He started his weightlifting program, and the next year the Bobcats had a winning season. He had two more wining seasons before moving on to another woebegone prep program — the 1976 Granger Lancers of West Valley City, who lost every game the previous year.

"I was looking for a team with horrible problems and bad attitudes," he says.

The next season, the Lancers won their first eight games and made the state playoffs.

Shortly after, Shepard says he was offered a job as head coach at Ricks College but declined. He had found his calling. He wanted to develop bigger, faster, stronger athletes, all on a natural high.

Since then, he has worked with hundreds of high schools, colleges and pro teams, including the Jazz, who enlisted him to help improve their rebounding through weight training.

Along the way, he became an educator in the dangers of steroid use.

"Here's the truth," he says. "Steroids don't work."

He illustrates his point by saying a 16-year-old athlete may bench press 200 pounds and weigh 180, but a few weeks after taking steroids he might be up to 220 pounds and lifting 250 pounds. But by then he's hooked. If he stops taking the steroids, his weight and strength will rapidly diminish. If he continues, he'll need increasing dosages and the results won't be nearly as dramatic. Then there's the well-publicized long-term effects of steroids.

"It's the first six months of steroid use that gets people excited," he says. "Then they start having a downward spiral and then they're caught in a trap. So you're turning to a pill for an answer, rather than knowledge."

Shepard promotes what he calls "the secret." It includes lifting, but also working on flexibility, diet, explosiveness, speed and motion as part of a program that helps athletes "succeed through strength and conditioning and motivation and goal-setting."

So it turns out, the secret really isn't all that much of a secret.

In fact, it sounds a lot like common sense.

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E-mail: rock@desnews.com