AUBURN | College football players are home due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Most gyms and fitness clubs are closed, and not all players have their own weight sets.

That means Ryan Russell, assistant AD for athletic performance, has to be flexible when putting together the workout plans for Auburn’s players, which he sent out this week.

“Some guys have free weights at home, some guys don’t. So he has two different plans that he sent out,” Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said during a teleconference Friday. “We do that each week and change as we go. I think the big thing from his standpoint is to make sure they’re running, running full speed at least three times a week.”

Without daily access to Auburn’s large and modern weight room, and a training staff to monitor and push them through workouts and conditioning, the players can’t be expected to be in the same shape they would be had they remained in school for spring and summer semesters.

That’s why Malzahn is already planning for when the players are able to return to campus, whether that’s later this summer or when preseason practice is scheduled to begin in August. He knows they’re going to need some time to build back up before they go through full workouts or practices.

“You’ve got to get your guys back in shape, and not just running but the lifting and everything that goes with that before you start your practices,” Malzahn said. “It’s really hard for me to speculate exactly what that would be. You’re talking about, we’re in a new situation that our guys aren’t actively working out with us, so they’re going to be in a different physical standpoint when they come back, so I think it’s all about when they come back.

“But I do know that the conferences, I do know the NCAA, is really trying to take that into effect. The health and safety of our players is No. 1. So that’s a hard question to answer right now as far as exactly how long that would take with where our guys are going to be once they come back in physically.”

The Tigers were wrapping up winter workouts and preparing for spring practice when the University was abruptly closed and all athletic activities were cancelled three weeks ago. Malzahn was pleased with the progress of his team up until that point.

“We really worked hard on just accountability and being accountable to each other. Being able to earn the trust of your teammates and coaches, that was really our message out of our FIST drills, our mat drills. That was really our focus up to the time that we left,” Malzahn said.

“We’ve got a bunch of young guys that we need to take the next step, that need to grow. We felt better. I think we had six mat drills and after that last one right before we left for spring break, we felt good. We did improve. We had some guys that we felt like were going to have good springs. We weren’t able to do that. As good as you can feel going into the spring I would say we probably did that as far as our team.”

The Auburn University campus is closed through the remainder of spring semester and summer sessions 1 and 2. A decision for summer session 3 will be made by June 1. Auburn is scheduled to open the season Sept. 5 against Alcorn State at Jordan-Hare Stadium.