and then you felt sorry for yourself. That’s not what champions do. Champions might get beat by the weight, but then they get up and worry about their teammate and then they finish,’ ” Lovett said, detailing a scenario in which a player could achieve the reward one week but not the next. “Or ‘Why didn’t get I my railroad tracks?’ Were you not late for study hall? ‘Yes, I was.’

“We tell them we want progress. We don’t need perfection.”

So if, for example, a young player struggles to understand the importance of checking in with nutritionist Lauren Link and misses out on a helmet, they’ll quickly learn how to rectify the situation. Either from Lovett or teammates who want their position group to be the best.

It’s rare, though, to see a name without a hammer square next to it.

Lovett said players rarely “screw up” when it comes to the weight room.

“That’s stereotypical of what you’d expect of Purdue over the last 50, 100 years — brawny, muscled-up (guys). We love it,” Lovett said.

And the board also reiterates the importance of every player on the team, Lovett said. There were several walk-ons who had perfection across the board, earning every helmet, hammer and railroad track, over the spring.

“If you get a guy who may not see the field ever, well, he can leave a huge part of this team because he’s an iron man awardwinner because he does every thing right,” Lovett said. “So your value to the team is getting good grades, serving on the show team and being tremendous in the community. So just because you don’t play doesn’t mean you don’t have value. We want to show that you might not crack the depth chart, but you’re definitely a value to us. You’re an example of what we should be doing.”

• Jeff Brohm, generally, wants players to get away in May, allowing them to refresh — while still working on their bodies, but just maybe not under the structured environment Purdue’s strength staff could provide. But with this team’s largely developmental roster, Brohm didn’t offer much push back when Lovett wanted to press players into staying for May.

Lovett said Brohm was OK with the idea because “we were going to set them up to win.”

“The way we feel is these kids work their whole life to get to a place like this new weight room. So why would you go home for a T-shirt, some Twitter likes with some trainer — who might be good — but they don’t have the resources we have with the NFL strength coaches and variety of equipment?” Lovett said. “Why would you go back to your high school where you could easily revert to your old ways after a week, when the new wears off?”

Ultimately, players ended up approaching Lovett on their own asking to stay, he said, and about 45 players stayed for Maymester and trained.

The result was significant: By the time the summer program began June 11 — when all players were on campus — the group that stayed for Maymester was considerably advanced in their schedule. Essentially, they were on to “Week 5.” And Lovett opted not to start them back on Square 1 when the rest of their teammates arrived.

That didn’t sit well with some of the veterans who had left to train on their own. Lovett said those guys wanted to jump ahead, too, but being cautious was key last week.

“The veterans that were like, ‘Look, it’s my third year. I crushed your workout.’ Well, it’s not about the workout. It’s about the week. Let’s see how you finish (the week)," Lovett said. "We didn’t want to get into too much soreness and too much volume too quick when that’s just going to set you up for failure in July. We’re about that long game. Not even in July but in training camp and through the end of the season. So we’re always tapping the brakes. This was another unexpected way to do so because we didn’t anticipate that Maymester group to get so far ahead. They really bought into it. It wasn’t pulling teeth. They came in together. They worked hard."

• Part of the reason Lovett thinks, from a training perspective, Purdue is operating at “an optimal level” is because of the holistic approach by the strength and conditioning staff, he said.

Incorporating MMA has been something they’ve done from the start, but Domenic Reno, who works with the quarterbacks, also has tried new technology to chart their reps in practices, among other things. They’re also trying “body tempering,” a significant step up from foam rolling by using 130- and 160-pound weights to roll over muscles. They had a representative in recently for a company that makes compression shorts that can track a variety of muscle groups, which can help in recovery, Lovett said.

Having staff who spent time in the NFL, helping mold the country’s best players, as well as others who have boxing and those MMA backgrounds have allowed players to have a wide range of approaches.

Lovett thinks that’s rare at this level — and it also could be a reason Purdue’s had an uptick in recruiting of late.

“I think we’re allowing some specialty things to happen, which doesn’t happen at a bigger school or doesn’t happen when you have a lot of turnover, because sometimes at bigger schools, it’s square peg, round hole,” Lovett said. “(It’s) ‘If you don’t fit, get out of the way. I’ve got you next. I don’t have time to mess with you.’ But we have the time and the resources with our coaches and a tremendous staff that care and are passionate to take care of the team, so I’m happy from that standpoint. I think we offer our players something (unique). In addition to the (new weight) room, they know they’re not getting three NFL coaches and two former big-time defensive linemen working with them anywhere else. So I’m happy we can offer as much as we can offer, and we’re dialing into now, because it’s not our first year with these coaches, either, upstairs.

“There have been times where some places, and I’ve been part of them, you say all that, but you can’t pull all that off. You just don’t have the staff. You can’t have a GA to slice up your line and figure out these guys are developmental, these guys are high-end, these guys need mobility, these guys need strength. I’m really happy at that.”

• Purdue has been in its new, expansive weight room less than a year, and, finally, Lovett and his staff are starting to take advantage of all the high-tech options the machines present. They used them sparingly last season, only testing them a bit on the developmental players who didn’t travel. But this summer, the entire roster is experiencing what the equipment has to offer.

Lovett didn’t want a too-much, too-fast approach with all the tools last year, especially when he and his staff were still learning Purdue’s players. Data is good, especially to track patterns and find trends, but knowing the athletes matters, too.

And, as is typical with the coaching staff as well as the strength staff, competition will come into play as the new technology opens up.

The elite form tablets on the racks record speed and movement that can be viewed immediately. There’s an option there to display those numbers on different screens throughout the weight room.

“If a wide receiver pulls a certain weight faster than a defensive end, it’ll track across the room and we’ll have players be like, ‘No way! Watch this!’ So there’s some more fun,” Lovett said.

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