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Utah coach Kyle Whittingham looks on during the first day of fall camp at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Monday, July 29, 2024. | Liv Medivitz, Utah Athletics
Before fall camp started, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham made it a priority to look at everything he could change or do to ensure his team got to the opening game on Aug. 29 healthy.
In 2023, a laundry list of impact players — including defensive end Logan Fano, running back Micah Bernard and wide receiver Mycah Pittman — suffered season-ending injuries, and star quarterback Cam Rising and star tight end Brant Kuithe missed the whole season because of knee rehab after surgeries.
In October of 2023, Whittingham said he had looked at it from every angle and couldn’t find any common denominator that was leading to the increase of injuries.
“I mean, we’ve looked at every single factor and there is no, at least nothing obvious that jumps out as, ‘Hey, this drill is too dangerous,’ or whatever,” Whittingham said then.
Football is a demanding and violent game, and sometimes a team gets the short end of the stick in regards to injury luck. That’s what happened to Utah last year.
That being said, Whittingham did implement some changes to fall camp this season aimed at minimizing injuries. Utah ramped up slowly, practicing for two days and taking a day off, practicing for three days and taking a day off, etc.
While the intensity of practices didn’t change, the time to recover did.
“As physical as we practice, you got to be able to divvy that up, and so a little bit more emphasis on spreading out those physical periods, spreading out those physical practices, giving our guys time to recover,” defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley said.
Whittingham also implemented modifications in lifting to prevent soft-tissue injuries and looked at the warmup and…
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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/70-less-injuries-camp-utah-024942050.html
Author : Deseret News
Publish date : 2024-08-22 02:49:42
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