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A Novel Approach
Strength and conditioning coach Johnny Long’s Olympic method
by Mike Gibson
When Johnny Long was 8 years old, he couldn’t sit still; he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t stop talking and fidgeting for more than a few moments at a time. A doctor told his parents that their son’s surplus of nervous energy was attributable to Attention Deficit Disorder, and that in order to stay balanced, he would need engrossing, regular physical activity. “I was a real antsy kid,” Long says, with some understatement. “They had to figure out something I could do seven days a week.”
Long’s father found a novel solution, placing his son in an Olympic weightlifting program—a sport which demands that its athletes put in long hours of training to perform at any level of competence, and a sport wherein pent-up energies are given explosive physical release. Long flourished, and went on to compete at the national level before an injury cut his lifting career short at age 21.
Today, at 35, Long still doesn’t like to stay in one place, and he still has the same self-stoking energy he had as a youngster. And he still finds an outlet in the weight room, only now it’s as a teacher rather than an athlete—as the head strength and conditioning coach for the University of Tennessee football program.
“I knew pretty early on I wanted to be a coach,” says Long, prowling the edges of UT’s geometrically daunting state-of-the-art weight room in Neyland Thompson Sports Center. He’s a cheerful, instantly likeable fellow with thick brown hair and a slight but distinctly non-Appalachian drawl, a remnant of his Louisiana upbringing.
“I got the bug from watching my coach, Gayle Hatch [who is now the coach of the U.S. Olympic weightlifting squad]. I not only loved lifting weights, I loved the thrill of watching young athletes grow and excel.
“But when I tell people what I do for a living, they always look at me like they don’t believe me,” Long continues, laughing. “I guess that’s what happens when you’re a 5’7” strength coach.”
Long may be short, but he’s fire-plug short: 185 pounds, solid, with heavy shoulders and a thick chest. He still runs and lifts weights nearly every day, to the greatest extent allowed by a body ravaged by injury and the cumulative effects of training, years of heavy loads grinding away at joints and soft connective tissues.
A multi-sport athlete throughout his high school days in Baton Rouge, Long went to college at nearby Southeastern in Hammond, La. He attended classes by day, then spent his afternoons working out and assisting his mentor Hatch at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.
His own weightlifting career was promising; at his best, Long threw more than 300 pounds overhead in the clean-and-jerk, and a little less than 300 in the snatch. But a torn rotator cuff, bulging discs, and then a catastrophic hernia suffered at the U.S. Nationals during his third year at Southeastern put an end to his competitive strivings; Long still carries some ugly reminders of the latter injury, including a piece of steel the size of his hand that was surgically woven into his torn abdominal wall.
“Every day I wake up, it hurts somewhere,” Long says. “I see a chiropractor every week. I can tell you when it’s getting cold.”
Long pressed on with his sports study, though, entering the University of Tennessee master’s program in Human Performance. He also sought an assistantship with UT’s then-head strength coach John Stuckey, himself a revered statesman in the conditioning field.
“Part of the reason I got on here was because I was a student of Gayle Hatch,” Long remembers. “He (Stuckey) wanted me to write down everything about the Hatch system, asking me all the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’.”
Long had been on staff for seven years when Stuckey retired for health reasons in 2000, and was the logical choice to replace him as head strength coach. Under his guidance, the program has continued a tradition of excellence in physical achievement begun in the Stuckey era—that’s evident just from looking at the chart on the wall above Long’s office, where the 40-yard-dash times, vertical leaps, and weight room totals are recorded for nearly every player on the current squad. By the numbers, Long says this year’s team ranks as the strongest in school history.
Long’s success is two-pronged, equal parts brains and enthusiasm. His approach is innovative; his athletes perform Olympic movements in addition to football-player favorites such as the squat and bench press, adding elements of explosiveness and functionality to the static, brute strength fostered by the standard power lifts.
“If you look at the physical aspects of playing football, a player coming out of a three-point stance uses the same muscle sequences as an Olympic lifter,” he says. “To be a good Olympic lifter, you have to have that surge, that explosiveness—which are the same things that make for a good football player.”
But just as important as his methods is Long’s attitude: his contagious zeal and irrepressibility. His players seem to have an easy rapport with him, as well as a very genuine affection, despite his brutal regimens and not-infrequent outbursts of temper.
“Johnny Long—he’s like the Energizer Bunny,” says UT senior linebacker Kevin Burnett, an All-American candidate. “Only thing is he’s not pink. If he doesn’t get mad at least once or twice a day, something’s wrong. Once he gets mad real good, then you know everything’s okay. I wouldn’t want to lift with anyone else in the country.”
Says wide receiver Tony Brown, “I think he runs on Red Bulls. He is hyped up every day.”
Long pleads guilty to all charges. “The kids will tell you I’m crazy at times. I get on ‘em, but I’m consistent. I yell at ‘em when they screw up. But I’ll also be the first to throw my arm around them and tell them to hang in there,” he says. Lowering his voice, he confides that, “I really am working on not cussing and blowing up so much, though, which is hard to do when you’re working around young kids.”
As if to underscore the point, he suddenly marches over to a group of players performing some haphazard stretching exercises outside the weight room, and barks, ferociously, “Hey, some of you are bullshittin’ your way through these things! You need to take it seriously. If you don’t work, you’re gonna go home!”
Of course, UT’s gridiron fortunes haven’t been quite as stellar in more recent years—at least not by the ludicrous standards of fans grown fat and drunk on championship football. Nonetheless, its strength and conditioning program still rates with the best in the country by several measures; by the raw performance data of bench presses and 40-yard dash times, or by the number of Tennessee players who have gone on to professional football careers since the early 1990s.
“The system we have here is real good. All you have to do is come in, do what you’re told and be disciplined,” says senior Jason Respert. A jovial giant and the team’s projected starter at center, Respert is one of at least six players on the current squad who can bench press 500 or more pounds—an astounding figure considering that the team had never had a player capable of that particular feat before linemen Trey Teague and Darwin Walker came in the mid-1990s.
But weights and measures aside, the thing that impresses most about Long is still his work ethic—the byproduct of a childhood struggle with hyperactivity, and of his tutelage under one of the greats in American weight-lifting.
His work week—usually consisting of 13-hour days Monday through Friday, plus many additional hours on the weekend—would be exhausting for a librarian, never mind a fitness coach who sometimes takes part in drills and exercises with his players. Long, however, seems none the worse for wear.
“They say if you don’t want to work for a living, find something that you love to do,” Long enthuses. “I maybe get 14 days off a year, but that’s okay; I like coming to work. This place needs to be open seven days a week, so I’ll do what it takes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”
September 2, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 36
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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