Three orange, 20-pound medicine balls are outside a white van, placed on the sandy side of Highway 101, a few hundred yards from the San Francisco Zoo with the Pacific Ocean a few hundred feet below.
They were placed there by stealth trainer Frank Matrisciano. It's late May and he is wearing his usual attire: boots, wraparound shades, a military desert sun hat, a weight jacket and long-sleeved shirt, shorts and, just in case the sand starts swirling, a pullover face-mask hood.
One by one, recent college players Blake and Taylor Griffin of Oklahoma and Jeff Adrien of Connecticut pick up the balls and begin the 20-minute hike into the sand dunes up from North Beach. No one in the party has any idea where he will be training.
Blake Griffin, who has been the consensus No. 1 NBA draft pick for months, is making his second stint with Matrisciano. He chose to come here, as did his brother, to go through a regimen that is enshrouded in secrecy.
The discreet locations around the Bay Area are all part of his methods. He wants not only to surprise the trainees so there is no repetition but also to shock the muscle groups. Matrisciano's training focuses on using nontraditional elements, which can include a discarded railroad tie or the monkey bars at a playground. His objective is to force the muscles to adjust to unstable weights and surfaces.
"We don't do anything on a flat surface, and we don't do anything on a hard surface," Blake Griffin said. "Everything is sand and stairs."
Said Taylor Griffin, "It's definitely one of the hardest things you will ever face. Frank's thing is that if you can run up a 60-degree incline in sand with a 60-pound weight vest on, then running 94 feet down a flat court should be easy."
Matrisciano begins the 50-minute workout (dubbed "chameleon") with the players running up the sand dune with the medicine ball. Up and back, up and back, up and back they go. The medicine balls are left atop the hill after a few runs. So, too, are the sneakers and, for some, the socks.
"Frank is one of a kind. There is nobody on this planet like Frank," Taylor Griffin said. "He is extreme -- the most extreme dude you will ever be around."
There are two 50-minute sessions. What you do in the 50 minutes fluctuates. Maybe one day you can run the hill 20 times in 50 minutes, maybe another you can do it 25, and on and on. The plethora of options Matrisciano can select include running beach stairs or using a harness on the sand to drag him along while both trainer and trainee wear a weight vest.
During the second 50-minute session on this day, the players stand on a sand ledge, ready for squats and push-ups in the sand that only get harder as time keeps moving.
The players are hunched over, their muscles aching, their abdomens stretched and the fatigue evident by their facial expressions.
What muscles hurt at the end of the two-plus-hour chameleon workout?
"Every single one," Blake Griffin said. "I remember the first day we came out here last year, and I remember waking up and thinking, 'Man, I don't know if I can do this for two more months.'"
Said Armstrong, "Everything hurts. There isn't one muscle [that doesn't]. My eyelids hurt, my feet, my back, legs and everything you can think of, Achilles, it's crazy."
Yet these players don't leave. The Griffin brothers are here every day for weeks. Armstrong also is doing it for the second straight summer.
Matrisciano calls it his Law Seven.
"For every 10 guys that come here, the ratio is that three stay," Matrisciano said. "Guys will last 11 minutes, maybe 12 minutes, and they are gone."
Blake Griffin said of last year's regimen: "A guy came for a day of the workout, and then you never saw him again. It's funny because you can always tell which ones aren't coming back because they are like, 'Y'all do this every day?' or something like that, and you are like, 'You get used to it,' and they are like, 'Man, I can't do this.'"
According to Matrisciano, most come to him thinking they can handle the training with ease because they're in shape after doing "illusionary" workouts.
The players attest that there is nothing phony about Matrisciano. He secures furnished apartments in downtown San Francisco for the out-of-town players. He said the college players don't pay a fee. But the NBA players do, though he wouldn't divulge how much.
"I don't have any expenses, no furniture, just a bed and a satellite TV in my place," Matrisciano said. "I eat the same thing every day: sweet potatoes, black beans, brown rice, chicken. And I have a dog."
The players adhere to his eating habits. Blake Griffin has been stringent about what he inhales, limiting himself to oatmeal and eggs in the morning; a burrito in the afternoon consisting of rice, beans and chicken (no sour cream); and then either salmon or chicken over vegetables in the evening (no sauce or oils on top). He supplements those foods with protein shakes.
"To do this stuff day after day, it wears on you mentally," Matrisciano said. "That's part of it. To go on the basketball court will be nothing for these guys. They will mentally adapt to it.”
"Guys need a challenge, and they'll say, 'My college strength guy or my pro strength guy doesn't do it.' So I say 'OK,' and in 11 minutes they're done, 12 minutes they'll say, '[Bleep] this.' One guy called his agent and said, 'Get me the [bleep] out of here.' I call the other training illusionary. It's good to do it, but it doesn't push you past that."
What makes the outdoor chameleon training even more taxing on the body is that it comes late in the afternoon, after the players have done two-plus hours of work on the basketball court.
Bob Hill the former NBA head coach makes his home in San Antonio but in the summer time he comes to the Bay Area to do the basketball training for Matrisciano’s group of players. He relishes working with the Griffins and players such as Armstrong and Sacramento Kings forward Kenny Thomas. The basketball skill work isn't for the weak, either. The players go at one another, hurling their bodies for boards and crashing to the court on occasion.
"There are no excuses here," Hill said. "What we're building is mental toughness."
If agents were watching this workout, they would have cringed, fearing their clients would get hurt. Griffin nearly did in clashing with Armstrong. The workout would be what the NBA teams strive to do during individual pre-draft sessions, and what the NBA draft combine would love to be but can't because of agents' influence on eliminating contact.
How does Matrisciano fend off the agents? "I don't let them in," he said. Matrisciano's clients during this training session were represented by at least three different agents, proving he doesn't play favorites. "Nobody knows where I am," he said. "I am in San Francisco. Great, then come find me.
"The parents of the guys coming in from high school or college appreciate that. I don't have to tell you it's a harsh world out there. It's a circus -- from AAU to college, it's a circus. The kids are pawned off, pimped off, and I don't need to be involved in that, and I won't be involved in that, and that's my choice."
As for Blake Griffin, Hill said his return to San Francisco this past spring proved his commitment to the program.
Griffin credits his improvement in his game this past season, after which he was named the consensus national player of the year, to last summer's regimen with Matrisciano.
"It helped a lot because I had two knee injuries my freshman year, and it helped me get back to where I never worried about my knees," Griffin said. "I just play, and it helped my vertical. I leaned down a bit, too. Everyone thought I had lost a lot of weight, but when I came back, I had actually gained 10 pounds."
Turns out Matrisciano's Law Seven didn't apply to Griffin.
"Because he is a mental and physical beast, because he wants to be the best, and I guess this where he feels he will achieve that goal," Matrisciano said.
Griffin could have coasted because he is a lock for the No. 1 overall pick. The only workout he did was for the owners of the top slot, the L.A. Clippers.
"There are plenty of guys who could be in his position who would be like, 'I'm set,' and just chill until the draft," Taylor Griffin said. "But Blake's thing is he wants to be an impact player his rookie year."
Blake Griffin's mantra is from a Henry Ford quote that he has tweaked for himself: "The competitor to be feared the most is the one who never worries about others at all and goes on making himself better all the time."
Blake like the workout because "it gives you a base where you can do so much more and last so much longer on the court.
"Let me just put it this way: When I went back to Oklahoma last year when we were done here, the guys were complaining about having to go to the weight room and do our 30-minute workout or our 45-minute workout, and I was like, 'Man, I could do this all day, this is great,'" Griffin recalled. "I don't have to go on a sand hill wearing a 40-pound weight vest and run up it carrying a 20-pound ball or do pull-ups. This has made that easy."
While plenty of other players go another route, Griffin heads west for the Bay. Plenty of others cut short Matrisciano's regimen before seeing the benefit, Griffin just keeps coming back for more.
You get the feeling he wouldn't have it any other way.
Others might worry about agents, signing bonuses and what they'll wear on draft night. Griffin puts his 60-pound weight vest on and starts chugging up the sand hill.
