NFL STARS DON’T reach the top of their game on their own. Behind the subject of every highlight reel is a team of experts tasked with fine-tuning his body for peak performance. That’s certainly the case for Cleveland Browns All-Pro Myles Garrett, who credits his wellness team’s multi-faceted approach for helping the veteran defensive end to a stellar 2023 season.
Four years ago, Garrett decided to enlist a wellness-focused roster to shape his off-season training. That wellness team, led by co-GM Mike Mancias (the chief performance advisor to LeBron James) and physical therapist and biomechanist Vinh Pham, also includes athletic performance coach Brian Buck.
Buck, a former professional baseball player now based in Dallas, has worked in the athletic performance field for 14 years. In the NFL off-season, he spends five mornings a week with Garrett, utilizing a sports science approach within a specific training plan designed collaboratively (the wellness team also includes Pham, Mancias, physical therapist Jon Lee, and others).
The results have been good, to say the least. Garrett has totaled at least 12 sacks in each of the past four seasons, and was named the league’s Defensive Player of the Year for 2023. Just as importantly, he’s remained largely injury-free, another goal of Buck and the team–Garrett played in 58 of 59 games over the last three seasons, a consistency he hopes to continue in 2024. We spoke with Buck about training Garrett as the Texas native prepares for his eighth NFL season.
MEN’S HEALTH: Myles Garrett seems like such a gifted natural athlete–his 58-inch box jump is just one example. What makes him so special?
BRIAN BUCK: Even in year three of working with him, there’s stuff he does on a daily basis that blows me away. The way that he does things with ease and his natural athletic gift. Even more than that, his ability to recover and adapt to certain training stimuli where others take twice as long as he does. There’s something special about what he has.
MH: You build on that natural ability with his training. Take bench press. How do you elevate a strength move like that?
BB: What I learned with Myles early on is that he can do bench presses in his sleep. He has that innate ability. Where it translates to the game, and how I like to train Myles, is to incorporate in a full-body movement. Isolation can be good early in the off-season to build up the structural support needed. Once that phase is over, and we have built back the structure and function to handle more intense loading we start getting into true strength work. Strength is specific–it’s not related to a specific exercise per se, it’s in the positions he’s in in the game.
He’ll do stuff standing up, he’ll do stuff kneeling—I like to get his torso involved with upper body movement. He has a lot of mobility for a big, powerful guy, so we challenge him to produce force with his entire kinetic chain, which is then expressed through the upper limbs. There will always be a split-stance component or something that’s more chaotic in nature and related to how he’s challenged in an in-game scenario. No rep will be exactly the same. It could be a different angle, height, etc. The variability is the key that I’m looking at, since that will be a consistent thing he’ll deal with throughout the year on the field.
MH: So with honing that variability in strength by introducing chaotic elements, are you also focusing on stability?
BB: It’s like shooting the cannon off the canoe. You can’t have power without stability. That stability piece—it’s loading those tissues with a lot more intensity and heavier loads, and then it’s how we can handle high velocity and different angles. That’s what Myles likes, and that’s what challenges the system. That’s where training gets fun. We can lift heavy stuff, but then throw or move it at a higher clip in order to truly express that quality. The power is mixed in later once we have those bases covered–we bring loads down and speeds up. Can he throw the same weight around faster as we progress over the days?
MH: Once the off-season begins, do you train in phases? Are you training toward a specific date or goal prior to training camp?
BB: Coming into the off-season, there’s a laundry list of things we’ll try to get back to homeostasis. The season is filled with unending trauma. Week to week, he’ll compensate in a way that his body isn’t even aware of. When we get him back in our hands, we think, “let’s figure out what’s going on here, let’s get a feel for where you’re at. Let’s rebuild this.” So early on, the first month or so, is a general phase, often termed GPP (general physical preparedness). We want to build up the structural components and address any potential glaring imbalances to promote overall muscle symmetry and joint health. And at the same time, build the base level of fitness which will lay the groundwork for an effective transition to more specific work that lies ahead.
Then the next four to six weeks is typically getting into higher demand strength work. Now we’ll add load and really challenge the system. We’re talking about a set of five or three or even heavy doubles or a max single, really pushing the system to exert maximum force. Again, these don’t have to be the traditional bilateral movements like squat, bench, or deadlift. These loading schemes can apply to unilateral movements, landmines, sleds or other stimuli as well—that’s the level Myles is at and we will challenge him each week.
Once that strength is set and we feel it’s adequate and we can compare to last year’s numbers, then we bring up velocity, power, and more of a chaotic nature. I prefer to spend as little time as possible in a strength phase and get out of the rigidity of formal weight room movements. I’m not making Myles better by taking his back squat from 650 to 675 pounds. I’d much prefer to get him on the field, and start to do things at high velocities where we really get more bang for the buck. That’s where the athleticism for Myles starts to shine: His sprint and agility work. It’s that chaotic nature that prepares the tendons, muscles and ligaments to handle abrupt stressors. Myles isn’t built like your average defensive end, he’s as skilled as they come no matter what sport or position. He can do it all.
Toward the end of the off-season, one of the qualities that I really push with him is his overall density and ability to do the same amount of work in less time, with less energy expenditure. I limit rest time and I have him in good biomechanical positions even when he’s tired. I want that resilience.
MH: And with those phases, are you also introducing a new focus area each off-season? Or work specific to his position, body type, etc., that maybe not even an elite defensive end is focusing on?
BB: One of the things we initially saw and evaluated with him was a lack of lumbopelvic stiffness. If it remains too lax, you can have issues in the low back, groin, sports hernia, etc. Usually there needs to be an increase in rigidity in that region to stop the leakage of force when you change direction and transfer forces at high rates. So for him, a lot of what we do involves tempo, pausing, uneven or offset loads, so it really turns on his trunk to maintain that rigidity throughout the course of a movement. A mainstay in most of our training is intensive bracing, no matter what the quality we are focusing on.
MH: Myles spoke a lot about his core stability, even when talking about upper body strength. Is that a focus for you as well?
BB: One thing Myles does every day, without fail, is he has a core routine that he goes through before we even start training. That has become a mainstay for him. I’ve been there on Sundays in-season, and we do that in his hotel room before the game with Jon Lee, his therapist. It’s just a good, well-rounded routine before he starts his training and gets his trunk activated. Once it’s activated, his body feels better, he’s looser, he can transfer force through that kinetic chain. It’s how we load things and do things in the off-season as well. Something as simple as a 45 [pound plate] on one side of the barbell and a 25 on the other. A very uneven load and he does overhead lunges and the core has to stabilize through the movement. Challenging that trunk stability and rigidity—that pays dividends. That’s something he takes pride in now.
MH: You mentioned workouts in his hotel room before games. Do you travel to all of his games and train him during the season as well?
BB: I go to three or four games a year. If I’m not there, I’m watching the game, and our wellness team does this, too. We’ll be in a group text during the game and talk about things we see. We’ll take direct plays and talk about them with him. He’s a student of the game as much as he is a superb athlete. If you bring up something you’ve noticed and thought it could’ve been done better, he’s all ears.
MH: Does that mean you also pause your data collection during the season?
BB: The Oura Ring is one piece of consistent data in-season. Myles wears that, we share that with each other on the app so I can see how he’s doing. Sleep is something we try to build on each year. It’s a constant challenge to find a place to rest and get really good regenerative sleep. We’re always trying to stay ahead of that.
MH: You train him off the field and then you see him on it. From your perspective, what set him apart this past year, especially as compared to the roster of elite defensive ends throughout the league?
BB: What I noticed early on—and he kept doing it toward the end of the year—was his ability for repeated bouts of serious intensity in the fourth quarter. A lot of that is because we prepare that way toward the end of the off-season. He’s not fully recovered when you go into the next set.
If we think it’s necessary, we’ll add some basic Zone 2 work when he’s back at his house to maintain that aerobic capacity and speed up the healing process, so even in December, he still feels like he’s in really good shape. We’ll go about that in a way that minimizes joint stress while maintaining cardiovascular health.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
