It’s hard to miss seven foot tall Clifford. His role at BHS is student support, but most students also know him from his roles as basketball coach, trainer and Instagram influencer. Known as “dcliff 24,” his Instagram account has 6,684 followers with posts about rehabilitation, diet and movement – many of which he agrees are unconventional.
“Everything you see on Instagram I will go and try it,” Clifford said. “I have not trusted somebody that said, ‘this works’. Anybody. I have to try it first.”
Clifford has tried a lot of things: walking barefoot, cold plunges, veganism, Shaki mats, raw milk and more. One video on his Instagram talks about how drinking tap or processed bottled waters is not as healthy as drinking spring water or even water straight from the river.
“The bacteria that’s in that river, has literally helped shape who we are,” Clifford said. “If we disagree with that, then we disagree with the fact that we’ve been drinking water for thousands of years.”
Clifford makes it clear that he does not make students or his clients go to their local stream.
“I cannot tell you what to do,” Clifford said. “I can just make suggestions and say that this is what I do.”
To understand Clifford’s philosophy on health and his passion for coaching and personal training, you have to know that Clifford was an NBA hopeful playing for Boston College in 2011 when he had a “quote-unquote career ending injury.”
“This is probably the biggest thing that ever happened in my life, just NBA dreams swept under the rug,” Clifford said. “Doctors told me I would never be able to play again. They were like, ‘you either retire right now, stop using the school resources or you give it your all and try to squeeze out a couple more wins for Boston College.’”
Clifford said he played the whole year feeling like “somebody [was] driving a nail into my knee.”
For two years he tried all the conventional methods of healing from icing/heat to rehab exercises, to cortisol and finally surgery.
“Everything that you ever heard from a doctor I tried, and it didn’t work,” Clifford said. “So I [was] injured for two years – I couldn’t get in and out of this desk without wincing.”
As a last attempt, Clifford went to “this weird dude that had no schooling or nothing.” It was Hank DeGroat, an athletic rehab consultant.
“And I felt better for the first time in years,” Clifford said. “Like, that same day.”
Although DeGroat’s practices seemed unconventional, Dennis says he started understanding more about the biomechanics of the body. Clifford said he shares many of these less conventional methods of rehab and training with his clients, but he is reluctant to do the same with his students.
“If I say something to [students], there’s a chance that [they] move backward and that what I say actually [messes] up your life. And that’s like one of the scariest things in the world [because] I was hurt because of a weight coach,” Clifford said. “That’s the last thing I want to do.”
Basketball captain Walter Hood ‘24, experienced a knee injury during his junior season last year – much like Clifford.
“It took me a minute to actually realize how significant it was,” Hood said. “[I was] just thinking constantly ‘This sucks, this sucks. There’s nothing I can do.’”
Hood recovered, with the help of Clifford, and in his senior season led BHS to the championship game.
“I feel like it’s like a lot of pressure to be a student athlete,” Clifford said. “What I do with the BHS boys team is I make sure that I’m the meanest person they have ever met. And I have to balance that to earn their trust.”
Clifford said he is “constantly nudging” his players to work harder and to push themselves so that they will be able to handle stressful situations.
“I always go back to a Kobe quote, after one of his game winners, they asked him, ‘wow, how did you summon the mental toughness to be prepared for this moment?’ And he was like, ‘no, there is no mental toughness, I am bigger than this moment because of what I’ve done the past 10 years of my life.’”
