Dr. Mianfang Ruan

DR: Dr. Ruan, thank you for doing this interview. Could you please give us some background information about yourself and how you got to where you are now?

MR: I received a Ph.D. in Kinesiology from Louisiana State University in 2007. I also earned a Master’s degree in Sports Biomechanics from Shanghai University of Sport in 1998. I am currently a faculty member at Ningbo University, China.  I have worked for a sporting goods company in China, a sports research institute in China, a sports medicine institute, and a university in the U.S. I also participated in a high performance biomechanical analysis projects for elite athletes sponsored by the U.S. Track and Field team.

DR: I heard your talk at the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar. You talked extensively about the differences between the Chinese and American sports systems. What are some of these differences?
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Yosef Johnson is the owner of Ultimate Athlete Concepts, a Michigan based company dedicated to providing top quality information from the world’s leading coaches, scientists, and researchers.

UAC delivers the best resources for serious coaches and athletes

DR: It’s great to have you for this interview, Yosef. Please introduce yourself and give a bit about your background to the readers.

YJ: I was an athlete searching for ways to get better as a teenager. Most of what I found was very weak, but I kept looking. In my early 20′s, I came across Dr Yessis’ “Secrets of Soviet Sports Training”. I remembered the story about how he developed Todd Marinovich and was also very aware of the Soviet’s success. Upon reading the book, I began to try to contact him. After making contact, I could tell he was far more knowledgeable than anyone I had encountered. As my own athletic career was ending, I was still fascinated with the field and began to work as his apprentice

DR: You’ve been publishing literature from the former Soviet Union for many years now. Most strength coaches know about the “big name” scientists from the USSR, such as Dr. Verkhoshansky, Dr. Issurin, and Dr. Bondarchuk. Who are some of the lesser known, but still highly influential, coaches to come out of the Eastern bloc countries?
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In the coming weeks we will release the line up for the 2012 Central Virginia Sport Performance Seminar.  The first to be announced is Mike Robertson.  Mike currently operates IFAST, a sport performance facility in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Although he has become known as a “corrective exercise guru,” Mike’s knowledge of preparing athletes is top notch and we are very excited to have him on the docket in 2012.

DR: Mike, thanks for taking the time to do this interview, I know you’re very busy these days. What’s new over at IFAST?

MR: Yeah it’s crazy right now! We’re actually in the process of expanding – going from 2,250 square feet to almost 4,700 square feet, so lots in the works!

When it’s all said and done we’re going to have one half that’s geared towards our semi-private, small group group, and the other side will be all turfed out and geared towards bootcamps and speed and agility training for our young athletes.

DR: You’ve gotten a reputation as being a mobility/rehabilitation guy. But most people aren’t aware that you’re actually an accomplished powerlifter. Has your training shifted away from powerlifting into something entirely different?

MR: Actually, it’s quite the opposite!

I started off as an athlete, and moved into powerlifting as my athletic career was wrapping up. I competed for 5 years and loved every minute of it.

When I moved down to Indianapolis, I took a job where I was doing in home personal training and it just took an inordinate amount of my time. I really just didn’t have the time or energy to compete.

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JD: Danny, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. I guess the first thing we would need is for you to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about how you got into the profession.

DR: Thanks for having me J. It’s a bit funny actually: I never really knew this profession “existed” until about 3 years ago. I was an English major at Richmond at the time, and decided to study abroad in Scotland. I remember reading an article about Joe Mazza benching some ridiculous amount of weight in a Men’s Health article. The article describes how he used these “bands” sold by some company called Elitefts. So I decided to check them out and see what these guys were all about. From there I started reading T-Nation and Westside’s articles, and I thought I knew everything about getting strong. So, long story short, I came back from Scotland, and happened by chance one day to be walking back by the Richmond weight room. I also, if you remember, had been wearing an Elitefts beanie, which you recognized. I started off volunteering as many hours as I possibly could; after graduating, I stayed for one more season with the teams. Then in December, I was accepted in to graduate school here at the University of Minnesota. I’ll be finished with my Masters in December.

JD: Going from and English major to a coach of physical preparation seems to be a huge swing in study. Talk to us about this change and how you view the information you find. Also, what you’ve done to acquire this information, i.e. what have you found to be the most relevant ways of finding relevant information to improving athletic performance.

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Coach J working with an athlete

DR: J, you’ve been the driving force behind the CVASPS. Tell us, how did this first come to be started?

JD: A few years back I got the idea to start basketball specific seminar and started researching.  I sent an email to every strength coach in the country to see if there was interest and got quite a few responses.  One response I received was from Charles Stevenson, who was at NC State at the time, and he was already setting it up.  Well my boss at the time was Brandon Hourigan, and he basically called me out on it, and said that I needed to put that much time into our seminar.  That was the push that I needed to start building this into what it is today.  I looked around for things that would benefit me and my staff and people who were the “experts” in that particular realm of our field.  That led me to Yosef Johnson and UAC who have helped tremendously with the seminar and reached out people that we feel are the top coaches in the business and brought them in.  From here we are just looking to improve and make this thing better, with better information, better speakers, and a better format.

DR: You’ve worked very hard to build this conference into one of the best seminars around. Where do you see the future, or more specifically, who would you like to see presenting at cvasps in the next few years?

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I want to personally welcome you to our site and thank you for becoming involved.  Our goal is to provide you with the best information possible, both here on our site and at our yearly seminar held in Richmond, VA.  I am truly excited to be able to bring some of the best minds in our field to your computer screen and our facility, in order to educate performance coaches throughout the world so that our athlete’s can reap the benefits.  In the following weeks we will be posting interviews, articles and published research studies by individuals who I feel are the best of the best in our profession.  I hope that you find this information as useful and valuable as we have.  
Along with our web site, you will find all of the products from each of our presenters and contributors available for sale as well.  These people have spent their lives trying to find the most productive and efficient means of training athletes, so you will not find anything on this site that I personally have not read, do not own, and have not used on a daily basis in the training of my athletes. It goes with out saying that all of these resources are of top quality and highly recommended to anyone in our field.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to ask you to please “like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our page on YouTube. All of the information on any updates, whether it be to the seminar, site or store, will be provided through those along with our news letter.

Thank you again for checking out our site.  I am sure that you will find what we provide to be the best information available in one spot on the web.