(photo by PonyFans.com).

As the 2016 season draws nearer, the SMU Mustangs are getting in their final conditioning work, moving piles of iron in the weight room and sweating through running drills under the summer sun.

SMU strength and conditioning coach Trumain Carroll visited with PonyFans.com to discuss the Ponies’ summer progress. In the second part of the two-part series, Carroll discusses some of the individual players who have stood out in the way they have gone about reshaping their physiques. He also discusses how he and his staff train different players differently, even when they play the same position, in order to tailor their conditioning to fit the style and strengths of their game.

Again, he was quick to point out that no amount of work on offseason conditioning guarantees playing time or a starting role — those decisions are made by the coaching staff — and reiterated that physical change, no matter how great, gives a player more tools for success but don’t always translate to talent and success.

PonyFans.com: OK, let’s talk about some individuals … with the understanding that just because someone has added a lot of size or lost some unneeded weight or can jump out of the building does not mean anything specific about playing time, starting roles or expected on-field production. With the acknowledgement that this is only a discussion of who has put in the time and effort with you and your staff, and seen the results of a hard offseason, who stands out to you?

Carroll: Evan Brown, obviously, is a guy who has been extremely important to us, from a leadership standpoint and just the way he goes about his training. He is, pound for pound, one of the strongest athletes I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. He’s got “scary strength,” and what I mean by “scary strength” is that I don’t necessarily know how strong he is, because I cap him. When you get to a certain point, I’m not letting any more weight go on that bar. Because my job as a strength coach is to make sure these guys develop and become stronger, and the last thing I want to do is go upstairs and tell (offensive line) Coach Dustin Fry and Coach Morris that I messed up Evan Brown by trying to see how much he can squat today. So I have to be smart. In our profession, you have to not become what’s called a “number chaser.” We don’t have a record board in our weight room, because those things aren’t important. If we’re not producing on the field and our athletes aren’t healthy, we’re not doing our jobs right. Our focus needs to be on keeping our athletes healthy, first and foremost, keeping them out of the training room unless it’s for recovery, and secondly, needs to be on making sure they’re able to produce on the field. If they’re not producing on the field, then who am I kidding? We’re not getting anything done.

Strength coach Trumain Carroll said junior offensive lineman Evan Brown has what Carroll calls (photo by SMU athletics).

So we’ll cap guys, but if they really want to go for it, we’ll add (elastic) bands, so it will add anywhere between 60 and 100 extra pounds, but that’s only at the top (of the lift). So he can squat 560 pounds or more, and he can do well over that — his last max was 605, but I didn’t feel comfortable going past that — but we’ll cap him somewhere in the 400s, and then we’ll add bands or chains, so we can give him what he’s looking for without putting him at risk of injury. So he wants to do the 605 again, and he wants to go further. He’s like any other guy in here. When he gets the adrenaline pumping and wants to start pushing the limits, that’s where you have to be smart as a strength coach and say, “OK, we’ve done enough for today.” I would rather have a successful day of doing a certain weight than have an unsuccessful day of either missing a weight or injuring a guy.

PonyFans.com: Matt Davis looks different. Part of that may be that he’s 22, 23 years old. You work with him all the time. Is he stronger? Leaner? Faster?

Carroll: All of the above. Matt has really stepped up his training. Last year, we kept all the quarterbacks in a group, and trained those guys together, but after talking to several people around the industry, I thought we would get more value, rather than having those guys train as a group, we had them train with their peers, so we split them up and mixed them in with players at other positions, according to strength levels and bar height, and who can be the motor in the group, the engine that drives the group.

But it also develops what we call “sweat equity,” because quarterbacks have their separate things that they have to do, like shoulder modalities just to make sure their shoulders and throwing arms are intact and we protect their shoulder capsules from overtraining and overuse. But the meat-and-potato worker of that workout, they’re going to be in there developing that sweat equity with their teammates, so guys like Jeremiah Gaines and Courtland Sutton can see those guys in there, sweating along with the rest of the guys, versus just doing a health club workout over on the side, on their own.

PonyFans.com: Who are some of the smaller skill position guys who have put on enough strength and muscle that they have a better chance of surviving the pounding of a season this year?

Carroll: Braeden West is getting stronger. He came in last year at 159, and now he’s close to 170. But you’ve got to look at his attributes. A guy like that, you don’t want to put a lot of weight on him, because his gift, his natural ability, is his shiftiness and his speed and his quickness. So you have to be very observant of his natural moving patterns and his frame. Because guys like Tony Richards — he has the frame that lets him carry the extra 30 pounds that he’s wearing right now. He has that frame to carry that. But Braeden doesn’t have the frame to be a 200-pound back, so if we get him too big, then he loses a step. Xavier Jones, he’s built a little bit differently, so he’s able to carry that extra 20 that he’s got on right now. But Braeden, he’s going to gain some weight, but we want to make sure we don’t take away from what he’s naturally good at. That’s where you’ve got to be very careful.

PonyFans.com: When you look at guys like that — Braeden West and Xavier Jones — they’re in the same class, they’re the same age and they play the same position. Is there a risk of someone like Braeden and looking at someone like Xavier and thinking he should be just as big, just as strong?

Carroll: I feel liked we do a great job of educating them on that, and we train each guy differently. Just like I told you we put those bands on for Evan Brown, we put those bands on for Xavier Jones, too, because he can move a lot of weight. We pushed and we pushed and we pushed, but we capped it, because even though he’s got another gear, we don’t want to push past that threshold, because right now, he’s our starting running back, and I don’t want to go tell Coach Morris and (running backs) Coach (Claude) Mathis, “hey, I messed up your starting running back by trying to see what he can do in the squat rack.” So those guys train in different groups, and they train differently. Braeden, we’re trying to get him to develop more force to apply to the ground, so his training is a little bit different than what Xavier does.

Carroll said tackle Chad Pursley is now "between 285 and 290 pounds" — a jump of about 50 pounds over his weight as a high school senior — and has "the kind of body that you recruit all across the country." (photo by PonyFans.com).

PonyFans.com: Watching spring workouts, and looking through some photos that we took, Chad Pursley looks nothing like he did when he signed … which I realize was before you and your staff got here. How big is he now, and has he surprised you with the fact that he has been able to put on that much size and strength?

Carroll: Chad is between 285 and 290, and no, he hasn’t surprised me at all, because Chad Pursley is the kind of body that you recruit all across the country. Those big, long, basketball-frame guys that have the long arms and the big hands with the monster grip … those are the guys that can go just about anywhere in the country. When I was at Oklahoma State, they recruited guys who came in looking like guys who look like Chad Pursley. He actually played with a guy I coached there named Zach Crabtree — I think they played together on an AAU basketball team — and it was the same deal: Zach Crabtree came in at 240, and Coach Glass and that strength and conditioning staff has developed him to where he has a chance to be an All-American this year. He’s over 300 pounds, and he doesn’t look like he’s 300 pounds. He still has that long, basketball body, but he’s strong. Chad has done that same thing, so it doesn’t surprise me, because I see the kid work every day. I see what he puts in to it. So for outsiders looking in, they’ll be surprised by that, just because he’s a quiet, soft-spoken kid who doesn’t have much to say, but when the lights turn on, and it’s time to go, he works his tail off.

The meetings we have with Coach Morris and the position coaches — for Chad, it’s Coach Fry — those meetings are so important, because they know where we need to be. Bigger isn’t always better. If you’re big and can’t move, then you do us no good. If you’re a 350-pound guy but you can’t pass-set, then you can’t fit our system. So I go to Coach Fry and Coach Morris and pick their brains on what they’re looking for in their offensive linemen. With Chad Pursley, he has gained this size and strength, and he’s still able to move a lot better than he was last year, and it has boosted his confidence. As long as those things continue to happen, we can keep going, but as soon as he loses a step, or he starts to wear down, or he starts having back tightness or knee pain or ankle pain, then that’s when we need to reassess where he is versus where he needs to be in order to fit our system and play 100 snaps a game.

PonyFans.com: Who has lost significant weight over the course of the year?

Carroll: Bryce Wilds. Jerry Saena. Those guys are getting after it. Bryce has lost a little over 20 (pounds) — he was 325 when he got here, and now he’s 304. But that means nothing if the body comp doesn’t change. Jerry went from 335 to 311.

PonyFans.com: Who has surprised you the most?

Carroll: All those guys: Bryce Wilds, Jerry Saena, Chad Pursley. Nick Natour is another one who has really worked hard, and it shows. Evan Brown, obviously. Those guys have really bought in and stepped it up a notch, on the offensive line.

Then, on the d-line, you’ve got those young pups, and they’re a year older now. You’ve got the Scott twins, you’ve got Hunter Thedford, and you’ve got Chris Biggurs — they were what we called the “Cat Daddy” group last year. They were all redshirts, and they had to lift on Friday, and we called it the Cat Daddy lift. We didn’t have practice on Friday, so all it was, was we would crank up the music and see how much we could squat, see how much we could clean, see how high we could jump. It’s all the athletic base movements, and that was our heavy day in here. That was just for those guys, that redshirt group, so all those guys that we recruited that didn’t play last year, they were in there getting that lift in, getting stronger.

PonyFans.com: Two of the guys Coach Morris mentioned several times during the spring as guys he has high hopes for were Michael and Delontae Scott. They look bigger and stronger, but how do you evaluate the progress they’re making?

Carroll: I’d say one has put on some size, and the other has transformed some size he already had. Michael was 240 when he got here, but he had a higher body fat percentage than we wanted, and Delontae was 10 pounds lighter. Now they’re both about 250, and they’re built like they should be.

PonyFans.com: How much of the progress athletes make in the weight room is a result of pushing themselves, and how much is a sense of competition, the desire to outlift their teammates?

Carroll: That’s where we’ve got to do a good job of who we pair them with when they work out. You’ve got to have one guy who’s the driver, and other guys who go along with that group. But if you don’t have a great driver, or a great engine in that group, then you won’t get the most out of them … and essentially, most of those guys are drivers, so when you put them together, you’ve got a highly competitive rack.

Trumain Carroll wants his players to get bigger and stronger, until it starts to affect their quickness, speed and overall mobility (photo by PonyFans.com).

PonyFans.com: Who has impressed you among the linebackers or the secondary?

Carroll: Darrion Millines is a guy who you wanted to speak up more last year. He didn’t necessarily speak up last year, but this year he is, and he’s a man of few words, but when he does speak, he has something very impactful to say, so it has been great to see that, to see him take ownership of that secondary group. He is the bellcow of that group, if you ask me — I’m not saying on the field, but for what we’re doing, from a training standpoint, he’s the bellcow in that group. Yes, he has enhanced his body, but he’s a senior. He’s a guy who already has reached most of his development. So what I try to do is what I call “monitor their mileage,” because I’m not trying to run them in the ground — he’s not a spring chicken anymore. But I want to make sure I keep him healthy and keep him developing. So his gains won’t be as great as, say, a Kevin Johnson or Rodney Clemons, because those guys are brand new out of the box. Those guys came from programs that didn’t necessarily train to the capacity that we try to accomplish here. So their best years are ahead of them, whereas Darrion Millines is a really developed guy — he was close to a finished product when we got here. We’ve tried to take him and teach him more on the recovery side of things, to where we can keep him healthy and keep him out there leading.

You talk about the linebackers: Jackson Mitchell has been phenomenal. Matt McNew has had a great spring and offseason. Mitchell Kaufman — you talk about someone who looks like a different dude, that’s Mitchell Kaufman. R.C. Cox has worked his tail off. That entire group — that’s a very solid group.

Then the freshmen, I’m just excited to see what those guys bring to the table, just because their natural movement patterns … those coaches have done a great job of identifying players, and in their selection process, making sure that they’re bringing in people who can help our program. Some of these linemen … we’ve got something to work with: Braxton Webb is 6-5, 296. Kadarius Smith is 6-3, 293 — he’s a big daddy now.

PonyFans.com: Football obviously is a violent sport, and players get hurt. You mentioned Kevin Johnson and Rodney Clemons — they missed a lot of time last year with injuries. Kyran Mitchell, Jordon Williams and some others, too. How far behind are guys like that, as far as their conditioning?

Carroll: Behind? They’re not behind. Those guys … you go on a case-by-case basis: that hurt him a little bit, because he did play early in the season, but then that injury caused him not to be able to play the rest of the season, so obviously, going into the winter, he was a little behind, but he and the rest of those guys have taken the rest of that opportunity, the plan that we put in place for them, going through spring ball with the yellow jerseys (given to players who do not take part in drills) … and since then, with the three weeks we had after spring ball, plus the four or five weeks we have done this summer, those guys aren’t behind at all.

Rodney Clemons was more emotionally disturbed than anybody by being injured, because he had never been hurt in his life. He lost a lot of weight. So I saw him down on himself and we put a plan in place, and I told him, “hey, man, are you trusting the process?” He said, “yes, sir.” I just said, “alright — we’re going to get you back.” Now, you look at him today, and he’s better than when he got here. He’s a lot heavier than when he got here, he takes his shirt off when he’s training … he’s got his swag back.

PonyFans.com: Is it hard to evaluate the strength and conditioning work for the kickers and punters — guys who don’t have to push linemen around or chase receivers downfield?

Carroll: Oh no. We specialize for those guys, too. You’re looking for more strength, but you’re looking for maybe five to 10 pounds (of muscle), because added size can help them add velocity on that ball. Coach (Daric) Riley and Coach (Keith) Gunn, they do a great job of knowing what those guys need. So I ask those (coaches) what it takes to get better in the kicking world, and I’m able to take my knowledge and expertise in strength and conditioning, to focus on what muscles need to be developed and what needs to be monitored, so you’re not overtraining. (Hip) labrum tears are common with kickers, and if you overuse it or overtrain, you can tear that labrum, and sometimes that can mean the end of your kicking career. So those guys are like the quarterbacks — they have certain movements that the rest of the team doesn’t do, so they’ll be doing different exercises and different modalities that we prescribe just for them.

PonyFans.com: You and your staff have been here for a little over a year now. When the season kicks off in late August, will the work these guys have done with you be more visible in passing the eyeball test, looking bigger and stronger and more explosive, or will it be more evident in their stamina in the fourth quarter … and how much they have left in November?

Carroll: Honestly, that’s a long way from now, and I wish I had another eight weeks to get them ready. But everyone around the country is dialed in, and our fraternity of strength and conditioning coaches, every one of us is doing everything we can, exploring every possible avenue, to make sure our teams will be ready in the fall. So to say our team is going to be better-conditioned than any other team on our schedule, that would be a reach. I’m going to make sure the guys are ready to take on whatever comes their way this fall, but at the same time, if they don’t have the confidence, belief and faith that our process will bring results, then it’s all for naught.

(photo by PonyFans.com).