How Steve Saunders is rebuilding Utah football’s strength program
Aug 14, 2026, 12:55 PM
Noah Bennee working on blocking drills. Photo courtesy by Utah Athletics.
SALT LAKE CITY — The most obvious evidence of Utah football’s new strength and conditioning program has been difficult to miss during fall camp.
The offensive linemen are bigger. Several young defensive linemen look considerably more mature. Players have discussed adding lean muscle while dropping body fat. Others feel stronger without sacrificing the movement that made them effective football players in the first place.
Spend enough time around Utah’s fall camp and the conversation eventually arrives at the same topic: summer workout gains.
But the most significant change under director of football sports performance Steve Saunders is not simply that the Utes spent the summer becoming larger human beings.
Saunders wants the weight room to produce better football players, not merely stronger ones.
“Coach Scalley’s vision matched exactly what I believe: The training should transfer to the field on Saturdays, and everything you do with the athletes should have a why behind it,” Saunders told the Utah Blockcast.
That principle sits at the center of Utah’s new approach.
Strength and size still matter. Conditioning remains demanding. Mobility and range of motion have received greater attention. Saunders is hardly attempting to turn one of college football’s traditionally physical programs into a wellness retreat.
The difference is how Utah is trying to create that physicality.
Rather than assigning the same general program to an entire roster, Saunders builds training around the demands of each position and the structural needs of each player.
The position matters. The player’s body matters. His deficiencies matter. The movements he must repeatedly execute during a game matter.
Building the foundation before adding football-specific power
“What I wanted to do was stop training athletes in a general fashion and start training football players by position and by individual structural needs,” Saunders said.
Utah’s first four-week summer block focused on establishing a foundation. That included correcting movement patterns, improving mobility, building tissue tolerance and closing strength gaps.
For some players, the answer was adding mass. For others, becoming leaner made them more effective.
RELATED: A day in the life of Morgan Scalley, and what it says about his vision for Utah football
“To be a good coach, you’ve got to hold yourself back and say, ‘We need this foundation so we can get to the next level of what we want to do,’” Saunders said.
The second four-week block shifted toward converting that foundation into football performance.
“The second four weeks were really about turning that foundation into usable speed and usable explosive power specific to their position,” Saunders said.
A 330-pound offensive lineman does not need the same physical tools as a 185-pound receiver. A defensive tackle’s explosiveness operates in a different environment than a cornerback’s. Even offensive and defensive linemen encounter different positional demands despite occupying similar neighborhoods on the scale.
“We’re looking to find the weak link in each athlete, attack it and manage the volume of what they do,” Saunders said. “But the intensities are non-negotiable.”
The objective is not merely to change how a player looks. It is to build the body he needs to perform his job.
Utah still wants toughness — just more purposeful toughness
The additional individualization has not softened Utah’s approach.
The workouts remain demanding. Saunders simply wants the difficulty to produce a clear football benefit.
Safety Jackson Bennee pointed to Saunders’ use of time under tension in the weight room. Instead of making every exercise a race to add another plate to the bar, Utah has incorporated slower repetitions, pauses under load and explosive finishes.
The method places a premium on control and deceleration before turning stored tension into power. Bennee said the approach has already produced noticeable strength gains.
The workouts can still be miserable. Saunders wants players to understand why they are miserable — and then feel the difference when they return to the field.
“Confidence is the key to all locks,” Saunders said. “Once the players saw and felt the transfer to the field, the buy-in became absolute and the transformation really accelerated.”
College football has never struggled to invent hard workouts or creative ways to leave large young men exhausted.
Saunders is more interested in what the players gain from the difficulty.
If the work improves force production, movement, durability or position-specific power, the suffering serves football. If the only accomplishment is that everyone survived the same exhausting workout, it offers considerably less value.
Fall camp has supplied the first receipts
The results have been noticeable enough that Utah’s strength program became one of the recurring subjects during the opening weeks of camp.
Zereoue Williams is among the clearest examples.
Williams estimated that he added approximately 15 pounds over the offseason while maintaining the athleticism that has always made him an intriguing offensive-line prospect.
Offensive line coach Jordan Gross said Williams reached 331 pounds at one point during the summer while remaining below 26% body fat. Gross viewed the added weight as productive while acknowledging that Williams still needed to become comfortable moving and competing with the additional mass.
That difference was visible once Utah allowed the media to watch portions of practice. Williams and several other offensive linemen looked considerably bigger without appearing cumbersome.
Saunders also highlighted defensive end Ethan Day and running back Wayshawn Parker among the biggest winners of the summer.
View this post on Instagram
Day added what Saunders described as grown-man strength and raised his long-term ceiling. Parker earned Saunders’ praise by buying into the program immediately, attacking every repetition and pairing that effort with measurable physical improvement.
RELATED: Wayshawn Parker is chasing 1,200 yards; Utah is measuring something bigger
Those are encouraging summer results. The more meaningful evaluation begins once those changes are tested against an opponent.
The real test comes in November
Summer builds players. Football season begins taking pieces away.
“Football is controlled violence,” Saunders said.
A strength staff cannot eliminate every collision, rolled ankle or unfortunate body position. What it can influence is how prepared a player’s body is to withstand the accumulated stress of a season.
That requires continued strength work, nutrition, sleep and deliberate recovery. Saunders does not want players merely maintaining what they built during the summer. He wants them remaining strong and explosive as the schedule progresses.
“Everybody feels great September 1,” Saunders said. “Who still feels great November 1 or January 1? Who is still strong and fast? In-season training is as important, or more important, than offseason training.”
That philosophy also fits Morgan Scalley’s approach to practice.
Bennee said Scalley may shorten a practice from 24 periods to 15, but the expectation remains full effort on every available repetition.
Utah is attempting to eliminate unnecessary wear without eliminating necessary work.
The early results are visible. Players are bigger, leaner and stronger.
The real review will arrive in October and November, when Utah can measure movement under fatigue, strength retention and how players feel after the season has begun collecting its toll.
The weight room built the foundation.
The season will reveal how much of it Utah can preserve and use.
The Bottom Line
Utah’s new strength program is not built around doing less work. It is built around making the work more specific, measurable and transferable to football.
The physical changes have already become one of fall camp’s defining storylines. Offensive linemen have added useful mass. Younger defenders look more mature. Players describe improved strength, movement and confidence.
Those are promising receipts, but Saunders’ program will not ultimately be judged by August body-composition numbers.
It will be judged by whether Utah remains strong, explosive and available when the schedule reaches November — and whether the work done in the weight room actually shows up on Saturdays.
