Next-Level NFL Muscle

T H E D U R A B I L I T Y

K IN G

N O P L AY E R T O O K more of a pounding last season than 23-year-old Jonathan Taylor. The 178-cm, 103-kilogram Indianapolis Colts running back carried the ball 332 times (the second-highest total in football since 2015) and rushed for 1811 yards (552 more than any other player). And Taylor didn’t miss a game. This season, he’ll be expected to do the same thing.

Taylor knows this won’t be easy. He – and the rest of the NFL – is well aware of the workhorse-running-back abyss, the way players like him inevitably break down after just a few seasons of big hit after big hit. From Giants star Saquon Barkley, who started his career with back-to-back 1000-yard seasons but hasn’t played a full season since, to Carolina’s Christian McCaffrey (remember him?), big-time running backs in today’s NFL don’t last long.

Then again, Taylor’s never been broken, not in three years at the University of Wisconsin (where he twice ran for 2000-plus yards) and not in two seasons with Indy. And he doesn’t plan to let that change, which is why he’s borrowing from the NFL’s original innovator of wellness, Tom Brady, and rethinking his training plan. Bigger, stronger and faster have long been the goals most players have had in the off-season – and they’re the traits that draw the most attention at every training camp. But five years ago, when Brady released his best-selling TB12 Method book, the league began to change. Instead of just training till exhaustion to make quick fitness gains, Brady chased longevity, focusing on band and core work to stabilise and strengthen injury-prone joints and emphasising recovery. This shift in training has been duplicated across the league (and in all of sports, really), with more players prepping with long-term goals in mind.

Taylor was paying attention, and his take on longevity has him chasing a quality that increasingly eludes those who play his position: long-term durability. “We all know the sport we play – injury rate is 100 per cent,” he says. “So being able to be flexible, be mobile, you hope everything you’re doing in the off-season, all the work you do, mitigates your chance of injury as much as possible.”

On this warm morning, Taylor is seated on a massage table at a g ym in Weston, Florida. He takes a deep breath, then twists his torso, rotating his chest to the left. He holds for five seconds, then returns to the centre and repeats the motion on the other side. Taylor barely blinks during the entire process. “He doesn’t have an emotional response,” says Jermaine Gordon, Taylor’s massage therapist. “JT knows what we’re doing.” It was Taylor who prompted Gordon to work this movement into his training. Early in the off-season, Taylor had approached the therapist to discuss his core muscles. Gordon discovered that there was room for improvement in the superstar running back’s ability to rotate his torso. And Taylor was excited to address this. So trunk-rotation training became a summer point of emphasis. Says Gordon: “JT knew exactly what he needed”.

LES S IS MORE

Don’t worry: this story isn’t all about trunk rotations. Because Taylor’s bulletproofing summer involves more. It’s 7am, three hours before trunkrotation time, and Taylor is on a turf field on an extra-humid 28° day that’s only going to get hotter.

Part of his pursuit of longevit y involves maintaining the unique breakaway speed and streng th he already has. So for about three hours a day, six days a week, he trains. There are classic weight-room sessions that have him benching as much as 170 kg and plent y of sprint drills to help him preser ve

Taylor must quickly step one foot into the square, then back to the centre, all while continuing to shu e his feet.

The drill, which Boily calls the “in-place, multidirectional edge work” exercise, represents another innovative shift in Taylor’s training. Yes, plent y of players do foot work drills, but few do them as frequently as Taylor does. Boily’s program has him taking them on several times weekly – and with them, he’s accomplishing more than honing his agilit y. Whenever he pushes off his foot, he’s teaching his ankle muscles and tendons to absorb the force of his body at a different angle, insulating a key joint against injur y.

Taylor does this near flawlessly for three 30-second rounds. In bet ween, Boily watches Taylor’s three training partners slip during the demanding sequence, which ser ves as a reminder that the Colt is a special athlete. “His body is biomechanically set up for athleticism,” says Boily. “The way his feet and ankles are, the way his hips and bone structure are . . . the structure of the way he’s set up is built for power and speed.”

Taylor knows he needs more – and he has known that since he started working with Boily three years ago. Boily prides himself not merely on working out players but also on educating them. That jibed with the curious Taylor, who wants to understand ever y adjustment his trainers make. Boily enjoys focusing on the little things, too, so he has happily worked with Taylor to correct his oblique imbalance. He has also worked to improve Taylor’s ankle mobilit y, teaching him to dorsiflex, or upwardly flex his feet, more effectively. This just might make Taylor harder to tackle this NFL season – and it’ll help safeg uard his ankles against injur y, too. “Ankles,” Boily says, “are of the utmost importance to athletes.”

These are the tips that Taylor appreciates, the adjustments that can

TAY L O R - M A D E M U S C L E

Hamstring pulls are common in the NFL, which is why Taylor spends extra time working his hammies, relying heavily on this 2-move superset. Do 3 sets once or twice a week

N O R D I C C U R L Kneel on your shins and have a friend tightly hold them in place. Squeeze your glutes. Keeping your torso in line with your thighs, slowly lower yourself towards the ground. When you can no longer lower yourself with control, place your hands in front of you and “catch” yourself. Press up from the ground to return to the start. That’s 1 rep; do 4-6. B E N C H R EV E R S E H Y P E R

Lie with your torso on a stable bench, legs hanging off the bench, arms tightly holding it, a light dumbbell held between your ankles. Keeping your legs straight, squeeze your glutes and lift your legs so they’re in line with your torso. Lower slowly. That’s 1 rep; do 10. simultaneously keep him healthy and help him squeeze a little more athleticism out of his already optimised body. And after three years with Boily, he’s learned plenty of others. When there’s a lull in the session, Taylor talks about his love of body weight isometrics, like push-up holds and squat holds. They’ve helped him strengthen his “end range of motion”, he says, essentially ensuring that his muscles and joints can maintain stability when, say, his knee is bent to its max or his shoulder is stretched overhead at an awkward angle.

Taylor slips into full-on trainer-speak when explaining his final speed drill, the overspeed sprint. He straps a band to his waist and hands one end to Boily, who lines up ten yards away. Boily starts running away from Taylor, as fast as he can, practically dragging the player behind him. Taylor starts sprinting all out, faster than ever thanks to the momentum Boily’s created. “It allows you to run faster than you necessarily can on your own,” Taylor says, “but it trains or programs the body to get used to that speed. So now, you do it with enough repetitions, your body is like, ‘Oh, I can move that fast’. ”

Three sprints later (with plent y of rest in bet ween), Taylor changes shirts, then hits the weight room, working through heav y bench-press reps. Once he’s done with that, he saunters over to the training table so Gordon can put him through those trunk rotations and several other stretches. And, as always, Taylor asks Gordon questions the entire time. “He’s a student of his body and willing to tr y new things,” Gordon says. “Yes, there are players like that, but I’d say usually later in their career.”

But for Taylor, the chase for longevity means asking those questions now. Because trunk rotations and ankle dorsiflexion are just as important as speed and strength work. “Some guys are crazy good and talented, even without all those things that can benefit them,” he says. “Then imagine them doing all these things. It’s insane to think about.”

Or it’s Jonathan Taylor, circa 2027 – and still the best running back in the league.

A N NA K ATHER IN E CLEMMONS is an assistant p r o fe s s o r o f m e d i a a t t h e Un i v e r s i t y o f Virginia. She writes about sports for ESPN, Fox Sports and The New York Times.