Today I am so excited to welcome Justin Landry to The Podcast. Justin is doing some absolutely great work with the development of basketball players. He’s had a really great path to get him to Atlanta that has molded a unique philosophy with his training. Throughout this aweseome 30-minute conversation Justin and I get into:

• Driving factors behind the directions of the programming he utilizes for his athletes
• Simple evaluations of common sequences that help him drive programming decisions
• The role of still photos and video in his practice
• Examples of his progressions in different mobility and stability situations
• Autonomy’s role in his program
• What the transfer portal has changed in his programs
• How he defines functional training, and how that definition impacts how he evaluates and trains his guys
• Monitoring/Tracking of practice as an evaluation of preparation

A great conversation with a fantastic practitioner who has a unique perspective on developing the athlete’s he gets to work with. Justin is really doing great work, and I’m so grateful for his open and candid sharing today. Make sure you give him a follow on The Gram at @jland_perf. I truly hope you took as much from this discussion as I did, and if so, please share this with a colleague that would find value in the episode. Also, if you haven’t subscribed on your favorite podcast platform yet and could do that for us, we would greatly appreciate it.

Who is Justin Landry?

With more than 13 years of experience in the athletic strength and conditioning field, Justin Landry joined the Georgia Tech men’s basketball program as its director of strength and conditioning in May of 2023. Landry spent the last three years supporting the men’s and women’s basketball teams, as well as women’s golf, at San Diego State. 

Landry was a key member of a men’s basketball team that reached the national championship game in Houston in 2023 and played in the NCAA Tournament all three years he worked with the Aztecs’ men’s team. The SDSU women developed into a 23-win team with a WNIT appearance in 2023.

A native of Oakland, Calif., Landry spent the previous 16 months as assistant strength coach at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He worked primarily with the men’s basketball as well as men’s and women’s golf teams, and in that time, he developed individual programs to improve athletic performance through agility training, weightlifting, core exercises and regeneration sessions.

As a result, in 2019-20, Georgia State completed its fourth straight men’s basketball season of at least 19 wins. Two of the student-athletes he worked with were recognized as All-Sun Belt Conference performers, with one earning National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) All-District 24 designation.

Before joining the staff at Georgia State, Landry spent three years at UC Davis as its associate strength and conditioning coach, working with five sports including men’s basketball. The basketball team won the 2017-18 Big West Conference regular-season title as well as the 2016-17 Big West Tournament championships. In each of those years, the team advanced to the postseason: the NCAA Tournament in 2016-17 and the NIT in 2017-18. The 2017-18 team, which finished 22-11, boasted the Player of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, and Newcomer of the Year in the Big West. Posting a 23-13 mark in 2016-17, five student-athletes were named All-Big West performers.

He was on the strength and conditioning staff at Troy University for the 2015-16 school year where, working with men’s basketball, two student-athletes earned Sun Belt Conference Player of the Week honors and one earned All-Sun Belt Conference designation. Landry began his major college professional career at the University of Texas in Austin.  There he worked as the performance coach for the basketball program during the 2014-15 season in which the Longhorns went 20-13 and competed in the NCAA Tournament.

Prior to his year in Austin, Landry completed an internship at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and was a graduate assistant coach with the women’s basketball team at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tenn.

 In addition to his college experience, Landry was the founder/owner of a strength and conditioning business in Oakland, Calif., where he worked with athletes from high school to the professional ranks.

A 2012 graduate of Cal State East Bay, with a degree in pre-athletic training, he completed his master’s degree in education in sport science from Tennessee State in 2014. In addition, Landry has earned Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) designation from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).