Inside Landow's process to evolving Notre Dame football in the weight room
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The lack of rasp in Loren Landow’s voice, he assures, isn’t that Notre Dame’s new significant addition to the strength-and-conditioning game isn’t capable of high decibels.
Or inspiring the kind of intensity from his athletes that usually are associated with that.
Rather, it’s a sign of a new era for Notre Dame football, one in which Landow’s charge as the new Irish director of football performance is to take something that wasn’t broken in the first place, and evolve and improve it anyway.
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All the while to being true to who the 1996 grad in Kinesiology from Northern Colorado is.
“When you say gaining trust, like it takes forever, it takes a long time,” Landow, 50, said Friday, in meeting with the Notre Dame beat media for the first time since his December hiring.
“I can sit there and I can hit you with my principles and my beliefs, and here's our training plan. But at the end of the day, I have to make sure that I'm consistent in my message. No. 1, these athletes don't want to see this and this. They want to see that I can be consistent. So, I think that's, No. 1, how you build trust.
“And No. 2, is you connect with everybody. I'm not just sitting here talking to a couple guys who are the starter of this or the starter of that. It's the ability to connect with everybody and give everybody constructive criticism, constructive coaching. I think those are the ways that you build trust.”
The approach feels so different from how predecessor Matt Balis ran things from 2017 until his abrupt resignation late last July, days before training camp started, for personal reasons.
And the job and mission is very different from when Balis took over after a program-wavering 4-8 season that prompted then-head coach Brian Kelly to reinvent almost everything, including himself.
Balis, who replaced the purged Paul Longo, was a blend of throwback strength coach and sports science visionary, but he was a culture-builder as well.
He had ideas and blueprints, for instance, on how to build leadership — the SWAT team (offseason accountability teams) that Kelly used throughout his renaissance years at ND (2017-21) and that current coach Marcus Freeman still embraces today.
Yet on Landow’s impressive résumé that includes a Denver-based sports performance/training business, five seasons as the head strength-and-conditioning coach from the NFL’s Denver Broncos and a client list that includes Olympic gymnasts, NHL players, and mixed martial arts stars, building — or even maintaining — a college football culture is not an apparent skill set.
“I think what I do is I listen to coach Freeman and I try to echo his messages,” Landow said. “I think that's why he and I probably hit it off so well in the interview process, because we speak the same language.
“We have the same expectations. We have the same standards in what our principles are in development. So, I think from my standpoint, I look at it as a challenge to be able to walk lockstep my head coach, and know that I'm being held accountable to his message and his staff's message. So for me, I take it as a great opportunity of responsibility.”
Landow has retained last season’s interim director of football performance Fred Hale as well as Tony Fusco from Balis’ staff to help with that responsibility as well as maintain continuity. And he has brought aboard two new ND hires from his past in Richard Guarascio and Travis Duffle.
The next steps they hope to take together are deeper and more cutting-edge usage of sports science, a movement accelerated when associate athletic director/sports performance John Wagle joined the staff in May of 2022, and integrating more individualized plans into a team approach.
“He’s unbelievable,” early enrolled freshman QB prodigy CJ Carr offered of Landow. “We came in not really knowing what to expect with him. But the things he’s putting us through out here, I’m confident that my body’s going to change. Everyone else’s body is going to change for the better.
“He’s going to get us as strong, fast, quick as we can get. Another great thing about him is he’s tailoring the weight program to the position you’re playing. So, he’s not going to lift the quarterbacks the same as the O-linemen, same as the D-linemen. It’s a lot of position-specific stuff, which I think is really good.”
Landow pointed out that not every head football coach is as open to his differences, particularly where sports science is concerned, as Freeman is.
“Ultimately, having somebody who then will also listen to the science side and say, 'Tell me what you think.' I think that's huge,” Landow said. “As [Freeman] says, ‘We always challenge everything.’ To me, that's important that we have a group around here that isn't going to sit there and say, 'I have the answers.’
“I think we are in a great integrated spot. John [Wagle], obviously, was here before I was. And I think he already started laying that foundation solidly. But the communication, the intentionality of all our resources — when we look at sports medicine, nutrition, sports psych, when you look at everybody and how we actually integrate and communicate — that's ultimately what moves the needle on any other sports science talk.
“I've seen programs and I've been at programs where I've consulted for, and yeah, they have all the same bells and whistles that we do. But at the end of the day if it's not being integrated, if you're not making actionable changes, then what are you doing?”
What Landow is doing goes beyond having the Notre Dame football team physically and mentally prepared for the start of spring practice next month. Short term, yes, that’s front and center. But, so is earning respect in the long run for following a new GPS to the same lofty standards and dreams.
“As I told the guys,” Landow said, “when I first met with the players, 'In your eyes, I haven't done anything, to you or for you.' … And so for me, it's important that they get this version of me and I'm not living on my past.
“I think it does help with a little bit of credibility where I can talk to a player and say, ‘I worked with this player in the NFL, and you remind me a lot of him. Here's what he did to stay at that level.’ Or I tell the story with Christian McCaffrey since he was 8 years old, those kinds of things. Those are great stories.
“It's as advertised here. These kids are hard working. They're great kids. And they're smart. Anytime a new coach comes in, whether it's a strength coach or a position coach or coordinator, you're going to learn something a little bit different. How well do you adjust to the learning? … The student-athletes here are incredible. And in their ability to buy in, whether it's me or someone else, they're gonna buy in. That's just who they are.”
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