Interview With L.a.'s Strength And Conditioning Coach (good Q&a)

Mike Trudell: Tim, I know you sit down with Byron Scott and Mitch Kupchak to go over what they’re looking for before creating offseason programs for the players. What’s the process from that point?

Tim DiFrancesco: It’s a case-by-case basis. Every guy is different in how they approach their offseasons, with the younger guys having less say than the veterans. I’ll dictate more to the young guys, where the veterans know what they’re doing in most cases. The program I’ll put in totally varies from player-to-player based on many things.
MT: Is it an advantage for you that so many NBA players live in or spend time in Los Angeles in the offseason?

DiFrancesco: I would say yes. For a lot of other teams, the strength coach will have to take trips all over the place to various hometowns for the players. But it’s pretty common that guys are in and out of L.A., if not here for most of the time. It’s a great place to be in the summer. We can accomplish a lot more in person, but there are instances where guys won’t be in Los Angeles, at which point I have to find a way to connect with them.

MT: Who’s been here with you the most so far?

DiFrancesco: Ryan Kelly has picked up right where he left off in the regular season. I keep a session tracker for how much guys work with me, which measures how many times a player does something with me to improve their body, be it a heavy lifting session or something (less intense). Ryan was on top of the board during the season, and sure enough, he’s been the first one in here in the offseason. He, in a short period of time, has already made a lot of progress.
Meanwhile, Ronnie Price just went back to Utah, where he spends his offseason, but he went home with a battery of program items to address the things he and I feel like he needs to stay sharp with or improve on. Ed Davis and I have been in really close contact from his home base (North Carolina) and me from here both on fitness and nutrition.

MT: Does your mode of communication differ from guy to guy? Ed, I know, is a texter…

DiFrancesco: Yes, it’s mostly texting with Ed. 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. So with Ed, our first phase of things is to get more toned, and then phase into building some mass and bulk around that. I sent Ed a text yesterday with six exercises to kick off phase one on Monday. When he’s done, he’ll text “Done” and I’ll send phase two. Right now, I just want him going three days per week, because I want his body to have some time to recover. I’ll also send a text about nutrition. For example: being aware of when he’s taking his carbohydrates in, since that can be better after than before workouts.

MT: Why is that? Asking for a friend…

DiFrancesco: So, if you’re taking carbs in before your workout, you’re going to burn them during the workout. That’s fine. It’s an energy source. But you’re not going to tap into burning your own body fat. Part of becoming toned is working the right muscles, and moving any excess body fat. And that of course is relative, as Ed doesn’t have much if any excess fat. A lot of people can work out on a relatively empty stomach and be fine; we’ve just heard for years that you’re supposed to have loaded up at a certain point beforehand. And it all depends upon what your goals were. For example, if your goal is to build muscle, you don’t want to work out on a fasted stomach.

MT: What’s good timing for toning and fat burning?

DiFrancesco: In an ideal world, I want you working out mid-afternoon to early-evening, because that’s the time your body is best prepared to be active physiologically. There’s better performance and less injury during that time, because you’ve been generally warming your body up leading up to that point. For food consumption, maybe you eat a big breakfast, but not a lunch, so you can work out in a fasted state. If you crush your workout, have a midafternoon snack or dinner depending on the range. You’re going to encourage your body to burn fat more efficiently. You’d need to follow that path for around three weeks to become an efficient fat burner.

MT: What’s the update on the rookies, with whom you’re obviously working much more closely than Kobe Bryant, who knows what he’s doing after 19 years in the NBA.

DiFrancesco: For sure. With that said, they get a ton of work during the season with us. Jordan Clarkson played a lot of minutes once he started seeing the floor in January. And Julius Randle got a ton of non-game work with us because he obviously wasn’t playing in games. Young guys are working with the strength coach and with the basketball development guys constantly. So I really want to give them a good break after the season where they’re sleeping, resting, going to the beach and chilling and recovering. Whether you’re getting minutes on the court like Clarkson or not, your body needs time away from the overall grind. Summer League comes up pretty soon (July 10-20), and that’s basically like a training camp. And then actual training camp (late September/early October) isn’t too far away from that.
It’s easy to get caught up thinking these guys are machines, that they’re young, and can handle everything – you can include Jabari Brown and Tarik Black in that category with Randle and Clarkson – and they’re all in to work out all that time. 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.

MT: In the case of Randle, do you have to specialize things that much more with Gary Vitti, the doctors and such to make sure he doesn’t get reinjured?

DiFrancesco: We’re looking to get him back to 5-on-5 based shape, and that’s far different from how we’d approach it with somebody else. He’s been cleared to do some light plyometric movement for a while. And it’s been aggressive in a training environment for us, where he’s been playing some controlled basketball on the court in 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 settings. He’s focusing on re-training the lower body to know how to produce and accept the load and push off aspect of jumping and landing. That has to slowly be built up. He can’t get cleared and then start doing some crazy drills. You lose some of the muscle connectivity when you’re in a boot for a while, so his process has more complexity to it than somebody who hasn’t been injured.
The goal is to get him ready to play in Summer League, but we don’t want to marry ourselves to that just in case he isn’t 100 percent ready for that. There certainly can’t be any rushing with him.

MT: We knew that Julius lost around 18 pounds by the end of the season. How?

DiFrancesco: He was in a boot for the tibia and for the foot for an extended period of time, so he wasn’t burning the calories that he normally would be when he could move freely. So he put on a bit of weight, but that was totally expected. When the boot was off, things changed. Performance enhancement is done in the weight room primarily, but body composition changes that also enhance your performance are done in the kitchen. If you’re going to lose some weight, you’re going to primarily do that in the kitchen. One of the things we did was go right to Whole Foods, and I asked Julius if he’d eat a big salad with lots of tasty but healthy things in it, if he knew what to look for, and he said yes. So we put that all together, and that was especially important for him from a bone-healing standpoint. You have to address guys’ diets to make sure they’re getting enough nutrient enrichment to help prevent issues with bone breaks. I was really impressed with the willingness of Julius to address his diet, among several other things like his activity, and the weight just started to fall off.

MT: In one sense, Randle’s getting hurt may have put him on this course to better nutrition far earlier than had he remained healthy. Is that possible?

DiFrancesco: I don’t see how it can’t be. Some guys will have that light switch come on eventually, but sometimes it takes something big to (elicit that change). Many guys have to learn the hard way. If you don’t have that nutrition change until you’re 25, you could have caused a lot of damage and just been getting away with it.

MT: Athletically, physically … how would you evaluate Randle moving forward after going through these injuries?

DiFrancesco: Being a little more lean for him is only going to help him, because his frame is robust no matter what. We can keep him lean, but he’s going to have big, giant hips and a big, solid upper body. That’s just how he’s put together. His body is some combination between Metta World Peace and Zach Randolph. If you picture Metta in his most athletic days, while Zach is just a big, solid guy out there. Julius being a little more lean without 10-15 extra pounds of non-functional body fat weight does not reduce his power and explosiveness at all. If anything, it helps.

MT: Are you seeing that explosiveness start to come back?

DiFrancesco: Yes. No question. And for a guy like him, with the ball in his hands once he’s cleared to do more work, the explosiveness is going to be even more obvious. We’re doing a lot of work to retrain his body to be able to handle the forces he’ll need, and you can already see it coming back in spurts.

MT: With Clarkson, Byron Scott said he’d like to see him put on a bit of weight, as with any rookie. What conversations do you have with Scott and Clarkson to turn that wish from the coach into results?

DiFrancesco: I try to have that conversation with both Byron and Mitch Kupchak, because I like to know what they’d like before I give a suggestion. They know what they need a player to do on the court far better than I do. So getting that information from them is important. I’ll note that Clarkson has actually gained 10 pounds of muscle since he walked into our doors. He came in around 179 pounds at Summer League, and he’s sitting around 189 now. He doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him; his body fat sits between 6 and 9 percent, which is more sophisticated than a traditional pinch test, where he’s probably be 5 percent. And you don’t really want to be much lower than that, because our body’s most efficient fuel source is fat.
Management wanted him to put on some muscle to better deal with bigger guards, and to act as body armor for him when he drives into the paint. We want Jordan to be the one delivering hits, not taking them on a slight frame. And we pushed around a lot of weight in here, a lot of sets and a lot of reps, and he put on the 10 pounds pretty quickly.

MT: People may not have noticed his growth in that way, because he didn’t really start playing noticeable minutes until January.

DiFrancesco: That’s right. He’d already added the lean mass by then. If you saw a picture of him with his shirt off now versus at Summer League, you can tell. And I think he’ll put on another eight to 10 pounds in the next couple of years, just because he loves to work. He’ll do whatever you ask of him, and that’s really going to be fun to watch. You can already see him being hard for other guards to keep up with in terms of speed and explosiveness in the stacked Western Conference. When he adds even a bit more mass to really make them feel him, I think that’s going to really help. And it’ll discourage any other guards that might want to post him up.

 

Thanks for sharing, very interesting interview. Lots of ositive information about our young players. What stood out to me the most was how Kelly seemingly has been the biggest workaholic of the group. That's very encouraging, I expected Randle, Clarkson and Davis to work a lot but somehow Kelly dod not strike me as a hard worker. He too has could stick around and be an actual contributor - the talent and BB IQ is there.

Overall nice to hear that the young players our "worst" FO in the NBA has assembled during the last couple of seasons all seem to not only be talented but also motivated. I have very high expectations of them, now let's get that top 5 pick and add one more future star and hopefully we can start enjoying to watch this team again.

 

Yeah, I liked what he said about Kelly as well. Kelly worked hard last year, but unfortunately, he hurt his hamstring and was out for much of the year. Then, he had a stint where he played the 3 and that didn't go over really well. We're high on Kelly, but he needs to stay healthy next year which is the key. Byron also needs to keep him at the 4 full-time. If those two things could happen, I expect a productive year out of him.

Clarkson also surprised me. He already gained 10 pounds and it sure did look like it over the course of the year. I like what that they want to prepare his body to give damage out instead of taking damage to his body. In the long-term, that will benefit Clarkson.

 

Loved this:

I mean, these guys are professionals when it comes to this stuff. It's easy to blame these guys (and Vitti) when we can't get our guys back on the court, but when you have old timers like Nash and Kobe taking most of the trainers time, there's just less attention to the other guys and things start to domino. Remove Nash from the equation, add in a couple young bloods who won't command the same amount of attention as older players, and the training staff is back on track.

 

the Clarkson stuff was really interesting/encouraging.

 

Totally agree on keeping Kelly at the 4. If Randle pans out as much as all of us hope he does and Kelly can develop into a solid stretch 4, we basically are set at this position for the foreseeable future.

The coments on Clarkson suprprised me too. I was as impressed as everybody with his play, but did not notice the additional 10 pounds. Generaly, my impression is that the conditioning coach is doing a hell of a great job.

 

I noticed and commented on them at some point in March or April. (wasn't sure, but he looked like it to me) ..... and if the case, thought it was impressive considering he's out there playing big minutes balls to the wall trying to do what Byron wants and get better and keep his starting position. That's tough to do with a lean young guy, I guess unless he's being really dedicated with the weights and everything the trainers are telling him.

 

I remember you mentioning it. Another 8-10 lbs would be great; I remember one specific play when we were playing Portland at home; Affalo had tried to back him down in the post and couldn't move him (Clarkson). I'd have to find it. It's in one of the highlight videos. It surprised me.

 

I still need to understand, after years and years of not understanding, why it is "illegal" to go forward though someone who has defensive position between the offensive player and the basket, but "legal" if the offensive player is going backwards and has the heft and strength to pull it off??