Florida Strength Coach Rusty Whitt Details New Weight Room Culture
Florida director of football performance Rusty Whitt brings toughness and discipline to the Gators, joining the staff after two seasons at Tulane with coach Jon Sumrall.
Joining “Sportscene with Steve Russell” on WRUF on Wednesday, Whitt gave insight to the new team culture, starting with three rules.
“Be early, don’t be an energy vampire and protect the team at all costs,” Whitt said.
And Sumrall’s core values for both himself and the program are “attitude, toughness, discipline and love.” Through training Whitt’s “The Gauntlet,” he said that the players are able to come together as long as the proper perspective is there.
“He always talks about the only disability in life is a bad attitude, so we’re always trying to fortify having a positive mindset, a resilient mindset, gritty mindset by working hard together,” Whitt said.
Loading ...Introduced by Whitt, the “The Gauntlet” training program builds strength and camaraderie through vigorous physical and mental training to create accountability and adversity. It was required that the team pass “The Gauntlet” before spring practices began, and if one teammate failed, the whole team had to restart.
Each Gator was paired with a teammate for the six agility drills, no more than 30 yards, to be completed with no errors and full intent for executing to perfection. If there was a mistake, the team did up-down drills, which translated as penalties in a hypothetical game.
But losing “The Gauntlet” pushed the team to come back stronger and work to beat it the next time. It became a team mentality against the drill rather than an individual task.
Starting Jan. 28 with 45 mistakes, the Gators passed on Feb. 25.
Inside Florida’s recently renovated weight room, “The Gauntlet” pushed the Gators to their limits, but it was all to bring the team together. Whitt emphasized that training is about being more selfless, bringing attitude and toughness together to build self and team confidence.
“Football is all about chaos and rolling with the punches and being able to adapt to different stressors, so it’s my job to teach them that, how to deal with uncertainty or with hardship,” he said. “I see myself as a mentor and a teacher with the toughness thing.”
Whitt coached in strength and conditioning after graduating from Abilene Christian’s football program. He originally was a criminal justice major wanting to pursue a career in the FBI after a path down law school.
He did not have a strength coach of his own his first four years playing, but he said that Cliff Felkins, now a throwers coach at Texas Tech, came in for his fifth year of eligibility changed his life and whole career path.
But 9/11 influenced him to serve in the United States Army as a Special Forces Sergeant, stepping away from coaching from 2003 to 2009.
Whitt revealed that the Gators train a form of mat drills in “The Gauntlet,” a tactic popular under former coach Urban Meyer. However, he clarified that his team focuses on an approach geared more toward football.
“I’m a big fan of them,” Whitt said. “They have kind of a wrestling background, and you know how well conditioned wrestlers can be. I love them. We kind of take that mentality into our gauntlet.”
Discipline is one of the most emphasized of the three, something the Gators lacked last season. In Florida’s 4-8 season, it gave up an average of 43.7 yards in penalties per game.
“Coach Sumrall always says that most games are lost,” Whitt said. “They’re not won by losing discipline by making mistakes, added up penalty yardage, whatever crucial mistake you might make in the fourth quarter, so our discipline is very strong here.”
Whitt coins himself as the “discipline manager,” as any mistake on or off the field could result in costing the team in a hypothetical one-possession game during the season. He emphasized that Sumrall has found success in his previous coaching roles because of the team’s attention to detail and execution in crucial moments when fatigue sets in.
“Can I do my job when I’m tired? When I’m stressed out?” Whitt said. “The conditioning component that we instill, we try to make those make our guys be the least penalized team in the fourth quarter to make tackles, to show less fatigue. When you get tired, you make mistakes, so we want to have clarity in the fourth quarter.”
That final value of love, Whitt said, is about loving the game and one another. He said that caring for each other develops by working together.
“Love involves sacrifice, so I’m going to sacrifice going out and doing things you can do as a young man so my body and my mind is right to perform at the highest level for the Gators,” he said.
On top of those priorities for the program, Whitt shared that Sumrall continues with his own personal fitness journey, running several days a week and showing strength in the weight room, even squatting “425 for a double.”
“He really does a nice job of being an example for our players,” Whitt said.
Category: Feature Sports News, Gator Sports, Gators Football
