Cal Football: Torre Becton's Build a Bear Workshop, Pt. 2

Today, we continue our Q&A series with Cal head strength and conditioning coach Torre Becton.

You talked about Cam Goode and hammering him on eating more and putting on weight, what's that process like of getting someone like Cam to add weight?

The cool thing at Cal is that we have a sports dietician, Liz (Elizabeth McNear), we have her available to the guys, and she consults like a mad-woman. We understand they're college kids, and as much as we want them to eat as well as possible, we know what's going to happen. What we want to do is to make sure we're at least presenting options and resources to them.

Liz, in the offseason, she has nutrition classes that are optional, guys don't have to come, but you start to see who it's important to. She provides nutrition classes, and I'll give her the first five minutes of a workout to bring in a nutrition tip for the day, and advise the guys. In this business, if we can get two guys this week, instead of having an extra patty on that burger, instead of having fries, I'll still have the burger, but I'll add a salad, any decision that they make that contributes to it. Everybody's different, but we want to train them to make choices a certain way.

It was cool with Cam to see him finally keep that weight on and get it on, because to his credit in the offseasons, in the weight room he trains hard, and I can imagine it was frustrating for him. He's training hard, he's lifting, and he's losing weight, he's down to 209, 'I don't know why, just eat and talk to Liz, eat some more, drink a shake,' all that, and he's doing all these things you need to do. Make sure you sleep, make sure you hydrate, we just try to educate these guys as much as possible.

It's important and impressive to me that we train them so much and they're hearing the same things so frequently that they know, 'hey I lost four pounds this weekend,' then they can have a thought process that says 'Friday, I went out, and I probably could have hydrated a bit better,' whatever the process is, I don't want them to be surprised. If they gained weight, if they lost weight, we want to educate them in a manner so they know why it's happening. If they get stronger in the power clean, or the hang clean, we want them to know it was 'coach, it was back when we did 65% or 70% (of max weight) and I focused on my speed, I focused on technique, now when the weight got heavier, it's easy.' That's what makes me proud.

When you look at Cam, when he has a season that started so well, but immediately ended, how is it working with him as the offseason was going on?

There was a little hesitation, because when he hurt himself, I think he was a little bit wider, and then when he came back, he was a little bit heavier, and now we're going to start running you, start working you back into change of direction with the trainers and doing plyos, while the injury that he has is 'if I do this too hard, is it going to happen again?' You could tell he was frustrated a little, I pulled him into my office a couple times to encourage, to educate, like 'look dude, I understand, but don't let it get you down too much. We understand it's going to be frustrating, you're a competitor, you're a big part of what we're trying to do, you're an awesome player, but be frustrated and use that frustration as fuel to push yourself through it.'

I think he did that, Cam's a quiet person but he wears his emotions on his sleeve. You can tell when he's frustrated, you can tell when he's happy, you tell when he's aloof, you can tell when he's kind of too chill. He's got some quiet determination about himself, I think there was a time, where you would imagine so, there was a time where he'd be down about it, but he picked himself up, dusted himself off, got tired of his pity part, and came to work. He did as much as he could with his restrictions in the weight room. The cool thing is, we didn't have to run yet so (I said to Cam) 'we expect yo ass to get bigger.' (laughs). That was our conversation, 'you better get bigger, you ain't running, son.'

He's done it and now when we recruit kids or kids come in early, we say 'this is your baby weight.' When I talk to parents in recruiting, it's their baby weight. Just the nature of living out on your own, starting to physically mature between the ages of 18-22, you expect guys can look at food and get bigger, they can look at weights and get bigger. That's baby weight, and lucky for us, Cam is starting to find his 'man weight,' his grown-up weight, and it's going to serve us all well.

Do you see some things with Cam, just from what you've seen him build, and say he's going to be something big this season?

Yeah, I kind of keep a lot of what I see as far as football goes to myself, but you see some things, you see growth, you see these kids becoming, you see them starting to turn the corner and get over the hump. They start to understand what it takes to be successful, you can't just show up, you can't just come to the weight room and lift weights, you've got to do it a certain way. You can't just come out here and run and think you're going to get by and get better, and our guys are starting to realize that. Foundationally, we just try to hammer it, hammer it, hammer it, it's not good enough to show up, with games, with practice, with practice, with weightlifting, with conditioning in the offseason, it ain't good enough to just show up. You've got to come in here and be deliberate, you've got to be intentional with your actions and that's when you get results, and it sucks because you've got to put in so much, just to get this much out.

You've got to keep doing it, and I think that's why coach Wilcox wanted to give us essentially another off-season with these five/six weeks after spring ball.

It seems a bit like you played into the EarnIt hashtag, with everything you say

It's absolutely the way that you want to live, it's not just about football, it's about life. We want to teach these young men, no matter how we slice it, we're teachers, and we've got to make them understand that 2%, 3% of people go to the NFL from college football, so no matter how you slice it, at some point, football's going to end, then you've got to be a certain kind of guy in life.

I tell our guys all the time, if there's a certain kind of job you want or a certain place in life you want to be or a certain thing you want to do as far as helping people, helping your family, you've got to be willing to earn that, you've got to willing to do whatever it takes to go earn it. You're not going to have your hand out waiting for people to give you things, (otherwise) you'll be waiting a long time. We just want to train them to have a certain kind of spirit, to be willing to fight for what you want, be willing to put out and put in whatever it takes to get you what you want, and even if you don't achieve it, you're gonna get something positive out of it. I do think those guys have the mentality to earn everything, and the sky's the limit for them.

You talked about Chris Brown a bit, how much has he progressed in the short time you've had him out there, because he looks way better in his side to side agility?

That was one of the reason's we wanted to put Chris in the speed and agility group, because he walks in the door at 228 lbs, it's like:

'how old are you son?'

'I just turned 18'

(jaw drops)

Chris is, he's functionally strong, in the weight room he can be a 600 lb squat guy, but he's such a functionally strong guy, which leads to his ability to cut and change direction quickly. It leads to his ability to run fast, break away from people and create separation and run over people. I want to take more credit, I think that's a lot of mom and dad, but he does work. Chris is one of those guys that he doesn't need a lot of direction. He listens when you instruct him, but he also listens when I instruct someone else, so he doesn't make that same mistake.

He's a low maintenance guy, he's a hard hat and lunch pail guy. I'm being cliche, but he comes in every day to work. If you hear us at practice, I ask him every day 'is that all you've got?' He's like 'well, I've got more,' well 'let's see it, you're holding back, you'll lose it if you hold it,' I always try to get him to do more, especially when he runs through the coaches during a drill or knocks somebody over, like 'is that it, because if that's it I'm not overly impressed,' just to see if we can figure out how to push those buttons. I like him, because he's easily motivated, I love the way he works and approaches things. He's the epitome of earning things.

I think last year as a freshman, you want to figure everything out, you want to get everything down before you can really be comfortable and go, and I teach these kids that you don't play as a young guy because you're fast, you're strong or you're big. You play as a young guy because you can manage everything, you can manage meetings, you can manage practice, you can manage coaches yelling at you, you can manage workouts, you can have the strength coaches yelling at you all the time, you can handle classes and schoolwork and professors, the stringent academic schedule at Cal. If you can handle all those things, then you're probably going to play as a young guy.

You can see in a guy like him, once he's got a handle on everything, you see what we're seeing. He can just go play football, bump into people, he's like a Tonka Truck, he's like a fast Tonka Truck, bumping into people and things, knocking people over, it's fun to see, but primarily because of his approach, he comes ready to play every day, and that's cool. He is deliberate, he is intentional when it comes to practice and lifting weights and running and all those things. Not a lot of fluff with him, he doesn't spend a lot of time BSing around, he's not that guy.

It seems like there are a lot of guys that are in that 'taking care of business' mold

Yes, absolutely, and you've got to have that kind of diversity in the locker room as far as characters and personality.

Not everyone can be Evan Weaver?

Thank god, everyone can't be Evan Weaver, don't get me started (laughs)

When you're looking at Weav and Cam Bynum, what was the focus with them with regard to building during the offseason?

Leadership, during our two years here, those guys have done a great job of physically becoming what they have the ability to become. I think our first year, Cam Bynum started every game, he was 174-178, and this year, he started every game and he was above 190 lbs. Cam makes a concerted effort to do what's necessary to play, always out here, last year during the 10 week offseason during the winter, we would coach the crap out of these guys. We'd go back inside, we'd have a minute to decompress before we get to the next group, we want to just relax, and Cam comes in, 'hey coach, can you work with me on this part of the 40, this drill or this thing with change of direction so I can master it,' 'yeah, come one.'

He's a little obsessed and I'm fine with it. He wants to be great, and that's why he does the thing that he does every day. He's mentally entralled with becoming the best corner he can be. The best part of his mentality is that he's bringing people along with him.

Any time you come into the January offseason, you look and assess your team, you look at your team with a needs analysis, what did you lose, what do you need to gain. When you lose your seniors, you lose guys that have played a lot of football and you lose grown men, you lose 22-23 year olds. Now you've got some 18-19-20 year olds that have to fill those spots, so now, a guy like Cam, a guy like Weav that have played a lot over these last two years, we know they're going to check the box on coming every day, working deliberately, doing the things you need to do better physically, but additionally we're going to charge them with 'be a leader, bring somebody with you. Show the right way all the time.'

We lost Addison, we lost Pat Mekari, we lost Pat Laird, we lost guys that we depended on, now this next group of guys coming in, we lost Jordan Kunaszyk, 'Weaver, what are you going to do?' We lost Chris Palmer, we lost Alex Funches, now we need the next guys that are going to step up.