The Takeover: Cal Strength (Episode 1)

Armen Hammer of FloElite, Danny Lehr and Charlie Zamora of Caffeine and Kilos are taking you inside the coolest weightlifting gyms with the best weightlifting coaches in the nation to see just what it’s like to train and hang with some bad ladies and gentlemen. This is The Takeover.

Episode 1 of The Takeover is with Dave Spitz at Cal Strength. The boys jump into his NFL Combine class’ linear speed workout in the AM and follow it up with the weightlifting team’s PM training session.

Here’s how Spitz breaks up the NFL Combine Class’ training week:

• linear speed work in the morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
• lateral speed in the morning on Tuesday and Thursday
• position specific on Saturday

Early stages of combine prep are an accumulation phase, which involves loading the athletes with a lot of resistance, geared towards helping them develop stride specific strength and suppressing test and endocrine to help later on when they taper and peak for the combine

Here’s how he breaks up the weightlifting team’s training week:

• Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 10am and 5pm sessions
• Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: 5pm sessions

The weightlifting workout we see here is the following:

Every 2 minutes x 8:
1 snatch (+5kg from last week if you hit seven of eight last week)

rest a few minutes

Build up to a heavy single clean & jerk (around 85% or so)