Why Frank Martin’s Gamecocks keep a treadmill at practice

South Carolina men’s basketball coach Frank Martin will tell you the treadmill is easier.

He knows when he runs on a treadmill, he can take it. When he runs outside, his knees flare up and he can’t walk for two days.

He used to make his players run along the floor when they were being distracting, not practicing the right way and dragging things down. That was back before he worked with Bob Huggins and strength coach Scott Greenawalt.

That’s when the treadmill came in, a Greenawalt innovation.

This didn’t 100 percent fit what Martin wanted. He wanted his guys to have to do something harder, which fits his approach to a tee.

“I just think running on a treadmill is kind of easy,” Martin said. “I said to Scott, ‘Make them run on the court.’ He said, ‘No.’”

Then Greenawalt made a convincing case, and the treadmill stayed.

“He said, ‘If they run on the court, they’re not going to make time,’ ” Martin said. “ ‘If they don’t make time, then they make me mad.’ Me being Scott. ‘And if they make me mad, I can’t get them back in practice because now I’m going to stay on them. And they came here to play basketball, not to run with me on the side.’ ”

Martin then asked, so why the treadmill?

“They get on the treadmill. I get to push the button to the speed I want them to run,” Martin recalled Greenawalt saying.

“Makes a lot of sense to me.”

And when a player comes off the treadmill, they have to fly off into a drill and do it correctly, or they might earn a return trip.

This story was originally published October 26, 2017 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Why Frank Martin’s Gamecocks keep a treadmill at practice."