Brian Meehan

Stay loose, it's the new age in training

12/18/03

Meehan: Lubisich eager to show his pitch

W hen the burly, 64-year-old trainer first tested Nik Lubisich, he was amazed at how inflexible the young left-handed pitcher was.

Seven years of weightlifting had made the West Linn High School graduate stronger, but tighter, too.

Marv Marinovich, the onetime USC standout lineman, had just the thing to loosen up Lubisich -- a large green yoga ball.

Lubisich blinked at this new-age athletic path, but a month later the Willamette University graduate recognized that Marinovich's green ball might be his ticket to the big leagues.

Marinovich is a legend in training circles, largely because of a Sports Illustrated cover story about how he raised his son, Todd, to be an NFL quarterback. Todd, who never tasted a cheeseburger and was doing pushups as a toddler, led USC to the Rose Bowl as a redshirt freshman. But a drug problem caused him to leave school early for the NFL. He started as a rookie for the Raiders in 1991, but substance abuse soon washed him out of the league.

The story has been held up as a cautionary tale for a generation of sports parents. But there is much more to Marv Marinovich, a strength trainer who has built a better mousetrap in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.

Lubisich's father, Pete, played with Marinovich on the line for USC's 1962 national championship team. Nik heard the stories about Marinovich, a weightroom wild man who once squatted 1,170 pounds three times.

Nik Lubisich finished last season with the Chicago White Sox long-season Class A team in Winston Salem, N.C. He has the makings of a major league pitcher: toughness, work ethic, resilience and brains. What he lacked was velocity. Before Marinovich, Lubisich's fastball topped out at 85 mph.

Lubisich was awed at first by the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Marinovich.

"Marv is (64) years old but he looks like the Terminator," said Lubisich. "I mean, this guy drinks fish oil for breakfast. He is still pretty serious about fitness."

Lubisich balanced on plate-sized discs. He teetered on a slant board with his eyes closed and wondered what the heck he was doing. He hit the rowing machine hard, and used iso-kinetic machines invented by Marinovich. And he became intimately acquainted with the big plastic ball used in Pilates workouts. Marinovich had 20 exercises with the ball that stretched and strained muscles simultaneously. The idea was to work the body as a whole.

Lubisich grew more flexible in his shoulders and hips. The results were astounding. After a month, Lubisich got back on the mound.

"My body felt like a giant rubber band," said Lubisich, 24. "I have never thrown so hard in my life."

The radar gun confirmed his progress: 93 mph.

"He has been one of our most successful pitchers in the entire minor league organization for the past three years," said Sean Snedeker, Lubisich's pitching coach in A ball. "If he comes back with that added velocity, no doubt it will open up guys' eyes. And if Marv really can figure out how to increase velocity like that, well, he is sitting on a gold mine."

Marinovich developed the regimen during 40 years of training elite athletes. He has borrowed techniques from Eastern Bloc sports programs, and paid careful attention to the makeup of great athletes.

"Everyone has looked at the muscles, but the nervous system controls the muscles," he said. "This is the new frontier. The neuro-muscular connection."

The new frontier has its roots in Marinovich's work with the Raiders. Owner Al Davis would send the strength coach to test potential draft choices. Often, the players who tested the highest were African American athletes from small, historically black colleges where structured weightlifting programs were scarce.

"I came to see that it was better to do nothing and play your sport than to do all the negative things, like slowly lifting heavy weights," Marinovich said. "It was shocking to me. I always believed more is better."

Now Marinovich says heavy weight training interferes with performance. "Some athletes would rather look good than be good," he said. "Bigger biceps are not really the answer."

The answer, he says, is greater core strength, better balance and flexibility, increased command of explosive movements.

He advises athletes to eschew traditional weightlifting, such as heavy bench presses. "I tell them never do things that don't specifically apply to your sport," he said. "If you are going to push cars, then do heavy squats."

Marinovich has written a book and sells equipment from his Web site, www.SportsLab.net, but he is not much of a promoter.

His son, Todd, works with young quarterbacks at his gym. The elder Marinovich says Todd is staying straight but that it remains a daily battle.

"I wake up a lot of times in the middle of night still thinking is there something I should have changed," he said. "I have to take responsibility as a parent, but you can only do the best job you can do. If I had to do it again, I am sure I would do things differently, but I can only be me. It is a heart-breaking experience. I think I probably should have got him into some different areas and not just sports."

But Marinovich remains passionate about his work.

"It is something I love doing to help athletes reach their dreams," he said. "I like going to work every day."

As for Lubisich, the pitcher can't wait for spring training with the White Sox.

"I am going to have fun getting up on the mound and letting that first pitch go," he said. "I go to bed dreaming about it every night."

Once word gets out about Marinovich's results, baseball will beat a path to his gym. He may want to clear his spring training schedule and stock up on big green yoga balls.

Brian Meehan, 503-221-4341; brianmeehan@news.oregonian.com