BATON ROUGE - The LSU Tiger football team will return from its near 11 week absence from campus on Tuesday morning when the first groups of players return for workouts with the strength and conditioning staff.

Assistant Athletic Director and head strength and conditioning coach Tommy Moffitt plans to welcome back returning veterans and newcomers to campus both freshmen and transfers as they start the process to get back into football playing shape.

Caught up with #LSU Strength & Conditioning legend @TommyMoffitt before he starts workouts again for the first time in 11 weeks, he says typical longest break would've been 3 weeks.

He's fired up for 6 groups of 15-20 players starting Tuesday morning at 7:15am. pic.twitter.com/FnRRsK3iBS

— Michael Cauble (@Cauble) June 8, 2020

“We want to lessen our exposure to the student athletes because of everybody in the athletic department, the strength and conditioning staff is the one that will be exposed to them (athletes) the most and you know we'll see 100 guys, a day,” Moffitt said of the health risk. 

The voluntary workouts will be held in groups of 15-20 players to maximize safety and exposure in the LSU Football Operations weight room.  State law allows up to 67 players to workout based on percentages of capacity, however Moffitt feels like the smaller groups are needed at this time. 

“We're going to be extra cautious and only train 20 guys at a time. We'll have six groups, five groups a day of all the varsity players, and one group with just the newcomers,” Moffitt told WBRZ Sports last week.

“I actually prefer larger groups because you have more energy, more enthusiasm. There's more guys in there, you know, high five and slapping each other on the back. So I prefer larger groups, but for safety purposes we're going to cut it.”

The first two weeks of work will be an acclimation period for the Tigers as they work their way back into the process of both lifting and conditioning running.  Moffitt says the groups will work out three days a week in sessions that consist of a warm-up, a lift session and a post workout run at 70 to 80% of their season maximum for both weight and distance.  In the third week of the workouts the Tigers will move to four days a week of workouts and although the weight will still not be at their maximum it will be closest to a regular in season workout session.

“Our goal was to try to do it by position, but there's when you start doing that one either got to have a lot of groups and work from six in the morning till six at night. Or, you got to have larger groups, and right now our group size would just not allow us to do it by position.”

The NCAA is considering a plan that mimics exactly what LSU is planning for, a phased return to workouts and then required workouts leading up to a traditional fall football camp starting in August.