Rockets.com feature on Yao and Strength Coach

http://www.nba.com/rockets/news/yao_dream_040824.html

How’s This For an Olympic Dream?


Following Monday’s 67-66 upset over two-time reigning world champion Serbia-Montenegro, Yao Ming and the Chinese National Basketball Team are riding an Olympic high as they head into the medal round and a quarterfinal game with Lithuania on Thursday. The victory over Serbia-Montenegro could well be considered the greatest upset in Chinese basketball history and ranks up there as one of the biggest in Olympic history. For as Yao told the Houston Chronicle following Monday’s win, “What we have achieved today will become a treasure for future generations of basketball players to come in China.”
It has been an interesting Olympic experience for Yao thus far, who saw his Chinese team drop its opening contest, 83-58, to Spain on Aug. 15, but rebound to defeat New Zealand, 69-62 on Aug. 17. Yao scored 39 points and hauled down 13 rebounds in that game to lead his team to victory, but was held in check in China’s next two losses – scoring 15 points and bringing down seven rebounds in an 82-57 loss to Argentina on Aug. 19 and tallying just nine points and six rebounds in an 89-52 loss to Italy on Saturday. But with his team facing elimination on Monday, Yao responded to score a game-high 27 points and bring down 13 rebounds and lead his team to victory.

However, Yao’s Olympic dream might never have been possible without the help of Houston Rockets strength and conditioning coach Anthony Falsone. From July 7-27, Falsone was over in China working with Yao to get in shape for the demands of the Olympic schedule, as well as implementing a program that should make sure Yao will be ready to go when training camp opens in October.

We checked in with Falsone to see how things were going with Yao over in China prior to the start of the Olympics.

(Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part interview that will conclude on Friday)

ROCKETS.COM: How did all of this come about where you ended up going over to China to work with Yao?

FALSONE: The main objective was to work with Yao. Let me say first that Coach Van Gundy is diligent when it comes to offseason goals for the players. It is a priority in this system. We establish goals at the end of the season because when guys come back from the offseason for training camp, we want them to be a certain weight and have a certain percentage of body fat so that they don’t get out of control in the summer. We have due diligence with all of our players. We make sure to make visits periodically to all of our players just to make sure that they understand the program and make sure that they are on track so that there are no surprises when training camp comes along with weight or body fat issues. So with Yao, it was no special treatment – it was just something that we do. Yao was practicing in Dallas with the Chinese National Team in June, so we all went down there to see how he was doing. I went on one day, Coach Van Gundy went on another day and CD (General Manager Carroll Dawson) went. Yao had taken some time off after the season, which of course he needed for rest and recovery, but he had gained a little bit of weight…Historically, with the guys like Shaq(uille O’Neal), it’s the toe injuries, the abdominal strains – the little things and nothing major that sideline the big man. So we didn’t want to have the problem where something small could turn into something large when the season starts or lead to something more advanced. Initially, Yao was having toenail problems. He had one toenail that needed to be removed and another one that was causing problems, as well. This was probably due to a lack of conditioning – the fact his feet weren’t in game shape or not really conditioned to that type of stress because he was a little bit overweight. It could also have been because of the starts-and-stops issues, going from vacationing and doing nothing to two-a-days with the Chinese National Team. Primarily the reason why I was there was to ensure Yao’s health.

ROCKETS.COM: So how did things go from visiting Yao in Dallas to spending almost three weeks in China?

FALSONE: I went to Dallas for a weekend, but again, it was only for Yao. I met a few of the guys on the Chinese National Team and met Coach (Del) Harris, but there was really no involvement with anyone other than Yao. I went to set him up on the program, see how he was doing, make sure he was taking care of the toes. Coach Van Gundy and I spoke about me making a trip to China to follow up his conditioning program, and for me, it just seemed to be the right fit. I love working with Yao. I design his program – I design all the programs, but Yao is the one I really focus on. He’s our best player, and it’s really my job to make sure that he’s following the right track, doing the right things and staying healthy. His situation has always been different. There has always been a thing with him where we have to gain weight and we have to gain strength. It just takes a lot of my focus, so it was one of those things where I talked to coach and he made it clear that Yao is our priority. I told him that if he wanted me to go to China to just let me know, and a few days later he called me up and asked me if I was willing to do it and I said I was.

ROCKETS.COM: So, were you excited to have the chance to go over to China and work with the big man?

FALSONE: I welcomed the opportunity because we very rarely have the opportunity with Yao to have offseason work, and that’s really where we make the gain. If you’re impressed with what Yao Ming has done in the past few years, you haven’t seen anything yet. He has done all of this in what we consider to be a maintenance phase during the season. You can’t do any real strength work to gain the kind of muscle size and the kind of muscle strength during the season that you can during the offseason. You simply can’t do it. Yao plays year-round basketball, so we’ve always kind of had him on a maintenance program. When he gets a chance to back off and have an offseason where he can really work on his body, that’s when you’re going to see dramatic improvements in muscle size and strength, you’re going to see his cardiovascular stamina improve and you’re going to see his foot quickness improve. Right now, he’s so committed to the Chinese National Team. They’re right there as far as the Olympics go, and in 2008, they’re going to be right there as well. He has a huge commitment to them, and we’ve had to work around that. It was just a great opportunity for me to go over and do some of the things we haven’t been able to do.

ROCKETS.COM: Did you have any reservations about going over there?

FALSONE: No, not really. I went over there last year for a week and initially probably had reservations then, but I met pretty much everybody there last year that I came in contact with this year. They are all very helpful. The primary thing – and we all have the same goal in mind – is to maximize Yao Ming, whether it’s Yao Ming as a basketball player, Yao Ming as a marketing tool, whatever, mine just happens to be from a physical standpoint. Everybody is looking out for Yao’s best interest. The Chinese people want Yao to do well, of course, and they take good care of him. We’re just over there helping out in a different area, and they understand that it’s our job and in our best interest to take care of him. It’s definitely a joint effort.

ROCKETS.COM: Did you basically get right to work as soon as you got there?

FALSONE: Pretty much. Coach Harris, who I met in Dallas, asked me if I would work with the entire team. I had to remind him that my priority was Yao and that I couldn’t do anything that would take away from Yao, but in situations where I could plug myself in and work with the team, I was happy to do that. So I basically started off doing pre-practice warm-ups and stretching routines, and then during practices, since I wasn’t doing much of anything, I started working with injured players. So the guys who couldn’t practice, I was working with those guys individually. After practice, Yao and I had a schedule that we had, and once I got that taken care of and made sure Yao was taken care of, then I worked with the other players. I got off the plane and went straight to a game. We had three games in three nights, so the mornings we used for conditioning and at night we had games. Then Yao and I continued to work on days off when the other team members didn’t. After that, we went to Urumqi, Xinjiang, which is a city in Northwest China where we played in the 4-Nations Tournament – kind of an extension of those first three games because we played the same teams. We went there on a four-hour flight and played three more games in three days, so it was pretty tough.

ROCKETS.COM: That sounds like a lot of work. So they were getting pushed pretty hard then?

FALSONE: Everything was two-a-days, but Coach Harris understood that they hadn’t had a lot of conditioning work. They were here for a long time in Dallas – a month – and they had just gotten back to China, so he knew they were suffering conditioning-wise. So he made the shoot arounds more like conditioning workouts. The games are important, but it also became important that the long-term goal was to have them ready for the games in Greece. Morning workouts were a good two hours long and then the games. Then we went back to Beijing for a 10-day training camp with no games, just two-a-day workouts – which turned into three-a-day workouts because I had to work with Yao. I like working with him by himself to meet his needs. Morning workouts were two hours of total conditioning with no basketball, just my thing with the whole team, which Yao took part in. After that, I’d usually do a weight training session with Yao independently and after that we’d come back and do basketball at night. So I was doing two- or three-a-days the whole time I was there. I was working the whole time, so I didn’t see a whole lot.

ROCKETS.COM: Since it sounds like you were working the whole time, was it really an enjoyable experience for you?

FALSONE: It was fun. I enjoyed it. They had never seen anything like me. They never worked with somebody at this level. There are 29 strength coaches in the NBA, and any one of us would have represented ourselves well. I just think that the NBA strength coach is very different than anything they have ever come in contact with. I was showing them things that I think – strengthwise it takes a while for you to benefit from weight training. It takes about a month for your body to come back, because in the first few weeks you’re breaking your body down so the adaptation doesn’t occur for a couple of weeks. So my main objective was to get them in shape – cardiovascular conditioning can be seen very quickly, so we were doing weight training with a high conditioning component. We were doing a lot of agility work, speed work, speed drills – a lot of fast-foot drills and just pure conditioning to get them in better shape. The CBA (Chinese Basketball Association) – those guys were great. They were very supportive of me. They came to my workouts in the morning every morning early on – the vice president and president of the CBA. Erick Zhang (Yao’s agent) was there and was letting me know what they were saying, and after the workouts, they were really impressed with what I was doing because they had never seen it before. They were very complimentary, supportive and gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted to do.

ROCKETS.COM: Your intention going over there was to work primarily with Yao Ming, but it sounds like you also got to work quite a bit with the Chinese National Team as a whole. Was that something you found beneficial?

FALSONE: I also enjoyed working with all of the players. Most of them didn’t speak a lot of English but could understand most of what I was saying. My big word with Yao has always been – I got this word from (Yao’s translator) Colin (Pine) a few years ago – it’s Jia You. It means “go.” Literally, the translation is “give your car gas,” and I’ve used it with Yao for years, “Jia You. Jia You. Go go go,” when he’s slacking or when he’s going too slow, so I pulled that out immediately. My first warmup with the guys, I looked at all the guys and said, “Jia You,” and they all looked at me like, huh? They had no idea I knew it, so my name became Jia You. Whenever they saw me, if they weren’t doing something, they got busy. They were a great group of guys – very open, very willing to learn and try something that they had never done before. They had a lot of confidence in me, and of course I think that came from the NBA tie. So I was very fortunate with those guys because they really gave me a lot of good effort. They made me look good a lot of the time because they’d push so hard with the CBA guys right there watching. It was really testament to their desire to get better. I was very fortunate to work with the guys I worked with, though, and have the relationships that I had with the players because I got nothing but good work from them. I only had to get on them a few times.

ROCKETS.COM: Through your work with the Chinese National Team as a whole, you got to see how Yao interacts with his teammates. What kind of a role does Yao take on with the Chinese National Team?

FALSONE: He was a great example for them. Yao is a totally different personality over there than he is here as far as a teammate goes. He’s a great teammate here but a quiet leader. I think the language barrier and the fact that he was a player coming in to an already established organization – Yao will lead by example here and not say much. Over there, Yao’s the guy. He’s a veteran. He’s directing the young players during timeouts and during games if they’re behind a few points. Coach Harris comes in and gives instruction and Yao lets the players know what they need to be doing. He’s the leader saying, “Come on. Let’s go. You do this, you do this, you do this,” of course respecting the coach, but he really takes control. Menke Batere and Yao are really the old established veterans there who lead the young guys. He’s more of a vocal leader there, as well as a leader by example. So I had Yao, who knew my system, knew what I wanted, knew my energy and knew what I expect. So when guys would look at each other like, “What does he want?” Yao would show them. I was on Yao a lot, though. I put a lot of pressure on him. Yao was probably very happy to see me go. More than anyone, I was really pushing him and he responded very well.