Dating back to his days as an all-purpose star at Stanford, Christian McCaffrey has been a unique blend of speed and quickness to go along with a well rounded skill set that allowed him to blend being a power back and one of the best receiving threats college football has seen out of the backfield in quite some time.
After being drafted by the Carolina Panthers, McCaffrey bulked up a bit over the past few years and recently shared an interesting nugget on how his conditioning has changed from running a bunch of 110s to a more football-specific approach.
The simple tweak to how he has decided to condition has significantly changed how he feels during games, which is really the end goal of conditioning in the first place. That last line of "...I can honestly say there were very few times I felt tired during a game," is a powerful statement on the effectiveness of his approach.
I'm no sports scientist, so I'm not sure if it's more mental that it is physical, but maybe McCaffrey's advice prompts staffs to take a closer look at how they condition during practices. Having a ten minute period to end practices with straight running is something that has seemed to dwindle quite quickly over the past few years, as a lot of programs now believe they get their conditioning in how they practice, but for those out there still doing that, McCaffrey's approach seems to be a great alternative.
[Cover photo via GQ]