The Pittsburgh Steelers will report to Saint Vincent College in Latrobe next week for their 2018 training camp and that means the annual conditioning test should take place late Wednesday afternoon. This past week, Steelers guard Ramon Foster was a guest on SiriusXM NFL Radio and he described what the team’s annual conditioning test consist of.
“We have to run 150s,” Foster said. “We sprint down the 100, jog the 50, walk back. I think we have eight of those. It’s not super bad because I’ve heard some teams running 30 half-gassers, or something like that. You know, our philosophy is like, if you’re not ready, it’s going to show in camp regardless. Ours is to just open you up, but yet and still, it’s always one or two small skill guys that just can’t happen to make it. And guess what? By week two, they’re usually at home.”
Foster’s exactly right and especially when it comes to last year’s conditioning test. Former wide receiver Canaan Severin was the lone Steelers player to fail the test last year and thus he started training camp off on the team’s Active PUP list. He presumably finally passed his conditioning test a few days later and was ultimately removed from the PUP list that first Saturday of training camp. However, about two weeks after he started practicing, Severin was waived from the Steelers 90-man roster.
Foster, who said this past week he’s now busy putting the finishing touches on his own offseason training, also admitted that he’s trying to spend a little bit of extra time with his family as well before leaving for training camp.
“I’m stretching and doing like light pushes and pulls and you know, opening up the lungs a little bit right now,” Foster said. “I’ve got my son’s birthday party this weekend and just more family time before I have to exit out of here.”
Foster also added one more comment about the annual conditioning test.
“It’s never the big guys that’s failing it, it’s usually the small guys,” Foster said.
This will be Foster’s tenth training camp with the Steelers as he was signed originally in 2009 as an undrafted free agent out of Tennessee.
