Earlier this afternoon Louisville's Head Strength & Conditioning Coach, Mike Sirignano, met with the media via video conference due to the current apocalypse we are dealing with. It was fascinating to hear how the coach is working with the players from quarantine in order to keep them in elite physical condition.

The coolest takeaway from Sirignano's comments was how well-prepared Louisville was for this extended break. Due to the Kentucky Derby, the football team had a six week break between the end of finals and summer training. A summer break of this kind is abnormal for most programs who usually get only a week-and-a-half to two weeks before beginning summer training. So, Sirgnano had to create a special plan last year to keep his guys in shape and ready for camp. In order to do so, what he came up with was a competition-style social media-based workout program, which he has rolled out in the team's response to the pandemic and social-distancing efforts.

The program involves 10 accountability groups, each led by a staff member, with 8 or 9 players in each group. Each group has been carefully crafted to include some leaders of the team and those Sirignano thinks should step up into leadership roles, as well as underclassmen who need to be led. Each group has its own group chat where they keep tabs on one another and hold each other accountable.

Each day they are bombarded with messages from their staff and player leaders regarding programming and scheduled video chats. He said each group pushes one another and sends each other videos and pictures of their workout. He said it's been awesome to see how even though this has been hard on everyone, how the culture within the program continues to grow due to competitiveness of the accountability teams. His favorite thing about it has been how hard the teams push one another and the playful trash talk the teammates give each other on a daily basis.

Sirignano talked about how it's amazing to see how resilient the team is, but how he really shouldn't be surprised with how far the team has come in such a short time, and what they've overcome since that dreadful 2018 season.

Coach Sirignano also mentioned that roughly 80% of the team has some sort of access to weights and the 20% that don't are doing body weight, core, and cardio exercises to stay in peak form. While he mentioned that the hardest part about all of this is to keep players on a schedule and keep the same intense workout environment, that the players have done a terrific job responding and that the accountability group program has been an easy one to roll out and adopt because everyone was so used to it from last year.

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