SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Once upon a time, Nick Bosa ate like a student.
He stayed at Chipotle on the day. When bars closed early in the morning, he and his team would go to McDonald’s. His favorite order: a McGriddle, 550 calories of sausage, egg, American cheese and slimy mildew.
When he returned home to South Florida, Sunday dinners consisted of penne, salsa, ribs and meatballs. Absolutely succulent, but. . .
“If there’s one position where there’s a weakness, it’s my diet,” the 49ers star said.
Not anymore.
No more chipotle and ceviche. The ribs have been replaced by poke tuna. And early in the morning, the McGriddles were swept away by freshly squeezed fruit juices, many, many fruit juices.
“You see my cooking on juice brewing days,” Bosa said. “It’s like the produce segment of a grocery store. “
The effects are written on his face. His cheeks are thinner than when he entered the league in 2019. And your abs? You may only make a few baskets of clothes on your washboard, which was well exposed during summer workouts. Bosa said it fell to about nine percent body fat, one of the lowest on the team.
More importantly, he shaved fractions of a from the moment he had to shoot from a three-point position and hit his pocket.
“I make my money in 10-yard bursts, that’s for sure,” the 49ers defensive finisher said.
These 10-meter streaks are interesting. Before recruiting, Bosa’s 10-yard distance was 1. 55 seconds, a focus for a 266-pound player like him. This offseason, his slots were consistently less than 1. 5 seconds, which is in the diversity if you’re an NFL quarterback.
How absurd are those moments for someone of Bosa’s length?According to Dane Brugler of The Athletic, only 8 cornerbacks had divisions of less than 1. 5 seconds before the last draft and only one passer, Amare Barno, 249 pounds, was below that mark with a division. of 1. 49 seconds.
And Bosa’s were more than that.
“My starts: If I’m not below 1. 50 in my 10-yard starts, then my nervous formula is probably there that day,” Bosa said. “I’m in 1. 4 diversity every time. “
Tackle Mike McGlinchey can give a first-person account of Bosa’s annual progress. He remembered his first pass coverage shot of the summer when No. it passed like a blur.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, it was even faster,'” McGlinchey said. “I don’t know what’s in the water in South Florida with him and his brother. I perceive education and nutrition and all that kind of stuff better than anything I’ve ever met.
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When players skip OTAs and other non-mandatory practices, NFL groups react as if they were absent without permission. When Bosa is rarely present in the spring, the 49ers simply shrug their shoulders and know that what they’re doing off-site is incredibly valuable.
“You see him in his work, in his appearance, in the way he plays,” McGlinchey said. “He maximizes each and every aspect of it. And that’s why he gets bigger every year he goes home. “
The two main adjustments in Bosa’s strategies were born of major injuries.
The first occurred in 2018 after a torn muscle ended his final season at Ohio State. He went to Southern California with his older brother, Chargers pass carrier Joey Bosa, who had Nick work out with his personal trainer, Todd Rice.
Two years earlier, Rice had been part of the Chargers’ strength and conditioning team and had given a presentation to the team’s rookies on the importance of flexibility. Rice had studied Olympic weightlifters in Sweden, Poland and Bulgaria and marveled at his clinic to train.
“It was, what makes Olympic weightlifters stay healthy even if they lift at least 2 1/2 times the weight of their structure in a blank shot?””And yet they don’t have the injuries that a lot of school and NFL athletes have. “
The difference is his flexibility, which Rice explained to the Chargers’ rookies after a hot practice in Southern California. He didn’t know if anyone had paid attention to him until Joey approached him afterwards and told him he had pain in his knees, back and hamstrings. He thought Rice’s 30-minute stretching regimen might help.
“And Joey came here and did it later that day,” Rice recalled. “And it wasn’t easy. We evaluated their flexibility, which was not good. And in fact not wherever.
Rice said most football players would prefer the bodybuilding side of training, the one where you inflate yourself and then stylize yourself in front of the mirror. Flexibility? It’s boring. It takes time and concentration. Many players come for a first consultation and never return.
Joey, however, didn’t just stick to the routine. At the end of the season, he hired Rice to be his personal trainer throughout the year. like a dancer. Joey can lie on his back and carry his legs as far back as his head. Little brother Nick has quadriceps like oak stumps, but can grow up to 10 inches beyond his feet with his legs locked in a sitting position.
Today, Nick is as wonderful a convert as his brother. He likes to torment Rice by sending videos of scenes from the weight room to school where a player hits a private punch on, say, the squat, and is then assaulted through frantics. teammates. The joke, of course, is that elevators are not technically correct, that the flexibility to do so safely and productively is lacking. College students stand like idiots when they are like idiots.
“Nicky sends them to me all the time. Again, he makes me smile, he tells me they know what it is. “mistaken.
It’s easy to see why the Bosa communicate the Rice regime with an almost religious fervor.
Siblings are the kind of other people who need to know the science of what they do, and Rice gives them a lot of material. Everything they do in South Florida from February to July is timed or measured, even the warm-ups. This allowed Nick to track his progress. He has become faster in each and every offseason, including last year, when he was recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament. The most recent off-season has been the most productive to date, which makes you wonder how much your overall stock market can skyrocket in 2022.
“I especially improved my highs in squats and benches last year,” he said. “My race numbers are bigger than ever. My agility training numbers are bigger than ever.
The 2022 offseason also included a touch of regimen in the form of a 4,000-square-foot warehouse that Joey bought and turned into a personal gym. How personal? There are two members: him and Nick.
Training has been complicated in recent years due to COVID-19. The new gym necessarily makes its sessions pandemic-proof and has traditionally been built with a full kitchen, hot, bloodless treatment sections, and a basketball court-like suspended terrain that is less difficult. for joints
Nick said that the bachelor store in some advertising domain and that there is a mechanical workshop next door.
“I think they’re confused when they see us prevent in our Teslas and get out,” he said. “And everyone paints on cars. There are no symptoms or anything. We just stay discreet.
The final piece of Bosa’s educational program also followed an injury, a 2020 anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction that included an MCL tear and a lateral meniscus tear.
During his rehabilitation, he felt that he already had a rigid, science-based education regime and that his nutrition needed to be up to par. So he hired a chef, Ana Machado, who was an executive chef in restaurants and taught culinary arts at local universities and without delay. he began to think of a menu for a defensive winger who devours quarterbacks.
Bosa grew up in an Italian-American family, enjoyed pasta — the richest, the most productive — and equated carbohydrates with energy. Suddenly, these disappeared, largely replaced by the fish Machado discovered at a market near his home in Fort Lauderdale. .
“It’s a ton of raw fish,” he said. Raw salmon and tuna. She makes a grouper and sea bass ceviche, which is unreal. And then a chef’s salad. It makes a lot of variety. It never gets boring. It’s delicious. It’s not a task. “
Bosa said the day with a green juice. Machado will one day arrive with bags full of culmination and vegetables, which he chops, slices, presses and transforms into six giant boxes that pass into his refrigerator. You will wake up, drink one and go for a run.
At breakfast, it’s egg white frittatas with chopped bison — “bison is leaner,” he says — with turkey bacon, chorizo and plenty of spinach, peppers and onions.
Then there’s another meal every 3 hours or so, maybe a ceviche at 1 p. m. followed by a raw salmon at 4 p. m. and poke tuna for the last big meal of the day.
“I think there was a kind of era of adjustment for my frame,” he said. “But now my body works better and I don’t really want it. I never feel too full. And I feel a lot of power in my training. “
The 49ers defensive end needs everyone to know that he is absolutely monastic.
You’ll drink a glass of wine on Saturday night out of season. Everyone celebrated Joey’s 27th birthday in July at a fancy restaurant and Nick admits he was pleased with dessert. Their trap food is no longer a McGriddle, but it’s not exactly a nutritional food either.
“It’s a steak, like a greasy steak,” he said. On weekends I’m going to have a fake network. Because when I do greasy things, I don’t feel as bad as having pizza for dinner.
But soft drinks and sugars are depleted or scarce. So is his beloved pasta. And now it feels faster, more powerful, bigger, than ever before.
“I had some injuries,” he says, letting that take hold. I know football is what I’ve been looking to do for a long time. So I felt like I had to maximize everything.