Every off-season for the past seven years, Christian McCaffrey, the San Francisco 49ers' All-Pro running back, has met up with Brian Kula, C.S.C.S., a trainer he's worked with since eighth grade. They talk about any injuries and any niggling pain from the previous season, do a battery of strength and movement tests, and then create a program "to turn CMC back on."
What they're turning on is primarily strength and speed and, when combined together, power. "We try to hit everything on the force-velocity curve," explains Kula. "On one end, you're emphasizing force-think slower moves, like heavy deadlifts and sled pulls and pushes. In the middle, it's plyometrics, sometimes with weight, and on the top end it's sprint drills without weights." For each touch point on the curve, there are various exercises, and Kula curates a four-month program to gradually raise McCaffrey's levels.
We connected in mid-June, just before the 49ers' training camp, and Kula told me the five-eleven, 210-pound McCaffrey is as strong as ever. Although he "doesn't chase numbers in the weight room," McCaffrey is deadlifting in the mid-500-pound range, the same as when he entered the league in 2017. Even more important for a running back than brute strength or straight-line speed, says Kula, is something somewhat nebulous, what he calls "being twitchy." "That good quick twitch is when you apply force, driving hard to the ground, and then fire off the ground rapidly," he says. "Christian is firing on a different level right now."
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