The 4-Hour Body: Hacking the NFL Combine

There’s a gym in the back of an industrial park in New Jersey, right next to a Chevy dealership. Guys in there rub horse liniment on their elbows between sets. McTarnahan’s Absorbent Blue Lotion - the stuff they use on racehorses. The fumes clear your sinuses from ten feet away.

This is Joe DeFranco’s gym. And if you want to make millions in the NFL, this is where you go.

The Ultimate Job Interview

Every February, the 330 best college football players get invited to the NFL Scouting Combine. Coaches and scouts spend a week measuring them - vertical jump, 40-yard dash, three-cone agility drill, bench press with 225 pounds.

One inch of vertical jump or one-fifth of a second on the 40-yard dash can separate a first-round pick from a guy who doesn’t get drafted at all. We’re talking millions of dollars versus nothing.

Sports agents know this. Their pitch to top college players? “Sign with me, and I’ll get you trained with DeFranco.”

DeFranco is so good the NFL had to change rules because of him. His athlete Mike Richardson ran the fastest three-cone drill ever recorded at an official Combine. How? DeFranco figured out that using a left-handed stance would save two steps in the first ten yards. Two fewer steps meant four-tenths of a second faster. The NFL scouts started banning left-handed starts. DeFranco didn’t care. He just found the next thing.

But Tim Ferriss wanted to see for himself. Was DeFranco actually that good, or was he just riding the coattails of genetic freaks?

Three Inches in Twenty Minutes

Tim showed up and did his best vertical jump. Twenty-two inches. Not impressive.

Then DeFranco started fixing things.

Flaw 1: Not enough shoulder drive. Shoulders contribute up to 20% of your jump height. Try running with your arms pinned to your sides - same idea. DeFranco told Tim to start with arms overhead like an Olympic diver, then throw them down as fast as possible to create elastic recoil on the way up.

Flaw 2: Pulling the arm back at the wrong time. Tim was hitting the measurement sticks on the way down, not the way up. His arm needed to retract during the upswing.

Flaw 3: Stance too wide. Feet just outside hip width was costing him one to two inches of standing height. Move the feet just inside the hips.

Result after those three fixes: 24 inches. Two-inch gain from technique alone.

Flaw 4: Tight hip flexors. This one is interesting. DeFranco uses static stretching on the hip flexors right before jumping - the one exception to his “no static stretching” rule. The goal is to temporarily weaken and elongate the hip flexors so they don’t restrict full leg extension. Hold each side for 30 seconds, nondominant side first.

After that stretch: 25 inches. Three-inch gain total. Tied the gym record for single-session improvement.

One of DeFranco’s athletes, Miles Austin, had a 42-inch vertical at 220 pounds. Brian Cushing, 250 pounds, had a 35-inch vertical. Cushing could put on a 20-pound weight vest, sit in a chair, and jump from seated onto a 50-inch box. These guys were mutants. But they were trained mutants.

The 40-Yard Dash: From Embarrassing to Record-Breaking

Next morning. Tim’s baseline 40-yard dash: 5.94 seconds.

DeFranco’s reaction: “The good news is that you broke six seconds. It’s not bad if you’re a below-average 320-pound lineman.”

Then, grinning: “You are going to make me look good today!”

The coaching started with 10-yard dashes. Not the full 40. Just 10 yards, over and over.

This comes from Charlie Francis, the sprint coach DeFranco respects most. Francis’s key insight: train at 95% or more of max effort, never between 75-95%. Below 95% is too slow to build speed, and the higher volume at those middle speeds just destroys your recovery. Keep it short, keep it fast.

DeFranco had Miles Austin spend over 80% of his sprint training on 10-yard dashes. Austin ran only three 40-yard dashes among more than a hundred 10-yard dashes. At the Combine he ran 4.67 seconds. Later officially clocked at 4.47.

For Tim, the corrections came in rounds.

Start position. Tim’s first step literally went from behind the line to the line. Zero distance gained. The fix: right hand down if right-handed, left leg forward. Weight shifted forward so the shoulder is slightly ahead of the fingers. When you lift your hand, you naturally fall forward. Drive the arm back to push the leg forward.

Head and body position. Keep your chin tucked. Eyes down. Upper body ahead of lower body for the entire first 10 yards.

Fewer steps. Take the fewest steps possible. It feels slower because of more ground contact per step. It isn’t slower.

After five coached 10-yard dashes and fifteen minutes total: 1.85 seconds for 10 yards, down from 2.07. A 0.22 second improvement.

Then DeFranco said: “Just run your 10. Run the best 10 you can. Don’t worry about the rest.”

Tim ran his 40. Time: 5.61 seconds. He shaved 0.33 seconds off his time and broke the gym’s single-session improvement record.

Then he felt a twinge in his hamstring.

Ice and Hannah Montana

DeFranco shut the session down immediately. “I’ve learned from experience that you stop when the hamstrings feel tight. That’s a sign of a pending tear.”

Tim’s instinct was to stretch it. Wrong. DeFranco said the hamstring feels like it’s contracting, so people stretch it, but it’s actually already overstretched. What you need is ice and arnica montana.

Tim misheard this as “Hannah Montana.” Same energy.

Arnica montana is a European flowering plant used by athletes for anti-inflammation. The topical cream version works. But the oral version Tim found at GNC was a homeopathic remedy - 30C dilution. That means it would take 2 billion doses per second given to 6 billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original substance. It is, for all purposes, water.

Tim still felt like he healed faster. His best explanation: placebo effect. And honestly? Placebo is powerful stuff. People get drunk on alcohol placebos. Fake knee surgeries produce real improvements.

How to Not Tear Your Hamstrings

DeFranco’s three-part hamstring protection protocol:

1. Train the natural glute-ham raise. Nothing in the gym mimics sprinting forces, but this is the closest thing. It builds eccentric hamstring strength - the kind that prevents tears during foot-strike. Athletes who can do strict glute-ham raises almost never pull hamstrings.

2. Focus on hip extension. Forget leg curls. Do reverse hyperextensions, kettlebell swings, sled dragging, and supine hip thrusts. Tim loves the hip thrust - it also fixes back pain from too much laptop time.

3. Keep your hip flexors flexible. Tight hip flexors create constant pull on the hamstrings. They also shorten your stride. People with tight hip flexors take fast, choppy steps that look quick but cover no ground. DeFranco calls it “going nowhere fast.”

Why This Matters for Non-NFL People

You’re probably not trying to get drafted. But the principles here are useful for anyone who wants to move better.

Technique matters more than raw effort. Tim gained three inches on his vertical and 0.33 seconds on his 40-yard dash in one session with zero strength improvement. All technique.

Short, intense practice beats long, moderate practice. Ten-yard dashes, not 400-meter runs. Eighty percent of training at the shortest distance.

Hip flexors are the silent killer. They mess up your jump, your sprint, your back, your stride length. Stretch them. DeFranco says so.

And if your hamstring feels tight after sprinting, do not stretch it. Ice. Rest. Maybe some placebo pills if that’s your thing.

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Next: Ultraendurance Running

This is part of my 4-Hour Body retelling series. New posts every Saturday.