A major transformation is happening inside Tennessee’s football facility right now. Several players are bulking up, adding more muscle. It sounds curious until you realize Josh Heupel didn’t just hire another strength coach. He went out and poached one from Curt Cignetti’s reigning national championship lineup. And it took just four months to see the result. 

Per Vols Football, Tennessee players collectively gained 867.3 pounds of muscle during a 14-week offseason program from January through May. At the same time, the roster reportedly lost more than 200 pounds of body fat. Even crazier, 33 Vols players added at least 11 pounds of muscle since Derek Owings arrived in Knoxville in January.

Bringing a coach from an undefeated, title-winning team changes the daily mindset. The players noticed the shift on day one. Owings brought that strict, winning discipline straight to Knoxville. He demands speed just as much as raw power.

When Josh Heupel hired Derek Owings away from Indiana, he was bringing in one of the fastest-rising performance minds in college football. He was fresh off helping build a 16-0 national championship team and CFP winner with Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers. The results were instantaneous. Tennessee has looked bigger this offseason, but bulking up alone isn’t the only goal. 

“We’ve had a lot of that have added already 15 pounds of muscle in a six and a half week training block,” Owings said in March. “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.”

Speed matters as much as size in modern football development now, especially in Josh Heupel’s offense, where tempo can expose poorly conditioned rosters. Owings admitted Tennessee will pull players back if added size starts hurting athleticism.

“As soon as we make them too big, that takes away from those qualities, now we’re taking away from football,” he added. “So, we want to enhance those abilities, not hurt them.”

Perhaps that explains why Josh Heupel wanted him so badly.

“Physical and mental toughness is paramount in everything we do year-round as a program,” he said. “No one understands this better at a championship level than Derek. He will elevate our strength and conditioning program with a relentless mindset and forge strong relationships with our players.”

Derek Owings also brought pieces of Indiana’s championship operation with him, including Josh Huff as director of applied performance science and Carl Miller as associate director of football sports performance. Then the Vols added Katie O’Connor as director of football nutrition after her stint at Kansas. But maybe it’s the past connection between Josh Heupel and Owings that led them here. 

Josh Heupel and Tennessee are going all in on Derek Owings 

Josh Heupel and Derek Owings already had a history before this hire happened. Owings worked at UCF in 2018 as an assistant strength and conditioning coach during Heupel’s first season leading the Knights. So this wasn’t a blind hire based solely on Indiana’s title run, as there was already trust there. 

When the head coach and the strength coach share the same vision, the players buy in quickly. They do not second-guess the hard sessions because the message stays the same from top to bottom. That is how a new hire starts showing results in a short time.

Josh Heupel practically said as much when Tennessee announced the hire in January.

“He has a proven track record of utilizing modern training methods to maximize speed and strength while specializing in injury prevention,” he said. “He also understands what it takes to build an elite nutrition program to ensure our players are set up for on-field success and durability.”

Tennessee paid accordingly. Derek Owings signed a deal through 2029 worth $1.2 million annually, making him the highest-paid strength coach in college football history. Before Indiana, he worked as the AD of strength and conditioning at Texas Tech and the director of strength and conditioning at James Madison. Long before that, he played WR at Eastern Michigan and TE at Mercer before beginning his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Utah State. 

“Tennessee is one of the most iconic brands in college football,” he said. “I’m thankful to Coach Heupel for believing in me, and I can’t wait to serve this program, this staff, and most importantly, these players on Rocky Top.”

If Tennessee’s offseason numbers are sustainable into the fall, Josh Heupel may have pulled off one of the smartest staff hires of the offseason, despite negative projections. Adding 867 pounds of muscle is eye-catching, but doing it without sacrificing speed is impressive.