Mike Sirignano pushes Cardinals to break barriers in the weight room

When strength and conditioning coach Mike Sirignano arrived at Louisville with the hiring of head coach Scott Satterfield in December 2018, he was in awe of how far the conditioning levels had fallen for Louisville football players.

For the past year-and-a-half, Sirignano and his strength and conditioning staff have worked to educate and create beneficial habits for the Cardinals’ roster. Sirignano says the team has progressed in a simple manner.

Although Sirignano pushes players to break barriers and thresholds in the weight room and during conditioning workouts, he never asked players to do too much early on.

In one of the first lifts with the team last year that taught technique, Sirignano learned how much work had to be done.

“We decided to run what we call dominators,” Sirignano said. “Dominators for us are 60-yard shuttles with five-back, 10-back, 15-back, and that is part of our conditioning test going into camp. My teams usually run 20 to 24 of those as well as 20 to 26 half-gassers to get into camp.”

The players managed to run six dominators before collapsing on the ground. Sirignano turned to his assistants to acknowledge how much work had to be done to get the players in the shape, but the message wasn’t just agreed upon by coaches.

“The best thing about it, not only did I say it, the kids said it because they knew talking to our past players where we were going with this thing,” Sirignano said. “They knew more about us coming into the building than we knew about them.”

The strength and conditioning staff face a new challenge this offseason with players away from campus due to the outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus). Home workouts have been designed for players and accountability is measured in a variety of ways.

Satterfield, Sirignano and the coaching staff have told players the teams that handle adversity in the offseason will have the most success in the fall.

“We just hold them accountable with times and standards in our program,” Sirignano said. “As long as we do it in baby steps way, we continue to break those barriers and thresholds.”