Dec. 17, 2007
By Brian Siegrist, Assistant Director Athletic Communications
With New Year's just around the corner, many people are contemplating a New Year's resolution and many will involve a fitness goal. Tell people your fitness plan starts with a nightly regime of a large cheese pizza and quart of chocolate milk before bed and they'll have you pegged as attempting to achieve Santa Claus proportions or dethroning noted eating champion Kobayashi.
However, that regime was one of the primary keys in freshman Andrew Jones' evolution from a thin 190-pound senior in high school to the muscular, 242-pound power forward that has started Penn State's last four games. Mind you, he combined the exorbitant eating with long and hard hours in the weight room, but it was the eating that may have been the biggest hurdle.
"His biggest challenge is the meal thing," said Nittany Lion strength coach Brad Pantall. "When we are in the weight room he kills himself. I don't have to get on him. He works his tail off.
"The part with Andrew was nutrition. It wasn't easy some mornings for him to get up and go to breakfast, so we had a lot of just checking him in at breakfast making sure he is coming over to the weight room for snacks. He was eating seven times a day. There was a time when he was up to 7,000 to 8,000 calories a day. His snacks were 1,200 calories."
Arriving at Penn State with just three seasons of organized basketball under his belt and as a self described "bean pole," Jones redshirted his first season in Blue and White and committed himself to building his body.
"The coaches wanted me to get bigger and stronger, so that's what I did," Jones, who added more than 30 pounds of muscle in his redshirt season, said.
"Andrew pretty much had a full year of off-season training," Pantall said. "So, when we went into in-season training last year for the guys that were playing, he was still getting one to two more weight lifting sessions a week. When we were on the road we worked out every game day at the hotel. He pretty much had four strength training workouts a week and they were very aggressive ones."
And those were after a full two-and-a-half hour practice with the rest of the team. After being put through the paces by coach Ed DeChellis and the Nittany Lion staff, Jones would leave the court with the rest of his exhausted teammates, but he didn't hit the showers. He went straight to Pantall who put him through a full-on weight workout that often sounded like some medieval dungeon with Jones' exertions echoing through the Jordan Center halls.
"He responded very well," Pantall said. "He has a great attitude and is one of the hardest workers on the team. He bought into it, worked and he's seeing the benefits of the gains."
"I can definitely tell the difference physically on the court," Jones said. "Now, I have to learn to play with that added weight and strength."
Jones has put that strength to use ranking second on the team with 25 offensive rebounds and averaging five points and 4.2 rebounds a game while playing 17 minutes a contest. A very active and energetic player who provides the Lions with strong rebounding and defense, he had an impressive eight point and nine rebound outing vs. South Carolina at the Old Spice Classic and scored nine points on the road at St. Joseph's as he continues to develop his post game.
But, the challenge still remains to keep the weight on during a long season of practices and playing in which a college athlete burns thousands of calories a day. While he is back to the normal two weight sessions a week with the rest of the team, his caloric intake still must be elevated and monitored closely.
"His body type and with his metabolism it was very hard to put on weight because his body would just burn, burn, burn," Pantall said. "It's a hard gainer, but if you get the calories in, you'll gain the weight." For Jones that means snacks and lots of them. From extra trail mixes and juices between every meal to a cheese pizza or three peanut butter and honey sandwiches before bed, regardless of when he ate dinner. It takes constant vigilance to maintain his weight.
"It definitely changed the way I look at food," Jones said. "It kind of makes you not like it as much because it's hard to eat like that. But, I look at the nutritional value of food now and what is doing for my body." Pantall points to Jones' weight falling to 232 after the Lions trip to the Old Spice Classic as an example of how quickly the weight can dissipate if the caloric intake is not maintained at the proper level to match the amount of physical exertion.
"He lost about two pounds a day with all the practice and playing and wasn't replacing the calories and hydration," Pantall said. So, it was back to the close monitoring of every meal and snack by Pantall, a role he readily admits neither coach nor player enjoy. But, it is one that is sometimes necessary to return Jones to his 242-pound playing weight and insure that a year's worth of weight room work sculpting his now chiseled frame doesn't melt away in the activity of a 30-game season.
"It was a big commitment," Pantall said. "There were days when you could tell he had enough. But, overall, he responded so well and worked so hard. He's done a heck of job. Going from where he was last summer to where he was this October is just phenomenal."