The Old-School Tactics DK Metcalf Uses to Build Unreal Strength

This memoir is portion of Males’s Successfully being‘s Discover NFL Stable package, a series of tales that stumble on different kinds of bodily and mental well being it requires to reach the toughest sport on earth. Be taught the whole tales here.

GET READY FOR DK Metcalf’s dirty secret. You’d mediate a six-foot-four, 235-pound slab of muscle would eat some high-protein, the whole lot-injurious-free diet, particularly when priming for the greatest season of his football existence. Nonetheless as Metcalf speaks on this Zoom in late April, he’s . . . bingeing immediate meals. “It’s vacation,” he says between bites, “so I’m having french fries.” He goes on. “I’ll characterize it as this: I’m a beefy-ass at heart. If I didn’t play football, I’d now not care about my physique.”

No longer that anybody will imagine him, because every time DK (valid name: DeKaylin) Metcalf takes the discipline for the Seattle Seahawks, he stands out, due to a grisly blend of Thor-level size and Shaded Panther athleticism. Customarily Metcalf is all explosive energy, the form that fueled his 73-yard discover-and-lumber-a long way from two Cowboys corners final year. Other times he’s channeling mental energy, the form that drives a man to drag down a streaking security half his size on an interception return (Arizona’s Budda Baker in a gradual-legendary 2020 play). After which there’s Metcalf’s internal most licensed show of energy, the brute force he uses to dam, which was on masks when he forklifted Commanders DB Kamren Curl (who’s also superbly jacked) yards upon yards past the sidelines all the diagram thru a recreation final season.

How did Metcalf assemble this energy? By ignoring damaged-down well being tips esteem “restoration” and “load administration” and specializing in one thing rather more efficient: coaching f*#%ing exhausting. This present day’s energy-and-conditioning panorama assuredly leans into complex gymnasium-jargon principles that help athletes and common joes alike now not to push their limits. Metcalf isn’t down with that. Two years previously, the league’s wrecking-ball wideout took a sledgehammer to his workout routines, ditching Instagram-horny workout routines and tips esteem heart-rate variability. His recent template: He maxes out his muscles and engine in each and each sweat sesh. “Classic lifts the put I’m in a position to peep the put I’m weight-vivid and check my energy,” says Metcalf, who is a Lululemon ambassador, “but additionally I feel esteem I’m dirty and getting after it in the gymnasium.”

It’s an extinct-college manner that pulls on his college and high college days (and allows for french fries)—and it’s working. Metcalf arrives in 2024 unusual off help-to-help 1,000-yard receiving campaigns, even though he spent final season catching passes from journeymen Geno Smith and Drew Lock. The provoking portion: His next step might perchance well well well even be rather more impressive.

That’s because he’s excited. He’s aware that he’d never been in the pages of Males’s Successfully being prior to this disaster. “So I ended studying,” he says. (Gulp.) He’s also aware that he’s now not the prototype receiver NFL scouts desire. The league’s in the midst of a love affair with immediate Smurf wideouts, due to Tyreek Hill’s dominance in Miami, Amon-Ra St. Brown’s ascendance in Detroit, and Xavier Worthy’s drafting by Kansas City. “The one part it’s probably you’ll well well’t coach,” says Metcalf with exiguous annoyance, “is web out how to be immediate.” His mission: remind each person that it’s probably you’ll well well’t coach light-tempo freight put together, both. All he needs to achieve is tumble PlayStation numbers (and more YouTube-worthy blocks).

“I’m now not searching to suit in with no person’s mentality,” he says. “I’m gonna be a total football player.” To reach these heights, he stumbled on more energy this off-season, french fries be damned.

WELL, THIS DOESN’T happen assuredly. Metcalf is struggling. It’s mid-March, and Metcalf has gorgeous started his off-season program. He’s in UCLA’s weight room (his identical old off-season hang-out), his hands greedy a loaded barbell on the ground weighing a huge total of 288 pounds. He’s going to attempt to energy-comely it six times, a show of explosive energy that can gas him to lumber a long way from more DBs—and that would also keep an Olympic weightlifter to shame.

Metcalf takes a deep breath, then powerfully stands with the weight, pulling the bar up toward his shoulders. He drops the weight to the ground. He does four reps, then tries a fifth. With the exception of the bar received’t hasten. “I kinda pissed myself off,” he says. “I couldn’t hit these final two reps.”

Metcalf nearly never misses his reps, says his trainer, Trey Shaw. He in actual fact makes a show attain the different, sneaking in a further web all the diagram thru each and each position. A year previously, when Metcalf started working with Shaw, he settled below a bench press and ripped thru reps. Shaw went to rob the bar after counting them out. Metcalf hissed at him to cease—then did a few more. “I idea I miscounted,” Shaw says. “It would now not topic what I request for, he constantly does one [more] web.”

Customarily that implies doing a position of heavy barbell lunges for ten reps, then including a further. On Fridays, he assuredly runs 100-yard sprints. Shaw will request him to achieve six. He’ll gut out seven. No topic he does, he goals to push exhausting enough that the final web is a disaster. This taxes his physique, he says, while constructing mental energy. “There’s a quote: The physique will stop long prior to the mind will,” says Metcalf. “I mediate it’s gorgeous pushing myself . . . constantly searching to put together myself for a fourth quarter of a recreation.”

This form to your coaching stipulations you to snatch it’s probably you’ll well well constantly push harder. Metcalf proves this a few weeks later, when he returns to UCLA and these 288-pound cleans. He simply does six comely reps—and that trademark seventh. “I do know I’ve gathered potentially thousands of reps bigger than potentially the licensed particular person that’s in the gymnasium doing what’s on their exercise card,” he says later. “Every thing to me is mental.”

Metcalf discovered this habit from his dad, Terrence Metcalf. Terrence, who spent seven years in the NFL playing offensive line, started bringing his son to off-season workout routines when DK was seven. When Terrence retired in 2010 and moved the household to Mississippi, he spent rather more time coaching with his son.

Every so regularly father and son would head to Ole Omit, the identical campus the put Terrence had developed into an All-American (and the put DK would superstar), and lumber sprints. Other times, they’d hit the weights at DK’s high college weight room. Wherever they were, Metcalf noticed his dad pushing exhausting. “My pops constantly educated me to gorgeous attain a further web, and I gorgeous constantly saved that with me,” he says.

Till he reached the NFL. Partly due to a fractured cervical backbone as a junior at Ole Omit, Metcalf slipped into the 2d round of the 2019 NFL draft, landing with the Seahawks. To steer clear of injuries, he ditched his one-extra-web philosophy. He spent his first few years as a talented in athletic coaching products and companies, and most of these clutch a kinder, gentler manner to getting experts recreation ready. In its put of pushing an athlete’s limits, professional trainers assuredly be obvious they steer clear of injuries and distress, limiting the balls-to-the-wall devices Metcalf adored. “No longer pronouncing the leisure was infamous with the coaching-facility manner of taking care of your physique,” he says, “but I imagine distress as potentially a upright part.”

So in the summer season of 2022, Metcalf shifted gears, selecting to determine alone. A year later, he employed Shaw, who understood the importance of gymnasium classics esteem squats and bench presses. “Finally,” Metcalf says, “I came to the conclusion of ‘I’m now not gonna attain any passive lifts.’ ”

FIRST HE SHOCKED you with his french-fry habit. Now he’s elegant you with his . . . steadiness? It’s June, and Metcalf’s doing his Males’s Successfully being shoot, making a exercise video on the Proactive Sports gymnasium in Los Angeles, a cutting-edge facility stuffed with the whole lot from Bosu balls to SkiErgs to Keiser machines (fueled by pneumatic resistance) to a pair of large sticks that athletes “jog” into the ground.

Shaw couldn’t originate this shoot, so Proactive’s Josh Tuerpe is working the exercise. He starts by asking Metcalf to steadiness on one foot on a Bosu, light weights in both hands. Metcalf leans forward and flares his arms, stretching his pecs and intriguing his leg steadiness.

It’s an exercise Metcalf has never performed, but he never breaks abolish. He has zero issues slaying the leisure Tuerpe asks for. It’s a reminder to all gymgoers: If an NFL receiver doesn’t need exotic workout routines or overpriced exercise equipment to assemble energy (and showcase that energy with recent strikes!), you seemingly don’t, both. “We keep on with licensed workout routines,” says Shaw. “He gorgeous needs to win in there and work.”

Metcalf does legs on Mondays, specializing in squats and lunges. Tuesdays are about bench presses. After a Wednesday off day, Thursdays carry explosive strikes (esteem energy cleans), and Fridays center on these sprints and on-discipline work. Metcalf determined this off-season that he wished to be quicker after the discover, so he’ll throw in extra foot-ability work on other days, too.

Every exercise lets Metcalf prove his energy. His most WTF scramble reinvents the farmer’s hurry: Metcalf holds heavy dumbbells, then walks up and down stairs. For the reason that strikes are in actual fact easy, says Shaw, Metcalf can deal with bright comely hundreds. “He’ll web the heaviest dumbbells he can web,” the trainer says.

Some trainers will expose you that the constant pushing might perchance well well well finally wear an athlete down. Metcalf says the different: He entered Seattle’s 2023 coaching camp in his excellent shape, a changeup from his behind coaching-camp starts of the past. “It’s in most cases me attacking the year,” he says, “as an different of vice versa.”

Metcalf can defend his energy in portion because he sneaks in extra restoration time than it’s probably you’ll well well realize, even when these moments don’t include compression boots and saunas. Throughout the off-season, he doesn’t put together on weekends or Wednesdays. And when the 2023 licensed season wrapped up, he took all of February to let mind and physique enhance.

He appears forward to retirement, when he’ll indulge that internal beefy-ass. “No longer M&M’s,” he says, thinking forward. “Nonetheless gummies and burgers. That’s what I sit down up for.”

For now he needs his energy so he can proceed to pummel (and lumber past/thru/around/over) NFL defenders. “I’m in a position to’t focus too worthy on the future,” he says. “I’ve gotta defend the put my toes are and deal with successful video games for this season.”

Plan DK Strength

Three licensed workout routines in DK’s routines. Originate each and each once per week.

Upstairs Farmer’s Elevate

Stand in entrance of a staircase retaining heavy dumbbells at your facets. Stroll up 10 to 12 steps. Turn around and hurry help down. That’s 1 position; leisure 60 seconds. Originate 3 devices, blasting forearms and core and constructing underrated help muscle, too.

Barbell Reverse Lunge

Stand with a loaded barbell held across your mid-help, abs and glutes tight. Step help along with your gorgeous foot, then bend on the knees and hips, reducing into a lunge. Press help to standing. Originate 3 devices of 8 to 10 reps per facet.

Striking Leg Steal

Inch, Metcalf trains his abs, too! Dangle from a pullup bar with an overhand grip, abs and glutes tight. Tuck your knees toward your chest. Lower with administration. Originate 3 devices of 8 to 10 reps.

This memoir appears in the September-October 2024 disaster of Males’s Successfully being.

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