STARKVILLE – When Dan Mullen arrived at Mississippi State, he promised his football players an offseason workout regimen unlike any they had experienced.

“In the offseason conditioning program, they’re going to be tested probably like they’ve never been tested before,” Mullen said the day he was introduced as coach in December.

The man in charge of making sure that happens is strength and conditioning coach Matt Balis, and according to the players, he’s backed up Mullen’s words.

“We’ve done some things that I never even thought were possible in college football,” junior center J.C. Brignone said. “It’s made me rethink the way I work out and everything I’ve done. I’ve gone in my levels a lot higher than I ever thought I could ever push myself, and I think that has a lot to do with Coach Balis and the new coaches.”

Brignone has noticed not only physical improvement, but he thinks his mental toughness has increased, too.

“When I went home and I didn’t have anybody yelling at me, I didn’t have anybody telling me to do this, I still went and did it on my own,” he said. “I think that was a big part of it, of having to push myself by myself to see that I could actually do it.”

Mullen is probably a little biased when he calls Balis the best strength coach in the nation. The two have worked together before, at Utah and Florida.

Balis was at Virginia the past two seasons but was targeted by Mullen when he left Gainesville for Starkville.

“His experience, personality and relentlessness is exactly what we needed to get started in the right direction,” Mullen said. “I’ve said before that we hired the best strength coach in America, and I truly believe that.”

Balis was more than happy to come.

“Too good of a challenge to pass up,” he said.

Making it competitive

The 37-year-old Balis was a competitive power lifter at Northern Illinois, and he looks like he can still hold his own in the weightroom. He could be described as tightly wound, always ready for the next challenge.

In his program, the challenges are daily. Another aspect of Mullen’s philosophy is making everything a competition – on the field, in the classroom – and that carries over to Balis’ territory.

Every exercise or drill has winners and losers, and each workout period has a champion. For the winter, the champion was a team of 14 players led by senior cornerback Marcus Washington.

Washington is among several players Balis listed as having made great progress in strength and conditioning, as well as becoming a weightroom leader. Other names he ticked off were linebacker Jamar Chaney, tailback Anthony Dixon and defensive lineman Pernell McPhee,

Those three have already proved themselves to be top-notch, and the hope is that Balis’ regimen will bring them to new levels on the field. It being the summer, only strength coaches can have contact with players.

“With the restrictions on coaches in the offseason, the strength coach is probably the person that spends the most time with the team, and it's vital to find somebody that can convey your goals to the players,” Mullen said.

So far, Balis likes the results he’s seeing.

“Lots of improvement in body composition, a lot of improvement in mental toughness, overall conditioning,” he said.

Said quarterback Tyson Lee, who’s noticeably more barrel-chested, “I’ve gained weight in the right places – gained muscle I guess is the proper word.”

Speeding it up

Another area Mullen wants improvement in is speed, which is really what makes his spread option offense go. It’s something MSU is short on right now, though some incoming freshmen will add to the collective swiftness of the team.

“Every time you condition and you’re doing your warmups to try some type of speed goal, whether it’s arm technique – speed is a lot of technique in the arms, and leg drive and angles – so you try and address those things in every conditioning session,” Balis said.

And every session is like the one before it, and just like Mullen wants his team to be on the field. As Lee put it, “Every day, it’s maximum effort,” and that’s helped Brignone and the others push through the self-imposed barriers of the subconscious.

Will it pay immediate dividends this fall? Who knows, but there is already a new attitude among the Bulldogs.

“I think the big thing that our team has had is being able to push each other,” Brignone said, “and knowing that if I’m not going to break, then I’m not going to let my teammate break.”