INTERVIEW: Travelle Gaines, NFL Draft Prospect Trainer

Travelle Gaines, Director of Elite Athlete Development at Athlete’s Performance. He’s worked with superstar athletes such as Reggie Bush, Chris Johnson, Jon Beason and Bob Sanders. Travelle’s NFL Combine training program was recognized as one of four Tier A Training Programs in the country along with Athletes’ Performance, and his athletes have produced 100 top 10 finishes in seven different testing categories over the past three NFL combines.

They’ve also trained the last five number one picks and are currently training high profile players such as: AJ Green, Blaine Gabbert, Da’Quan Bowers, Robert Quinn, Cam Jordan, Julio Jones, Prince Amukamura and many more.

With so many players coming into your center to train, how do you make sure that guys get specialized attention?

When the athletes come to us, we take them through a full medical evaluation, we see where they’re at from a nutrition standpoint and their body is at in terms of faculty and muscle mass, and if these guys have any injuries and so we’ll build out a customized program for every athlete in their based on anything that they need. So everybody has a completely different workout.

So, if everybody has a different workout, I assume that applies to positions as well, so could you give an example of what might the differences in some of the drills be that the cornerbacks might be doing that the defensive lineman or linebackers aren’t really focusing as much on?

They all will do explosive lifts and different movements and 40 techniques, but for the defensive backs, we might do some longer change of direction drills, focusing on opening up their hips to turn and run. We might do some hip flexibility whereas with an offensive lineman we’ll focus on their initial first step and their punch, which is very important for them in the trenches.

How does preparing an athlete for the combine differ from preparing them for other sports or seasons?

These guys are here because they are training for a test, so they pretty much will go over the Wonderlic, board work, media preparation and they’ll practice their 40 times, their 225 bench, the 5-10-5, the L drills. They’ll practice all the things they have to do at the combine, whereas a veteran like, say, Terrence Newman, who’s in here training with us now, his workouts are totally different because he’s training for real life, practical situations. He’s just getting in great shape and getting ready to play the game of football.

What is an average day for an athlete in training at your performance center prepping for the combine?

They’ll have breakfast about 7 am. After breakfast they will take a pre-workout shake to get their muscle going. They’ll go through a regeneration phase, which is kind of like a movement prep to get their body warmed up to get going. After their movement prep, they’ll do a dynamic warm-up and then they’ll go through their first 60 minute speed session, whether it be linear or lateral. After that they will go through a 30 minute explosive lifting session. So after that first 90 minute workout, they will have a recovery shake and they will once again go through a regeneration phase at the cool tubes, getting their muscles ready to go. They will have a snack and hang out til lunch. In between the hang out time, they might watch some position drills or media prep or different things to get them ready for whatever specific aspects they’re preparing for. In the afternoon they’ll go through a similar thing. They’ll have a pre-shake, the regeneration phase, a 30 minute movement session, whether it be linear or lateral speed. Then they’ll go through a 60 minute strength session. Then they’ll have a recovery shake, regeneration and then go ahead and probably get an hour long massage. After that, they’ll go in and get their dinner and then go home. Probably go to bed around 9 pm and do it all over again the next day, six days a week for eight weeks.

I hear you talking about the shakes and the food, so with your nutrition plan, is it looking at the guys, their body fat percentage, their lean muscle mass and you look at what its gonna take to get them performing at their peak, and that determines the calorie level, etc?

That’s exactly how it’s set up. We wanna get the guys in the best possible shape and make sure that they’re goals are our goals, so if a kid comes in and weighs 240 pounds and wants to weigh 220 pounds, we do what has to be done to make sure he reaches those goals. Another thing we wanna do is lean these guys out, so that when all of our athletes come in, their body fat decreases significantly while they’re with us. We’ve been able to peel off 30 pounds of fat from an athlete and put on 30 pounds of muscle onto an athlete, whatever needs to be done, and the reason we’re so nitpicky and have it down to a science with the nutrition is because we need to know exactly whats going into the body to know what to get out of the body.

You said guys come to you with their ideal weight, but are you guys also able to weigh in and say, “This is where you should be at?”

Yeah, we take their thoughts, their agents thoughts and I have relationships and our other coaches have relationships with scouts and GMs and we take their say and come up with a figure and agree upon it and then aim towards that goal.

So feeding off that talk about listening to scouts, with guys that are going through position changes, is that something that the guys will come in and say they wanna do work for a given switch or is that something you set up after talking with scouts and agents?

Once again, their agent is typically the one that is selling them and working for them, so we rely on their agent on what exactly the scouts what to see from them.

I know it differs for each player, but what would you say most players need improvement on when they come to you guys from an agility or athleticism standpoint?

The biggest thing is the technique. A lot of the athletes have never learned how to run properly, so helping them learn running technique is probably the biggest thing that we see the most improvement on.

Are there any guys that you’re training right now that you think are really gonna perform well at the Combine?

I think some of the guys that are gonna do pretty well are Julio Jones, AJ Green, Jimmy Smith, Davon House who is a little under the radar. I think that Alex Green is gonna do very well. Robert Quinn is gonna do very well. I think for the most part, we have a pretty solid group of guys.

Just because you mentioned a lot of high profile names there, how do you handle the media attention that those guys get while they’re preparing? Do you funnel all that through the agents or does it come through the agents and you guys just need to deal with it as they come in?

We do have a media team, we have three front office people that work for us and do a phenomenal job, so we all kind of work together with the agents to make it happen. Because we have guys like Blaine Gabbert and Da’Quan Bowers and AJ and Julio, so many guys that we’re getting requests on every day to see how they’re doing.

One of the names you mentioned is intriguing because you talked about everybody coming in and doing a medical evaluation for you guys, specifically Bowers with his knee injury. How is he doing?

Well, it came out today that he is only gonna bench at the Combine, but he is gonna bench very well. He can run and perform at the weigh-ins, but I think that, with a lot of guys that are projected high, he just feels more comfortable doing his movements at his school. But the knee is fine and everything is fine. The guy is in phenomenal shape, which everybody is gonna see when he weighs in. He weighs the same, but he is much leaner, so he’s on fire.

You mentioned that Bowers is only gonna bench and every year there seems to be a story about a guy skipping a drill. Certainly, the QBs are under the microscope more than any other position. With Gabbert not throwing, can you tell us from the player and trainer standpoint, what one of the reasons is to not throw because it’s not always injuries.

I think the thing with QBs, when you’re in a situation like Blaine Gabbert or Cam Newton, when you’re a first round guy, it all comes down to timing issues. A lot of them prefer to throw at their Pro Day with receivers that they’ve been throwing with for three to five years rather than at the combine with a receiver that they just met five minutes ago. I think that’s why a lot of the QBs choose not to throw at the combine. As for Da’Quan, he just feels more comfortable running at Clemson and we support him in that.

Last combine question: how accurately do you think the combine represents these players and what they’ll able to do at the next level?

I think that the biggest thing that the NFL is really trying to do is get those guys in there and get teams to spend time with them. I think that that’s the biggest indication of the athlete and that people are gonna learn a lot more about them. They’re only 21 and 22 year old kids and someone is gonna give them a million dollars. Some kids, their true character and how they act and how they might act is all brought out to light in these combine interviews. So I think that the chalk talk, the medical and the interviews are the most important things. But you gotta understand, there’s always gonna be workout warriors and there’s gonna be guys like the kid from Florida last year, Spikes. He worked out like crap, but he knows how to play football. There’s some guys that are great football players that will test bad and there’s some guys that will test well that aren’t good football players. And that will be forever.

That’s a great lead-in for the next question: Who would you say, of the guys you’ve been training, who are some guys that are gonna surprise people at the next level. Maybe a guy who isn’t being talked about a lot, but can really play and is gonna enjoy a successful NFL career?

There’s a couple of guys. Mason Foster, the LB from Washington is gonna be a guy that’s gonna have a long career. He’s tough, he’s fast and he studies football. There’s another kid, Armon Binns from Cincinnati. He’s a bit under the radar. He’s a big kid and he can actually run. He’s had a very productive career, but he doesn’t get a lot of attention and I think he’s gonna open up some eyes at the combine. And Alex Green. The kid is 6’0” 225 and he can run. To me, I think this is a very weak RB class this year, with the exception of Mark Ingram, who, I know he won the Heisman last year, but I’m not overly impressed with. He has no flash, nothing to him. I think that when people see how big Alex Green is and how fast he is, he’s gonna open up some eyes. And then there’s another kid named Taiwan Jones from Eastern Washington and lemme tell you, he’s a stud muffin. I trained Reggie Bush, Chris Johnson, Marshawn Lynch, Ryan Mathews, LeSean McCoy. This kid is legit. He’s 6’1”, he’s 200 pounds and he can flat out fly. Unfortunately, he’s not gonna run at the combine, but at his pro day he’s gonna run in the low 4.3, high 4.2 range. The kid’s amazing and he’s a great kid too.

You said five years in a row you guys have had the number one overall pick, are you getting a sense that you’re gonna make it six? Are you hearing anything or is it still too early to tell?

Lemme tell you something, Da’Quan Bowers is one special kid. That’s all I’m gonna say. He’s something special. And he doesn’t care about money. He just wants to play football. You know there are guys that wanna do this and buy that. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about his contract or where he plays, he just wants to play football and when you see kids like that, that’s great. In the age of bling bling, you don’t get a lot of kids like that.