Good Weight vs. Bad Weight: How Elite Strength Coaches Actually Track the Difference

Author Brian Szutkowski is TeamBuildr's Director of Customer Success, as well as a Sports Performance and Track Coach at Elon.

Bigger isn't always better on a football field. Tennessee's new strength coach reveals the weekly measurement system that separates muscle that helps you play from weight that holds you back.

When Josh Heupel's Tennessee Volunteers landed Derek Owings away from Indiana this offseason, they weren't just hiring a strength coach, they were acquiring a philosophy. Owings built the Hoosiers into one of the most physically competitive rosters in college football without leaning on five-star recruiting. His secret? A rigorous, week-to-week system for distinguishing weight that enhances athletic performance from weight that quietly destroys it.

The concept sounds simple. In practice, it demands discipline, data, and the willingness to pump the brakes on mass gain when the numbers don't support it.

"Everything we do, it has to fit together like a puzzle. The reason why we track speed every single week, we track power every single week, vertical jump — to make sure that the weight we are putting on is good weight." — Derek Owings, Tennessee Strength & Conditioning Coach

What Is "Good Weight" — and What Isn't?

In the weight room, the scale is the most dangerous liar in the building. A player can gain 15 pounds and be dramatically better — or dramatically worse — depending entirely on what those 15 pounds are made of and how they affect the way he moves.

Good Weight:

• Lean muscle mass that adds force production
• Maintained or improved sprint speed
• Stable or higher vertical jump
• Increased power output (rate of force development)
• Better strength-to-bodyweight ratio
• Enhanced football-specific explosiveness

Bad Weight:

• Excess body fat or non-functional mass
• Reduced sprint speed at same or higher bodyweight
• Drop in vertical jump or jump power
• Sluggishness in change-of-direction drills
• Increased injury risk from inefficient movement
• Slower first step and reaction time

The distinction isn't arbitrary — it's the difference between a player who is harder to tackle and a player who is simply harder to move off the couch. Owings described some of his Tennessee players adding 15 lbs of muscle in just six and a half weeks of training. That kind of gain is only considered a win if the athleticism metrics move in the same direction as the scale.

The Weekly Tracking System: Three Pillars

What separates elite collegiate strength programs from average ones isn't the bar weight — it's the data collection. Owings uses a multi-metric, every-week approach built around three athletic performance indicators that directly translate to football performance: Sprint Speed (Weekly), Power Output (Weekly), and Vertical Jump (Weekly).

Sprint speed is the most direct football metric — if a player is getting slower as he gains weight, the added mass is functionally counterproductive regardless of how it looks on a body composition scan. Power output, typically measured through force plate technology or jump variations, captures rate of force development — how fast a player can apply strength, which is the athletic quality that shows up on every snap. Vertical jump serves as a quick, reliable proxy for total body explosiveness and neuromuscular efficiency.

Together, these three indicators create a weekly report card on whether mass gain is serving the player's athletic identity or compromising it.

How the Decision Tree Works Week to Week

Owings described the logic clearly: tracking happens, and then decisions follow from the data. This is the framework in practice.

1. Establish baselines. At the start of a training block, every player is measured for sprint speed, power output, and vertical jump. Bodyweight is recorded alongside these. This is the benchmark everything else will be measured against.
2. Collect weekly data points. Each week, the same battery of tests is run. The goal is a consistent, apples-to-apples comparison — same conditions, same tests, same measurement protocols. This eliminates day-to-day noise and surfaces real trends.
3. Plot weight against performance. The key question isn't "did he gain weight?" It's "did his performance move with his weight?" Rising weight plus rising performance metrics = good weight. Rising weight plus flat or declining performance = a warning sign.
4. Intervene before the problem compounds. Owings said directly: if a player is getting too big and getting slower, the response is to hold bodyweight steady. The coach stops pushing for mass gain and instead focuses on maintaining the current weight while rebuilding speed, power, and explosiveness to a higher baseline. Only then is the push for more size resumed.
5. Recognize the ceiling — and respect it. Some players have already reached their optimal playing weight. For those athletes, the goal shifts entirely. As Owings noted, getting leaner will actually make certain players faster and more powerful without any additional mass gain. The program adapts to the individual, not a standardized weight target.

The Indiana Proof of Concept

Case Study · 2025 Season: Indiana's Defensive Front vs. Miami's 330-Pound Offensive Line

Owings' philosophy was on full display in the 2025 national championship game. Indiana's defensive line averaged just under 280 pounds — considerably lighter than Miami's offensive front, which averaged around 330 pounds per lineman. On paper, the Hurricanes should have bulldozed them. Instead, Indiana's front controlled the line of scrimmage through the first half, shut down Miami's ground game, and built a 10-0 lead on the way to a national title. It was a live demonstration that playing at your optimal athletic weight — trained for power and speed — outperforms simply playing at a bigger weight.

The result wasn't an accident. It was the product of a systematic, data-driven approach to size that prioritized functional mass over raw mass. The Hoosiers were built to be the strongest and most explosive version of their naturally athletic selves — not to hit an arbitrary weight room number.

Why Most Programs Get This Wrong

The instinct in football at every level is to equate size with dominance. Recruiting services rank linemen partly by weight. Coaches talk about "adding beef" as a universal good. But this mindset can quietly ruin players who are built for athleticism first. A 260-pound edge rusher who runs a 4.6 and plays with explosiveness is often more valuable than a 290-pound version of himself who runs a 4.85. The extra 30 pounds didn't make him better — it made him a different, slower player.

Owings' system forces the question that most programs skip: what does this player's body actually do better at this weight? The scale is only one data point. Speed, power, and jump height are what convert weight room gains into on-field production.

"As soon as we make them too big and that takes away from those qualities, now we're taking away from football. We want to enhance those abilities, not hurt them." — Derek Owings, Tennessee Strength & Conditioning Coach

Information sourced from Derek Owings' interview with Voice of the Vols Mike Keith, as reported by AtoZ Sports, March 2026.