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Inside The Bolt: The Chargers Dazzling State-of-the-Art Practice Facility
By Eric Smith Aug 15, 2024

When Chargers players reported to training camp in late July, they were blown away by, well, everything that had to do with their new facility.

And with The Bolt officially opening for business this summer, the Chargers now have a crown jewel that they can call home.

"It's one of the best facilities in the nation," said quarterback Justin Herbert.

He later added: "They've done such a great job putting it together that, as players, we're fortunate to be able to have a front office that cares so much about us. The way we respect it, clean up after ourselves, I know we're going to do a great job taking care of it."

Safety Alohi Gilman offered an apt Southern California comparison.

"It's like Disneyland," Gilman said.

Chargers leadership spent the better part of five years finding space for a permanent facility and working on the design of it.

Dean Spanos, Chargers Owner and Chairman of the Board, noted that the organization looked at dozens of potential sites before deciding on the plot of land in El Segundo.

"Now you look at this and it's really incredible," Spanos said. "I just feel fortunate to be sitting here and I'm glad our staff, our players and the fans are going to enjoy this for years to come."

Fred Maas, Chargers Chief of Staff and Counselor, touched on the deeper meaning of what The Bolt represents to the organization.

"Sometimes a building is more than a building … and more than the four walls you see that define what the space is," Maas said. "It's an icon for what the franchise is, where we've come from and where we want to be."

And make no mistake about it, every inch of The Bolt is pristine and was carefully crafted with football in mind.

The dazzling 150,000 square-foot headquarters features three perfectly manicured practice fields along with a trio of training tubs, an outdoor lap pool, a player lounge and a separate coaches lounge.

The locker room features 103 lockers and the building itself is enhanced with 250-plus TVs.

Chargers Head Coach Jim Harbaugh gushed about The Bolt when the Chargers opened training camp.

"Just amazing. Everybody's first impression is just it's incredible, amazing," Harbaugh said. "Things are going to jump out at you. How beautiful it is aesthetically. The grass is as good as any grass anywhere, three fields of it.

"But then inside, I mean it's all football," Harbaugh added. "This was designed by football people who knew exactly what they were doing."

The Bolt also features a three-story LED board that is 42 feet tall and greets staff and visitors in the lobby upon arrival, as well as a two-story auditorium that serves as the team meeting room.

Dive deeper into the building and you'll see it is designed to give players an edge in order to be at their best on practice and game days.

The new 7,000 square-foot weight room features top-line equipment such as half racks, chest-supported rows, adjustable benches, performance towers, pull down machines and force frames.

Ben Herbert, the Chargers Executive Director of Player Performance, has only been with the Bolts since January.

But he raved about the excitement and potential of the weight room, which has been tailored to the vision he's implemented in recent months.

Herbert laid out the open space in the middle of the weight room so that players can be active with their movements.

"What I didn't want to do was create clutter," Herbert said. "I wanted to make sure what we have in here is what we need but I wanted the space to feel open.

"I didn't want to put anything in here that didn't need to be in here because we have outdoor space we can utilize as well," Herbert added.

Oh yes, the weight room will also feature sliding garage doors that open up and give the Chargers an additional 3,000 square feet of outdoor workspace.

"Everything we have the capability for inside, we'll have outside as well," Herbert said. "If you want to train outside, you'll be able to."

And if a player needs treatment, a sparkling athletic training room will be right next door to help players recover and get back on the field even quicker.

"It's a high level of communication between the sports medicine staff and the strength conditioning staff to make sure that, even if somebody is modified because of an injury, they're still getting what they need in the weight room," said Marco Zucconi, the Chargers Director of Player Health, Wellness and Performance.

"Both rooms are almost always positioned right next to each other in most facilities," Zucconi continued. "And that's so that we can utilize that space at different times, and they can utilize our space if needed at times and then also make sure that we're preparing them for the movements that they need to do in there before they're ready to.

"It's the blending of the two departments … like weaving in and out and weaving up," Zucconi added.

The new athletic training room features 4,000 square feet of space and includes 10 spotless training tables, sauna and steam room, plus cold and hot tubs.

"Those are amenities we've had in every facility, but the room is just going to be awesome, fresh and nice," Zucconi said.

Zucconi emphasized the wet room is highlighted by a hydrotherapy pool that features a treadmill.

"We will have the ability to raise the floor and drop it, so we can take someone from completely non-weight bearing in the pool to a much higher level and have them run on the treadmill underwater," Zucconi said. "Be able to accommodate any size player in any condition and make it really personalized."

And much like the weight room, the athletic training room can also utilize an outdoor space that includes a lap pool for recovery and rehab.

"We can take some of the rehab to the outdoors whether it's a group setting or more 1-on-1 rehab," Zucconi said.

We haven't even touched on the cafeteria yet, features approximately 9,000 total square feet of space — 6,200 for the eating area with another 2,800 reserved for the extensive kitchen operations.

The space includes brand-new, top-of-the-line equipment throughout and is highlighted by a smoothie and coffee station, rotisserie oven, pizza oven, carving station, grill station and a section for pasta and other bowls.

The cafeteria is managed by Wolfgang Puck Catering. The main objective is to fuel the Bolts to maximize player health and performance.

As the Chargers embark on the Jim Harbaugh Era, they do so with not only one of the most astounding and awe-inspiring practice faculties in the National Football League, but across all of professional sports. Just this past July, leadership from Manchester United even paid a visit to study and learn from the Bolts' new digs.

It's the perfect place for the Chargers to call home.

"These facilities now are state-of-the-art as each one is getting built," Spanos said. "It really shows the players, the coaching staff, the organization and the community how important it is.

"There are a variety of reasons of importance, starting with recruiting, how serious we take our home and where we work," Spanos continued. "The messages we're trying to send is to not just come to work, we want people to want to come to work.

"And from a fan's perspective, I want them to feel that this is part theirs," Spanos later added. "This is part of the Chargers family and our fans are a very important part [of that], as well as the players and the organization itself. But this is theirs as much as it is ours. I want them to feel that."

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