Larry Jackson shares offseason progress made in A&M's weight room

Key quotes from Larry Jackson interview

“The speed has come from a little bit of training an recruiting. What we are able to do in the weight room, we need dogs to work with. Now, we’re getting stallions and we’re able to work with those guys. What Sumlin has done with the staff has really helped me. We still have John Tannigway fueling the athletes, so my mind can be free of that. This dude is great. Then, I was having to worry about what the players were doing when I’m not working with them, so he brings in Mikado (Hinson), so now I’m free of that part. Now he brings in sport science.

Strength coaches used to have to guess. We’re good at it, and over time we’ll get pretty close, but it is still an educated guess. Now, with the sport science, I can actually put a quantitative value to how much work I’m doing with the players and can get them to the edge, without taking them over. We always have to work on the edge, but can’t take them over it. So what I was able to do this summer, I was able to have the science, nutrition and the off the field stuff off my mind. Now I can focus on pushing this guy, so the guys are all bigger, stronger and faster. So now, when they do the body compositions, they are all reading higher. They are faster, bigger and have less body fat. You can see that explosion on the field. The guys look different, because they are different.”

“I know everyone wants to know about Daylon Mack. When you think about the D-line, you think about guys like Daylon, Myles (Garrett) and Daeshon (Hall) all on the same line. With Daylon, we have plenty of weights for him to lift. The Ags have given a lot of money to make sure we can fill that room with plenty of weights. I guess the thing I didn’t anticipate, we use the standard bars that all weight rooms use, but he is so strong. When we were doing chain squats, with 33 pound chains hanging off each side of the bar, so you have 66 extra pounds when they are completely off the ground. So he has 600 pounds on the bar, plus the chains and that is all we could fit on the bar. We thought it was secure. He starts to go up, and the clamps come off so two of the plates slide off.

Most of the time, the guy crashes if something like that happens. This dude is so strong, that he recovers on one leg, finishes the squat and puts it back. So we have plenty of weights, but I had to order special bars, which finally made it to campus on Wednesday, that I’m going to have to use when he squats because we don’t have bars long enough to slide all the weight on. We don’t know what he can one-rep max, because we go up to 600, 700 pounds and he is still just repping. But we can’t get enough weight on the bars to figure out his max, so we just put all the weight we can on it and let him rep.”

“Daylon is absolutely the strongest guy I’ve coached as an incoming freshman. Myles would be the other guy that comes to mind. Myles is a total body guy. He can do the clings, kind of like a cat, Myles is that kind of guy. Myles, he doesn't know his strength. You’ll get these guys that are just freakishly strong, but they don’t know how strong they are, because they have never been pushed all the way to the limit. We’re trying to figure out how strong these guys are. We’re still trying to figure out how strong Myles is, because there is stuff he does every day that throws us off.”

“With this class of freshmen, I can see why they ranked them where they did. It isn’t just the physical strength, and they are very gifted, but mentally they are very strong. They don’t do a lot of talking, they come in and put in work. They know what league they came into and there isn't a lot of fluff time when you show up in June and you want to play. They have a serious look, that eye of the tiger stuff, they have it. These guys are coming in ready to work. That is so much fun to work with, because we have the science, they're getting the right nutrition, getting enough sleep and being taken care of spiritually and emotionally. I can hammer them, hammer them and if there is a problem, I can send them to where they need to go, and get them sent back to me ready to go. It is a thing of beauty and these guys are excited.”

“Christian Kirk is one of those guys that works too hard. You have to tell him, ‘Christian, you need to take a break. You’re doing too much.’ That is a good problem to have. He is the kind of guy that understands he is extraordinary. You’ll have guys that say, ‘Oh, I’m extraordinary.’ No, that is extra beyond ordinary. He understands what that means. So, when you are about to go home and you go through the indoor, fixing to lock everything down, he is in there running routes on air. He has a jug machine and wants you to shoot him balls. This is the kind of kid that cannot get enough. So he understands that, ‘I want to come in here and start as a freshman, I have to act like I’m a veteran.’ That is what he does.”

“Zaycoven (Henderson) looks different. He has made a huge difference in his body. Myles was gunned up, but you just cannot say enough about him. One guy that comes to mind is Armani Watts. The way his body soaked up all the training, and just the way he looks, he was ripped and put together, but now he is gunned up and looks like a grown man. That is after one year, so you can just imagine what he will look like a year, two years from now.”

“Donovan Wilson, his energy level is off the chain. Brandon Williams, I cannot get him tired. We’ll break everyone around him, trying to break him and can’t do it. He is like a machine and it is fun to work with. With the DBs we needed to get some nastiness, some physical and mental toughness. They needed to get in the weight room and get bigger, stop being so finesse. They have taken that personally and are doing it.”

“With the linebackers, if you hurt a shoulder, you can still work the other shoulder and do all the other things. Then, when you come back, it is like they have a super arm. That isn't the side you concern yourself with, it’s the other side. So we try to make sure that every other part of the body is worked, so that when they come back, there is no weakness just because this side is hurt. I have excellent coaches on my staff that live and breath coming up with different techniques to make sure these guys can get back as soon as possible. These guys put in a lot of work and we just brought in Ben Compton, who was made for this.”

“When I played tailback, that was a lot running. I’m a pretty big target, back then I was more agile. The way people tackle now, they go down low at the knees. I would probably be good for a few snaps playing now before they got my knees, then I’d be done.”

“We’ve heard a lot of things on the shoulder issue, but putting a young guy on the field quick, or even an old guy, there is a depth issue. It becomes, how many plays can you go in a row before you get hurt. On defense, if you give up a first down, you are getting three more plays and cannot come off. Another first down, three more plays. Eventually, you are on the field for enough plays and get hurt. In my day, we didn't have a lot of injuries, but we were getting three and outs. When you are in there eight, 10, 15 plays in a row, it’s at those times that you see injuries. I’m trying to figure out ways to get it fixed, and they have to get bigger. So I tell them, ‘You have to come see me more.’ So guys will get injured and they start to figure it out and you see the upper body growing. Their legs are big, they run a lot, so you can grow where you get a lot of work, but that upper body takes time.”

“Kyle Allen’s leadership has been excellent. You can see it, hear it, but the guy has put on 13 pounds and dropped four percent body fat, so that is a big deal. You didn't know he had that much fat to lose and muscle to gain, but he did. That shows you how much work he is putting in. He came here wanting to start, and lead this team and that is what we are looking for, we want guys who will lead on and off the field."