Available 2/12/26
In this episode of the Samson Strength Coach Collective, Samson sits down with Dana LeDuc to discuss his experiences working with Dave and Linda Schrader, founders of Samson Equipment. Dana shares his journey from being a world-class shot putter to serving as a strength coach at the University of Texas. Along the way, he reflects on how strength training methodologies and equipment have evolved over the years.
Dana recounts his first interactions with Dave and Linda and how their willingness to customize equipment set them apart in the industry. At a time when many companies offered rigid, one-size-fits-all solutions, Samson Equipment prioritized collaboration and quality. Dana explains how access to durable, athlete-centered equipment transformed his training environment and positively impacted performance. He closes the conversation with gratitude for the legacy Dave and Linda built and the influence they’ve had on generations of strength coaches.
Key Takeaways
- Dana LeDuc’s transition from elite shot putter to collegiate strength coach shaped his training philosophy.
- Early strength training environments often relied on subpar, outdated equipment.
- Samson Equipment stood out by offering customization and collaboration.
- High-quality equipment directly impacts athlete performance and training culture.
- Dave and Linda Schrader built a legacy rooted in relationships and service to coaches.
Quote
“Their willingness to listen and build what we actually needed changed everything for us.” — Dana LeDuc
Dana LeDuc:
I liked how they were, it was a really a mom and pop feel to it.
And everything they made was built, you know, extremely sturdy.
Samson:
What’s going on Sampson Strength Coach Collective listeners on today’s episode. have a, he asked me to describe him as just a former NFL and Colleged Strength Coach. I think that’s not a very appropriate ⁓ introduction for Dana. Dana LaDuke is a legend within the field of strength and conditioning. So I’m very excited to have you on the show. Dana, thank you so much for coming on.
DANA LEDUC:
⁓ thank you for having me, man. I appreciate it.
Samson:
Absolutely. Well, we are very stoked about it. I’ve talked with Brian about a lot of our guests for the Sampson Legacy Series, and he was adamant that we had to have you on. And he said that we have a great story that I’ll save for later from your time working with Sampson. But in the meantime, can you just give us a background of your career? I know it’s a pretty extensive background, but we’d love to hear it. And what you’re currently up to, too. We would love to know that.
DANA LEDUC:
Yeah. So, so, uh, I’m from Tacoma, Washington and, uh, played all the sports in high school and, uh, honestly really fell in love with track and field and the shot put and became state champion and got recruited and went to Kansas. had the best three shot putters in America. They’re Carl Solve, Steve Wilhelm and Doug Canop. And, uh, anyway, ended up at Kansas for a year. was just a little bit cold for me and, uh,
Anyway, I ended up transferring down to Texas and ⁓ had a pretty good career. was runner up my sophomore year at the NCAAs, my junior year, I was hurt my senior year, I won the championship. And while I was at Texas, I noticed that there was only three or four of us using the weight room. And of course I didn’t really pay a lot of attention. I went to some of the football games and I watched our basketball team because I loved all sports, but I was kind of curious as to why there was only three of us using this room and it wasn’t.
Not like it was decked out. Our bars were bent. We didn’t have any bumper plates. Our incline was a two by 12, you know, about 10 feet long. And it was, ⁓ it was, you’d have to lay back on a slant, entire body. Our power racks were four by four wooden with holes. And we had, of course we had steel rods that would go through the power racks. Our benches were just wooden benches.
But all of us were bench pressing right at 500 or more. We all power claimed over 400. I squatted 805 and the football players, it was funny, they would see us out and they’d be semi lit up at the local watering hole and so forth. And we’d walk in and we really didn’t drink it much during the season. just tried to get out and try to socialize and meet some other athletes at their favorite place to go.
Many times they’d say, hey, you tough guys, you throwers up there lifting weights, you guys on arm wrestle, you man. I said, nah, man, you don’t want any of this, trust me. I’d go about my business, we’d sit down with the throwers and we’d chat with the folks that were out there. This happened a number of times and finally I said, all right, you want to arm wrestle, I’m left handed, I’ll go right or left, it doesn’t matter. I said, you can pull whenever you’re ready.
You know, they’re pulling them. I’m like, no, you got to pull that. So and then I take it, pop them down about seven, eight. Man, what are you guys doing? You’re strong as a bull. I said, well, you need to come up to the weight room and find out. I’ve been trying to get you guys to lift some weights. I said, not only that, but tomorrow I’ll see you out on the track as our tracks around the stadium. We were inside the state football stadium and we had Astro Turf and
I said, now I’m 275, 280 and you’re by 250. Coach Royal didn’t want anybody bigger. You know, 250 you couldn’t play yet, you know, cause he, would take full backs in high school and make them offensive lineman, you know, for the wishbone and stuff. So, and everybody, Frank Medina was the trainer, Medina sessions, the book meat on the hoof, you know, and he’d no lifting, but run with a weight vest, pushups, sit-ups. And that was it.
And so I said, Oh, you know, I’ll meet you on the track and I’m going to beat you in the 20 yard dash. And we’ll get somebody to start us off. beat him by three, four yards. And then now let’s go over to the long jump pit. I outweigh you again by 30 pounds and I’m going to beat you in this too. And so I beat him in the standing long jump. And so I had a handful of people, some of those players started sneaking up against Royals will that actually got a lot better.
So my senior year I won the NCAA championship and go to the Olympic trials in Eugene. And I had taken the fall semester off. I mean, I’m always trying to get better. Like I said, I trained with Bruce Wilhelm, Steve Wilhelm’s brother was my coach and a great lifter, world’s strongest man, wrestler, everything. so I had a chance to go to Dallas the fall of my senior year to train with Sammy Walker.
and Jim Napier. Sammy Walker was the first high school kid ever to throw over 70 feet in Texas. so great shot putter at SMU, whale of a weightlifter. so I took the fall off and I got a lot better being up there. So I go back to the trials and my dad wouldn’t have wanted me to play football and I ended up doing the track thing that he didn’t really care about. He didn’t come to the trials, but the paper interviewed me and said, hey, listen, ⁓
What are you going to do now? said, well, I’m moving to San Jose. I’m going to train with Fuerbach and all these, the best shot putters. They’re all, I mean, it’s the episode. Ryan Oldfield, all these guys are out there. And my dad called me when I got back to UT and he said, wait a minute. I said, you told me you’d be the first guy in our family to get a degree. And you you took a semester off. You should be short of hours. Oh, okay. So anyway, I had to stay in Texas and finish my degree.
And in the meantime, as I finished that coach Royal, you know, ⁓ came to me and said, listen, a couple of things. One thing is that we’re looking at this equipment, novelists and it’s in the land, Florida, and they’re going to fly up here. I want you to go down. ⁓ You’re one of the big lifters. The players are telling me with our trainer, Frank Medina and Charlie Craven, who was the head of our rehab.
really instrumental and get me hired and he said, okay, so we went down and met Arthur Jones and you know, everybody in the country was buying Nautilus in the 70s, 75, 76, 70. I came back and of course when I was down there, Arthur Jones put me on it and I was stronger than Six Acres Onions back then, And so anyway, I’m like.
Yeah, man, give me the whole stack. I did it about 20 times. I’m like, this would be great for my dentist or for my doctor, but not for our athletes. Anyway, I’m like, no, dude, you got to stick with the Olympic lifting, right? And so anyway, we came back and I gave Royal my two cents, but we had to have it because Penn State had it. Alabama had it. All these kids coming down recruiting, but you don’t have nautilus. You know, why would I end up coming there? You know.
Just like you don’t have a soft ice cream machine in your dining room, why would I come there? I’ll go to A &M because they got one. I mean, so you had to keep up with the Joneses, right? So we ended up buying this stuff and I’m finishing my degree that summer. Coach Royal calls me and he said, know, Charlie Craven has talked to me and we know it’s a little bit of a risk. You know, we’ve never had a guy in this position, but some of the players have said that they think you can help us. So I’m willing to pay you, I’m willing to pay you 10,000 a year.
And I said, well, coach, how’d you come up with 10,000? He said, well, Dana, said, you know, I’m the athletic director here, even though I’m stepping down as head coach. I know what everybody majors in. said, yeah, that would be a first year school teacher salary. I saw coach, that’s a lot of money. said, I’m making 200 a month right now in scholarship and I’m living pretty good. No, no, no, we’ll, we’ll end up paying you that. so anyway,
I said, coach, I’ll get back to you tomorrow. I want to talk to my parents. So I called my dad and of course my dad says, Darrell Royal offered you a job. He said, you realize Darrell Royal was 1955. He was a head coach at the University of Washington. And he’s a, you know, two, three time all American quarterback at Oklahoma. said, son, if you don’t take that job, don’t even think about coming home. He said, that guy’s a legend. He’s got three national championships and all that.
So, all right dad, so anyway, I told Coach Rol I’ll take the job and sure enough, I got the job and ⁓ man, it wasn’t a week later and Donal O’Piano was the first women’s AD here. And you know, they were just coming off of, you know, really being the women’s athletics was really just a club sports, you know. I think our ladies that try to have a track on the club, they would ride with us on the bus sometimes or take an extra bus to attract me.
And you know, because they didn’t have any money actually. So anyway, they, they become a part of the AIW and the association for intercollegiate athletics for women. And so that was the, that was the thing. They weren’t NCAA and they brought in Jody Conrad for the basketball team and, and Lopiano and Conrad come to me and say, listen, you know, if we give you a one month salary, $880, will you take the women?
into your program. said, yeah, sure. That’s another hundred and seventy five athletes added onto your football and track and golf and everybody else. So by myself now. And so it just meant that I had to go. I’m a big believer in the split routine. You know, I know you can go up or lower Monday, Tuesday, rest Wednesday, go up or lower Thursday, Friday. But you know, when you have this, you know, you got over 400 athletes by yourself. I had to go Monday, Wednesday, Friday with a group and then Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday.
Saturday was the only time I had off and ⁓ it was starting at seven o’clock in the morning till six o’clock at night by yourself and you get a break for lunch and for dinner and then you get finally get home by about eight o’clock at night and then and then the ⁓ captain of the UT police force he comes to me and says listen Dana you know we got an opportunity for you if you’d like it
PT training for the academy, the academy for anybody that wants to become an officer of the UT systems, be it, you know, UT Brownsville, UT Galveston Med School, UT Dallas, UT San Antonio, you know, all of those folks, there’s about 35 that will come to the academy every year. And the first class of the day is PT. It would be, it would be at five in the morning now.
you’re getting in there about 636 and if we can pay you $750 for a session in the fall that would last about 10 to 12 weeks and then one in the spring so you can make an extra $1,500. That’s why yeah, I can do that. I’m only 23 years old. So all of a sudden you go from 10 to 10, 8, 80 and then you add another 50. Shoot, I’m almost to 12,005, know, almost 13,000.
Of course, you know, I’m getting up at four o’clock in the morning and getting home at eight and, ⁓ you know, enough time to go to bed and do it again every day of the week. Now, again, I didn’t travel with the team. couldn’t travel because I had groups on Friday. They’d leave Friday at 11, 12, one, wherever they were going. If they were flying somewhere or busing somewhere really didn’t have a whole lot of time to see anything except maybe a home game, ⁓ on a Saturday because Sundays were taken.
with the three day split having to divide the groups up. And so that’s kind of how it all started for me there in Texas. mean, and so you took the job and you’re like, hey, this is the way it’s supposed to be. Well, I look back on the hours, man, and I’ve made more money cooking in a restaurant my senior year in high school. You know, I figured out the hours. I mean, I’m probably making about a dollar fifty an hour back then.
And, know, of course I was a zombie, man. mean, I, you know, it takes a toll on you after a while. get a little time off and I’m like, you know, we started that NSCA at 77 up there in Lincoln. was probably 35 coaches, ⁓ that, that we went up there and actually started that, that, that group. So, ⁓ you know, you get to know some of those folks and you ask them, you stay in touch with them. Hey, do you have an assistant? You know, what are you making up there?
yeah, you know, got to try to get a grad assistant. So I eventually, you know, got one of my former shot putters to help me. was, it was coming through. He was there when I was a senior. He was a freshman, so he was about done. So about three or four years into my deal, I finally got a guy named Robbie Robinson. So he understood the Olympic lifts to me, the Olympic lifts are the foundation of any group because multiple joint exercises, obviously we, everything we do in sport.
multiple joints. So you might as well train. You’ll be a product of how you train no matter how you slice it. So we don’t do anything one joint at a time in any sport. anyway I hired Robbie man what a relief. my goodness to have somebody that thought like I did and you know that knew the techniques I taught him as a young thrower. ⁓
So man, was a major relief and it ended up growing from there. finally, know, seven, eight years into it, I finally, well actually it was, I guess, 81 or 82. I’d gotten invited to a couple of Barney Awards by my players, Steve McMichael and then Kenneth Sims, Tony DeGrade. I went to three of them. I think it was the third one I went to. It 82, something like that. So six years in and I ran into our head coach, Fred Akers.
What are you doing here? I said well or the players invited me so I just flew down on Southwest He goes what I said yeah, he said no no no no he said you Bring that ticket back, and I’ll get you reimbursed and he said I want you to fly back with me on the UT jet private jet Yeah coach sure I’d be fine so anyway off we go to We chit-chatted that even he said meet me here. You know that well this thing’s over and
And so I met him over there. We take a limo out to the jet and get on it. I said, Oh, thank you to myself. This is how the, it’s how the head coach travels, man. This is pretty awesome. So all the way back, he’s, he’s like, Dana, he said, uh, do you get a bowl bonus? I said, what’s that coach? said, uh, well, you know, we went to the cotton bowl five years ago against Notre Dame at 77. And then we went back again at 81. I said, Oh, coach, I don’t get a bowl bonus. said, kidding me?
I said, no, he said, well, I’ll take care of that. He said, let me ask you something else. Do you get a car like the other assistant coaches do? A car to drive from a local dealer? I no, coach, I got my own rig. I’m good. No, no, no, we got to get that scored away. So a number of things transpired on that trip coming back. anyway, that changed a lot for me. And then coach Royal called me one day and said, listen, I’ve got my
My son-in-law’s cousin, Curly Farris, he’s an attorney here in Austin, he’s got a bad knee, he loves to jog, little guy. can you help him out? I said, yeah, coach, send him up to the weight room. I got him on partial quads and got the VMO a lot stronger, you know, because the patella was floating, and you know, he was beginning to develop chondromalacia. And so, ⁓ man, after about a month, he goes, man, my knees, he goes, I feel unbelievable.
And so anyway, he said, guys, darn, what can I do? said, well, I said, you you’re pretty close with coach Royal. Why don’t you, why don’t you find out? actually coach Royal has stepped down to last. Dodds was the AD, but coach Royal still had his head. was, he was an advisor to the president and they brought in the last dogs. And I said, why don’t you tell coach Royal that,
Man, it’d be fun to be able to travel with a team or at least have a travel budget to where I could get to the site and have a hotel room because I could leave Friday evening and then I could fly back Saturday after the game. And it’d be nice to either which way. I did have somebody that could watch the weight room. I finally had a couple of GAs and I didn’t quite have a full-time assistant yet.
But enough people to cover for me. And so, man, the last gods calls me in the next week and says, hey, what are you doing going behind my back? You know, a little bit ticked off about the fact that I went to Curly and Curly goes to coach Royal. Coach Royal then comes back down to the losses and listen, you know, we got to get this guy. He works with these athletes. He doesn’t even get to watch him perform. And so anyway, he said.
What would you rather do? I said, you know, quite honestly, I don’t want to leave my athletes. If I just had a travel budget and that was the year I got a budget. I think it started out, it was like 25 or 30,000 and a line item here to make your line items out there. I said, you know, probably about three or 4,000 for travel because Southwest Airlines was pretty cheap back then. And so much for refurbishment. If I need to get stuff recovered.
Any kind of work done we had a plant there a power plant and I was really close with the all the people on the bottom level You know, I mean so I could call and get something done Most of the time they would even charge my account and stuff So I worked with the people on the lower level in the engine room if you will Is it to me the engine room that makes this whole thing go are the trainers? The strength coaches and the equipment guys. So this is what I call the engine room
And so I was close with that bunch. didn’t go to the coaches offices. I didn’t stay on the phone trying to get a job. I never even worried about that. I knew what I was doing had a lot of promise to it. If I was a good enough teacher.
And that’s what I would have been. And I pride myself. I got good, good remarks from the people I did my student teaching with. I can teach. Other than that, I was a pretty decent athlete and a very good technician. And I had had a chance to go to Russia in 1974 and throw out the World University Games. And there I got to meet Vasily Alexeyev and his up and comer and David Rieger. I got to meet a lot of these guys and train with them. I was there 16 days.
And I was training at the University of Moscow, which is where we stayed. Not only that, but having trained with the Wilhelms and the Ken Pateras and Carl Salves of the world. ⁓ And of course, my teammates, Bishop Delegowitz, Don Osmas, Jim McGoldrick, were all very good lifters. I thought, hey, you know, I can teach them how to do this stuff. And so as it worked out, I got my budget and I got my money and I would book my Southwest airline.
I’d get my girlfriend or somebody to drop me off the airport or I’d drive myself, it, and I could turn those expenses in. So my budget eventually grew to, you know, I think they raised you 10 % every year or something like that. I think when I left after 17 years, it was 52,000 or something. And then I think they began to add the salaries in there and I had a full-time assistant. And actually when I left, I had two full-time assistants.
money for three or four GAs and actually hired a female GA probably in 1984 or five. So one of the first to get a female in there working. She was very good. So, but that’s kind of how that all started out. And you know, I a wonderful, wonderful career there, man. I enjoyed it, but you know, I knew it was very important. This I can tell you. I knew how important it was because I was a
6’3″, 235, 40 pound kid that never lifted a weight. threw 64 feet in high school in 1971, which is an act of a throw by today’s And this, we’re talking 50 plus years ago. I did have a good coach. I can tell you this, the fact that I was an all-American tenor saxophone player. Only lessons I ever had were from my dad, who was a third division Army band lead.
And I was all state, all Northwest. made the All American Youth Band, everything by tape. I had to make a tape. It took me eight hours. My lips were bloody and I was not happy until it was perfect. And so I went to Osaka, Japan and played the World’s Fair as a senior in high school. And I can tell you this man, the rhythm from music, from me learning how to read, I would much rather read music than read a book.
And you have to stay three or four bars ahead for it to flow the right way. I can tell you this music had a tremendous effect on my throwing. I mean you can go back to the days of Newt Rockley when he began to shift the backfield he topped those guys to music. This is how you shift in rhythm. Rhythm and timing is everything in sports.
Otherwise, how could a kid that never lifted a weight throw 64 feet? I had to know exactly when my feet should hit. boom, boom, boom, boom. It’s a one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, four. You can go waltz, you can go two, four, however you want to slice it in music. It’s all related. It’s all related, you know, to sport. And I found this out later on in life. There ⁓ was a machine that Bob Ward developed.
or actually had it brought in. was a guy that was working with lot of judo guys and it’s a leverage system and it’s all horizontal and you have to learn to hit the sweet spot. It’s only a five or two and a half pound weight but it rolls on a cord you hit it and you have to pop it right when that little plate’s coming back to you and the judo people, the golf people use it. I bought one in St. Louis. ⁓
and brought the guy in and I said, you know, this is very interesting. I had no problem with that. I understood it. But you can’t believe how many guys, particular, big guys, in particular, big guys that would be on this thing and had no rhythm at all and couldn’t, they just had to slide it. They couldn’t find that sweet spot to hit it at the right time. Well, think of this now, if you’re blocking, right? And you’ve got somebody, you know, coming at you.
You have to know when to hit the guy, right? You don’t wait till he’s up on you. You got to wait and make sure that there’s enough leverage for you to hit him to where your hands are not going to get caught up. It’s a timing. It’s a rhythm thing. And you can’t, I was like, I was shocked at how many of these guys made it to the NFL that did not have the rhythm or timing. They were simply big roots.
Samson:
Hmm.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
And they got a lot better and our teams got a lot better as a result. So this is just, this is just one thing that brings me back to my background, which wasn’t weightlifting in high school. was music. Otherwise, I mean, I never gave up a sack in high school. I had great feet. I averaged 15 points a game, 15 rebounds a game. And I was only six, three, played against guys taller, six, five, not a lot of big tall guys back then, but guys that went on and played college basketball, but that really.
Samson:
Yeah.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
had a tough time out jumping me. ⁓ So I have to lay a lot of that on my musical background. So yeah.
Samson:
Yeah, that’s incredible.
I love hearing that. That’s fantastic. I’ve never, I never really heard the correlation between ⁓ music and the actual strength and conditioning and athletic side. So I love it. Yeah. Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
yeah, the rhythm is everything man.
It’s everything in the clean. You come from the floor, one two three, one two three, one two three, you gotta come slow off the floor. Be a turtle if you like. When you hit the knees buddy, you gotta, and then you have to be faster when you react underneath the bar.
Samson:
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah,
that’s incredible. Wow. Thank you. I appreciate the insights too, because now I’m certainly going to go look back at a couple of things that I do. You know, I’m curious about this too, because Brian told me a lot of good stories from your time at Texas. You know, what was it like? When was the first time you encountered Samson equipment and what was it like working with them?
DANA LEDUC:
Well, you know, I was looking to research. We did not have much equipment and, and we got some things built. I had to go when I first got hired, I had to go to coach Ellington. was the kind of Royals right-hand man and had been a coach, long-time coach with coach Royal. And, ⁓ I said, coach, said, you know, we don’t have any equipment here. The stuff we have is just totally outdated. mean, we’re going to need to get some stuff.
Well, you know, we don’t have a lot of money. I’m like, really? We don’t have a lot of money. I said, coach, I got a guy at Texas athletic club that’ll build six benches and six end clients because we got numbers coming through this room now. And he said, what’s that going to cause us? I didn’t get them done for $50 a piece. And they’ll make them for me downtown Austin. So $300 for six benches.
$300 for six end clients and the bars goes, they’re going to be 150. our bars are all bad. I got to get some good ones. Then I’m to need some Olympic lifting bars and I’m going to need some bumper plates. Otherwise we’re going to crack the ceiling and we’re going to have to have a platform bill. And so all of that amounted to maybe a couple thousand dollars, which is nothing. And so we went like that for a period of time. And then, we were in the process of,
of building a new weight room. And I had a friend, well, we were actually myself and Oscar Jacobson, my assistant from Iceland, who’s a whale of a thrower here at Texas. We were going to travel all over and I’d already set equipment companies up with pretty much everybody. And then I had heard about Samson. And so I called Dave and Linda and I said, listen, I want to come out to Las Cruces.
Flydale Pass or Reddicar, I want to come in and talk to you guys about some things and Yeah, come on out Danny. Heck you the University of Texas. I I said well, I said Most of these companies are pretty well set on what they do I said that I need somebody and I’m figured to myself
They’re kind of like a mom and pop operation, which is exactly what they were. And so I’m thinking to myself, maybe these folks aren’t so hard headed that they will actually work with me. And sure enough, they did. I said, you know, I have a young son probably remembers that I wanted to develop and I had an idea of a seated behind the neck press.
And so I said, Dave, you know, I have to have a seat and then I have to have a place to put the bar. It needs to be spring loaded where we can load the plate and then I could push out with springs and so I can dip my head under the bar, take my feet off the springs and the bar will come back and then I can sit right up there. And then when I’m finished, I simply load it back on the bar. It’s high enough to unload it.
And sure enough, he developed that for me. I mean, I don’t know if they ever did much else with it, but we had three or four of those. And I said, well, heck man, I’m going to get, I want to get this guy to make a lot of stuff for me. You know, he can do power racks, you know, and that was, that was kind of where we went. We went to, we were in 17 countries, a good friend of mine, Doyle Wilson, who’s a home builder. I was training him.
at the time and we were going to go Raycom out of Atlanta I believe was doing the Southwest Conference back then and I went to the AD and told them what I wanted to do. I wanted to save money. The dollar was very strong against all those European currencies back then. wasn’t a, it didn’t have the Euro. And so I contacted Ilico and then I found out about Udahome. Udahome makes the steel for Ilico.
Udahome makes all the special steel for all the NASA projects. And I called them, said, you know, do you guys do it? Oh, as a matter of fact, this is the first year we are going to make bumper plates. And you know, we supply. Yeah, I heard you guys. So I did my research. So we set up a trip to Ilico, to Udahome, to Berg in Germany, to Leaco in Finland, to David in Finland, Pignotti in Rome.
We were all to Schnell in Germany. We were at seven or eight different, David in Finland, David Equipment. We were in a lot of countries and went to each one of They took care of us. They put us up while we were there, wine and dine us. of course, then we had ⁓ Dave Schrader and Linda Schrader, about the only people we dealt with in the US. And so…
We ended up buying everything. We had all bumper plates. The room, all the platforms, we had 16 platforms all recessed into the ground. I did not want somebody tripping over a platform. So when they laid the foundation, they went 12 by 12 and six inches deep. And so we layered the wood to where we’d have a little vibration and you’d have a little jump for your feet and you weren’t pounded down on concrete.
It worked out nicely, man. We ended up in University of Washington, BYU. Everybody was coming to look and see what we had done. yeah, it was definitely the flagship room, without a doubt. I also put a recessed AstroTurf area in there. Because when I had been in the Soviet Union, they had a Russian Leaper with bands. They were used for their athletes to jump. This was in 73. And so when I had a chance, I wanted an area where we could do medicine ball.
Samson:
It’s awesome.
DANA LEDUC:
because the medicine ball people right here in Butte, Texas, I hired that guy as a GA to do all our med ball work. He was one of the founders of the company. And in fact, I still work with one of those guys today. so anyway, I wanted an area where we could do medicine ball work in a turfed area. So we had about a 30 by 40 foot turfed area. And I built these Russian leapers based on what I saw in Russia. We had bands, could line up five, I five of them. I could line up five offensive linemen.
and they’d have their turf cleats on. And it was again recessed because we jumped on it. I didn’t want to, you know, I wanted to have a nice surface with padding and underneath the turf. And so I could get five linemen and we do 10 of those at a time. I’d either use two or three bands and 10 reps, take all the belts off. Now one rep with you, all five firing out at same time. Dude, I’m telling you, our guys got that. 1983, we go down to Auburn.
And Kevin Green was an all-American linebacker. went on to wrestle. He was first round draft pick the Rams and the Packers and all that. So, I didn’t really know who he was at the time. I do know this at halftime, we’re up 14, nothing. They’re ranked number one or two in the country, Bo Jackson and all that bunch. Right. And so, we’re coming off the field at halftime. Bo Jackson says something to Eric Holly, our defensive end. says, you guys got to take, I said, we ain’t taking it easy on you. It’s your ass locker room, man. We’re not taking it easy on you.
Samson:
Hehehehehe
DANA LEDUC:
We’re we’re fixing to whip your butt. And so
anyway, coach acres, I saw going to the restroom, coach acres Dana. That’s why, that’s why we lift those weights. So fast forward, fast forward to probably 2005, 2004, we’re in training camp in Western Illinois, McComb, Illinois. And this guy walks in the weight room and our D line coach was Bill Kohler, one of the top D line coaches. And then comes this kid, good looking. said, man, that looks familiar. was Kevin Green.
Samson:
Mwahahahaha
DANA LEDUC:
And I said, Kevin, that true? Yeah, yeah. I read all about you. He said, yeah. He said, you know, I played for the Rams and the Packers and I’m here with training with Bill Kohler. want to be a D line coach in the NFL. And the NFL really wanted to have a lot of former players coming back to coach. But he says, first thing he says, said, Hey, I read where you were in Texas. Were you in Texas? 1983 with y’all? Yeah, I was on that team. That was a team I thought would win a national champion. He said, man.
You guys lined up against us. I’m the all American linebacker. I’m in charge of the defense and you got a guy named the Coke machine. I said, that’s Gene Chilton, Gene, Gene, the Coke machine we nicknamed. He can bench 500 pounds in sleep. We were stout. He said, your guys were telling our guys, this is where we’re going to run the ball. And I was like, are you kidding me? Nobody does it. He said, dude, I was lining everybody up and they still push us five yards downfield.
Samson:
Yeah.
Hahaha
DANA LEDUC:
He said, is the, said, dude, let me tell you something. That’s probably the most powerful offensive line I’ve ever been associated with. They all get on the plane. That year we had 17 drafted for more 21 guys made it the NFL off that team. To me, the greatest team in Texas football history. Now we didn’t have a big time quarterback like events young, but we still, we lost 10 nine to a bum play in the cotton bowl with Georgia. But, but that just goes to show you.
Samson:
Yeah.
Wow, that’s incredible.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
All of this stuff you did and the little things you picked up and like in the Soviet, the leaper, the Russian leaper, and then our basketball players were jumping out. Our women’s basketball team, 86, they go 34 at all. And back then, you know, I didn’t get a, I didn’t get a conference championship or national championship ring. I was just one of the guys. wasn’t in a team. Dude, I wasn’t in any team pictures. You wouldn’t know that I was a strength coach. All my time, I didn’t get into a team picture until I went to Miami in 93, 94. I’m in both team pictures.
Samson:
Yeah.
Yep.
DANA LEDUC:
They demanded, hey, nobody ever said it’s picture day today. I’m not in one team picture. That’s how they didn’t know what to do with me. You know, I’m a little sour about it because I’d like to be, I’d like to have pictures with my guys to remember them, but that’s how it was. You know, I didn’t have an agent. Hey, isn’t Dana supposed to be in a team picture? mean, think about it now. I knew how valuable it was.
Samson:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
And I would have thought that DeLasse Dodds, our athletic director, would have known. He’s a track background guy. And of course, not a lot of people pay attention to your shot putters, but, and, nobody can see the correlation. Well, I thought to myself, the perfect strength coach is a guy that was a thrower. He understands power. Dude, go to the, I go to the Olympic training camp in 1976, right? That fall I’m up there with Sam Walker. Sam Walker goes to, and
Samson:
Hmm.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
at the University of Indiana. They weigh us underwater. Of course, listen to this now, they have the top 10 high jumpers in the US there. Top 10 shot putters. So I got, I was curious, you know, always, I had no idea I’d ever be a strength and conditioning coach. And so they do us standing long, they do a vertical, they do a three step vertical, they underwater weigh us.
Ball State Costal does a biopsy on our, you didn’t have to have it done because it was a little invasive. It snipped a little bit of your gastroc to see what percentage of fast to slow to. I said, I want it all. Get it all done. I want to know where I’m at. And so when I saw the results, think of this now. You got Pat Matzdorf, 7’7 high jumper. He’s the world record holder. And all the other top 7’4, 7’5 high jumpers. And you got the best day of shot perps. Our average body weight was about 270.
Samson:
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
and the average body weight of the high jump about 185 190 in there. How about this? The standing vertical, we were like 32, 33. They were like 32 an inch behind us. One inch behind us. Wait a minute now. How can you have a guy 75, 80 pounds? What does that tell you? What does that tell you? These guys are number one, not strong enough.
Samson:
You
Yeah, that’s incredible.
Yup.
DANA LEDUC:
I’m not going to lift on my legs. You’re going to mess my legs up, right? Okay. Now, then you go to the three step vertical. They go to 37 and we go to 34. Maybe just by three inches. Well, that’s what they do. That’s what they do. They take steps before they go into their jump. So a flat footed jump tells me power output, right? And you know, as a track coach, you think, you know, the last dodge, you’d understand, you know, track.
Samson:
Mwahahahah
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
You know, you have to understand that power just doesn’t come naturally. In some cases to a level it will. But we can all develop. We have no idea what our mind will allow us to do with this human body. And we have to this point in time as an athlete, by the time you’re a senior in high school, you have not been pushed the way you’re supposed to be pushed.
So you are like a babe in the woods, just out of the womb, getting ready to sprout and crawl and walk. And so I look back on those experiences, man. I’m like, we have no idea. I couldn’t do this in high school. I could dunk in high school, but not like I could. I dunked a 16 pound shot foot my senior year in class. I dunked 16 pound shot foot for you.
Samson:
Yeah, Brian told me that story too, Yeah,
DANA LEDUC:
Bring
Samson:
that’s awesome.
DANA LEDUC:
a mattress in here. They brought one in the closet. And then the head of our department, Gene Coleman, he’s like Dana, come up front here. I got my jeans on, it’s an exercise for this class. goes, can you jump up on this 55 inch box? Yeah. The students are like, there’s no way. I flat footed, jump up on a 55 with my jeans on. He goes, I want you guys to understand, this is what weightlifting can do. I’ll never forget.
They were like astonished. so Dr. Coleman leaves to go to the University of Houston, Clear Lake, becomes a director of performance down there. Goes to work for his 30 years, 35 years strength coach for the Astros. And he goes to work training all the astronauts. And he had, of course, he was a doctor of physiology. So he had a great background, but he had some pretty good students that could actually lay claim. I was like the little lab rat, the lab rat, if you will.
Samson:
That’s awesome.
DANA LEDUC:
And they come to watch me. You did this. You ought to be able to do this. Well, yeah, I know I can do that. mean, we can plan metrics and Medball work back in the seventies. And it was like, really? What are you doing that for? Well, it’s this thing called, you know, it’s a dynamic explosion. And as a thrower, you want to be that it’s, called coming from an E center to a country and center contraction as fast as possible. And there is no other contraction in the world like it.
Samson:
Hehehehehe
DANA LEDUC:
It’s called the plan Patrick. So, and they’re like, you know, all of a sudden, you you get to become a strength coach. You further that, Oh man, we’re going to do plan really in the nineties, you’re going to do well 20 years ago. I saw the Russians doing this and we, we, we were doing it and Oh, we got med balls. Yeah. We did that back in the day. We didn’t have dynamics making our med balls. We had some BS that, you know, would fall apart. Every time you banged it into something, you know, the stuffing would come out of it, but
Samson:
Yep.
Yep.
You
DANA LEDUC:
We finally got that remedy when we found Dynamax. But yeah, it’s things like that that you just learn by keeping your eyes open, your ears open and your mouth shut. so, you know, we certainly don’t have all the answers, but I’m going to learn, man. I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I hired, I hired Angel Spazoff when he was on a trip coming from Bulgaria, sixth time Olympic coach.
Samson:
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s a good rule of thumb. I like that, the rule of thumb.
Yeah.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
He came and spoke, Terry Todd and Jan Todd were here. They had come back from the Auburn Sport Institute where they had all those strength conditioning down there, a big lab down there at Auburn. came back, Terry had come to UT and brought Jan and they brought Spaz off in. Well, I went to hear him speak. I said, you’re done. He goes, what do mean? said, I’m taking you to, I called my lawyer, Curly Ferris. Hey, Curly, need someone.
I need to take this fellow down to get his green card. I’m going to hire him to be my assistant. And I was able to talk to people. I’m not afraid to bring the brightest minds in the world in it. And I learned a ton from the guy. Listen, if you think you know it all buddy, I’ll tell you this, you’re done. You’re finished, quite honestly. I mean, you got to surround yourself with people that are only going to make you and your program better. I him his first color TV. I set him up in an apartment.
Samson:
Yeah.
Well that’s how you get better, you know, there’s no doubt that’s absolutely how you get better.
Heh heh heh! Yeah!
Exactly.
DANA LEDUC:
I didn’t have any money, but I found a way to get it done. Because I want to have the finest strength conditioning staff in the United States. And we did.
Samson:
Yup, yup.
Yeah. And that’s how you get better and that’s how you continue to improve. So I love that. Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
And that’s how athletes get better
and our teams win championships. And quite honestly, I don’t think many of the coaches, I’d have to say this Dick Vermeel and Fred Akers were probably the two best coaches at understanding what a difference this makes. Dan Reeves tried to hire me at 83 that year we went 11 and 0.
Samson:
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
And
I said, coach, I just can’t leave. said, well, we got this quarterback coming in. Dana. said, I can, I’ll raise you 15,000 over what you’re making in Texas. I said, coach, I got to think about it. And everybody, Darryl Roy, everybody said, you need to go with Reeves. He’s a hell of a coach. And I could have ridden that pony for 25 years in the NFL. But I couldn’t because I wanted to win a national championship in my alma mater. So I stayed, and then I sat there and watched this guy, this quarterback that he called John Elway.
Samson:
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
Take this for Bolsa and he said, you know, Danny, you’re going to get the same playoff money the players get. And so I’m like, ⁓ my God, I’m sitting there on my calculator, calculating all the money I left on the table. I’m not taking the Denver job. And after a time with Denver, goes to New York and then New York to Atlanta. like, ⁓ God, I could have written that pony for 25 years. I’d be sitting here in fat city instead of being selfish and
Samson:
⁓
Yeah.
Yup.
DANA LEDUC:
But I love my guys. I don’t have any children. They’re all like that’s why I moved back here from St. Louis to be able to be able to go to the reunions and, and, you know, that that’s the life of, ⁓ Dana LaDuke. ⁓ you know, my, my players are my kids and we were playing Arizona. the Cardinals out there and this kid walks up to me. I’m not really sure if I knew who he was. And he said,
Samson:
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Yeah, that’s incredible.
DANA LEDUC:
Coach, I’m Lyle Sendline. Yeah, you’re the starting center. said, my dad wants to see you. What? Sendline. said, you’re not Robin. Yeah, Robin Sendline is my dad. He played for you at Texas. He wants to see you after the game. I said, you’re kidding me. Tell him to come to the buses. I’ll make sure he gets in. I’ll meet him down there. And I’m thinking to myself, after the game, we beat him. We go down, and we were pretty good back then in St. Louis.
thinking to myself, showering up, getting ready to go out and meet Robin. I’m saying, man, when the son of one of your players, and Robin played seven, eight years of the drafted by the dolphins and played there in Minnesota. The son of one of your players comes to you and you’re still coaching. You’ve been in this a long time. So I had to think, man, how many more years do I have to go to just live a, you know, I’m not.
I’m semi-frugal, but I’ve been relatively smart in investing in real estate and so forth. My best friend, Joel Wilson, took us in his private jet. He said, you’re to have to take some risks. You’re not going to make a lot of money coaching. And we didn’t. You think of this now. And I made this comparison. guy over here at Texas now makes, I can’t get a call back from the guy. I I know you’re busy and stuff.
Samson:
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
But anyway, he makes, you know, 7, 800,000 a year. And I’m sitting there thinking to myself, wait a minute. I left there after 17 years making 52,000. And so I said, Dana, let’s do a check. So I went back to 77 when I made 10,000 and supposedly we were relatively competitive with all the other strength programs in the country. And, and so I said, let’s see what a high school coach made in Texas.
Samson:
Hmm.
DANA LEDUC:
the highest paid, it was somewhere around 50,000. Our head coach was making 100,000 at college, spread acres. I remember my first year. So the highest paid, fast forward from 77 to 2,025, the highest paid Texas high school football coach today is about 178 to 180,000. And I think it’s Westlake or.
Samson:
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
one of those at Lake Travis or one of those schools up in the Dallas Fort Worth area. That’s the highest. So you go from 52 to 180 roughly. I mean, I get that, but how do you go from 52 to 180? And then let’s look at the strength coaching. As important as I knew this job was, how do you go from 10,000 to 800,000 in the same time period?
Samson:
Yeah.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
It’s out of whack. It’s totally out of whack. And think of this now, Iowa and Oklahoma State, both those guys are making a million. So that’s what you as a young straight, that’s what you got to look forward to. Your future is bright. And I can tell you’re going places as sharp as you are. So you are in the right field. I knew it was the right field. But again, it’s just like, it’s just like football players.
Samson:
Yeah.
Thank you.
DANA LEDUC:
You know, back in the day, Doug English or Earl Campbell, most money Earl Campbell ever made was $400,000 a year. He told me that dude, 400,000 to 20 million. Come on now. I might need to be a bigger differential than, than, than strength coach. But, but again, those guys were, I guess, semi trailblazers, but the true trailblazers were people like myself and guys that started in the, in the early seventies.
Samson:
Big discrepancy for sure. There’s no doubt.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
I was actually helping players out in 74. know, wouldn’t get paid anything for it, but guys that want, they all got better. They all made all Southwest Conference. They were all good athletes. That wasn’t a problem. We weren’t starting with, we were starting with some prime chicken and we made chickens out of that. We weren’t starting with garbage. So, so you knew you had to be pretty damn good. And back then, they bring it, it wasn’t no problem bringing 110, 120 freshmen in every year.
Samson:
Yeah.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
I’m getting you to come to Texas because I don’t want to play against you at Baylor. And you want that Southwest Conference Championship ring, you coming to Texas. And you might sit at the bench, you might play freshman ball, but after that, and then of course they leveled the playing field and you got to where you could only bring 30 guys in a year, 35 or 40, and then they lowered it to whatever it is now, 25 or 20, 30, whatever it is. But yeah, back in the day, I mean,
Samson:
Yeah.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
You knew that if you did the right things with these guys, they would get better, there is no doubt. I’m just shocked that back then, the powers that be did not understand the importance of it. You can’t go ahead and pay you or me as a new guy more than the head trainer.
Samson:
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, well, it’s the unfortunate piece of it. Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
who’s been here for 20 years. You can’t pay you more than our equipment manager who’s been there. Let’s not look at the job and the aptitude that it takes and the education that it takes to be able to develop these guys and understand what you’re doing so nobody gets hurt, which is extremely dangerous. Just think of this now. You got a player that’s making 25, $30 million and you heard it and he’s done? Wait a minute.
Samson:
Yeah, yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
You’re working for Exxon Mobil. He just made a $30 million mistake. Buddy, I don’t think you’re gonna be there very long. You know what talking about? Exactly. To whom much is given, much is expected. And so let’s make that right on the payroll side of things as well. You you want all this at the other. Where’s the heat on the trainer? Where’s the heat on the equipment guy?
Samson:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s the same with the college and the NIL now and everything too. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
DANA LEDUC:
Into a 12 and a half four guys got blisters. He should be wearing a 13. That’s that ain’t rocket science now I love the guys in the engine room. We thought honestly the guy that the guy think hey we lose games somebody gets hurt It’s on you. It’s all me
Samson:
Yeah.
Yep, absolutely. Yeah.
Well, that’s the the onus of the strength coach. So
Samson:
this episode was so fantastic. The first time we had to continue it and go even more in depth and talk more about Dave and Linda and hear a little bit more stories from Dana. So I’m very excited about this. Dana, thank you for coming on again. Can you just tell us about your experiences with Dave and Linda, what it was like to meet with them ⁓ and how it has been to become friends and get to know them over the years?
Dana LeDuc:
Okay.
you
You know, when I first met David on phone, you know, talking to him about, were redoing the weight room at the University of Texas and, ⁓ and he said, well, you need to come out. And, and ⁓ so I flew out there and checked out their operation in Las Cruces and, you know, just wonderful people. And ⁓ you’re around a lot of people in the equipment business that ⁓ quite honestly, they know everything. And ⁓ I’d been in the
You know, I was a world-class shot putter and I trained with some of the strongest people in the world and on some of the most unique equipment in the world. been to Russia, trained in Russia, I’ve been in Germany, trained in Germany. And, ⁓ and so, ⁓ yeah, what really struck me as unique about them is that they didn’t have all the answers. They were like, Hey, you know, is there anything you specifically
Yes, there is something specifically I’d like to have you guys design for me. I’ll give you the layout. And it was a seated behind the neck press machine. And first of all, most people in this business would not do that. You you’ve got to, this is what we have. We’re the best in the business. And I get that, you know, of course you’re going to promote your stuff to be the top of the line. But I liked how they were, it was a really a mom and pop feel to it.
And everything they made was built, you know, extremely sturdy. And, you know, when I was a thrower at Texas, we didn’t have much in that weight room. Darrell Royal didn’t really want the football players to lift weights. Our power racks were made out of four by fours wood and they were drilled and we had metal bars. Our inclined bench was a two by 12.
⁓ you know about eight feet long and it had you know it was all wood and it had some ⁓ like a two by four on the bottom where you would you would lay back on the board and your feet would be attached or would be on top of a two by four that was drilled in to the two by twelve and it was like you know we we didn’t know any better we were coming out of high school and ⁓
And our benches were just wooden benches and we slid them under the power racks and all our bars were bent. We didn’t have any bumper plates and you know, most all of us in there were power cleaning 405, know, and most of the plates were chipped, which I weighed later on. Some of them weighed 42, some of them weighed 43. And it got to be when I got hired there that the seniors would grab those chip plates and
lay them over by the bench. So instead of really a 405, it was probably more like about 396 in weight because nobody else could use these plates. mean, you know, the top dog, it was one of those deals. But I had grown up with that there as a thrower. And again, I got hired right after I graduated. So it was I knew I knew the lay of the land. And I also knew that if we were going to have if we were going to get any kind of program going, we had to have equipment.
We had one in kind. mean, all of sudden you’re taking over 125 football players. So meeting these guys, I had my first bit of equipment, you know, made downtown Austin for $75 a bench. And it was, you know, two by two tubular steel. mean, it was the cheapest we could get, but I needed six of each. And it was like, you know, $450 for six benches.
$450 for six end climbs and then we did have to get a couple of Olympic bars We had room to have two guys cleaning back in the back and we did have to buy some bumper plates because You know quite honestly when that stuff would hit the floor that you could the ceiling ⁓ Down below, you know, we were up one level on the stadium. You can see the cement What’s going on up there man? Well, you’re dropping weights. There’s no rubber. There’s no nothing. I mean
What do you expect? So, meeting those two guys, Dave and Linda, what a breath of fresh air it was because, you know, starting out on this journey to redo the weight room when it came time to get out of an un-air-conditioned room that had bare bones equipment. And Darryl Royal had bought Nautilus in 1975 when I was a junior. I actually flew down to Deland, Florida because every
team in the country was buying it. So we had the perimeter of the room only for recruiting. ⁓ so they could see that we had what Alabama had, what Penn State had and so, but they never used it. You know, we didn’t use it. mean, maybe for my dentist and, ⁓ you know, my doctor, it’d be a great, great workout, but I wouldn’t going to use that as an athlete. You’d never catch, you know, you could stack the whole thing and do it 20, 30 times. mean, really, ⁓ you’re not making much, ⁓ much gains there. So.
You know, as I said, when we really got rolling in the early 80s and it came up that we were going to build a new facility, you know, we’re going to go from about 4,000 to about 9,000 feet and top of the line equipment, man, I reached out to those guys and they were spectacular.
Samson:
So what did it mean to you to be able to have that quality of equipment? Because like you said, you’re able to get it done with the 2x12s. You’re able to kind of slap shot some equipment together and make it work. But what did it mean for your teams to be able to train with high quality equipment like Sampson’s?
Dana LeDuc:
Well, you know, I mean, I got to travel all over the world. A friend of mine took me in his private jet. We were in 17 countries in 30 days building that weight room, looking at equipment. And lo and behold, most of the equipment I got was located in, it wasn’t in Germany, it wasn’t in Sweden, you know. We got all our bars from ⁓ Udahom, who was a special steel maker for Ilico. They provide all of their steel.
And Ilico was a top of the line Olympic bars and, you know, used in the Olympic games and their bumpers. And when I called Uduhom, they said, you know, believe it or not, this year, when you come, this will be our first year of creating weightlifting equipment. And it was another little town. But he said, have, we have supplied all of the special steel for Ilico for years and years and years. And
We’ve also supplied to your space program, NASA, all the special steel. So the finest steel in the world came from Sweden. And so, well, I said, well, I’d like to schedule an appointment to come and visit with you guys. And I did. And we ended up buying all their bumper plates. We had nothing but bumper plates everywhere. And we used it. We bought all their bars and it was exceptional equipment. But when it came down to the racks,
and ⁓ the benches and things that I wanted, man. When I flew out to ⁓ El Paso and made my way up to Las Cruces to visit with those two folks, it really was, ⁓ hey, man, I didn’t have to go all over the world to ⁓ find the best stuff for me and for the university. And Dave was really pretty well unknown at that point in time. wasn’t a lot of people. I think Texas might have been maybe one of the very first big accounts.
And I knew at the time we were going to do it that there was a Saudi Arabian fellow that got behind the weight room. met, he was a friend of mine that I helped, was his lawyer. And this guy said, hey, know, the Coastal Duke and the program over the U.S. helped me get my knee back to where can jog. And so the Saudi Arabian fellow, you know, wanted to meet me. He said, I’m going to put some money into this new building and I want my name on the weight room.
what you’ve done for my attorney here and so forth. I said, yeah. And Curly Ferris, the attorney said, hey, this guy is going to, he wants this thing first class, man. I said, well, we hadn’t had a lot of money to spend in the past. You would have thought Texas was sisters of the poor the way it was when we were, when I was going there. And of course, you know, when I found that out, I said, you know, I’m going to put the very finest equipment and it just so happens that.
Dave and Linda Schrader’s Samson equipment was the very best that I could find. And it was done to our specs. It wasn’t a cookie cutter thing that everybody does, take it or leave it. We were able to put different chin up bars on things. This is back and forth. A lot of this stuff was even known. And then the seated behind the neck press that was spring loaded to get it out. All of that stuff he created for us, which was just fantastic.
Samson (1:01:37)
What did it mean to you to have a company that you could work with, you one-on-one? And you mentioned it earlier, like a lot of companies don’t operate like that. They’re just going to say, well, I’ve got the best and you know, we do the, we do things right here. So just by our standard equipment, you know, what was it like to work with somebody who was willing to hear your ideas and really implement them and find the product that you wanted.
Dana LeDuc (1:01:58)
I mean, here I am, dude. mean, again, I’ve been all over the place throwing the shot put and have lifted all over the country. I knew exactly what I wanted from my players. I was going to train them the way I would train a track team. My linemen were going to be trained a certain way. my bat, you know, like shot discus sores, like, know, sprinters and hurdlers and, you know, based on position groups. And I knew what kind of equipment I wanted.
And I’d seen and trained on a lot, but I wanted to take it to a whole nother level. I wanted this stuff to be, you know, indestructible and for it to last a long period of time, we were going to invest into something that was going to be first class. do it when we were done and we put everything in, we had people coming from all over the country. UCLA, Washington, BYU, we had a, we had a turfed area.
in the middle of the gym that was recessed. All of our platforms were recessed down into the ground, eight to 10 inches. So when you walked in that room, everything was flat, but we had a lot of reverberation on the platforms. They were active to where you’d get a little spring. when you hit or reacted under a bar, if you happened to lift your feet off the ground and hit, it was much more forgiving.
for your knees and ankles. And so we didn’t leave one stone unturned. We had extra mat underneath our plyo area, you know, which made it a little more difficult to get up. And, know, when you’re doing the, you know, multiple standing longs or even a vertical or we had the Russian leapers that had bands behind them. These are pieces of equipment weren’t even invented. Now everybody’s seldom and to where we could have five linements firing out with two to three to four bands.
and you know, four or 500 pounds of pressure all at the same time. Ten reps with, take one rep without, they’d almost fall on their face. They couldn’t believe how explosive they were. But we had this turfed area to where we could come off of a squat and then go directly once you’ve stimulated those muscles and actually teach them what you wanted them to do, which was as an offensive lineman, it would be to fire out. So what better way, I mean, because they’re not really power lifters, right? I mean,
We have to teach those muscles while they’re active, if you will, what you want them to do on the field. It’s quite similar to you being a professor at UT and you walk in, there’s 500 students and they’re all sound asleep. You can’t teach them anything. Well, basically when you go into the gym, your muscles are asleep. You must, you must generate and get them to contract and to awaken them then.
While they’re awakened, now you can teach them what you want to teach them. Cause your body out on the football field really doesn’t care and doesn’t know what a 500 pound squat is and what it does for you. I this is a vertical movement, not horizontal. Everything you do out there for the most part is horizontal. So having been able to turn the weight room into something that was a little more scientific and explain just like the Russians when we studied over there.
just the way they had explained it to us. This is how the human body works. They would always say in the States, it’s almost a joke. Anybody can be a coach. And they were absolutely right. And the Soviet Union and those Eastern block countries, had to study exercise. You had to almost be a doctor for the years of study to become an exercise physiologist, to be involved in any way with the Russian Federation or the East German Federation.
and to be able to work with their top athletes. Again, they don’t have American football, but we had sent them plenty of film to study when we went over there and they knew exactly what they were talking about. And it was everything that I’d kind of imagined it was when I was there in the seventies as a thrower. And it was pretty cool. But, but again, you get back to Dave and Linda and the way they were of all the equipment companies, they were by far the best.
Samson (1:06:15)
That’s excellent to hear. you know, I know they certainly appreciate that. You know, what kind of legacy do you think Sampson has left within the strength and conditioning field? You’ve obviously been within it for a very long time. You know, what kind of influence do you think they’ve had on the field? What’s their legacy that they’ve left within these past 50 years?
Dana LeDuc (1:06:32)
I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s certainly outgrown what I ever thought of. I knew they would do very well. And I knew that Texas and we had some people that came at Samson’s request to look at the equipment that they had built for us that came into our room. Number of times, you know, and let’s see, let’s see what they built for Texas. Let’s, let’s see if we should buy that equipment. And I, you know, I was always way up in arms over.
you know, almost giddy as a kid, you know, over the experience that I had with helping them design what we wanted and just the personal touches that they added for our, we’ve got something special that nobody else has and they were willing to do it. They were willing to build it. And ⁓ I knew they would be good, but they have by far surpassed anything that I could ever imagine. But I did know this about those two people.
They’re fighters, they’re very good souls, good, solid ⁓ people that you really enjoy dealing with. And they made you feel comfortable whenever you were around them. ⁓ to me, when you’re putting together a purchase like this, and of course, the strength coach is almost like the tail end of the dog. And ⁓ if you mess a deal like that up,
when you’re spending three, $400,000 back in the eighties, you’re probably gonna be in a little hot water. But I had no doubt from the very beginning, all the places that I had been on an international level as an athlete, and quite honestly doing that, lifting these kinds of weights that we lifted back in that day, I was able, myself and my team, we were able to purchase the right things.
and more importantly from the right people.
Samson (1:08:33)
Okay, on a personal note, I have a question for you. Do you still get some shots up? Do you still throw?
Dana LeDuc (1:08:39)
You know, I went to a seniors meet the other day and, and, man, I don’t know. I might end up, I might end up doing it. I think the records are within reach. You know, I mean, I, I spent a day out, ⁓ out at a track meet. It was just throws only it was hammer. It was shot discus and javelin. I’m like, really? My shot puts only get away like four key, like a eight pounds. Man, that’s half the way. ⁓
The records are somewhere around 50 and so I’m like, man, that’s kind of, that’s kind of, so I made this spring, uh, purchase a shot, you know, a little bit. prefer it a little bit bigger in circumference and they make all kinds of when I went online after the track, I was pretty geeked up and, uh, I may fiddle around with it, man. You know, I’ve seen guys that there was, there was an 85 or six year old retired.
anesthesiologist from Austin. And he goes, yeah, man, I remember you. Yeah. I remember you throwing a UT back in the day. What do you ask? I just came out to see the guy that owns the property and his wife. I remember she was a discist or Carol Finz rude. Mike Graham owned Texas athletic club way back in the day. In fact, Mike Graham’s the guy that built those, ⁓ machines for me. And then he, he let, he let Texas athletic club go. And then he owned another high Hyde park gym in Austin. then
Samson (1:09:56)
Mmm.
Dana LeDuc (1:10:04)
Austin got too big, so he moved to Lockhart. And meanwhile, his wife was still throwing. She still has numerous records, and she’s 67, still throwing. So it was good to see them, said, hey, Danny, you need to think about this throwing deal. I might. I might do that. So yeah, it’d be fun.
Samson (1:10:19)
I’d love to see it and I’d certainly keep up with it. ⁓ We’ve got a facility
manager here who does all the Highland games. And so he’s trying to get me involved in those and he gets excited because I’m a former thrower as well. But he wants to see me do the Kaber toss. Yeah, I wasn’t very good. I mean, was low 50s in ⁓ high school. So I didn’t continue out in college, but it was fun. I had a lot of fun.
Dana LeDuc (1:10:28)
yeah.
really?
okay.
You know, my teammate Jim McGoldrick came to Texas with me from Orofino, Idaho. He threw 208 in the discus in 1975 as a junior, very good throw. And I think Ryan Krauser finally broke the record 40 years later, but Jim moved to California when I took the job here at UT and continued to throw, got it to about 214, 215. Never could quite make the team, the Olympic team, and so got into the Highland games.
And he won seven world championships in the Highland games. And is considered the number one caver thrower in the history of the high, Jim McAuldrick. If you want to look up a guy, well, that was my teammate. grew up together. He went to Washington state originally to throw the discus. I went to Kansas and we’d met each other in high school and we both decided, you know, we weren’t getting what we thought we were. We signed on for our schools and he left Washington state. I left,
Samson (1:11:16)
Yep.
Dana LeDuc (1:11:43)
I left Kansas and we both ended up at UT for the betterment of things, I should say. Yeah.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Samson (1:11:51)
Okay, so Dana, as we wrap up this episode, is there anything that you would like to say to Dave and Linda as they’re celebrating their 50th anniversary of Samson Equipment?
Dana LeDuc (1:12:01)
Yeah, I would say much like I said to you, David and Linda, you know, catching up with your kids is just like catching up with you. I remember when they were a twinkle in your eyes and, and, as I, as I said on the podcast that man meeting you two back in the day, when I was a young strength coach and trying to have the best of the best, ⁓ God put, put you.
two in my path and ⁓ I can’t thank him enough and certainly can’t thank you two enough for all that you’ve done for me and our program at Texas over the years and being there for us and designing things and putting up with me and some of the changes that we wanted to make specifically. And I tried not to be a diva, I’m just an old shot putter from.
state of Washington, man, old country boy, if you will. And ⁓ I can’t thank you two enough for how gracious you were back in those days. And ⁓ congratulations on 50 years. I knew you’d be good, as I told him earlier. I knew you’d be good, but man, you certainly ⁓ exceeded my expectations. And ⁓ rightfully so, because there is nothing, ⁓ there’s not another company like you guys, especially knowing the founding.
parents of mom and dad of that company. And you guys are the best. God bless you and may you live a long, happy and healthy life.
Samson (1:13:36)
Excellent. Well, Dana, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been great to see you again and it’s greatly appreciated.
Dana LeDuc (1:13:43)
You got it buddy, I’ll get everything boxed up and we’ll get it sent off to you guys.
Samson (1:13:47)
Perfect, that’s
Dana LeDuc (1:13:49)
Alright buddy.
