Michigan State University Athletics
From Garage Gym To B1G Championships
3/2/2021 6:10:00 PM | Wrestling
Spartan wrestling used unique summer training to prepare for season.
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Last summer, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, a standard college student-shared home on Stoddard Avenue in East Lansing underwent an unexpected transformation. It became the new unofficial training facility for the Michigan State wrestling team, as the athletes tried to safely keep their training going.Â
Two large audio speakers, countless free weights, and up to eight wrestlers filled the garage, driveway and front lawn at any given time. The wrestlers worked hard, using the bench, dumbbells or even doing lunges across the length of the front yard with sandbags strapped on their shoulders.
Their goal was simple: stay in shape for the upcoming wrestling season.Â
Roger Chandler, MSU wrestling head coach, heard about the home gym and had to see it for himself. He soon learned the house and gym will not be featured on HGTV for a sophisticated renovation reveal.
"I'm sure we could use our best imagination to visualize what a typical college house looks like off campus. When I walked in, I told myself, 'I will never set foot in this house ever again,'" Chandler said with a laugh. "When I went outside, I checked out their garage gym, I think I would have felt safer sleeping in the garage than their house."
The garage gym was at the home of redshirt-senior Jake Tucker. It was created to be the new training center for the wrestling team but out of necessity: Tucker wanted to keep training during the shutdowns due to COVID and keep up his preparations for the upcoming season as best as he could. MSU shut down its facilities, along with the state of Michigan closing gyms to prevent the pandemic from spreading.
"During that April or May of last spring, we assumed we could just go in and roll around the mats and stuff. Stay in shape and get a workout in. It was almost right away Coach Chandler and the other coaches told us we can't be in the building, we can't do anything," Tucker said.Â
Chandler was also concerned about the impact of the shutdowns on his wrestlers, worrying about their safety and conditioning.
"The biggest frustration from my standpoint is that the offseason is where you make the most gains as a program," Chandler said, reflecting on the challenges of last spring and summer. "We weren't able to structure our guys' workout schedules, and we weren't able to spend time with them in the practice room, or even in the lifting and conditioning standpoint to actually see what these guys are doing.Â
"I'm a firm believer that it is one thing for you to go workout by yourself, but when you have someone standing over the top of you, giving marching orders, you work out a little harder and a little different."Â
The idea of a home gym happened after redshirt-freshman Peyton Omania bought a squat rack and bench. Tucker, Omania and others then approached the coaching staff about grabbing the free weights from the gym.Â
Chandler was on board and helped by loading his truck with as many weights as possible to unload at Tucker's house. Â
"We emptied out the whole front of the garage and just put all the weights in there. That was where we worked out for a solid three months," said Tucker.
The team was able to keep in shape, however there were no chances of practicing wrestling moves on a mat.Â
"We didn't have any mats. It was mostly the weights we worked out with," Tucker said. "We also had big sandbags that we would put on our shoulders and we would go up and down my front yard doing lunges with these big bags on our back. It was funny, because I looked around one day and there were like six or seven guys in my garage, on the driveway and front yard all working out. I can't imagine what people driving by were thinking."
The home gym was functional and up and running in just two weeks after the idea first came to mind.Â
"We had to keep the team close and I think that was an important way to do it, so that everyone could work out together," said Tucker.Â
However, Tucker talked about the mental strain he felt with the season still up in the air. The Big Ten Conference and NCAA had decisions to make, and it took until the late fall to learn if the wrestling season would go ahead during the pandemic.
Wrestling, unlike other sports, cannot adhere to social distancing or wear masks because of how practices and competitions work.
From September to December, training was stop and go. Chandler said how difficult it is to stay in wrestling shape when there are no long spans of training. The team learned it would be able to come back in full in December.
"It really messed with my head a little bit. Up until October and November, we didn't even know if we were actually going to have a season," Tucker said. Â
He said that consistency is a big part of his life and not having the same repetition he had in prior years was difficult. Another challenge was setting some type of safety precautions for the home gym.Â
The Spartans tried to be responsible while training, and do as much as possible to limit COVID-19.
"We did it carefully, we spread the benches six feet apart," said Tucker.
Chandler was impressed with his team's creativity to keep training, and gave them all the credit.Â
"That's what you want, that's leadership, right?" Chandler said. "Our program has come quite a long way in the last three, four, five years. As a coach, you hope they take that undertaking, they take what they do very seriously and it's just affirmation that we have the right kids in the program. They did a really good job."Â
Now Chandler, Tucker and the Spartans are hoping that all that work in the garage, driveway and the yard all summer pays off as MSU enters the Big Ten Championships this week.Â
No. 23 Michigan State heads to University Park, Pennsylvania for the 2021 Big Ten Wrestling Championships, on Saturday and Sunday, March 6-7, at the Bryce Jordan Center, hosted by Penn State.
Action gets going on Saturday with Session I at 10 a.m., before Session II at 7:30 p.m. Championship Sunday gets underway with Session III at 12 p.m. and Session IV at 4 p.m.
While no public tickets will be made available for the event due to virus mitigation restrictions, the Big Ten Network will air action on Saturday, Saturday night's semifinals and Sunday's finals live nationally and the Big Ten Network+ will live stream every mat.
Â
Two large audio speakers, countless free weights, and up to eight wrestlers filled the garage, driveway and front lawn at any given time. The wrestlers worked hard, using the bench, dumbbells or even doing lunges across the length of the front yard with sandbags strapped on their shoulders.
Their goal was simple: stay in shape for the upcoming wrestling season.Â
Roger Chandler, MSU wrestling head coach, heard about the home gym and had to see it for himself. He soon learned the house and gym will not be featured on HGTV for a sophisticated renovation reveal.
"I'm sure we could use our best imagination to visualize what a typical college house looks like off campus. When I walked in, I told myself, 'I will never set foot in this house ever again,'" Chandler said with a laugh. "When I went outside, I checked out their garage gym, I think I would have felt safer sleeping in the garage than their house."
The garage gym was at the home of redshirt-senior Jake Tucker. It was created to be the new training center for the wrestling team but out of necessity: Tucker wanted to keep training during the shutdowns due to COVID and keep up his preparations for the upcoming season as best as he could. MSU shut down its facilities, along with the state of Michigan closing gyms to prevent the pandemic from spreading.
"During that April or May of last spring, we assumed we could just go in and roll around the mats and stuff. Stay in shape and get a workout in. It was almost right away Coach Chandler and the other coaches told us we can't be in the building, we can't do anything," Tucker said.Â
Chandler was also concerned about the impact of the shutdowns on his wrestlers, worrying about their safety and conditioning.
"The biggest frustration from my standpoint is that the offseason is where you make the most gains as a program," Chandler said, reflecting on the challenges of last spring and summer. "We weren't able to structure our guys' workout schedules, and we weren't able to spend time with them in the practice room, or even in the lifting and conditioning standpoint to actually see what these guys are doing.Â
"I'm a firm believer that it is one thing for you to go workout by yourself, but when you have someone standing over the top of you, giving marching orders, you work out a little harder and a little different."Â
The idea of a home gym happened after redshirt-freshman Peyton Omania bought a squat rack and bench. Tucker, Omania and others then approached the coaching staff about grabbing the free weights from the gym.Â
Chandler was on board and helped by loading his truck with as many weights as possible to unload at Tucker's house. Â
"We emptied out the whole front of the garage and just put all the weights in there. That was where we worked out for a solid three months," said Tucker.
The team was able to keep in shape, however there were no chances of practicing wrestling moves on a mat.Â
"We didn't have any mats. It was mostly the weights we worked out with," Tucker said. "We also had big sandbags that we would put on our shoulders and we would go up and down my front yard doing lunges with these big bags on our back. It was funny, because I looked around one day and there were like six or seven guys in my garage, on the driveway and front yard all working out. I can't imagine what people driving by were thinking."
The home gym was functional and up and running in just two weeks after the idea first came to mind.Â
"We had to keep the team close and I think that was an important way to do it, so that everyone could work out together," said Tucker.Â
However, Tucker talked about the mental strain he felt with the season still up in the air. The Big Ten Conference and NCAA had decisions to make, and it took until the late fall to learn if the wrestling season would go ahead during the pandemic.
Wrestling, unlike other sports, cannot adhere to social distancing or wear masks because of how practices and competitions work.
From September to December, training was stop and go. Chandler said how difficult it is to stay in wrestling shape when there are no long spans of training. The team learned it would be able to come back in full in December.
"It really messed with my head a little bit. Up until October and November, we didn't even know if we were actually going to have a season," Tucker said. Â
He said that consistency is a big part of his life and not having the same repetition he had in prior years was difficult. Another challenge was setting some type of safety precautions for the home gym.Â
The Spartans tried to be responsible while training, and do as much as possible to limit COVID-19.
"We did it carefully, we spread the benches six feet apart," said Tucker.
Chandler was impressed with his team's creativity to keep training, and gave them all the credit.Â
"That's what you want, that's leadership, right?" Chandler said. "Our program has come quite a long way in the last three, four, five years. As a coach, you hope they take that undertaking, they take what they do very seriously and it's just affirmation that we have the right kids in the program. They did a really good job."Â
Now Chandler, Tucker and the Spartans are hoping that all that work in the garage, driveway and the yard all summer pays off as MSU enters the Big Ten Championships this week.Â
No. 23 Michigan State heads to University Park, Pennsylvania for the 2021 Big Ten Wrestling Championships, on Saturday and Sunday, March 6-7, at the Bryce Jordan Center, hosted by Penn State.
Action gets going on Saturday with Session I at 10 a.m., before Session II at 7:30 p.m. Championship Sunday gets underway with Session III at 12 p.m. and Session IV at 4 p.m.
While no public tickets will be made available for the event due to virus mitigation restrictions, the Big Ten Network will air action on Saturday, Saturday night's semifinals and Sunday's finals live nationally and the Big Ten Network+ will live stream every mat.
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Players Mentioned
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