Texas Tech responds to viral video claiming they've banned dumbbells under 40 pounds

Few folks have burst onto the social media scene the past several seasons like Adam Breneman has.

A former tight end at Penn State and UMass, Breneman had a brief coaching career at Arizona State under Herm Edwards before he began to carve out a name for himself in the sports media space.

Now several seasons into his off season tour around the country talking to some of college football's top coaches, one of Breneman's most recent stops was at the impressive facility that Texas Tech has put together.

While there's a "Wow" factor everywhere you look in Lubbock with some of their recent upgrades, including locker room that Breneman believes is the best in the country, one of the clips touring the facility went viral over the weekend.

The clip took place in the weight room where one of the hosts mentioned that the staff had banned dumbbells under 40 pounds.

"We're not going to be weak," the host in camera view shares to open the clip. "[Coaches] are like, 'If you want to do something like side raises or something, you're still going to have to do 40's"

Breneman chuckled and asked if it was actually true that there were no dumbbells under 40 pounds before walking over to a rack and seeing for himself the lightest weights there were in fact 40's.

That prompted Breneman to share a story from his Penn State days, where a coach removed all the 2.5 pound weights, with the logic that if you can do 2.5 pounds more, you can do 5 pounds more.

Below is the clip.

The clip had been seen over 5.6 million times since posting on Saturday, and while some of the internet loved and applauded the move, there were more than a few critics, and while it would seem the majority of those are nothing more than armchair strength experts concerned about (rather obvious) potential injuries, there were some high profile critics like former NFL Defensive MVP JJ Watt who knows a thing or two about proper training and took to X to call out the move as "wildly absurd and irresponsible."

The video prompted a response from a Texas Tech spokesperson, who told Chron: "We do have weights less than 40 pounds in that facility, just not in that area they were touring on video. Those less than 40 pound weights are maybe a 10 second walk from that area."

"We have a state-of-the-art weight room and training facility that opened a year ago, and the most important aspect of our program and this facility is the health and rehabilitation of our players."

The Red Raiders entered last fall with one of the most expensive rosters in college football, and wildly high expectations to match, and finished the year 12-2 and Big 12 champions before losing to Oregon in the opening round of the College Football Playoff. Joey McGuire's squad figures to be a contender for a national title again this season as they reload at some key spots to make a College Football Playoff run.

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