Local USA Center Training Future Elite Athletes
by Nancy Justis

         
The Cedar Valley is home to what could be the best kept secret. It is the United Sport and Athlete, Inc., (USA) training center located at 1045 Southtown Drive in Waterloo. Its mission is to “develop future Olympic athletes in the sports of Weightlifting and Tae Kwon Do.”

USA has secondary objectives that are very important to president and founder Jed Smith. The center hopes to recruit underprivileged youth, providing them a positive environment for their “healthy” development by providing elite coaches and a world-class training regimen. It hopes to enhance academic programs at the University of Northern Iowa by

Jianping Ma and Jed Smith, Photo by Mike Walden

“People can join USA like a health club, but the mission is to get the kids off the street, doing positive things, and teaching sports they may never have the opportunity to learn. They receive world-class training. Kids will be doing positive things for the community when they’re done. There WILL be kids here who go on to compete in the Olympics.” The center opened in the former Evans Furniture Store Sept. 1 of 2007. Smith, UNI’s strength and conditioning coach, brought the idea with him when he was hired away from the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League in June of 2005. With the help of other community individuals, such as Cedar Valley Medical Specialists CEO Gil Irey, UNI professor and USA board chairman Robin Lund; and Chris Edginton, professor and director of UNI’s Health, Physical Education and Wellness program, Smith’s dream has become a reality. The building includes areas for the general population to get in shape, or stay in shape. The 4,300- square-foot fitness center has over 24 pieces of resistance machines in addition to a large selection of free weights. Treadmills, stair climbers and elliptical machines also are available.

The 2,400-square-foot multipurpose aerobics room is open to all members. Classes are taught by Kristi O’Connell and her staff. O’Connell has over 15 years of teaching and personal training experience. Open to all Martial Arts members, the 3,000- square-foot Tae Kwon Do (known as the “way of hands and feet”) and Kickboxing room houses all those programs taught by Master Russ O’Connell and his staff. O’Connell has coached two Junior National Champions in Tae Kwon Do, a World Champion in Kickboxing, was named the 2002 Coach of the Year, and is one of six Regional ASAT Coaches in the nation. He founded Cedar Valley Pro Fitness and Martial Arts, which changed its name to Peak Performance Iowa in 2006. He’s worked with three-time Olympian and national Tae Kwon Do coach Juan Mateo in bringing the national coach’s system to USA. There are about 75 Tae Kwon Do students in training.

“Russ wants to build a larger Tae Kwon Do group and do some damage nationally,” Smith said. “He’ll develop some future Olympians right here out of Waterloo. A couple trainees have a shot at the 2012 Olympics.”

The program consists of the Little Dragons (ages 3-7), the Kids Program (7-13) and the Adult Program (13-and-up).

Kickboxing, the only program of its kind in the metro area, is one of the latest additions to the Peak Performance selections. It’s similar to a martial arts system and dates back to the early 1970s. It allows competitors a full contact experience, combining martial arts with traditional boxing.

The 1,200-square-foot multipurpose Combat Room houses the Jiu-Jitsu (“gentle art”) program taught by Greg Halsor. This is the oldest form of martial art, originating in India around 2000 B.C. It was created by monks who could not use any weapons to defend themselves. Ages 13-18 and adults are eligible to participate in the beginning or intermediate programs. The 2,100-square-foot Olympic Weightlifting Room houses the program taught by 1984 Chinese Olympian Jianping Ma. He’s a five-time Chinese national champion, a two-time Asian champion and a four-time world champion medalist. He has served as the Guangdong Provincial team coach, the Chinese Junior National Team coach, the Seychelles (Africa) National Team coach and was coach of the USA University World Team.

Smith and Ma have been friends since 2003, when the latter was hired to coach at one of the United States Olympic Training Centers at Northern Michigan University. Smith traveled to China this past summer to learn more about strength training and China’s facilities.

“Ma is one of the top coaches in the world,” Smith said. “China is no. 1 in the world in weightlifting. Our kids can learn, not only from myself and the staff at UNI, but from a world-class coach, an opportunity that doesn’t exist any other place in the country.”

The weightlifting room floor is based on the Chinese style of training rooms. It is flush, adding to its efficiency, and can be used for multiple functions.

There are about 54 weightlifters training who are interested in becoming professional-level weightlifters, including 10 females and one 12-year-old. The center also trains the Waterloo Black Hawks and the Waterloo Warriors. The Don Bosco High School wrestling team takes advantage of the expertise. The equipment includes ZK barbells, ordered from China, which will be used in the Beijing Olympics. USA is the exclusive distributor for the barbells in the United States.

Smith said the sport of weightlifting in the United States is “not very good because we don’t have the resources they have in China. Jianping says it’ll be easy to develop good weightlifters because the sport is at a low level in America right now.”

“China has professional coaches and they train all day,” Ma explained. “The U.S. has amateur coaches. They go to work other jobs and they don’t get paid to train. The techniques also are different because of the level of the coaches. Eventually America will catch up. You are learning.”

Ma is taking at least 15 of his students overseas to train with the national Chinese professional team, including the local 12-year-old. The Chinese team will present a demonstration in Columbus, OH, in March during the USA Nationals. Several of the USA trainees will be attending that demonstration.

USA is equipped with a 3,700-square-foot turfed track which houses the XL Sports Acceleration Program. A 700-square-foot space is dedicated to UNI-sponsored research. XL is administered by Terry Noonan, former UNI director of Sports Medicine who recently returned to the Cedar Valley as director of athletic training services for the new Human Performance Center located on the UNI campus. Nate Werstein, a UNI graduate student in strength and conditioning, is in charge of programming and the XL coaches.

“Jed works on the strength and conditioning,” Noonan explained. “XL adds the speed phase because high school athletes don’t have access to that. We utilize high-speed treadmills and force treadmills, where you run under your own force, making you stronger. We run athletes through the same tests Jed does and all of our results show that trainees have increased their speed. They have gained in their vertical jump and their explosiveness. That’s what this is all about.

“What we do in the XL program and with what Jianping does, we can offer the middle school athlete what a Division I athlete has access to. And with my experience as an athletic trainer, we can oversee the entire training process. We combine all this with the educational programs available at UNI.”

Need-based assistance is available to enrollees and members who qualify. There also are membership discounts for advance payees, family discounts, law enforcement and fire department discounts, and college student discounts.

“My goal is to see more of these centers go up,” Smith said. “They really benefit communities. Here, we have a neat situation with the tie to the university. We do professional weightlifting with all of our collegiate and high school athletes to improve their skills in other sports such as football, baseball and volleyball. They do variations of the professional lifts already, but people don’t realize there’s a sport dedicated to it at the Olympic level. If athletes don’t want to be weightlifters, they’ll still be better football players, better baseball players when their training includes Olympic weightlifting.”

USA’s web site is www.usatc.org.