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SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Once upon a time, Nick Bosa ate like a college guy.
He subsisted on Chipotle during the day. When the bars closed in the wee hours, he and his crew hit McDonald’s. His go-to order: a McGriddle, 550 calories of sausage, egg, American cheese and gooey goodness.
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When he went home to South Florida, Sunday dinners consisted of penne, gravy, short ribs and meatballs. Absolutely scrumptious, but …
“If there was one place where there was a weakness, it was my diet,” the 49ers star said.
Not anymore.
Chipotle is out and ceviche is in. Short ribs have been replaced by tuna poke. And early morning McGriddles have been washed away by freshly squeezed fruit juices — lots and lots of fruit juices.
“You should see my kitchen on juice(-making) days,” Bosa said. “It’s like the produce section of a grocery store.”
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The results are written all over his face. His cheeks are leaner than when he entered the league in 2019. And his abs? You could do a few baskets of laundry on his washboard, which was on full display during summer practices. Bosa said he’s dropped to around 9 percent body fat, one of the lowest on the team.
Most significant, he’s shaved fractions of seconds from the time it takes him to fire out of a three-point stance and crash into the pocket.
“I make my money in 10-yard bursts, for sure,” the 49ers defensive end said.
Those 10-yard bursts are interesting. Before he was drafted, Bosa’s 10-yard split was 1.55 seconds, a strong time for a 266-pounder like him. This offseason, his splits were routinely below 1.5 seconds, which is squarely in the oh crap range if you’re an NFL quarterback.
Just how absurd are those times for someone of Bosa’s size? According to The Athletic’s Dane Brugler, only eight cornerbacks had sub-1.5-second splits prior to the most recent draft and just one pass rusher, 249-pound Amare Barno, was under that mark with a 1.49-second split.
And Bosa’s have been faster than that.
“My starts — if I’m not under a 1.50 on my 10-yard starts, then my nervous system probably isn’t on it that day,” Bosa said. “I’m in the 1.4 range every time.”
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Tackle Mike McGlinchey can give a first-person account of Bosa’s annual progress. He recalled his initial pass-protection snap of the summer when No. 97 zipped by like a blur.
“It was like, ‘Oh, he got even faster,'” McGlinchey said. “I don’t know what’s in the water down in South Florida with him and his brother. But the two of them, they’re so meticulous, they’re so professional. They understand training and nutrition and all that kind of stuff better than just about anybody I’ve ever been around.”
BOSAAAAA
No. 97 checks in at 25 on the #NFLTop100 list 🐻@nbsmallerbear
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) August 22, 2022
When players skip OTAs and other non-mandatory workouts, NFL teams often react like they’ve gone AWOL. When Bosa’s not around in the spring, the 49ers merely shrug and know what he’s doing off-site is extremely valuable.
“You see it in his work, in how he looks, in how he plays,” McGlinchey said. “He maximizes everything about himself. And it’s the reason he gets better every single year he goes home.”
The two major changes in Bosa’s training methods have been born of big injuries.
The first occurred in 2018 after a core muscle tear ended his final season at Ohio State. He went to live in Southern California with his older brother, Chargers pass rusher Joey Bosa, who got Nick working with his personal trainer, Todd Rice.
Two years earlier, Rice had been part of the Chargers strength and conditioning staff and had given a presentation to the team’s rookies on the importance of flexibility. Rice had studied Olympic weightlifters in Sweden, Poland and Bulgaria and had marveled at their scientific approach to training.
“It was, what makes Olympic lifters stay healthy even though they’re lifting, minimally, 2 1/2 times their body weight in a clean and jerk?” Rice said in a phone interview. “And yet they don’t have the injuries that a lot of college and NFL athletes have.”
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The difference was their pliability, which was what Rice explained to the Chargers rookies following a hot practice in Southern California. He wasn’t sure if any had paid attention until Joey approached him afterward and said he’d been having pain in his knees, back and hamstrings. He thought Rice’s half-hour stretching routine might help.
“And Joey came in and did it later that day,” Rice recalled. “And it was not easy. We evaluated his flexibility, which was not good. And definitely not where it needed to be.”
Rice said most football players would rather concentrate on the bodybuilding aspect of training, the one in which you pump yourself up and then preen in front of the mirror. Flexibility? It’s boring. It takes time and concentration. Many players come in for an initial session and never come back.
Joey, however, didn’t just stick with the routine. When the season ended, he hired Rice to be his year-round private trainer. After all, his knee and back pain had gone away and suddenly the stiff-legged edge rusher was bending like a ballerina. Joey can lie on his back and bring his legs as far back as his head. Little brother Nick has quadriceps like oak stumps, but he can reach 10 inches past his toes with his legs locked in a sitting position.
Today, Nick is just as big a convert as his brother. He likes to torment Rice by sending video clips of college weight room scenes where a player squeezes out a personal best in, say, the squat and then is mobbed by frenzied teammates. The joke, of course, is that the lifts aren’t technically correct, that the flexibility needed to do them safely and productively is missing. The college guys are lifting like meatheads when they should be doing it like eggheads.
“I have a library of all the videos Nick and Joey have sent me knowing that it makes my stomach turn,” Rice said with a laugh. “Nicky sends ’em to me all the time. Then again, it kind of makes me smile because it tells me they know what’s not right.”
It’s easy to see why the Bosas speak about Rice’s routine with near-religious zeal.
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The brothers are the type of people who want to know the science behind what they’re doing, and Rice gives them plenty of material. Everything they do in South Florida from February to July is timed or measured, even the warmups. That’s allowed Nick to keep track of his progress. He’s gotten quicker every offseason — even last year when he was recovering from an ACL tear. The most recent offseason has been the best yet, which makes you wonder how high his sack total might soar in 2022.
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“I’ve upped my maxes in squats and benches this past year pretty substantially,” he said. “My sprinting numbers are better than they’ve ever been. My agility drill numbers are better than they’ve ever been.”
The 2022 offseason also included a twist to the routine in the form of a 4,000-square-foot warehouse that Joey bought and converted into a private gym. How private? There are two members: him and Nick.
Training got tricky in recent years because of COVID-19. The new gym essentially makes their sessions pandemic-proof and was custom built with a full kitchen, hot and cold therapy sections and a basketball court-like suspended floor that’s easier on the joints.
Nick said the one-time warehouse is in a nondescript commercial area and there’s a mechanics shop next door.
“They’re definitely confused, I think, when they see us pull up in our Teslas and walk out,” he said. “And they’re all working on cars. There’s no signs or anything. We just keep it low-key.”
The final piece of Bosa’s training regimen also followed an injury, a 2020 ACL reconstruction that included a torn MCL and torn lateral meniscus.
During his rehabilitation, he reasoned that he already had a workout routine that was rigid and science-based and that his diet ought to match. So he hired a chef, Ana Machado, who’s been executive chef at restaurants and taught culinary arts at local universities and who immediately began drawing up a menu for a defensive end who devours quarterbacks.
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Bosa grew up in an Italian American household, loved pasta — the richer, the better — and equated carbohydrates with energy. Suddenly those were out, largely replaced by fish that Machado finds at a market near his Fort Lauderdale house.
“It’s a ton of raw fish,” he said. “Raw salmon and tuna. She does a ceviche with grouper and sea bass, which is unreal. And then a chef’s salad. She makes a ton of variety. It never really gets boring. It’s tasty. It’s not a chore.”
Bosa said he starts the day with a green juice. Machado will come in one day with bags full of fruits and vegetables, which she chops, slices, squeezes and turns into six big containers that go into his refrigerator. He’ll wake up, drink one of those and go for a run.
For breakfast, it’s egg-white frittatas with ground bison — “Bison is leaner,” he says — with turkey bacon, chorizo and a pile of spinach, peppers and onions.
Then it’s another meal every three hours or so, perhaps a ceviche at 1 p.m. followed by a salmon crudo at 4 p.m. and tuna poke for the last big meal of the day.
“I think there was kind of an adaptation period for my body,” he said. “But now my body operates better and I don’t really need as much. I’m never feeling overly full. And I feel plenty of energy during my workouts.”
The 49ers defensive end wants everyone to know he’s not completely monastic.
He’ll have a glass of wine on Saturday nights during the offseason. Everyone celebrated Joey’s 27th birthday in July at a fancy restaurant and Nick admits he indulged in a dessert. His cheat meal no longer is a McGriddle, but it’s not exactly health food, either.
“It’s a steak, like a fatty steak,” he said. “On the weekends I’ll have a ribeye. Because when I do fatty things, it doesn’t affect me nearly as bad as eating a pizza.”
But sodas and sugars are either out or are extreme rarities. His beloved pastas are, too. And now he feels quicker, stronger — better — than he’s ever felt.
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“I’ve had a few injuries,” he says, letting that statement sink in. “I know that football is what I want to do for a long time. So I felt like I have to maximize everything.”
(Top photo: Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
