Mike Dixon needs only to listen to his muscles to tell him about the quality of his recent workouts.
“I’ve been sore a lot these past couple days,” said the Missouri basketball team’s rising junior point guard, who, because of that lingering dull pain, can say with confidence he’s pushing his body to new limits.
The man overseeing the pushing has been new strength-and-conditioning coach Todor Pandov, who two weeks ago started Dixon and his teammates on a three-day-a-week weightlifting regimen.
It’s a first step as he begins to help them retool their bodies for a new brand of basketball under Coach Frank Haith, one dependent more on strength than the speed and agility required for the Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball of predecessor Mike Anderson. That’s particularly true for forwards such as Laurence Bowers, who will be asked to bang under the basket.
Pandov, a 31-year-old native of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, has a good idea what physical attributes will be important for Haith’s system. He spent two stints on the coach’s staff with Miami, working as a graduate manager during the 2007-08 season before returning to South Florida to be the head strength coach before last season.
“Coach and I talk all the time about what he wants the guys to be like and what he expects them to be,” Pandov said.
He also knows what traits benefitted him in his playing career.
The 6-foot-8 Pandov played three seasons at Western Kentucky between 1999 and 2004 and spent one year with the Eiffel Towers, a professional team based in the Netherlands.
His greatest success as a player came as a college sophomore, when he averaged 8.8 points and 3.3 rebounds on a team that went 28-4, won the Sun Belt Conference regular-season and Tournament titles and earned a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Even bigger things were expected of Pandov entering his junior season, particularly after he averaged 22 points in a pair of exhibition games, but he suffered a knee injury in the season opener against top-ranked Arizona. He had already scored 12 points and grabbed five rebounds in 23 minutes when he went down, his knee buckling underneath him after a drive to the basket early in the second half. He tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments as well as the meniscus and chipped a bone in his left knee.
It was during the months that Pandov spent working his way back from that injury that he became interested in strength and conditioning as a profession.
He was always around gyms growing up as the son of Kiril Pandov, a heavyweight boxer from Bulgaria who represented his country in the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games and later worked as a trainer for other fighters. But it took getting hurt for Pandov to focus intently on the details of training.
He found himself wondering if he could have done something differently.
“When you think about it, you can never come up with the answer, but that got me interested,” said Pandov, who is married to wife Kimberly and has a 3-year-old son, Mason.
Pandov made it back on the floor but was never the same. He averaged 6.4 points and 2.4 rebounds as a senior, appearing in 18 games. His knee buckled again late in that season, and he had to finish the year wearing a protective brace before undergoing another reconstructive surgery.
He endured a frustrating season overseas with the Eiffel Towers, despite being named one of the league’s all-stars.
“It just got to the point where I couldn’t do the things that I wanted to do with the speed that I wanted to do them, and it was very frustrating because I was playing against people that in my mind I could beat, but I couldn’t physically do it,” Pandov said. “That’s a very frustrating thing for an athlete.”
He ultimately decided to walk away from the game — at least as a player — and made his way to Austin, Texas, where he served as a volunteer with the Longhorns, helping highly regarded strength coach Todd Wright. That proved to be the start of a career that, since leaving Austin, has taken him to Miami, Western Kentucky, Miami again and now Missouri.
Pandov has been excited by what he’s seen from his newest group of players.
“The thing that I really like about those kids, and I hope that doesn’t change with them, is the fact they’ve had great attitudes and have been willing to learn, and so as long as that goes on, then they’re going to see great results,” he said.
He is looking forward to the summer, when he can begin putting them through more intense training tailored to each individual’s needs. The players will begin that regimen soon after starting summer school on June 6.
“I like to see athletes get to the point where they know they’re there physically,” Pandov said. “That’s my excitement about everything. That’s what keeps me going.”
Pandov
The man overseeing the pushing has been new strength-and-conditioning coach Todor Pandov, who two weeks ago started Dixon and his teammates on a three-day-a-week weightlifting regimen.
It’s a first step as he begins to help them retool their bodies for a new brand of basketball under Coach Frank Haith, one dependent more on strength than the speed and agility required for the Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball of predecessor Mike Anderson. That’s particularly true for forwards such as Laurence Bowers, who will be asked to bang under the basket.
Pandov, a 31-year-old native of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, has a good idea what physical attributes will be important for Haith’s system. He spent two stints on the coach’s staff with Miami, working as a graduate manager during the 2007-08 season before returning to South Florida to be the head strength coach before last season.
“Coach and I talk all the time about what he wants the guys to be like and what he expects them to be,” Pandov said.
He also knows what traits benefitted him in his playing career.
The 6-foot-8 Pandov played three seasons at Western Kentucky between 1999 and 2004 and spent one year with the Eiffel Towers, a professional team based in the Netherlands.
His greatest success as a player came as a college sophomore, when he averaged 8.8 points and 3.3 rebounds on a team that went 28-4, won the Sun Belt Conference regular-season and Tournament titles and earned a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Even bigger things were expected of Pandov entering his junior season, particularly after he averaged 22 points in a pair of exhibition games, but he suffered a knee injury in the season opener against top-ranked Arizona. He had already scored 12 points and grabbed five rebounds in 23 minutes when he went down, his knee buckling underneath him after a drive to the basket early in the second half. He tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments as well as the meniscus and chipped a bone in his left knee.
It was during the months that Pandov spent working his way back from that injury that he became interested in strength and conditioning as a profession.
He was always around gyms growing up as the son of Kiril Pandov, a heavyweight boxer from Bulgaria who represented his country in the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games and later worked as a trainer for other fighters. But it took getting hurt for Pandov to focus intently on the details of training.
He found himself wondering if he could have done something differently.
“When you think about it, you can never come up with the answer, but that got me interested,” said Pandov, who is married to wife Kimberly and has a 3-year-old son, Mason.
Pandov made it back on the floor but was never the same. He averaged 6.4 points and 2.4 rebounds as a senior, appearing in 18 games. His knee buckled again late in that season, and he had to finish the year wearing a protective brace before undergoing another reconstructive surgery.
He endured a frustrating season overseas with the Eiffel Towers, despite being named one of the league’s all-stars.
“It just got to the point where I couldn’t do the things that I wanted to do with the speed that I wanted to do them, and it was very frustrating because I was playing against people that in my mind I could beat, but I couldn’t physically do it,” Pandov said. “That’s a very frustrating thing for an athlete.”
He ultimately decided to walk away from the game — at least as a player — and made his way to Austin, Texas, where he served as a volunteer with the Longhorns, helping highly regarded strength coach Todd Wright. That proved to be the start of a career that, since leaving Austin, has taken him to Miami, Western Kentucky, Miami again and now Missouri.
Pandov has been excited by what he’s seen from his newest group of players.
“The thing that I really like about those kids, and I hope that doesn’t change with them, is the fact they’ve had great attitudes and have been willing to learn, and so as long as that goes on, then they’re going to see great results,” he said.
He is looking forward to the summer, when he can begin putting them through more intense training tailored to each individual’s needs. The players will begin that regimen soon after starting summer school on June 6.
“I like to see athletes get to the point where they know they’re there physically,” Pandov said. “That’s my excitement about everything. That’s what keeps me going.”
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