Max
Sports Magazine
Performance Condition
Issues 19 and 20
Go
From Zero To Hero
Marinovich’s
Unique Training Tips - Part I
By
Mason Storm
Photos by Jason Ellis
Marv
Marinovich has had an illustrious career; much more luminous than most
men in his position. He’s an ex pro football player, and served as both
athletic trainer and coach in the NFL. But it’s the years of development
of the kind of mind that perpetually ticks day and night that is most
interesting.
Marinovich grew up on a 3000 acre cattle
ranch in Northern California and became a physical lad at an early age.
That environment got him interested in nutrition and exercise. He used
to devise different ways of doing physical things better; even going
as far as putting himself through experimental exercises and drills.
Since he loved animals, he’d watch their movement and decipher the principles
of body mechanics.
But it wasn’t the bovine physique from
which he took the majority of his cues. Marinovich was always nearby
when ranchers were training horses. He’d watch for hours on end, making
note not just of the musculature of the equines being broken, but of
their endurance and the mechanics of their fluid movement. From this,
he was able to discern pat-terns that could be applied to human physiological
movement.
This eventually took him into college with
an arsenal of theories and ideas about training the body for human performance.
Landing a job as a conditioning coach at the University of Southern
California while still a student himself gave Marinovich the confidence
it took to eventually go all the way to the NFL; both personally, and
as a coach. It was in this environment, and these two capacities, that
he was able to act as facilitator for cutting edge human performance
theories. And guess what? Without a background in kinesiology, physiology,
biology or nutrition, Marv Marinovich was able to extrapolate cause-and-effect
relationships between trained movement and performance, and between
nutrition and performance, better than most anyone in the fields of
either.
Today, a wealth of years spent acquiring
practical knowledge of physiology under his belt, Marinovich has set
up his own training facility in southern California. He trains all sorts
of elite athletes, both collegiate and professional, and never fails
to improve their game substantially. But perhaps the most impressive
thing about Marinovich is his continued interest in learning new things;
his utter thirst for learning how to hone for perfection. This ability
to continue in his search for knowledge, and still uncover things, is
unsurpassed. And the fact that such an accomplished and successful man
has escaped egoism and arrogance along the way, is the only unbelievable
thing about him. But it’s precisely why he has accrued the amount of
knowledge that most men find stifling.
At those who choose to maintain a closed
mind and prefer to stick to convention, even when everything points
to the success of an idea that has no roots in convention, Marinovich
just laughs. But laughing has been hard at times when traditionals have
tried to get in his path and stop him from implementing and facilitating
his very original ideas about training athletes. Had he been arrogant
and close-minded him-self, the world might never have known the gems
of his approach: That to go beyond the basics is the name of the game!
MAX: Marv, you’re such a curious
fellow. You must have been a voracious reader as a kid. Were you?
MARINOVICH: Oh yeah. I liked things like Greek Mythology,
where these superhumans would perform these incredible feats. I remember
reading about the guy who lifted the calf everyday of his life, and
so forth. But what I really liked was to be outside everyday lifting
things, running, jumping, and throwing. Living on a 3000 acre ranch
was the perfect environment for me, let me tell you, because it gave
me a chance to become so physical. I'd run in the mountains, throw these
big rocks so I tried everything.
MAX: So you were very athletic as
a kid, obviously. But did you involve yourself in organized athletics
as a kid?
MARINOVICH: Yes. I was fortunate to be blessed athletically as
a kid and I did well as a youngster an ended up going to USC on a football
scholarship. When I got there, they knew I had a background in training.
In those days, as a scholarship athlete, you had to do so much to earn
your keep. So they put me in the weight room in charge of training the
athletes. As an underclassman, I got my first experience working with
others.
MAX: But you were also a pro football
player, weren’t you?
MARINOVICH: Yes. I played for the Raiders in the 70’s.
They put me in charge of training the athletes in the off season. So
they’d send me all over the country, where they drafted players. But
even before they drafted them, they sent me out to test them. I worked
researching, testing and evaluating athleticism. Working with anthropomorphic
measurements of the arm length and reach and hip girth as it affected
performance in football.
MAX: Wow. You were so interested
in the fine points of physiology for someone so young. From where did
you draw your knowledge?
MARINOVICH: Well, I'd read all of the eastern bloc material
on the pliometric principles, and periodization. They had really utilized
their scientific information from a sports standpoint and had Ph.D people
doing the research.
MAX: Were you a physiology
major at USC?
MARINOVICH: No I wasn't. I was actually a Fine Arts major
at USC. But there were a number of people there who were ahead of their
time. There was a guy there named Vern Wolf, who was the track coach.
We was one of the first people to utilize performance weight training
to affect speed and agility in his athletes. So, that really impacted
me as a youngster, to have him there to get together to discuss training
from a sports standpoint. That was instrumental in my thinking.
MAX: So tell me a bit more
about the athletic testing of athletes for potential NFL drafts. What
did you see in athletes that others didn’t?
MARINOVICH: Well, they’d send me out, and I’d evaluate
all of these athletes and based on my findings, they were able to take
some people who weren’t highly rated by the scouts because of the potential
of their bone structure, mental attitude, etc. Later on, I devised what’s
called a combine for testing I helped design the flexibility and agility
portions of those tests.
MAX: What do those tests entail,
anyway?
MARINOVICH: Well, they have orthopedic surgeons check the
athletes structurally first. And then they run them in the 40, the 30,
the 20. They have them do a vertical jump. They do agility drills. They
do throwing, catching and specific skill work to help rate them. But
the work I’d done on evaluating athletes, was some of the first work
to be able to determine what the potential of an athlete was.
MAX: So you could find a kid
from a small university that really hadn’t been trained properly and,
by virtue of his structure, you could determine potential?
MARINOVICH: Yes. We would take athletes from the big universities
that had major programs, and then take athletes from some small black
school with no program. But the potential of the athlete would be determined
by his physical structure, his attitude, his fast twitch fibers, and
other factors that would point to his eventual potential for success.
MAX: Did you ever go beyond
football to include other sports?
MARINOVICH: Oh yes. I've worked with almost every major
sport. I've worked with basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball and
swimming.
MAX:
So what do you do to estimate the abilities of an athlete?
MARINOVICH: Well, I still work with athletes form all sports
because there are common threads between certain ones. To be able to
evaluate an athlete for his or her potential, pinpoint what his or her
weaknesses are, and then to continually change their training as the
athlete develops. A lot of people talk about an intensive evaluation,
but it’s usually like a cookie-cutter thing where everyone does bench
press and pull downs. What I do is completely different. My evaluations
are based on actual potential and bone structure and alignment, and
one of the things I’m big into is balancing the muscles of the body.
Incorrect or inappropriate training overdevelops some areas and under-develops
or weakness others, causing major imbalances in some areas of the body.
That affects performance because it puts that individual in a position
where he or she is not as explosive as they could be, and more apt to
be injured.
MAX: So how can you test for imbalances
created by training?
MARINOVICH: What we do is evaluate the athlete by doing muscle
tests and just strengthen the areas that are weak. The restorative process
is the first part of the training. So we don’t just take someone and
have them start doing something until we know where they're weak and
where they're strong. The next step is devising a program for them.
MAX: So it's not just a matter
of endomorphic, mesomorphic or ectomorphic physiques that determine
all of this, it's based on structural weaknesses and strengths, and
what type of muscle they have?
MARINOVICH: Exactly. I can really pinpoint what is going
to impact whatever sport they're playing, the quickest.
MAX: So you could pinpoint
exactly which areas of the body were weakest, not necessarily by testing
strength in conventional ways, but by finding the weak fiber areas amongst
the stronger body parts?
MARINOVICH: Yes. I can actually precisely say that I can
locate sub-structural weaknesses because the nervous system is such
a major factor in performance. It’s a huge thing. I try to develop the
nervous system to respond. That transmission of response can be tweaked
through certain types of training. I use iso-kinetic training to facilitate
the nervous system development. It affects balance and the coordination
and firing patterns of the muscle, and so forth.
MAX: So define for our readers, what is iso-kinetic?
MAX: Tell me more about how to train the nervous system to act
in your favor during any sporting activity?
MARINOVICH: Well, I have a few iso-kinetic machines here
at my training facility. The resistance is such that, the harder you
push, the more resistance you get. It’s set at a standard rate. I’m
not going to sit here and tell you I know exactly why it works, but
I know that it does.
MAX: Right. The old, I don’t have
to know everything about the electric company to know how to turn on
a light switch and get light-type of thinking.
MARINOVICH: Exactly. Science doesn’t know if you’re actually
increasing the recruitment pattern of the muscles, or the nervous pattern
of the muscles. I feel strongly that it’s the neural activity it’s increasing
through practical experience and knowledge. In a sequence of training,
we go to a warm up and go immediately to the iso-kinetic and then go
to the pliometric, and then into the strength, and then maxi-mal strength
recruitment. The sequence is important.
MAX: Tell me the benefit of pliometric
(repetitive quick burst activity) training?
MARINOVICH: Pliometrics affect the nervous system also.
But with pliometrics what you’re really doing is strengthening the muscles
on the stretch, the way you’re going to use them in sport. So, by training
the muscle in a stretch, the way you’re going to use it in a game of
basketball or volleyball, for instance, allows you to apply more force
and speed within the same movement in your game. It’s a real logical
cause-and-effect relationship that is proven to be effective. It’s an
essential part of my training.
MAX: Tell me more about how to train
the nervous system to act in your favor during any sporting activity?
MARINOVICH: Well, we use a number of different types of
training to do that. The iso-kinetic training is a good example. When
you take an iso-kinetic exercise and use it in an unstable environment,
you’re channeling the nervous system in the spine. We use the balance
disks and gymnastic balls in just about everything.
MAX: What are balance disks?
MARINOVICH: It’s a circular piece of wood about 24 inches
across that is balanced on a ball underneath. It's obviously unstable.
MAX: Thanks. Continue
MARINOVICH: So we use that with iso-kinetic exercises so that
the foot position is unstable. By doing this, you’re affecting the micro-muscles
of the spine. When you affect the micro-muscles of the spine, that’s
the roots of athleticism right there. It’s not the biceps, triceps,
deltoids and quads, it’s the small muscles of the spine which affect
quickness, reaction, explosiveness. They’re like the megaphones of the
body that tell other muscles to work.
MAX: Now that is interesting.
MARINOVICH: In starting with the micro-muscles, you actually
affect more athletic ability and more nervous system and recruitment
aspects, and it’s more efficient recruitment because wherever you’re
weak, you’re going to feel it in only those areas. It pinpoints things
immediately. Everyone is different so everyone will feel it differently.
MAX: I’ve have a board that is built
like a see-saw. What is the advantage to having a disk instead of the
see-saw type of balance board?
MARINOVICH: Because where your board is two dimensional, this
is multi-dimensional; sort of the hybrid brother to what you’re talking
about. The two dimensional board is a great start, however.
MAX: Do the balance exercises you
use actually strengthen the nervous system?
MARINOVICH: Yes, because you’re working the intrinsic muscles
of your feet all the way up through the stabilization of your ankles,
your knees, hips, and all the way through. Where as in a normal bodybuilding
routine, you are deciding what muscles to train and how you’re going
to train that particular body part, with this, you let the body make
the decision what it’s going to affect.
MAX: Oh, I get it. So your body
becomes its own self-correcting machine then?
MARINOVICH: Yes. It’s because of the balance factor. That’s propriaceptive
stimulation. It’s like 10-1 compared to regular exercises done statically.
Compare one normal exercise without the balance aspect added to it,
and it would take 10x that exercise to replicate what you can do using
the disk in conjunction with that exercise.
MAX:
So, based on the fact that you can only use a balancing disk with your
lower body, is that sufficient to balance the entire body through the
micro-muscles of the spine?
MARINOVICH: Well no, actually, there’s more than just one way
to use it. For instance, you can do military press by being seated on
the disk. As you get more proficient, you find more challenging ways
to use it. For instance, my athletes are doing power cleans, with dumbbells,
on these disks. It’s actually too easy for them. I have some elite athletes
who come in and have a hard time doing anything to start with. After
your body learns it though, you can go out and go skiing or play golf,
and your body works together as a unit; finally the way you want it
to be. When you’re just training with weights, a lot of times you go
out and try to do something with it and you feel as though you’ve had
lead shot through your body. When you leave this sort of training, you
feel better. Your coordination is better, and your performance is better.
NEXT ISSUE: Look for the continuation
of our interview with Marv Marinovich.
In PART 2, Marinovich will talk about the
often unconventional, unique, but perfectly logical, training techniques
he employs with elite athletes. Using a combination of pliometrics,
pilates, flexibility, and more propriaceptive movements with prototypes
of tools he has developed himself, he sets himself apart from almost
any professional trainer in the field today. He also discusses the ways
average people not destined for pro athletics can improve their health
and daily performance through diet, and simple training techniques.
So whether you are a weekend warrior, a bona fide fitness buff, or a
real player, Marv’s cutting edge techniques can improve almost anyone’s
physical ability and overall balance.
To read PART 2, click here.