A new regime has inherited responsibility for the physical development of every single Penn State football player after longtime director of strength and conditioning Chuck Losey followed James Franklin to Virginia Tech in December.

The man who received the bulk of that pressure? Reid Kagy, who has spent six total seasons working alongside Matt Campbell at Iowa State, including the last three as the Cyclones’ director of football strength and conditioning. Kagy also had prior stints with Cincinnati, Oregon, and Boise State before making the jump from Ames to Happy Valley.

Kagy is still laying the groundwork for his program with the Nittany Lions, but his hands-on, day-to-day interactions with the entire roster during winter workouts and spring ball have allowed him to quickly instill a battle-ready culture.

For a program that has undergone as much turnover as anyone in college football, that stabilization is essential.

The Nittany Lions’ 2026-27 roster can be described as a melting pot, with a chunk of players returning from the previous season, a large number of transfers from outside the program, and incoming freshmen and redshirting players. When you have that many new faces accumulating in one area, synthesis can be difficult due to differing personalities or experience levels. But there’s one place that unites every football player: the weight room.

“There’s a whole bunch of trust involved in winning football games and training and all those things,” Kagy said. “We needed that time. It was critical, and I couldn’t be more proud of what this team has done, coming and meshing together, not knowing each other off the jump, really spending the time to get together.”

The core concept of daily competition has been in motion from the jump, which Kagy reinforced during his media debut at Wednesday’s annual Lift for Life event.

“We were able to put our little twist on it and make it competitive,” Kagy said. “We go out throughout the season, and we have leadership teams, and they’re competing in everything we do, because we’re going to compete in the fall. And sometimes some of that stuff is absent throughout the offseason. The competition piece of it, there’s not a win and loss. We’re trying to create a win and a loss every day.”

Through the intentional creation of consistent competition opportunities, Kagy and his staff aim to mold Penn State’s roster into the “most violent team in the nation.” However, achieving this during the summer is nearly impossible, as the team is allowed only eight hours of workouts each week.

Nonetheless, Kagy wants his players’ minds and bodies prepared to maximize resilience and production on gamedays, which is why he’s hyper-focused on improving their power, speed, strength, toughness, and grit before the thrilling yet taxing action of the college football regular season begins.

“We want to make sure we’re working as hard as we can to build up armor, to build up resiliency… to keep them on the football field,” Kagy said.

In an uber-physical conference such as the Big Ten, collective wherewithal, point-of-attack strength, and mental fortitude are certain to pay dividends for Penn State in the fall.