Strength coach Aaron Ausmus back at USC with 'unfinished business'

It wasn't Aaron Ausmus' decision to leave USC after the 2013 season, after four years as the Trojans' head strength and conditioning coach. Lane Kiffin was fired mid-season and when Steve Sarkisian eventually arrived to replace him, he brought his own guy for the job.

"Coaching changes are part of the business," Ausmus said last week, now back in his old office and back in that same position. "I believe we won 10 games that year, my last year here, so it leaves you with kind of a … I had unfinished business here."

Hired just before the start of spring practice as USC's head strength and conditioning coach again, Ausmus returned last month to the same weight room he helped design and settled into his familiar corner office, the one with the same 'SC barbell Fathead sticker on the wall that he put there years back.

He didn't have much time to re-acclimate with the Trojans starting the spring phase of their strength and conditioning program, but he felt at home quick enough.

"I tell people, I think my first day was very weird," Ausmus said, sitting down with TrojanSports.com last Friday. "I got home and I told my wife, 'I feel like I rode a bull for 12 hours. Not 8 seconds, but 12 hours -- just the energies, of course coaching the team, the dynamic there, trying to put together a staff and all the familiar faces that want to come up say, 'Oh my gosh, welcome back. How long's it been?' So it was a very emotional day.

"By day 2, day 3, it felt less like a bull ride, a little bit more like a bicycle. And honestly like right now, four weeks later, I tell people now it feels like there was never a gap that I was gone."

This is actually Ausmus' third stint at USC. After launching his career at his alma mater Tennessee, where he competed in the shotput as a student-athlete, he was an assistant here from 2001-03. He worked with the football team as Pete Carroll was building his dynasty, while helping out with other sports as well.

Ausmus left for his first job as a head strength and conditioning coach at Idaho in 2004, spent three years at Ole Miss, a brief stint at North Texas, joined Kiffin at Tennessee and followed him to USC in 2010.

When it came time to part ways with the Trojans, he prioritized family stability as his wife and two young boys were finally settled in the Redondo Beach area. So he became a sales consultant and "solutions specialist" for Sorinex Exercise Equipment. He went on the road and helped coaches build their weight rooms, while sharing insights from his professional experience.

Then the USC job came open again when his predecessor Ivan Lewis left to join Carroll with the Seattle Seahawks.

"I don't necessarily say I was really looking to get in any program, but one like this, absolutely -- because of my familiarity," Ausmus said of his return to college football.

He and Lewis have been friends for a while because they've crossed paths often in the business.

"We talk all the time, so when he goes to Seattle he actually calls me about wanting to build a great weight room and 'When can you come visit?' And at the same time, he goes, 'Hey, you know, now that I'm gone that seat's open,'" Ausmus recalled. "And of course I was already like putting the gears together in my head. So yeah, it was exciting. It was just an unbelievable opportunity. I feel like the seas parted again, a chance to come back and go again."

He says USC coach Clay Helton, who was familiar with him from their time together previously in the program, reached out to him and they decided they were on the same page about what was needed and the impact he could make.

As much as anything, they agreed on a key priority.

"He knew a lot what I'm about. He knows I'm going to run this thing really clean and put a high price on accountability, which is going to hopefully help our discipline," Ausmus said. "… He knows that I'm really high on those things, and I think your strength program, it has to have a strong backbone in those things.

"There's a lot of strength coaches that can go out and coach squats and make a guy stronger in the bench press, but can a staff create a culture where it's about competing in here and guys want to be on time because there's a pride about it. And want to do their best just because of the pride and sense that this is the standard in our program. So that's our daily task."

While missing the offseason program was not ideal, he acknowledges, he feels he has more support now than in his previous stint to deliver that message.

Ausmus has a team of four assistants under him -- Steve Novencido, a holdover from the previous strength staff; and his own hires, Jared Klingenberg, Ty Webb and Darren Mustin -- whom he says are focused on the football program along with him.

"Last time I was over everything, so you had between the football assistants that are helping, some of them actually had other sports on the Olympic side. … So this time it's unique, it's really just attack and go after this football side," Ausmus said. "I've been really blessed to have now some assistants that are just full-steam ahead with me. I think it's a good formula for what we need to get done because we've got to ... push this thing as hard as we can. It's kind of like that old song, we've got a long way to go but a short time to get there. So we're in that mentality."

Whenever a college football program struggles or injuries mount, the strength coach becomes a common target of fans' ire. It happens everywhere, and there were definitely fans eager to see a change made in that department at USC.

Lewis, of course, left on his own for a coveted job in the NFL, and Ausmus said he isn't in a position to evaluate what was done before his return.

While he and Lewis are friends, they haven't worked together, so he doesn't know first-hand how their styles compare or contrast. Nor does it matter to him.

"I don't really look back at what all has been done in here. I just look at what we're trying to do," he said. "And we're just trying to establish a really good culture of the accountability part and how we execute our movements, put a lot of intensity and passion behind what we're doing and just keep taking and building on that. I don't know what the players have said, but right now they're very coachable. We're demanding a lot of those guys, and right now they're giving it back."

Well, to Ausmus' comment, here is what one player had to say about his first impressions of the spring strength program over the last month.

"I think the intensity is a lot higher. Man, it was a rude awakening the first two weeks. It was a very rude awakening -- something you definitely have to get used to," redshirt-freshman running back Markese Stepp said. "He's very intense, very upbeat, moving fast. There's no lollygagging. He's going to get us back to dominance."

Stepp was asked what he felt was lacking from the strength program before, and he was quick to divert blame away from any previous staffers.

"I think it had to do with a lot of the kids, not necessarily the coaches of the strength program. I think we were complacent [from] the season before, and then [after] this 5-7 season, it really opened our eyes," he said. "… It's just very competitive in the weight room, it's just a competitive nature all around here. I think the culture has changed a lot since I've been here."

That's what Ausmus wants to be a part of in his return to USC.

He said in his first meeting with the team upon his arrival last month, his message was concise.

"'Will you do two things in this program? No. 1 is commit to it, No. 2 is compete in it,'" he relayed. "I didn't have 9,000 rules they needed to memorize. It was two questions -- will you compete and will you commit to the program? I told them, if you do those two things, everything will fall in place, I promise you."

While the USC coaching staff has taken the players back to the basics on the field this spring, harping on technique and fundamentals, Ausmus has tried to instill a similar mentality in the weight room.

His philosophy on strength training is delivered in a pyramid. At the base is the strength foundation and the lifts and exercises that support that. In the middle is the power production facet. And at the top is speed application.

"We're really trying to lay the foundation right now that these two at the bottom support the top," he explained. "All athletes if you ask them, 'What do you want to work on?' [They'll say], 'Oh, my speed, coach, I've got to get fast.' … Our speed program is really built on being strong, being powerful -- which will support that speed."

And from his previous stints with the program, Ausmus can relate to USC's current players how past Trojans greats developed their bodies in that same weight room.

That's not a bad card to have in the pocket.

"You can go down the list from Reggie Bush to Troy [Polamalu], some of the things they did here in the weight room, some of the power output things or how fast they ran or how high they jumped, it's just phenomenal," Ausmus said. "So I probably have a book of stories to share with these guys when needed as testimonies to show them."