Opting for 'Interesting' Workouts, Parsons Ready for Return to Penn State
Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons is giving it one more week.
Abruptly sent away from the Nittany Lions’ on-campus football facilities since spring break in March, the All-American was among those given the option to return for “Phase One” which began Monday, June 15, or Monday, June 22, for voluntary workouts. Joining reporters this afternoon for a Zoom web conference, Parsons explained why he opted to wait a week to come back to campus.
"I decided I'm coming in phase two,” Parsons said. “I just know it will be my last week at home and I wanted to spend Father's Day with my son and spend it with my father for the last time before I headed back to campus. So I'm gonna come back next Monday."
And when he gets there, Parsons said he’ll be ready.
Featured in an April video on Penn State All-American wrestler Bo Nickal’s YouTube channel, Parsons could be seen joining other Nittany Lion athletes completing a “lumberjack circuit.” Asked Monday about the training video, Parsons indicated it was just one of many unique avenues he took toward staying in shape during the unexpected departure from organized football team activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I'm doing everything with the wrestling team. I actually trained with Bo a little bit with some MMA stuff. I was doing running, fieldwork, running hills. I was doing anything I could think of, anything that seemed fun or challenging for me, I was doing it just as a competitor,” Parsons said. “I just knew it would make me better. I was actually wrestling a little bit with Bo again this offseason. It was just some fun stuff. It was interesting."
Parsons also spent time Monday discussing his evolving role within the Penn State linebackers room.
Once the player fresh to the position, appearing in 13 games as a true freshman but starting only once during the 2018 season, to becoming a full-time starter and All-American last year, to now being the unquestioned veteran and leader of the group, Parsons said that his effort to exert vocal leadership skills - which he admitted don’t necessarily come naturally to him - has been made more challenging by the dispersion of the team this spring.
“It makes everything so much harder because you don't know who's really paying attention, you don't know who's really working out as hard as they possibly can. You don't know any of those things, so it's hard to really monitor, but we get this chance to come back and get in the flow of things during these voluntary workouts. And we're just going to from there,” Parsons said. “We can't control what happened with this pandemic. You can't control what's been going on in the world right now. But we can control how we come back after this pandemic and how we move forward. So we're going to control the things that we control now and we're going to get better from it.”
All that said, Parsons acknowledged that he doesn’t expect to be in quite the same shape that he would have been if he’d been able to remain on campus working out under the direction of Penn State strength coach Dwight Galt.
“Obviously, I didn't have the same workload I would have working with Coach Deej,” Parsons said. “He's one of the best strength coaches around for years. But as of right now, I think my body feels good. I think I'm weighing what I want to weigh. I think I'm moving the way I want to move. I've been helping working on my transitions.
“I feel like I'm not a Coach Deej shape. I wouldn't say I'm in Coach Deej shape because his shape is completely different from mine but I'm in a shape when I come back that I won't die.”
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