“Through these doors walk the toughest, hardest working athletes in the SEC.”
Those are the words plastered across the entrance to the LSU athletics weight room located on the outskirts of Tiger Stadium. The weight room is filled with “The Eye of the Tiger” blasting over the speakers and with football players and other athletes shaping their bodies into peak physical condition.
Tommy Moffitt is the man responsible for making sure those football players are working out with 110 percent effort. He is also the man responsible for making sure that when the fourth quarter rolls around, nobody will outhustle or outlast LSU.
Moffitt has been the head strength and conditioning coordinator at LSU for five years. And even though the strength and conditioning program involves every LSU athletics team, Moffitt deals strictly with football. After all, that is where he became interested in dealing with fitness and strength for a living.
“It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do,” Moffitt said of his position. “I had a junior high school football coach that had us lifting weights. And I guess that’s the first time and I just enjoyed it. It’s just a decision that I made a long time ago. I knew I wanted to coach, and I liked the strength and conditioning part. And I felt like I had more influence with the players on a year-round basis.”
It all started for Moffitt at John Curtis High School in River Ridge, where he accepted his first paying job out of college. The native of Summerville, Tenn., attended Tennessee Tech, and his roommate in college played high school football at Curtis.
It was there that Moffitt began to implement his strength program based around explosive exercises that give players something different to give them and edge.
“Our program is based on free weights,” Moffitt said. “We do a lot of explosive type exercises. Some people call them Olympic lifts. They’re just barbell exercises that require you to exert a lot of force. And a lot of them are done while standing.”
Moffitt said do not come to the weight room and expect it to be quiet. Yelling and screaming are very common.
“Our guys work hard here,” Moffitt said. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm, there’s a lot of yelling and screaming that goes on in here, and we crank the music up and we open the doors.”
Whatever Moffitt’s program consists of, it is obvious the program is effective; at least according to people familiar with the strength and conditioning business.
Moffitt was named 2003 College Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year by America Football Monthly and also received the 1999 Collegiate Football Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year by the Professional Football Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society for his work at the University of Miami.
“Our staff teaches pride,” Moffitt said. “I have a tremendous staff in the weight room. Everything we do focuses on five elements — effort, toughness, discipline, commitment and pride. We lead as a staff and we make our players give effort.”