Workouts about staying healthy, not getting even stronger
He is bigger, stronger, faster than virtually everyone. He is so uncommonly, physically dominant that the person tasked with training this supreme athlete is playing the long game to keep Saquon Barkley powered up for a decade. “When it comes to an athlete like Saquon, there’s only so much faster and so much stronger he can get or wants to get,’’ Ryan Flaherty told The Post. “I would rather way over-index on the injury prevention side than on the speed and strength side because there’s laws of diminishing return.’’
Ever since the Giants took Barkley with the No. 2 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, Flaherty as vice president of performance at Nike has worked with him, in concert with Aaron Wellman, the Giants’ strength and conditioning coach. Once Flaherty got a look at those arms and outrageous legs, got a feel for Barkley’s zealous work ethic and listened to his stated goals, Flaherty realized his mission was less instant gratification and more about adding time to the warranty.
“He wants to play a minimum of 10 years and he wants to be able to go out on his own terms,’’ Flaherty said. “He doesn’t want to go out having to be forced out because he’s injured. To do that you have to be healthy.’’
Looking chiseled from a block of granite, the 6-foot, 232-pound Barkley may appear impervious but he is not.
A revelation: “He’s struggled with a little bit of tendinosis in his knee, which over time is due to a poor movement pattern,’’ Flaherty said. “When you fail to understand how to land or change direction — he puts load on his hips, sometimes he puts too much stress on the knees. For Saquon, with how powerful and explosive he is, all that power and explosiveness and force is driving through his joints, he’s at a higher risk for injury than a Tom Brady is, given that he’s so explosive. There’s a lot that can happen on a play. There’s more exposure.’’
It is the life of an NFL running back.
“He’s battling statistics in terms of injury rate,’’ Flaherty said. “The amount of hits he’s gonna take and how fast and explosive he is can potentially put him in a situation where he breaks a tackle that most people shouldn’t and gets exposed to a hit to his knees. The risk of injury for him on just every play is higher than just about any other position.”
Focusing on decreasing the imbalance and asymmetry in Barkley’s left and right sides — an imbalance everyone has, to a degree — Flaherty is attempting to reduce the risk of injury. There has been extensive work on Barkley’s gait , which needed repair, as he ran with what is called back side mechanics — his foot motion swings behind his body and not underneath it, limiting the stride and the amount of force he can achieve.
Flaherty — who al s o works directly with Serena Williams and Brooks Koepka — concentrated this offseason on improving Barkley’s biomechanics and the results indicate he is actually faster than before. Barkley was previously timed at 1.88 to 1.90 seconds in the Flying 20 drill (attaining top speed after 20 yards) and now he is clocking in at 1.78 to 1.80, correlating to a 4.3 second 40-yard dash. He ran 4.4 at the NFL Scouting Combine in 2018.
“You combine that with a year of experience, he’s almost a tenth of a second faster in the 40-yard dash, it could be scary what he’s able to do this year, even with the defenses focused on him,’’ Flaherty said.
How scary? Flaherty and Barkley reviewed seven runs in 2018 that might have gone for touchdowns with one extra step of getaway speed.
Barkley, after seeing the benefits of this training, is all-in, sometimes too much so. Flaherty got word back in March that, unbeknownst to him, Barkley was sneaking out on Saturdays to run hills.
“He was running scared from competition in his mind he believes is outworking hi m,” Fl a her ty sa i d, “What he doesn’ t realize is he’s outworking everybody.’’