Florida's Jon Sumrall on tearing turf from the weight room: 'I don't need turf in a weight room'

When Jon Sumrall walked into Florida's weight room for the first time last winter, one thing jumped out at him, and it wasn't the racks or the platforms. It was the turf.

"The first time I walked in there, I was like, 'Okay, I didn't love some of the layout.' I'm not trying to take shots," Sumrall said this week as the Gators opened preseason camp. "There's a big patch of turf in the weight room. We got 120 yards of turf right outside. I don't need turf in a weight room. We need weights in a weight room."

"It's like some guys, I'm not gonna name any names, but you got a little patch of hair. What's that doing? Just cut it, don't try to hang on to it."

"The idea turf in the weight room just made no sense when you've got a full-turf practice field in the indoor and then two grass ones right there."

The turf is gone. So are the narrow weight racks Sumrall inherited, along with a recent in-season habit of cutting back on lifting that he wanted no part of. After spring camp, he got approval from the University Athletic Association to buy new racks, reorganized the space, and turned his strength staff loose on a new plan.

Later on in the clip Sumrall says the simple action of removing the turf sent a clear message to players on what is being valued under this new staff in Gainesville.

Running Sumrall's vision in the weight room is Rusty Whitt, Florida's director of football performance, who followed Sumrall over from Tulane. Whitt has been down this road with Sumrall before, and he sounded like a proud father breaking down what the Gators have put on the bar since January.

From May to July, Florida's average power clean climbed from 276 to 298 pounds, according to an official Florida release on the weight room transformation under Whitt. The average back squat jumped 46 pounds, up to 430. The average bench press went from 290 to 311, and the average deadlift moved from 435 to 469. Across those four lifts, the team added close to 14,000 pounds of combined improvement in a single offseason.

Defensive lineman Jayden Woods drew the most attention, with a video of a 405-pound power clean at 245 pounds went viral among Gator Nation. 

"That's elite," Whitt said. "I think one player in the nation topped it, and he was at North Carolina State, a defensive lineman."

Florida is coming off a 4-8 season, and Sumrall said the tape showed a team that got pushed around by bigger, stronger opponents far too often to compete in the SEC. This is Sumrall's first year in Gainesville after building his reputation at Troy, where he took his first head coaching job in 2022, and at Tulane, where he landed in 2024. The evaluation approach has been the same at every stop. Figure out what is working, and change what isn't.

For coaches wrestling with the same question about in-season lifting, Whitt laid out the plan plainly. Florida will not touch weights for the first four days of camp while players readjust to the helmet and fight through hydration and fatigue. After the first week, the Gators go back in for a 50-minute lift and maintain from there.

The Gators open the Sumrall era September 5th against Florida Atlantic, and the offseason work in the weight room still has to show up on Saturdays. Sumrall likes where his team is a lot more than he did in January.

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