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A Few Words with Strength Coach Larry Jusdanis

The secrets of top-level training for young athletes

When you think about the typical clientele of strength coaches, the image is of college and professional athletes seeking to get that edge over the competition. But with the level of play of today’s athletes, strength coaches are needed at the high school level and even the middle school level. And when it comes to preparing young athletes for the highest standards of performance, one of the best strength coaches is Larry Jusdanis.

Jusdanis is the owner of Sports Specific Training, Inc., which he started in 1997 and has now expanded to six franchises in Canada. As a quarterback, Jusdanis received a scholarship to the University of Central Florida, was invited to the NFL Combine, and played for three years in the CFL. He has a bachelor’s degree in physical education (BPE), has attained Level 4 PICP International Coach, and has attended a dozen Poliquin seminars and three internships.

Whereas in the United States high schools can get all their strength and conditioning training from their sport coaches, in Canada the resources often are limited so that many athletes go to sources outside the school to train. Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions about how to train young athletes, especially in the area of speed development. For this reason, we decided to ask Jusdanis to share some of his insights into youth training.

KG: What sports do you and your staff work with?
LJ: Football, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, lacrosse, speed skating, skiing, figure skating – you name the sport and we’ve probably trained it.

KG: Do you perform any special assessments with young athletes?
LJ: Any athlete who comes in here gets an assessment, and they are reassessed every three months. Some of the testing includes structural balance, biosignature modulation and nutritional profiling.

KG: How do you promote your services?
LJ: We have a website, www.sportsspecifictraining.com, but our reputation is pretty solid in this area and people know we get results very fast. We’re in a good market, and people recognize us. A lot of our clientele are from the same families. A young athlete will start training with us, and then their mother or father will start training with us.

KG: Do you have a basic training model for athletes?
LJ: We use a four-step approach in training athletes that consists of strength, speed, nutrition, and functional training that includes sled dragging and tire flipping.

KG: What do you think about football testing, such as the 40-yard dash?
LJ: It’s not really relative to the sport because you don’t run 40 yards straight in football, or in any other sport, but it does provide the coach a barometer of what type of an athlete a person is. In Canada if you run a fast 40, the American football scouts will take a look at you because they believe speed is the key. But to answer your question, the test is overrated.

KG: What about the 225-pound bench press test for max reps?
LJ: It’s a test of muscular endurance. In football it’s about creating as much force as you can in less than five seconds. I would rather see a max strength tests, so you have to go with what people are doing.

KG: For young athletes in grade school or middle school, what special exercises do you give your athletes?
LJ: For those ages we like to do activities such as the ladder, the dot drill, and low-impact plyos where we are trying to decrease ground contact time. We also do lots of bodyweight exercises, especially single-leg exercises to get rid of muscle imbalances. In my experience the kids who are lifting weights in the seventh and eighth grades are the ones who usually end up getting the scholarships.

KG: What about the idea that lifting will stunt your growth?
LJ: Research has shown numerous times that Olympic lifters are the tallest ones in their family, and the kids who actually strength train get injured less in their sport than those who don’t. I look at myself. My dad is 5'3?; I started strength training when I was in grade six, and now I’m 6'4?, so weight training didn’t stunt my growth. But my training was supervised, and that’s the key to ensure the safety of the young athlete.

KG: Plyometrics have gotten a bad reputation in the US by many coaches. Do you believe that many of the injuries occur because coaches underestimate the intensity of many of these exercises?
LJ: I definitely think so. I watch a lot of coaches who think that sweating all the time is the best thing when they are working out, and so they have the kids do as many as 300 foot contacts in a single workout session. That’s a lot of contacts for a young athlete, especially if that athlete is out of balance – you need to build a solid foundation first before you build a house. Start with low-impact plyos, such as jump roping, and teach them how to run properly.

KG: Are there any special weight training exercises you focus on with young athletes, such as the back squat or the power clean?
LJ: I don’t believe there’s one perfect exercise for anything. You need to perform a combination of various exercises to achieve your goals. The beauty of our program is that everybody’s workout is individualized, so an athlete in grade five is not going to be doing the same program as an athlete in grade 11.

KG: What do you think about the value of high-speed treadmills?
LJ: They can be a good conditioning tool, but a very expensive conditioning tool. The problem with a treadmill is that the ground is moving underneath you; whereas when you run, you need to move on top of the ground. Also, to run fast you need to apply as much force as you can to the ground, whereas with a treadmill you don’t have to apply as much force to the ground. If these treadmills worked as well as some coaches claim, then every national-level sprinter would be lining up to use them, but I don’t see that.

KG: What is your nutritional philosophy?
LJ: I don’t count calories. Rather, I give athletes parameters to follow and tell them if they live within these parameters they will get results. With higher-level athletes we are much more sticklers about their diets. I’ve used several different diets. Since human beings haven’t changed much since the caveman times, I’m big on the Paleo diet; but I’ve also had success with Dan Duchaine’s 30-60 Rebound Diet for athletes who need to gain weight quickly.

KG: How did you first hear about Charles, and what sets him apart?
LJ: One of my professors at UCF gave me a lot of his stuff to read, and my strength coach here in Canada went to a seminar of his about 12 years ago and told me about it. I think what sets Charles apart is that he knows how to periodize training and balance athletes – he’s always trying to find the weak link.

KG: Are you a fan of multi-sport training for young athletes?
LJ: Definitely. I tell young athletes to play as many sports as possible. One sport I suggest is martial arts, because I’ve found that athletes who have had martial arts training are usually far superior in all athletic tests such as the vertical jump, broad jump and the 10-yard sprint. The problem with playing just one sport is that sports correct imbalances, and it’s our job as strength coaches to get rid of those imbalances.