Meet Ben Durbin, Iowa State wrestling’s strength coach who's been key to the Cyclones’ rise

AMES — There’s a small lounge tucked between the Harold Nichols Wrestling Room and the weight room here at the Lied Recreation Center. On a Wednesday in mid-December, Ben Durbin walks in wearing a t-shirt that says, "Thou Shall Increase Strength," and smiles.

“Want to hear some fun numbers?” he asks.

Kysen Terukina, a two-time NCAA qualifier, has the strongest pound-for-pound squat numbers of any Iowa State wrestler. Durbin says the junior from Hawaii can squat 335 pounds … as a 125-pounder.

Paniro Johnson, the Cyclones’ ever-confident freshman who’s ranked No. 5 nationally at 149 pounds, has a team-best 36-inch vertical jump, Durbin says. That’s better than Travon Walker (35.5), the first overall pick in last year’s NFL Draft.

Marcus Coleman, an All-American at 184 pounds, has the team’s best one-rep max pull-up. Durbin says Coleman can pull 135 pounds, plus his body weight, which is 184 in season, so Coleman is pulling up 319, total — and likely more in the offseason.

Durbin recites this all from memory. He has more, too. Heavyweight Sam Schuyler can run a sub-6-minute mile. David Carr, the Cyclones’ star 165-pounder, can bench more than 300 pounds. Yonger Bastida has the strongest grip and hips on the team by far.

“Strength is useful,” he says. “This is a full-contact sport. You have to be able to impose your will on your opponent. It’s not the end-all, be-all, but it’s one piece of the puzzle, and it’s something we want to make sure we’re high-level at.”

Durbin is in his fourth year as the Iowa State wrestling strength and conditioning coach. His job, in its simplest description, is to make the Cyclone wrestlers stronger and more physically imposing on the mat. He is quite good at it, too, evidenced not only by the fun numbers he loves to share but also in the program’s overall results.

Iowa State coach Kevin Dresser hired Durbin as a volunteer assistant in 2019, then as the full-time strength coach ahead of the 2019-20 season. In the four years since, the Cyclones have produced six All-Americans, an NCAA champ, four Big 12 champs, a 41-11 dual record, and has finished third or better at the last four Big 12 Championships.

Last week, Iowa State reached new heights, climbing to No. 5 in InterMat’s Division I poll. Nine of 10 starters are ranked at their respective weights, including five in the top-10. Dresser’s ability to recruit better wrestlers helps, yes, but developing those high-end prospects into All-American-caliber talent is an important part of the equation.

That’s where Durbin’s strength-and-conditioning prowess enters the chat, almost as much as improved technique, proper nutrition, recovery and other factors. Iowa State has bigger, faster, stronger wrestlers now, top to bottom. With Durbin’s help, the Cyclones are firmly a top-10 team and a darkhorse trophy contender come March at the NCAA Championships.

“I’d like to say this is a competitive advantage,” Durbin says. “We’re not where we want to be, but we’re on the path. The overall strength levels, across the entire team, have increased from the day I started to now.

“This is my passion. This is what I do. Every day, I wake up thinking about what I can do for these young men, and every night, I go to bed still thinking about what I can do for these young men. I love it.”

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Ben Durbin's journey from college football to wrestling strength coach

Durbin’s office is in the back of the weight room here at Lied. There are awards from his own athletic career and posters of the successful Iowa State athletes he’s coached. He also runs the strength programs for the Iowa State gymnastics and cross country programs as well as the middle-distance track athletes.

A window in the corner faces north. Durbin grew up 15 minutes away in Gilbert, a two-time state wrestling qualifier and all-state linebacker. He played football at Wyoming, graduated with a psychology degree, then joined Iowa State as a fifth-year grad transfer in 2012. He recorded 51 tackles in 39 career college games.

Durbin’s strength-training obsession began during his four-year stay in Laramie. Wyoming’s strength coach, Trent Greener, showed him how proper regimens and consistent routines can make good athletes great and great athletes even better. (Greener now leads human performance programs in the special operations military community.)

Now 33, Durbin has his CSCS and RSCC certifications through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. He’s a USA Weightlifting-certified Level 1 coach. He’s published in the National Strength and Conditioning Association Coaches Journal. He has one U.S. patent and another pending. He started his own Ames-based gym, too.

Wrestling wasn’t always top of mind for Durbin as he navigated the early chapters of his strength coaching journey. He considers himself a late-bloomer of a football player, and the thought lingered enough for him to try wrestling again — even after nearly a full decade off the mat.

He trained with Kyven Gadson, the former Cyclone star who spent four years as USA Wrestling’s No. 2 option at 97 kilograms (213 pounds). Durbin won bronze at the 2017 Dave Schultz International in Colorado, then was eighth at the U.S. Open in Las Vegas, then silver at the 2018 Cerro Pelado in Cuba.

The Senior-level experience allowed Durbin to see how Olympic-level wrestlers trained and competed, a masterclass for someone who constantly seeks optimal training methods for peak performance. But he also felt like wrestlers — all over the world, but especially in America — could benefit from better strength-and-conditioning methods.

“The sport of wrestling can be very barbaric in strength and conditioning compared to football,” Durbin says. “I knew there was a need and it was something I wanted to commit my life’s work to, just optimal strength training for wrestling.

“Peak performance is an infinite game. We know how to stay healthy, but optimal human performance is still evolving. There’s so many different disciplines and ideas, but there’s some science behind it, too. There’s a way to do it right.”

When Dresser added Durbin as a volunteer coach, he did so knowing Durbin would eventually become Iowa State’s strength coach. But he also wanted Durbin in the room to help build the foundation of his program. Durbin was integral in helping Gannon Gremmel become a Big 12 champion and All-American.

“It takes a lot to build a championship organization,” Dresser says now. “He’s real analytical, more analytical than me. I’m always like, ‘Just get them strong and don’t get hurt.’ Some guys take the weight room off. Some guys take it serious.

“He does a good job of getting everybody to understand how important it is. It’s not so much about how much we can lift. It’s more about how strong we are. There’s a difference, and he understands that we need to be strong for a long time.”

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'When you see me slammin' dudes, that's all Durbo'

Back in his office, Durbin has a painting depicting Milo of Croton, the six-time Olympic wrestling champ. The story goes that Milo carried a small calf over his shoulders every day. The calf eventually grew into a bull. As the calf grew, so did Milo. Durbin’s painting showcases Milo, with bulging muscles, carrying a bull.

“It’s the first documented strength progression model for what small increments and added weight over time can do for the body,” Durbin explains. “I talk about it a lot with our freshmen.”

He talks about it with the veterans, too. Durbin’s guidance was crucial, for example, in helping David Carr make the transition from 157 pounds to 165 last offseason.

Instead of a bull, Durbin tasked Carr with lifting an atlas stone, a massive concrete ball normally seen in strongman contests, like the World’s Strongest Man Competition on ESPN. They’re large and awkward and hard to pick up off the ground.

The process of picking up an atlas stone activates the same muscles required to lift another human, so Durbin told Carr that picking up a 215-pound rock and putting it over his chest would best prepare him for any physical hurdles while he adjusted to a heavier weight class.

There is often a learning curve when changing Division I weights, but Carr’s results so far: 9-0 with four bonus-point wins. He’s beaten a returning All-American and a U23 national champ. He’s outscored his nine opponents by a combined 86-25. He’s scored 30 takedowns and has allowed just one.

“When you see me slammin' dudes, pulling in legs, snapping guys down, throwing them to the mat, that’s all Durbo,” Carr says.

The combination of Durbin’s coaching and wrestling experiences helped him devise wrestling-specific workouts for every Iowa State wrestler. He’s created plans that he knows will help them be stronger in certain on-the-mat situations.

Another task Durbin had for Carr was to rep a 165-pound dumbbell single-arm row — to basically put the weight of his opponents in his hand and pull it toward his body. Carr is a rangy wrestler, and the added strength from a single-arm row helps him pull an opponents’ legs in to finish a takedown, even if he gets extended underneath.

“Horizontal rows and vertical pulls are very important,” Durbin continues. “That’s the bread-and-butter of our training. Football is a lot more push, wrestling is a lot more pull. We’re training their backs year-round.”

There are more examples: Johnson can maintain his explosiveness for an entire 7-minute match (and more if needed); Coleman has settled into 184 after bouncing around different weights early in his career; and Bastida, a talented freestyler from Cuba, built up his back and leg muscles to help him stay strong for American folkstyle.

The most notable might be Sam Schuyler. At Buffalo, he wrestled 197, but has steadily grown into heavyweight since transferring to Iowa State. He sits regularly at 245 now and looks like a pro linebacker — so much that Durbin jokes about putting him in an NFL training camp next summer.

The results so far match the look: Schuyler is 6-1 with four bonus-point wins. He’s climbed to No. 10 in InterMat’s heavyweight poll after beating Wisconsin’s Trent Hillger, a two-time All-American, and two other NCAA qualifiers. Outside of a loss to Tony Cassioppi, Iowa’s world-class heavyweight, Schuyler has outscored his opponents 57-21.

“At the end of the day, we pick up heavy-ass weight, we put it down, and we do it in a systematic, strategic way so our guys perform at an optimal level,” Durbin says. “It’s the Goldilocks Paradox. Not too much, not too little. We look for what’s just right.”

After an hourlong conversation, Durbin gets up from his office chair and steps into the weight room. Cyclone wrestlers are filing in for an afternoon workout. They circle around Durbin, who gives instructions —the wrestlers call them “Turbo Plans” — then walks around shouting encouragement over the next hour.

“Make it harder on yourselves,” Durbin says aloud. “Good effort. Good intent. Good focus. This is an opportunity to level up. Let’s work.

“Your body is a temple, but prepare it for war.”

Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and high school sports for the Des Moines Register. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: How strength coach Ben Durbin has keyed Iowa State wrestling's rise