Max Sports Magazine
Performance Condition
Issues 19 and 20

Go From Zero To Hero

Marinovich’s Unique Training Tips - Part II
By Mason Storm
Photos by Jason Ellis

The Marv Marinovich interview continued from issue 20, discusses the often unconventional, unique, but perfectly logical, training techniques he employs with elite athletics. Using a combination of plyometrics, pilates, flexibility, and more propriaceptive movements with prototypes of tools he has developed himself, he sets him-self apart from almost any professional trainer in the field today.

MAX: You use some pretty unconventional machines in your training don’t you?
MARINOVICH: Well, they’re conventional when they get to me, but then I sort of adapt them and they end up being used in a way that is different. They’re not designed to do what I do with them.

MAX: So, in the last issue, we talked about eccentric and concentric exercise. Is there anything more you want to say about it?
MARINOVICH: Well, it’s far more significant than what most people think about it, that’s for sure.

MAX: Let me ask you a question about it in terms of a sport a lot of people are familiar with. Let’s say, it’s skiing. When you go into a turn, the concentric part is when you’re going into a turn and your quads are really flexed. And when you’re ready to turn the other way, and you take that weight off your quads, that’s the eccentric, right?
MARINOVICH: No, the switch turn is the concentric part of the turn. When you come up out of it, that’s concentric. The cushioning aspect, when your quads are burning and you’re stopping yourself, that’s the yielding part, and that’s eccentric.

MAX: Oh, that’s eccentric.
MARINOVICH: Yeah, when you’re shock absorbing and your knees are flexed and you’re getting a burn in there, that’s eccentric.

MAX: Okay, so eccentric and concentric training…tell me some other aspects of your training?
MARINOVICH: Well, I do a lot of balancing of the hips. The hip extension aspect is where you get acceleration and running. The athletes with the high butts can run, and the ones with the lower, saggy butts can’t run. The upper hamstring and glute allows the leg to extend. Then you have the abduction and adduction of the hip, which affects lateral movement. So, in basketball, football and baseball, that range is a huge factor. Also, the rotary aspect of the hip is important. We do a lot of hip rotator type training. I do that on a Pilates bed.

MAX: Oh wow! You do Pilates too. That’s amazing. Sounds like a candy store of training down there!
MARINOVICH: Yeah. (laughs). So that’s important. Another thing is, the intrinsic muscles of the hands and feet. We do a lot of work with the hands and feet. When you warm up the hands, it warms up your wrists, your elbows, your shoulders. When you start with the toes, you go up to the intrinsic muscles of the feet, the ankle, the knee, and the hip. So, we do a lot of balance stuff, but we get on these rolls and you have to roll and walk and balance on them. It teaches people with flat feet how to develop arches. It completely affects your running ability and teaches you to use your toes as an athlete. A lot of athletes tape their ankles and have a lot of ankle problems, and none of my athletes have ankle problems. We don’t have that.

MAX: Do you think that taping and wrapping sets an athlete up for a lot of weakness and future injuries?
MARINOVICH: It sure does. But you need to do that until you strengthen those areas. If you have a training program that addresses the feet and the ankles, however, you’ll never need to do that in the first place.

MAX: Can you wrap while you get stronger?
MARINOVICH: Yes. It’s an in-between thing you do until your ankles get strong enough that you don’t need it.

MAX: Back to the Pilates hip strengthening movements… Is that what you’d call super-isolative training?
MARINOVICH: Well, what we do is try to get all of the dimensions of the hip. How you position yourself on the Pilates bed is important. That’s the basis of training before getting into the lateral plyometric work where you’re jumping sideways off a box. In fact, I developed a shoe with a ball on the sole of it. It’s adding the propriaceptive training to the plyometric work. It’s a tremendous training tool.

MAX: What do you use to evaluate an athlete when he comes to you?
MARINOVICH: I evaluate using a gymnastic ball, for a whole series of things. I evaluate flexibility, stability of the joint and how the body works together as a unit. And I also developed a glove-like piece that fits on your hand that has a ball on it, so that when you catch the gymnastics ball, you’re catching it using a propriaceptive ball surface.

MAX: How did you specifically develop these things? In other words, how did you know that a combination of these things would serve to make the correct type of training?
MARINOVICH: Well, as a kid, I was looking to know what to do when it came to training. I had questions about what it was I had to eat, and do, to get stronger, and no one seemed to have the answers to those questions. Whether it was how to get faster, or how to develop more balance or agility, none of these questions were answered. So, I’ve been searching for them my whole life. When I got into professional sports, and saw what people were doing, it didn’t transfer. There was a lot of heavy weightlifting, and it didn’t transfer. The best athletes were never the strongest ones, and I wondered why. I thought, "If it’s not weightlifting, what is it?" And it dawned on me, through my practical training experiences and the research I did, that it was the micro-muscles of the spine that mattered. The Michael Jordan’s are not the guys with the most muscle on them. So, I got into the propriaceptive training, the use of plyometrics and isometrics, and put it all together, and came up with sequences of exercises that affect the muscles that turn everything else on, and control everything. Only then did it start coming together. Every athlete I work with, in two workouts, is a better athlete! That’s the key to it.

MAX: Define "Propriaceptive" since we’ve been throwing that word around a lot…
MARINOVICH: It’s your brain telling your body where it is in space. That’s the easiest way to think of it. When you put ankle braces on your ankles, for instance, what you’re doing is destroying the propriaceptive ability of the ankle to know where it is in the space of things. Your brain doesn’t know where your foot is. The propriaceptive stimulation thing means simply that, in the absence of balance, your body will find what it needs to bring it back into balance. Propriaceptive training causes as much instability as possible, so that your body finds its way to balance, and functions in a way that it naturally would if you yourself weren’t trying to put it into balance. For lack of a better term, it’s how God wanted it to function. In other words, through instability, true and correct stability is found, naturally, by the body.

MAX: So, you gain stability through instability?
MARINOVICH: Yes. Any time you go unstable, you work 25 times the muscles when you’re stable.

MAX: So, placing yourself in instability, makes the body go into a "sink or swim" or "fight or flight" sort of mode?
MARINOVICH: YES! Exactly! When you do it, you feel it. Everything has to work. It’s forced to, but naturally.

MAX: We talked earlier about athletes having to be endowed with the sort of talent it takes to be a champion. But, let’s take a guy who has a mind that’s better than one who has physical talent, and has been retarded by the knowledge that he’s talented. Which person do you think is going to be the better athlete?
MARINOVICH: That’s a tough question. There’s no doubt that the mental action is what is most important. If you think you’re going to win, you have a good chance, as long as the physical is in place. But if you don’t think you’re going to win, you’re not going to win, no matter the talent. So, it’s an age-old thing. I feel with this program I have, you’re affecting athleticism and not just the visual aspect of it like you might with weight training. So, I’ll take the guy with the mind because I can improve his overall athleticism because I affect the roots of athleticism. I can’t do much with the guy who doesn’t think he can win!

MAX: How often do athletes who train with you, win?
MARINOVICH: I’ve seen athletes of every age and sport, come in and train and end up dominating their sport. It’s incredible to see that day in and day out. So the proof is in the pudding.

MAX: I understand that your son is an NFL player. Have you tried all of these methods on him?
MARINOVICH: Yes. He loves it. This morning, the coach here at Santa Marguerita High School, locally, asked him to come and take a look at his quarterbacks. The first thing my son said was, "You’re killing them with the training you require." They were tight. They were out of balance. They were working their butts off, and doing things from a negative standpoint.

MAX: Tell me, your son played for what teams?
MARINOVICH: He played for the Raiders, and he played in Canada this last year. Now he’s playing quaterback for the Los Angeles Avengers.

MAX: Let’s say an athlete comes to you in a great deal of instability. Can you correct that and make it stable? Do you approach that the same way?
MARINOVICH: Yes. But you start at a lower level. It’s like baby steps. In every exercise, there are different levels. I have athletes at different levels. I like to train in groups so athletes recognize where they fit in.

MAX: When an athlete comes to you, what are the steps you’d take to get him from Point A to Point B?
MARINOVICH: First thing is evaluate them. I have them run, walk, jump. I check their feet and hands for alignment and to see what’s firing in the nervous system. I have them do sequences of things, and a lot of times there are gaps. They can do two parts of it and then all of a sudden, there’s a gap, and they can’t do it. It’s a matter of finding out where the gaps are. There could be a lot of elements there but once we nail it down, and strengthen the weak muscles, strengthen the feet and ankles, and other things, they’re much stronger athletes.

MAX: Anything else you test?
MARINOVICH: Yes, I test them mentally. I test them on desire, determination, and stamina. I do that on a concept two (odometer) rohr, which tests anaerobic and aerobic threshold, VO2 consumption, etc.. I know where a person should be, and I start them easy and build them up, gradually, by getting their diet squared away, and their training. Sometimes it takes a week, a month, or six months.

MAX: How much do you delve into diet?
MARINOVICH: A lot! I did some of the first studies that Dr. Barry Sears wrote with athletes. They had the Stanford Swim Team, and my NFL athletes. And it was so significant that I’ve been on it ever since, and so are my athletes. I won’t take an athlete that won’t commit to it. It’s like three steps forward and two steps back!

MAX: Let me ask you a question about that. I tried it myself, and without question, there’s no doubt that glycemic index is significant in weight loss and control; particularly for women. But what I somewhat disagreed with, was the fact that somehow, macronutrient balance was supposed to substitute for an overall lack of calories and a low amount of protein. What do you feel?
MARINOVICH: Well, it somewhat depends on the individual. Every athlete is different. The protein requirements should be based on the lean body mass. And the monounsaturated fats are the key element for most athletes and it’s much higher for elite athletes than what it shows in the book. Most people think that if they eat fat, they’re going to get fat. Nothing could be further from the truth and it really is the most efficient way to fuel your body.

MAX: Okay, here’s another one I’ll throw at you. And it’s not to dispute Dr. Sears’ very sensible work. But, since I write about diet, I’ve tried a bunch of them along the way. And, for my body, naturally, lower carbohydrate diets that include more fats are definitely the key. However, I’ve tried Dr. Atkin’s New Diet Revolution, and I found something significant. I found that a fat gram is a fat gram is a fat gram. In other words, I can take in 10 grams of fat from flax seed oil, which is monounsaturated, and I can take in a gram of fat from whole cream, which is saturated, and it doesn’t make a bit of difference in terms of getting lean.
MARINOVICH: I think that’s true in one sense. I don’t think the body is able to recognize one from the other in that sense. However, in terms of performance, it’s a huge difference . And, as far as the additional protein some people need, regardless of whether they are a few points leaner or heavier, I think it all depends on a person’s individual energy needs. But I do think that glycemic index is HUGE in terms of being significant across the board; both in how it affects performance, and how it affects lean mass.

MAX: Marv, I always give people an opportunity to tell me something I don’t know. In other words, I admit that I’m not an expert, and I’m not you, so I may miss one aspect of all of this that would be interesting to someone else. If I don’t know anything about it, it would be difficult for me to ask that significant question. Is there anything I might be missing?
MARINOVICH: You’ve been pretty thorough. You’re in the top five of interviews, easily, and are perceptive about this stuff. But, I think the only thing I’d like to say is that in all of the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never let my ego get in the way. I’ve been able to amass some things that work, because I haven’t let that get in the way. I’ve never been satisfied, so I’ve always looked for ways of doing things better. The establishment doesn’t like me because I’m against a lot of stuff that they feel is important. But I like to shoot straight. I’ve got a lot of experience, but I don’t know it all. I’m always open to something better.

MAX: Are there any name athletes that you say you train?
MARINOVICH: Steve Finley, the center fielder for Arizona, has been great. Gee, I’ve had so many, I almost hate to mention one.

MAX: Any huge success stories?
MARINOVICH: Steve Finley was a guy who was almost out of baseball, and he got the "Comeback Player of the Year Award" last year. That was pretty good, and evidence that he was doing something right.

MAX: Do you train a lot of college athletes?
MARINOVICH: Yeah, I do, and the strength coaches at various schools aren’t as open to things I do. They’re more traditional. But my athletes go back to the school and dominate, and then they have to go downhill because they won’t let them do what I have been doing with them. Some are positive, but most are close-minded. Most aren’t looking to advance their profession.

MAX: That’s a shame. I remember when I interviewed Oscar de la Hoya, a few of the trainers he had before were fighting the strength and conditioning coaches because they came from a more traditional background. Most boxers run in construction boots and chop wood, still, to this day! He’s not one of them, but many come from that old, old school.
MARINOVICH: (laughs)…Yeah, yeah. It’s sad. Everyone is scared to try something that seems out of the norm!

MAX: I remember seeing Oscar working on this piece of equipment that looked like a cable crossover where the standards on either side were moved in much closer. He’d hook into the lower cable pulley on either side and do upper cut work using weight on each hand. But it also worked the midsection: the external obliques, the intercostals and serratus area too.
MARINOVICH: Sounds great. That’s the sort of stuff I like seeing athletes do.

MAX: Is there a name for your training facility?
MARINOVICH: Yes. Prowess Sports Tech. The address is 23331 Via Viavenado, Coto de Caza, CA 92679. How about a phone number: (949) 766-5712.