May 19, 2015Lakers’ Strength Coach Discusses Off-Season Training
Mike Trudell at NBA.com touched base with Los Angeles Lakers’ Strength and Conditioning Coach (and T&C author) Tim DiFrancesco about off-season training and his approach to working with younger players.
“Every guy is different in how they approach their off-seasons, with the younger guys having less say than the veterans,” DiFrancesco says. “The program I’ll put in totally varies from player-to-player.”
Because not all of the players stay in L.A. for their off-seasons, DiFrancesco has to get creative about keeping in contact with a few of his athletes, sometimes even texting workouts.
“I prefer not to just throw a big book of a program at a guy and say, ‘Go do all of this and I’ll see you in August.’ To me, you’re setting up for failure. I really like to give guys one or two weeks at a time at the most, sometimes even daily.
“I sent Ed [Davis] a text with six exercises to kick off phase one on Monday,” DiFrancesco continues. “When he’s done, he’ll text ‘Done’ and I’ll send phase two.”
DiFrancesco emphasized that the young players also need rest during the off-season.
“It’s easy to get caught up thinking these guys are machines, that they’re young, and can handle everything,” he says. “They’re excited to do whatever it takes to get better. That’s a beautiful thing, but it can be a trap, because you can get carried away because we want that type of dedication. But you have to be careful not to overwork a guy. You really do. We really want to pick our spots until the recovery effect has been felt.”
DiFrancesco wrote about getting the most out of preseason training for Training and Conditioning in 2013. You can find his article here.