Penn State Football: Craig Fitzgerald Calls Weight Room Best in Nation

Penn State’s weight room renovations aren’t quite finished, the rest of the custom-made equipment won’t be installed until May.

But first-year strength and conditioning coach Craig Fitzgerald does not need to see the finished product to know what he’s got here in State College.

“I would say overall, just the whole football facility, with it being right in the middle of campus and near where our players live and eat . . . it’s tremendous,” Fitzgerald said. “The weight room is now gonna be up there with the rest of the whole facility of football. I think it’s gonna be by far the best in the country. I can’t see another one being better than this.”

Change isn’t limited to the squat and power clean stations.

Words like “graduate”, “finish”, “team first”, “hard work” and “honesty” are plastered onto the concrete pillars of the facility. On the large wall toward the back of the room, “pride” sits just above a vast American flag.

“Mike Mauti said, ‘You know Coach, you should put an American flag underneath that pride sign,’ ‘ Fitzgerald said. ‘So the next day we had that [flag] laid up, so he’s pretty excited about that. I don’t think you can have enough American flags in your weight room.’

Of course, the look of the weight room really doesn’t matter at all compared to the look of the players.

Is the strength program working? Are bodies being transformed? That is ultimately the measuring stick for a successful winter camp.

“You can see where Fitz and his assistants and his program have had a direct effect on guys already, like Adam Gress,” Penn State coach Bill O’Brien said. “Right now you can see that the offensive tackle for us has had a heck of a winter and has already changed his body. You go from looking one way to looking more like a V-shape, and that’s what you’re looking for in your linemen.

“[Gress] looks like an NFL lineman right now,” Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald also singled out defensive tackle Jordan Hill, running back Silas Redd and the linebacker Mauti as leaders in the weight room.

“His goal is to always lift as much as the linemen and run faster than the skill guys,” Fitzgerald said of Redd. “So there’s a guy that every time he works out, you can feel his energy in here.”

A 360-degree view of the new weight room is available here, courtesy of Mark Wogenrich of the Morning Call in Allentown.

Related coverage:

• StateCollege.com’s Penn State football page

• Penn State Football: Danny O’Brien Attends Spring Practice

• Penn State Football Analysis: O’Brien Maximizing 2012 Team While Keeping Eye Toward Future