'You're running for your life': Why conditioning is Louisville coach Kenny Payne's focus

CHARLOTTE — The treadmill once was Kenny Payne’s weapon of choice.

In his days as a Kentucky assistant, the new Louisville men’s basketball coach — in his quest to help build the best-conditioned teams in the college game — became infamous for rigorous treadmill workouts.

They were the stuff of legend. The Athletic did a whole story about them.

Payne still works his players.

But he’s expanded his running repertoire.

The Cardinals now run on the court. Around a track. Up and down a football field.

“It's the most running I've ever done in my life,” guard El Ellis said Wednesday at ACC Tipoff. “Like the most running I've ever done in my life. ... We’re gonna be in the best shape of our lives.”

That’s the idea.

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A successful decade under John Calipari at Kentucky taught Payne plenty. Among the lessons he’s passing on to the current Cards is that physical conditioning equates to mental toughness, and that in turn helps win a lot of games.

“The first quarter of a game, that other team would want to beat you so bad,” Payne said Wednesday. “The second half, they want to beat you so bad. The last five, six, seven minutes, they can’t keep up. But you can. You can play another game. They don’t know that. But you know that you trained to be able to play another game.”

At the dawn of his first season coaching his alma mater, Payne doesn’t know what to expect.

He’s added some pieces to a roster that went 13-19 last season as Louisville parted ways with coach Chris Mack. He’s preached internal development and promised a culture change.

Payne plans to win big, to bring a “championship culture” back to U of L basketball.

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“I know it’s not gonna happen Day 1,” he said.

He can’t have the most talented team in college basketball this season.

But his team can work harder and be fresh longer than its competition. And that’s the goal.

To achieve it, Payne took a fresh look at how teams train.

When he set out to find his first strength and conditioning coach, he sought one with at least some background in track. Payne reached out to two high-profile college track coaches, Texas’ Edrick Floréal of Texas — who was at Kentucky during Payne’s tenure there — and Oregon’s Robert Johnson.

Payne asked each for “five or six” names; Adam Petway was on both lists, and he landed the job. Petway also had logged time in the NBA and written a book on basketball movement. He’s interested in more than better-built bodies.

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Louisville’s program is designed to create conditioned teams that don’t give in to physical or mental fatigue. He wants his players to "know stepping on the floor that you did more (work) than the guy in front of you."

“(Payne’s) whole entire thing is just about conditioning,” said Nick Richards, the Charlotte Hornets center who played at Kentucky when Payne was an assistant. “If you can do everything while you're tired, then if you're not tired, you should be able to do anything.”

Those are lessons Payne believes extend beyond the final minutes of a game.

“This is not just running to run,” Payne said. “You’re running for your life. I need them to know there’s a desperation that comes with everything that we’re doing. Not to win a game. To win the game of life.”

But, sure, he wants to win some games, too.

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And he believes that conditioning is a critical piece. His players are starting to share his vision.

“We're gonna look to our left and to our right (late in games) and we're gonna see that we're not breathing hard,” Ellis said. “We’re gonna look to the other huddle and see that guys are breathing hard.”

In a season when Louisville won’t always have a talent advantage, that’s an edge Payne figures he can create.

It’s more than just running. But it starts there.

“If everything in the environment is hard, when you step on the court for the game, it should be easy,” Payne said. “Your mentality should be different. That's changing the culture. Simply put, that's changing the culture.”

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brett Dawson at mdawson@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @BDawsonWrites.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball coach Kenny Payne focused on conditioning