Aug. 26, 2011

Missouri Women's Basketball works hard during the off-season to stay in shape, and Coach Jacob Linn plays a big part in their training routine. MUTigers.com sat down with Coach Linn to find out a little bit more about the man in the weight room.

MUTIGERS.COM: Tell us a bit about your background.

LINN: "I grew up in a small town in Kansas called McPherson, a town of about 12 thousand people, and I played football and ran track there for all four years of high school. I attended Kansas for my undergraduate and while I was there I interned at Mid-American Nazarene University, a small NAIA school in Olathe, Kansas. I worked there for 6 months, and shortly after I graduated I worked as a part-time paid assistant. While at MNU, I worked with every sport they had, which was a great opportunity. At that school they have a unique strength and conditioning program where everything was based off of the competitive Olympic lifts which are the Clean & Jerk and the Snatch. I was exposed to a great base knowledge in strength and conditioning there. From Mid-America Nazarene, I left and began to work at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, KS, another small NAIA school. After my first year as an assistant at HINU, the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach moved on so I took over and was responsible for football, women's basketball, softball, and volleyball."

MUTIGERS.COM: How can your experience with Olympic-style lifting help the athletes at Mizzou?

LINN: "I have a strong foundation in (Olympic-style lifting) so I am proficient at teaching those lifts. The girls have a good base of technique because they were taught by knowledgeable coaches before. Most athletes here at Mizzou use something similar to Olympic lifting because they are favorable for training triple extension (extension of the hip, knee, and ankle). Olympic lift variations also train the athlete to move explosively, and it helps them build explosive strength quickly. Most MU athletes use some form of an Olympic lift because it meets all these needs."

MUTIGERS.COM: Have you always enjoyed strength training and exercise? Where did your passion come from?

LINN: "I always had a passion for physical improvement. When I was young, I asked my dad what I could do to get better at football and other sports, and he took me to the YMCA to work out. I made the connection pretty early between increasing physical strength improving general movement skills and how this could translate into what I wanted to do with sports. I am very process oriented and I saw that all the hard work I put in in the weight room during the off season benefitted me on the field. That work translated into higher performance in high school and college as well. I was always interested in exercise science and strength and conditioning, all things training that go on behind the scenes before and after the sports season."

MUTIGERS.COM: What are some things you do in the offseason to help the athletes prepare for the upcoming season?

LINN: "In the off season we break our training into three big blocks: right after the season the idea is to take them from competing (being banged up, tired, and mentally fatigued) in the long basketball season and to get them back in to weight room shape. To do this, we do a lot of corrective exercises, high repetition, low-intensity weight exercises. You don't want to overload them right away; you want to make sure they have the capacity to do the work they need to do in the weight room. Then, in the pre-season and basketball season, we back off of the weight room activities to allow them to spend more time on skill development and competition.

During the summer, we focus mostly on general strength, speed, and agility development. The whole program is systematically designed to get them strong relative to their body weight, explosive so they can jump higher and accelerate more quickly and more reactive so they can decelerate and change direction in less time. One thing we worked on this summer was first-step, quickness - being able to have the proper technique, being able to recognize the situation and being able to put more force to the ground and move themselves from a static position to a running/sprinting position more quickly."

MUTIGERS.COM: How do you plan to use these skills to improve player development?

LINN:"In the season we will take that strength that we built over the summer and try to harness it and get them to improve on the court by working on their rate of force development - the explosive use of strength to help them jump higher, run more quickly, and start/stop more quickly. These skills will translate more into the basketball skills on the court."

MUTIGERS.COM: What is your advice to build strength and develop as a player?

LINN: "My advice: First, develop techniques to use resistance training effectively. I sometimes work with kids who have never touched a dumbbell. It takes a lot of skill development to get them to put themselves in the correct body position to do a squat or a pushup. Sometimes they can't even do a pushup. The strength might be there, but the movement skill won't be there."

MUTIGERS.COM:: What are some strength exercises that you focus on in particular?

LINN:"One thing that I focus on with the girls is single leg strength because with athletics you are almost always on one leg even when you are running, jumping, or stopping. Because of the way we move, we usually use one leg at a time. I think that athletes need to get a lot better at doing single leg strengthening exercises like lunges and step-ups. You need to focus on the basics, make sure that you are strong relative to your body weight, and that they have competent movement patterns one and two legs. Be able to do pull-ups, pushups, and be able to do them proficiently. Basic things, that make an athlete better able to control their own body weight."

MUTIGERS.COM: Is there a certain time or age when children should be taught basic strengthening excercises?

LINN:"Its never too early, you can take a 5 year old kid and teach them to do a body weight squat proficiently. Usually kids can do that - it is a very basic body movement skill but they lose it if they don't use it. If the kids are old enough to start playing ball then they can start teaching their body to do these very basic skills. They can do pull-ups, push-ups, body weight squats, walking lunges and single-leg balance exercises like jumping and landing. I don't think it is ever too early for that kind of stuff. The more they do it the better they get at it."