MUSKEGON TOWNSHIP – All-Stater Liam Smith, only a junior, is expected to score a ton of goals for the Reeths-Puffer boys soccer team this fall.

He’s already had two great seasons of varsity soccer, this summer he’s been playing for the semipro Grand Haven Admirals, and he’s already receiving scholarship offers from Division 1 universities.

On the football field, junior running back Brody Johnson is expected to be a big offensive threat for the Rockets after rushing for more than 1,000 yards last season.

This winter, the R-P boys basketball team will again by anchored by two extremely talented juniors, Jaxson Whitaker and Travis Ambrose, who have both become legitimate Division 1 college prospects well before the end of their high school careers.

The Reeths-Puffer girls basketball team is expected to be a strong contender for a second straight conference title with players like senior standouts Sophia Hekkema and Ariel Walker and junior Brooklyn Tornes.

About a month ago, the Reeths-Puffer baseball team won a district championship after upsetting state-ranked Mona Shores and Kenowa Hills. That squad included two standout senior hitters – Kaden Edwards and Alex Johnson – who will both play at the collegiate level, as well as an extremely promising pitcher, sophomore Trenton Reichert, who is expected to accomplish some special things before he’s done.

If it seems like Reeths-Puffer has more athletic standouts than it’s had in a long time, that’s because it’s true. You see the names in the headlines, over and over.

R-P wins a lot more than it used to, in just about every sport, due to increased athleticism.

The kids are also able to play more consistently, because the number of non-contact injuries for R-P athletes have decreased dramatically in recent years.

None of this is by accident. The kids started to improve and stay healthier when Yosef Johnson, a former local bartender and restaurant manager, became an athletic trainer/consultant for the school district about seven years ago.

Johnson introduced a whole new set of training principles and angered a lot of established professionals by doing so. But those who took the time to consider his methods and view the results have been impressed.

Among them is Reeths-Puffer Superintendent Steve Edwards, who became sold after his own two children started working one-on-one with Johnson. He says there’s no doubt that Johnson deserves a lot of the credit for the upswing in the school’s athletic program.

“When Yosef says something is going to happen, it happens,” Edwards said. “His word means everything, and he doesn’t want to let the kids down. In the weight room, I was shocked with the explosiveness and power I was seeing from our athletes.”

Edwards said he made several calls to top athletic training professionals around the nation before hiring Johnson, and learned how much they respect his knowledge and approach.

“Outside of Muskegon, he’s viewed as one of the top experts in the nation,” Edwards said. “I talked to three of those guys, and they all said, if he’s there in your neighborhood and you are not taking advantage of that, you’re an idiot.”

‘The results will be like clockwork’

Johnson, 52, a Muskegon native, is not a certified athletic trainer.

He became interested in physical conditioning after high school and read a book by Dr. Michael Yessis, the leading American authority on athletic training in the former Soviet Union, which was an athletic mega-power in the mid-to-late 20^th century.

He tracked down Dr. Yessis in California, went to visit him and learned new concepts. A few years later Yessis came to Muskegon to assist in a clinic that Johnson organized for the Mona Shores football team.

Through Dr. Yessis, Johnson came into contact with Yuri Verkhosanski, a widely-acclaimed Soviet sports scientist, who was hoping to get one of his books published in English so it could be sold in the U.S. Johnson formed a publishing company and handled the task, which led to a second career of sorts. His company, Ultimate Athlete Concepts, has now published more than 30 books, mostly authored by foreign athletic trainers and sports scientists.

The publishing business put Johnson into regular contact with many of the top athletic trainers around the nation who were eager to learn more about the Soviet methods.

Over the years  Johnson has mentored and/or consulted professionals like Jake Jensen, the strength coach for the NHL’S Seattle Kraken; Fergus Connolly, the former director of sports science for the San Francisco 49ers and the University of Michigan; Matt Thome, the director of the sports science lab at the University of Nebraska; and Tim Smith, the assistant director of sports science for the Detroit Tigers.

The book business also led to contacts with young athletes from near and far who were looking for help, and Johnson started training some of them one-on-one in his spare time, when he wasn’t working at Bear Lake Tavern, Racquets Downtown Grill, or spending time with his wife and their three growing sons at home in Lakeside.

The fact is that Johnson was quite well known on the national athletic training scene long before he was known in local high school circles.

That changed around 2012, when Reeths-Puffer athletic trainer Aaron Szura, a Mercy Health employee, ordered one of the books online. Johnson was stunned to see that a local resident had ordered a book, so he emailed Szura, they eventually met and became friends, and Szura became fascinated with the Soviet training concepts.

For a while Johnson simply advised Szura in his work, then Superintendent Edwards became interested.

Before long his kids were also training with Johnson, and the superintendent eventually recruited him to be a paid trainer/consultant, working with Szura, for the school district.

Edwards said he wanted all kids to have the same opportunity as his children to learn from a unique athletic trainer who made a real difference.

“Aaron was working with my kids at the time, and he said I might want to check out Yosef,” Edwards said. “So they started meeting with him once a week, and he would assess their progress and put them on a plan for the next week. Then they would complete their workouts and check in with him again. That’s still going on after six years with my son Kaden.

“Yosef uses the lowest effective doses, with the goal of moving the needle a bit every week so the athletes never plateau. As long as the kids are there consistently, the results will be like clockwork. You can predict the metrics moving forward.”

‘Sometimes working harder is not better’

Johnson and Szura developed a new physical education curriculum for all K-12 students, based on the Soviet model.

The program involved a steady progression of light to moderate workouts, with plenty of rest mixed in. One level of workouts will continue until the athlete has reached a benchmark, then he or she will advance to the next phase and build on the progress.

The idea is to have a logical plan for athletes, with specific goals they can work toward within their specific sports.

Baseball players focus on workouts that will help them hit, pitch and field better. Basketball players focus on exercises that help their jumping ability. A football kicker or soccer player will focus on leg and lower body workouts.

“The big question is always, what do we do next?” Szura said. “Most people don’t know the answer to that. They might get some good results, but then what? We try to identify a very specific starting point and end goal, and the result they can expect.”

That’s all in contrast with most traditional training programs, which are often an illogical hodge-podge of approaches, based on heavy lifting and exhausting work with no specific direction, according to Szura.

“Their idea is to just get kids stronger and they will do better,” he said. “But are they actually getting better at the skills in their specific sports? Everything should lead to specific skills.”

Moderation is also a major theme in R-P’s conditioning program. Johnson and Szura believe that too much of any type of conditioning – particularly in the weight room – can be counterproductive and harmful to young athletes.

That’s why preseason conditioning drills, so common at other schools, have been eliminated for Reeths-Puffer teams.

The idea is to get kids into shape without pushing too hard and leaving them exhausted, less able to perform, and more vulnerable to injury, according to Szura.

“Sometimes working harder is not better,” Szura said. “We carefully track where our athletes are at physically, which has led to an injury reduction. We’ve had a large decrease in non-contact injuries.

“You see so many injuries out there in Friday night football games. A kid will be coming off weeks of conditioning and heavy practicing, and he will be exhausted. Then he will go to stop quickly in the game, the muscle won’t fire properly, and there goes the knee ligament. By keeping training volumes low, and specific to the tasks the kids are asked to do, we’ve been able to cut injuries down.”

The stats tell the story

The numbers illustrate the success of the R-P program.

Between 2015 and 2019, Reeths-Puffer varsity teams had more conference, district and regional victories than in any other five-year period in school history.

Since 2013, 54 Rocket athletes have earned All-State honors. Before that – in the long period between roughly 1960 and 2012 – there were a total of 65.

Between 2006 and 2012, Reeths-Puffer athletes suffered 14 ACL tears. Since then there have been a total of five, and three of those were contact injuries.

The R-P training program has also worked well for general physical education students, all the way down to the kindergarten level, Szura said.

“Now we have a program where kids are learning a lot of the basic skills and motor development stuff at younger ages,” he said. “It’s very chronological. At this point they are doing this, at this point they’re doing that, and it all feeds off from itself. Every exercise we do has a purpose, and Yosef helped us draw all of that out.

“Students who come through Reeths-Puffer, even if they are not athletes, will have skills that will allow them to remain physically active. A lot of our non-athletes are still pretty athletic.”

All of the above has impressed Superintendent Edwards, who has strongly encouraged all R-P coaches and physical education teachers to buy into the Johnson-inspired program.

Some embraced it right away, while others were more hesitant, Edwards said.

“I would say we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg right now,” Edwards said. “Much of (Johnson’s) approach is so counter-intuitive and so counter-cultural that it meets a lot of resistance in the beginning. His belief in the lowest effective dose in the weight room is not a typical approach – usually it’s lift until you can’t walk – but Yosef’s approach says if you overtax the central nervous system, you lessen the body’s ability to respond and grow.”

Edwards said some coaches and teachers have been slower to the table because Johnson doesn’t try to convince anybody to “buy in.” He just does what he does and lets the results speak for themselves.

“Because of Yosef’s approach, and his lack of desire to sell rather than simply perform, there was quite a bit of skepticism,” Edwards said. “I’m a former athlete, physical education teacher and coach, and I know that Yosef’s approach flies in the face of what most of us have experienced. What worked for us in the past is ingrained, but what we didn’t realize is that what worked for us did not work for a whole lot of other people.

“When you see Liam Smith and Trent Reichert and Travis Ambrose and Alex Johnson, some of them having some of the best seasons in their respective sports that Reeths-Puffer has seen, you understand it.”

‘You become unstoppable’

Johnson is not very politically correct, and he’s never been overly concerned about what people think of him.

He’s never been afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, even when it angers some longtime athletic trainers and rocks the boat they’ve been rowing for years.

“I revel in it,” Johnson said, when asked if he enjoys rattling the cage of the establishment. “Like Mark Twain said, if you’re on the side of the majority, you should probably stop and reflect, because the majority is usually wrong. Any idiot can make a kid bigger and stronger, but creating an athlete is an entirely different thing.”

Johnson became fascinated with the Soviet model because of the incredible success that nation had in international competition.

That success occurred because the training was directly geared toward on-field performance, rather than just building massive muscles on overworked athletes.

“If you never lifted weights in your life, then you started, you would probably be a little stronger and be a better athlete than what you were, but it would stop fairly quickly,” Johnson said. “If it were just about strength, power lifters would dominate in all sports, and they don’t.

“The Soviet scientists went through the process of building up athletes’ strength, then they realized it wasn’t translating in various sports. Ultimately they learned that the main thing is the main thing, and the only thing that matters is making them better in their specific sports.”

Johnson said that if the system is applied correctly by trainers and teachers, the athletes “are far less likely to get injured, their techniques in their events will be better, they will be fitter and stronger and have better endurance.

“The idea is do as much as necessary, not as much as possible. People watch Rocky movies and think you have to work yourself into the ground and that will accomplish something, and in fact it’s just the opposite.”

The R-P athletes who have gained the most are those who have worked one-on-one with Johnson. That group includes many of the top Rocket athletes, including Smith, Johnson, Edwards, Walker, Whitaker, Ambrose and several others.

In four years of baseball, Kaden Edwards advanced from having an 83-mph exit velocity (speed of the ball as it leaves the bat) to just under 100 mph.

Whitaker, a basketball and baseball standout, added 10 inches to his vertical jump in a year and a half. Ambrose, the basketball player, gained five inches in his vertical jump in six months.

Chase Smith, a basketball and baseball player, dropped a half second in the 40-yard dash in one year.

Liam Smith, the soccer star, reduced his 40-yard dash time by nearly half a second in a year, and gained eight inches on his vertical jump.

There are many more examples like that, and Johnson takes great pride in the results. He also enjoys the relationships he forms with the athletes as they work toward and achieve their goals.

“You create an interesting bond with them, a connection,” Johnson said. “Kids are used to being manipulated by adults, but I don’t do that. I just tell them the truth – if you do this then this will happen. I tell them I don’t care if they do it or not.

“The best part is when a kid can’t wait to tell me what they’ve just accomplished. It’s something they wanted to do, they didn’t know how to get there, and I helped them.”

Liam Smith said he’s faster, stronger and has much more endurance because of Johnson.

“My speed and overall strength on the field, my ability to use my body to get opponents off the ball, has increased so much,” Smith said. “I usually feel like I could play two games instead of one, because my body isn’t sore. After games I still feel light and fresh.

“Yosef’s approach is about being smart at a young age. His goal is to help athletes stay healthy and fit for as long as possible so they can stay in their sport for as long as possible.

“We’re all in the weight room together sometimes, and you can just see everyone getting better and improving at rates that nobody expected. Some people may hate on Yosef, but he’s super smart and he’s helped a lot of us. I got a ton faster and stronger.

“Once you work with Yosef, you become unstoppable.”