Rich Lansky is the Strength & Conditioning Coach and Weightlifting Team Coach at Manatee High School in Bradenton, Florida, returning to the school after serving as the Strength & Conditioning Coach and Head Coach of the boy’s and girl’s weightlifting teams at Braden River High School in Bradenton. Coach Lansky returns to Manatee this year after spending seven years as the Strength Coach at the school.
During his 34-year coaching career, Lansky has worked in the private sector as a personal trainer, a collegiate sports club conditioning coach, a combine preparation specialist, and as both a club coach and team coach for USA Weightlifting. He has also coached at Lakeland Christian School, Sarasota Booker, and Venice Wrestling.
A 1988 graduate of Syracuse University, Rich has helped coach five different USAW National Champions and served as an official TEAM USA coach at the Pan Am Championships, the Junior World Championships, the World University Cup, and the Mermet Cup.
Coach Lansky was the NHSSCA Florida State Director from 2016-22 and is a member of the USA Weightlifting High School Developmental Committee. Rich was named the NHSSCA Southeast Regional Strength Coach of the Year in 2017, and this past June, he was inducted into the NHSSCA Hall of Fame. This past July, he was also recognized by the NSCA as the organization’s High School Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year.
Coach Lansky provides insight into his training philosophy and how it’s been impacted by his experiences as a college strength coach and personal trainer.
What are the core values of your training philosophy?
My coaching and training philosophy are built around five factors that influence everything I do as a coach and teacher. I expect my students and athletes to demonstrate these qualities, and they can expect to see the same core principles displayed by me each and every day. Successful working relationships are built upon the foundation that each of these pillars represents:
- Accountability
- Reliability
- Consistency
- Honesty
- Effort
What do you do in your training program that makes it unique)?
I don’t believe that I do anything truly unique. I focus on teaching and coaching the basic strength and power movements each and every day. Like many others in the field, my teams squat, pull, and press. They learn, practice, and perform the Weightlifting movements and their variations daily (cleans, snatches and jerks). I expect and demand great technique and maximum effort in each and every training session.
From a movement standpoint, I stress acceleration and deceleration mechanics while maximizing functional mobility and stability.
Whether we are developing maximum strength, strength-speed, or speed-strength, athletes must be able to reduce/absorb external forces as well as produce force to stay injury free on the field, court, pitch, mat, and platform.
How has your experience in the private sector as a personal trainer and a strength coach at the collegiate level impacted how you train high school athletes?
Athletes are athletes, or rather people. They all want to know that you have their best interests at heart, that you care about them more than a number or a name on the depth chart. They want to be sure that you will be there for them when they make mistakes, not just when they rush for 100 yards or score the winning goal.
The surroundings may change, but the core essence of the coach-athlete relationship remains essentially the same. It doesn’t matter if they are a high school student, a private client, a collegiate athlete, or a professional sportsman. They want to know that you care about them.
As far as the training modalities, volumes, and intensities, a good coach understands the physiological as well as the psychological differences between a 14-year-old freshman just starting puberty and a 28-year-old NFL athlete. Kids are not scaled-down versions of adults.
What trends do you see impacting the profession in the future?
Technology continues to provide coaches with great tools. I am impressed with the analytical tools available to coaches at every level. However, I personally think that a coach must be cautious when testing and measuring all of the potential variables. I tend to concentrate on tools that help me coach and communicate more effectively, such as videos which can be used as an immediate source of feedback and teaching.
For me, the simplest tools often remain the most effective, such as using a vertical jump or long jump to assess CNS readiness for training.
Where do you go for continuing education, and what is the best piece of strength training & conditioning advice you have received?
I love sharing ideas and discussing training with my NHSSCA family members, both here in Florida and around the country. The USA Weightlifting and Florida High School Weightlifting coaching communities are great sources of collaboration as well. Industry journals are always a great resource, but perhaps most exciting is that I will begin the Master’s program in Sport and Exercise Psychology through Setanta College next month.
The best piece of strength and conditioning advice I ever received was from legendary strength coach Johnny Parker. Coach Parker told me, “Coach the kids, not the Weights.” I also love Dr. Michael Stone’s presentations, where he states, “Don’t do stupid stuff.”
What do you hope for a student-athlete to learn while in your program?
I tell all of my students that one of my goals for them Is that they Never have to pay somebody like me to coach or train them.” I want them to understand the basic principles of strength training, have solid and safe exercise techniques, and have the ability to apply this knowledge to design their own personal training programs.
I strive to instill in them a love for training and health and fitness that they can carry with them for the rest of their lives.
