On-Site with University of Arizona Football

Welcome to OLP On Site. I'm LeCharles Bentley. We're here at the University of Arizona to talk player development with head strength and conditioning coach Brian Johnson. You've been here for 3 years.

Yeah, going on my third.

And obviously you guys are finding your success.

Yeah.

So everybody in the country will jump, will run, will lift weights. What's the developmental advantage here at UA?

The biggest advantage is what I learned a long time ago from my strength coach in college and one of my mentors that I worked for, Tommy Moffett at LSU, is it's not what you do, it's how you do it.

Okay.

And there's going to be a huge attention to detail in everything that we do. We're going to coach it. If it doesn't look right, we're going to go in there and we're going to fix it. We're not going to let them do a set of— whether it's our pre-workout complex work, anything outside, anything on the field, there's not going to be a moment we aren't coaching, right, and teaching. And that's, that's why we pride ourselves on being teachers of anything that we're doing, right? So that's just the biggest thing I think that we're working to set ourselves apart from everybody else is our attention to detail.

You're a former athlete.

Yes, sir.

Former NFL athlete as well. 28 games started at the collegiate level at LSU. Now I'm a Buckeye, right? I'm not going to talk too much about LSU, but the fact of the matter is you have a track record of success as an athlete. How has that impacted what your philosophy currently is as a coach?

Uh, just applying the things that I've always— that I've seen, that I know help us be successful. And the biggest thing is I'm not trying to do it the way those successful people did it. I had to put— I had to be Brian Johnson. I had to put my spin on it. Now, Coach Saban and Coach Moffett and Coach Les Miles, uh, those guys are great coaches. So I take a lot of their philosophy and morals and ethics and the way that they do things from a cultural standpoint and attention to detail and being successful. But I also have to make sure that I do it my way.

Talking about that spin, you left your career as an NFL athlete in typical circumstances, as all of us, not the way that we want to have it end.

For sure.

Your back, you had a back injury. Yes. Let's talk through how that injury and that circumstance has impacted who you are today as a coach?

Oh, it's— that experience is everything of what I try to be today. Just that attention to detail in teaching, because, you know, back in the day, it's all you sore back or something wrong, you know, you tough through it. Right. So a lot of my philosophy and what I want to do is I want to get in this business to be able to educate guys on what's going on, you know, modify things where I need— where they need to be modified so I can limit as much of those injuries as possible. We already play a really brutal sport. I don't want it to be brutal in my weight room. I want it to be— I want it to be preparation for the brutality.

But that's typically a bad word in our world, modification, right? You know, typically people see that word modification like, no, it's got to be my way. But that's something that you don't buy into.

No, no. I think every, every person is different. We're all individuals, and we apply that in every other aspect of life. Why wouldn't we apply that in trying to enhance performance, right? Um, yes, we will try to increase, uh, your level of play. You know, we have deficiencies and limitations. Those are limitations we can't fix, all right? So we have to monitor. If you're not very good in knee flexion or hip flexion, right, we'll put it up on blocks if we're doing anything off the floor. Um, so, you know, but we have deficiencies too. So we try to work with those deficiencies, and we have a corrective program. We work, uh, hand in hand with our training room. So we try to improve those deficiencies as much as we possibly can. With the understanding that we're in 4 or 5 years trying to fix what 18, 19 years has been done. But if we're not individualizing, if we aren't modifying for the athlete, then I'm getting them closer to decreasing performance, right? Which is completely the opposite of what I'm— what I'm here to do.

In terms of what you see with young athletes coming into college, what are some of the big issues that you say, you know what, we have to address this?

There are so many.

Okay.

The biggest is recovery. The biggest is recovery.

Explain.

Sleeping, hydrating, and eating food.

The little things.

The little things.

Basic stuff.

The basic stuff that— yeah, and I told our registered dietitian the first day I got here, that's the first person I wanted to meet with, and I said everything that I do are a bunch of pieces, pieces to a puzzle, all right? Recovery is the table that those pieces are sitting on, right? If I don't have a table, then everything's just all over the place. And I can't put those pieces together. So when guys come in, we're educating, all right? How do you do that?

How do you undo those behaviors? Because I have 5 boys, and my oldest 2 are in high school right now, so I know exactly what you're saying, right? Sleep is a bad word to them. How do you begin to educate them on that?

Well, sometimes it takes, uh, an undesired, uh, circumstance, okay? Like a soft tissue, right? Oh, well, you know, your hydration score was It was pretty high. You know, you were pretty dehydrated today. Well, what happens to a muscle when it's dehydrated? Say you ate that beef jerky upstairs in the player's lounge, right? That's a little bit— it's not to that extent, but you have to think when you were performing at a high level, you have to treat your body as such. Right. So hydrating some of that soft tissue, chronic soft tissue stuff, maybe because you're chronically dehydrated, you're not sleeping very well. You know, your readiness from our Force Deck data, our NOAA Board data and our daily questionnaire data tell us that you haven't recovered very well from the weekend or the, the day before, right? How are you sleeping? Uh, when guys come in, uh, we actually are— we work hand in hand with our sports psychology department. There's a questionnaire that asks questions. You answer those questions a certain way, then they already know, okay, well, he's out for sleep apnea or insomnia or any other sleep disorder. So we already kind of hit it from that standpoint and seeing about getting them to a doctor or talking to somebody about kind of improving those things. I'm also a big routine guy. That's one thing I learned from the NFL and being around older guys, you know, watching the Ray Lewis and the Ed Reeds and the Anquan Boldins and the Edgerrin James. Those guys had routines, right? So I'm a big routine guy. Find something that works for you at night. Get off the iPad, get off the phone, turn the TV off. Maybe a stretch or mobility routine. Take a warm shower. You know, whatever works for you, eat something, you know, get a meal in you or a casein protein shake, whatever, and then just go lay down and relax. So, you know, trying to teach them routines and hammer it, hammer it, hammer it is really big. Over time, for sure.

I'm hearing a guy that has matured as an S&C coach over the years.

For sure.

Let's go back to your first job at Akron.

Okay.

What were some of the biggest takeaways you took away from that experience that you applied now?

Okay, biggest things is, is one, I didn't know anything.

Okay.

All right. And that it's a constant learning process, uh, because that was my second job. My first, I was 2 years at Florida State, uh, so I was 27 going into this thing. I didn't have a certification, uh, so when I went there, I knew, okay, I got a lot of responsibility. I have a lot of young men that are depending on me to get them to a certain place. And I need to make sure that I'm educated, that I've taken the right steps to be able to do that. I also knew that Akron wasn't my endgame. I had aspirations to get to the Power Five and compete for national championships and hopefully one day Super Bowls. So I needed to take a step back. That was the biggest thing that I realized, that I needed to take a step back.

But you know, that capacity to take a step back, a lot of people don't have that. Where does that come from?

Having to take a lot of step backs before that.

Okay, fair enough, fair enough.

I grew up in a household, my dad was, you know, traditional, hard work, Saturdays aren't for sleeping in. Uh, then I started getting recruited and I had to go get a construction job, okay, you know, working 12, 13-hour days. Uh, so that was a big step back, right? So there were always constant step backs where I was— I'm able to embrace them now. Because I know that they'll make me better, right? So that's, you know, I've seen those results and that's just kind of how I applied it to the rest of my career.

Is that something you, you try to impart into your athletes?

For sure.

Sometimes taking a step back, i.e., modifications, is the best way to take 2, 3 steps forward.

For sure. I take a step, step back to leap forward. Um, and that's just all in educating, right? If there's not a desired effect, uh, whether it's training Um, I let it be known, look, this isn't, this isn't what we want, this isn't where we want it, so we're going to take a step back, we're going to come back here. But the beautiful thing is, is that we all woke up this morning, we have another opportunity to take that leap forward.

Let's talk about mentors. I know when you took that step back, it landed you an opportunity at LSU. Yeah, it landed you the opportunity with Mark Oyama in San Francisco. Those are two people that I have a tremendous amount of respect for in the industry. How did they impact your coaching philosophy today?

Oh man, uh, Coach Moffett, she's— when you talk about details, he's the guy.

Okay.

All right, he's the guy. And, and a lot of his programming, I was brought up into that program, uh, so I had a great grasp on that. When I got in, when I went to go work for him, I was able to fine-tune some things and then be like, oh, so that's why we did that that way.

All right, so it's crazy how that works.

No, yeah, it is, it is. And I was able to ask him a lot of questions and see some things from behind the scenes, whereas I wasn't in it saying, man, here he go again, you know. So, uh, so, so that was, that was great. And that's— he impacted me in that way and just becoming detailed and really teaching and coaching. Um, and then Marco Uyama is, you know, he was kind of on a different level. Yeah. Uh, from a certain standpoint. And he, he influenced a lot of other organizational things that I do, just kind of in a different way. How I apply some of the sports science things that we're doing, how I communicate with coaches, how I communicate with players. You know, it's just different because that you communicate one way in a professional setting, and then there's another communication in the college. So I try to kind of integrate a little bit to where, you know, some of these college guys, you want to give them a little bit, but you don't want to give them too much because then the wheels start spinning a little too much. Whereas those older guys, you know, we talked about it, routines, right? They want to know what, why, when, where, how, okay, or they're not going to buy in. So I was able to see a little bit of both of those from two different angles. And now that's kind of how I integrated, you know, understanding. I still know how to talk to my college guys, but if I was in a professional setting, I'd be able to talk to them too.

So dealing with that, coming from the NFL back into the college world, do you see a big disconnect between some coaches and the athlete and how they communicate?

For sure. For sure. I think, you know, a lot of guys are just about kind of the hype. Getting them up, which, which is huge, right? You want to be a motivator, you want to get— but you don't want that to come at a sacrifice of technique or quality of training, right? I always say it's quality over quantity. Okay. Um, yeah, you hyped up and you're going to do that bodyweight squat. Yeah, we got the velocity band attached to it and boom, you stroke it, but now the barbell's left your back, it's bouncing on the spine. Now you're in the training room with a tight back, right? So I never want any coaching or communication to come at the sacrifice of the athlete walking out of here ready to train. The next day.

That's one of the things I noticed in the weight room. Two things, actually. A lot of teaching, and there wasn't a lot of hype. Yeah, the music was going, but I saw kids that were being held accountable. Yeah, it wasn't somebody with them every single moment, but they were all working.

Yeah, they were all striving to build. For sure. It's only 5 of us through NCAA rule. If I could have 3 or 4 more, I would embrace it. All right. So then I could have somebody with somebody every time they're at a rack. But I want them to always feel like they're being watched. Right, right. So we got a set of 6, you hit 6. It's okay if you go 7 or 8.

Okay.

But we're definitely not going 4 or 5.

Right.

But also from a technical standpoint, I want them to have the confidence that we're watching what's going on to the point where they say, hey, Coach, I'm about to hit this set. Can you come and watch my technique? Something might not feel right. That's all part of the education process. So now if I have guys going to the NFL, that strength coach in there saying, Yeah. Oh man, technique's good. Or he knows how to communicate. That player say, hey coach, you know, usually I have a shift to the right on my back squat. Can you make sure that I'm not shifting or, you know, coach me up? And then everybody sees that. So now that goes well with my reputation and my assistants. But now my athletes are prepared to go and do things that they have to bounce around to different teams, different coaches. They're well prepared for what they have to do and how they should be training.

Let's talk about culture. You know, that's the big buzzword. Everybody, culture, culture, culture. It is. What does the word culture mean to you?

Your everyday habits.

Okay.

Who you are, the mindset you have when you clock in and you walk through the doors of the facility, that is culture. Right. You know, it's how you do it. You know, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. The coach puts something on your plate, how you gonna handle it? Oregon puts something on our plate, how we gonna handle it? USC, Washington, they put something on our plate, how we handle it? How you're going to handle it in that moment is how you handle it every day.

Right.

And that's what, that's what culture kind of stands for for me.

How do you mesh the culture that Coach is trying to establish here with the culture you want in the weight room?

It's one and the same. It's one and the same. What Coach Sumlin is saying on a daily basis, I make sure that's what I'm saying on a daily basis. And we do a great job working together. We bounce off. He says something that I like, boom, I'm in here hammering. I put up on our whiteboard. And then vice versa, if he hears something that he likes from me, then we kind of bounce off, and then the team's hearing it from him, they're hearing it from me. So that's kind of how we keep that going.

How important is that for a young athlete coming into a program?

Man, it's so important. One, communication, because it lets them know that one, there aren't any leaks, right? Everybody in the building says the same thing, everybody believes the same thing, and if you don't, then you don't fit in, right? So there, there no, there no leaks over here, or I'mma go over here. It's only one way to go.

It's like parenting. For sure, you know. Ah man, like being a— like being a father. Yeah, you know, baby girl thinks she can tell daddy something, they gonna tell mommy something, right? It's a completely different world. But you got to be on the same page. That's obviously important for a young kid coming into the collegiate program, that everyone is on the same page. For sure.

Yes sir.

Well man, I really appreciate this.

No, no, I appreciate it, man.

It was a tremendous honor. Yeah, number one, I remember when you played. Yeah, and I remember, uh, you at LSU, I think it was 2003. '03, y'all won a national championship.

Yeah.

And I followed your career, obviously. Wally.

Wally.

Yeah. That's family. So family for both of us.

For sure.

More so you than me, but still family.

Still.

But man, I really appreciate this.

No, no, I appreciate you coming, man.

Thank you.

Great. Appreciate you for sure. All right.