How a summer in Columbia has gotten Rocket Sanders back to 'feeling good' again

As Rocket Sanders prepared for his first day of fall camp last Friday, he had some nerves. While he had been through fall practice in previous years, this time around was different for him.

Not only would this be his first time practicing with his new team at South Carolina, but also his first day back from a shoulder injury he had been rehabbing from.

Once he stepped onto the practice field and got back into the flow of things, though, that nervous feeling started to wear off. And now through four practices, there are no more nerves. It’s back to being all about football and getting into a rhythm again.

“I actually feel great. I’m not limited in no way,” Sanders said. “I’m ready to go, really. We’re on our fourth practice and I’m feeling good. Pads on, throwing my shoulder in there, as well. So I actually feel great.”

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It’s been a long, hard recovery process for Sanders as he missed the entirety of the spring. But to be back on the field now is a great feeling for him. And none of it would have been possible without spending the summer here in Columbia.

In years past at Arkansas, Sanders would typically go home to Florida to spend time with his family. That’s the norm for most college football players. However, since he still had some more work to do to get back to feeling 100 percent, the senior running back elected to change things up and stay in Columbia to work out.

At first, it was an adjustment for him to get used to not being back home. Fortunately, he wasn’t going through the process alone. Chip Morton, South Carolina’s senior associate director of football strength and conditioning, was always in the facility with him and made sure he was taking the right steps to get healthy again.

“I feel like Chip played a big part of that with just me staying and believing in that,” Sanders said. “And I feel like that helped not even just my shoulder out, but my full body, and showed me how to take care of myself when I’m outside of the facility as well when I did get the chance to go home to figure out all the little things I needed to do with stretching and being patient. I feel like with the summer, it helped being patient in January and the little spring deal as well. That’s what helped me out.”

In spending so much time with Morton, he learned a lot of good habits that have been instrumental in getting him back on the field for fall camp. The biggest of which have been preparation and being more patient by trusting the day-to-day process.

“When I first got in here and I got in with Chip, I was just ready to go,” Sanders said. “It was a lot of patience stuff. Not just working on my shoulder, but working on my mobility of everything with my hips, my knees and everything. I feel like that was the main thing. It wasn’t just the shoulder.”

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Eventually, Sanders got into a good routine by usually waking up between 5:10-5:15 a.m. every day and arriving at the facility around 5:30. He was typically one of, if not the first to get there in the mornings this summer.

“I’d go and get a little hot tub going, do my sheet for my shoulder and just hit a couple things before I hit the weight room and do some recovery stuff and just getting ready for practice meetings,” he said.

Now, he’s at a point where he feels good again. But there are still some more hurdles to cross before the season opener.

South Carolina will have its first scrimmage of the fall at Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday. It will be one of the first opportunities for Sanders to show the progress he’s made and what he could look like in the backfield for the Gamecocks this year. The goal for him right now, though, is to get a feel for the game again since he hasn’t played since last season.

“Just getting a feeling of getting tackled again and taking on blocks,” Sanders said. “I just want to figure out the offensive standpoint of it, because I’m still learning and studying. Really, the main thing is just the falling part of the shoulder and getting back into that routine again.”

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