by Tom Brady
The goal of pliability is to reeducate your brain–body connection, which continually sends messages to your muscles to stay long, soft, and primed, no matter what you’re asking your body to do. One of the critical keys is doing pliability both before and after your full workout or physical activity. (Think of pliability as the new “warm-up” and “cool-down.”)
HOLISTIC AND INTEGRATIVE TRAINING
At TB12, we believe that everything we do with regard to our bodies is interconnected and interdependent. Just as you can’t do strength training without conditioning, you also need to find the right balance between strength, conditioning, and pliability, depending on your sport or activity, and the intensity with which you do it. It also depends on your age and physical condition. The older you are, the more you need to incorporate pliability—and commit to it, too, as younger athletes have a hefty supply of pliability that starts to dissipate with age. There are great benefits to strength and conditioning—you need a baseline of both to do the job you are trying to do. More important is how you do it, functionally, and whether you do it alongside pliability.
Holistic means only that your health and performance are intergrated. You need to consider every detail of your exercise and training regimen and reduce or cut out the things that negatively affect your pliability. Time is an asset for us all, which is why adopting a holistic, integrative approach to your exercise and workout routine is so important. Among strength, conditioning, and pliability, at my age I spend roughly one-half of my time on pliability sessions. Many athletes spend no time on pliability—and a few might spend only a few minutes. I believe that at a minimum, most younger people should dedicate 20 percent of their workouts to pliability. As you get older, and depending on what sport you engage in (for example, contact versus noncontact), you’ll need to increase the percentage of pliability in your workout. Why do golfers today experience more back pain than they did in past decades? Why do baseball pitchers today need Tommy John surgery on a regular basis? Too much overload, and not enough muscle pliability!
Resistance-band core work.
One keyword of the TB12 Method is balance. Each of us needs to figure out the meaning of that concept in our lives, based on our innate strengths and weaknesses, and on external factors, too. At TB12, balance is as much about creating the right mixture of strength, conditioning, and pliability as it is about lifestyle choices—what we eat, how much rest and recovery we get, and what daily activities we engage in. The more balanced we are, the better.
BALANCE AND MODERATION IN ALL THINGS
One keyword of the TB12 Method is balance. All season long, football players work hard to improve their weight lifting, sprinting, jumping, and agility. Many often gain recognition for their efforts—but their bodies can possibly be out of balance. Working too hard at one thing, even if you work harder than anyone else, may not lead to improved performance, especially if you have imbalances. Most likely it just means you’re getting better at that one thing.
Each of us needs to figure out the meaning of balance in our lives, based on our innate strengths and weaknesses, and on external factors, too. At TB12, balance is as much about creating the right mixture of strength, conditioning, and pliability as it is about lifestyle choices—what we eat, how much rest and recovery we get, and what daily activities we engage in. The more balanced we are, the better. In my experience, most athletes like to work on things that they’re already good at. It reinforces their confidence in their own abilities. Strong athletes like to work on strength, and fast athletes like to work on speed. But that doesn’t create balance. To create balance, we need to work on our deficiencies as well.
CONDITIONING FOR ENDURANCE AND VITALITY
Why do we work out, and what does “good health” really mean? If you’re like most people, you measure your health based on what a scale says, or on your blood pressure or cholesterol or BMI levels, or how you look in the mirror. (Maybe you’ve even had your body fat measured.) You probably also assess other people’s health using those same criteria.
I define good health and being healthy as vitality—and feeling it. That means I have the energy to do the things I want to do and love to do: Play professional football. Work out. Ski. Surf. Play basketball. Play soccer in the yard with my kids. Interact with my teammates. Focus on my game plan in the team meeting room. It also means doing all those activities without pain, and with energy, enthusiasm, passion, and endurance.
The bottom line is that the conditioning and endurance that clients do at TB12 helps create the energy and vitality they need to do the things they want to do. Exercise, working out, and engaging in physical activities are all parts of a joyful life.
NO-LOAD STRENGTH TRAINING
Strength training allows you to do your job well, whatever that job is, and helps your muscles contract appropriately for the daily acts of living you ask of them. But the emphasis on more weight, greater reps, and longer workouts wears down our bodies’ natural pliability and creates tight, dense, stiff muscles that aren’t appropriate for the jobs we ask them to do or for our daily acts of living. Quarterbacks, pitchers, and golfers are all what are known as “rotational athletes.” That means they need to rotate their trunks or arms as they do their jobs. If rotational athletes do only “linear” workouts, such as running and lifting weights, they’re confusing their bodies. They need their muscles to be long, soft, and primed, which allow those muscles to rotate efficiently as they do their jobs. This can’t happen if their muscles are tight, dense, and stiff.
At TB12, about 90 percent of the time clients work out with resistance bands. Most are surprised to find that resistance bands work their bodies functionally better than weights do in terms of elasticity, resistance, versatility, and efficiency. Bands also allow for a bigger, more fluid range of motion, and build strength and power without overloading muscles or creating excess inflammation. By targeting accelerating and decelerating muscle groups at the same time without putting stress on your joints, bands can also mirror your body’s normal, everyday movements.
A lot of people work out with resistance bands or do water aerobics or practice tai chi. Not many young people do these things. They’ve grown up believing that good health is synonymous with big muscles. But despite what the culture markets to us, the goal of strength training isn’t bulking up. It’s training your muscles to work appropriately for the job you’re asking them to do or how you’re asking them to support your movements throughout the day, without creating undue risk of injury.
PROMOTE ANTI-INFLAMMATORY RESPONSES IN THE BODY
Chronic inflammation is the enemy of pliability. Chronically inflamed muscles are working in a suboptimal state and are more resistant to lengthening and softening. That’s why pliability and nutrition work together to decrease the amount of chronic inflammation in our bodies. Why would a body be chronically inflamed? Simple: Dehydration, poor nutrition, poor recovery, and tight, dense, stiff muscles.
Some degree of chronic inflammation is inevitable as we get older. But to gain optimal pliability and promote faster recovery, consider adopting lifestyle changes that combat inflammation. They include proper hydration, a nutritional regimen made up of real food—preferably organic—and adopting methods that reduce stress, recenter the brain, and accelerate recovery.
PROMOTE OXYGEN-RICH BLOOD FLOW
Few things can survive on this planet without oxygen. Why are our bodies and muscles as oxygenated as they are when we’re young? Because younger muscles expand and contract at 100 percent—what we call 100 percent muscle pump function—and haven’t yet sustained many negative traumas such as falls, collisions, injuries, or overloads.
As we get older and experience years of muscle contractions and negative traumas through just plain living, our muscles get stiffer, shorter, and more dense, limiting full muscle pump function, which in turn limits oxygenation. That’s one reason why, as we age, we don’t recover as quickly. Athletes often say, “I’m not young anymore.” Why? Be
cause they don’t have pliability. Pliability helps us achieve a state of 100 percent muscle pump function. This allows full oxygenation in every muscle of our body, helping us reach a state of optimal health and vitality. In contrast, over time, tight, dense, stiff, dehydrated muscles lose their optimal pliability—and therefore their optimal oxygenation. Without full oxygenation, muscles begin to degenerate. That’s why athletes say they’re not young anymore.
As I said, we are all born with optimal pliability. We had to work on strength and conditioning. Which came first? Pliability. We need to be pliable first.
The moment another player’s helmet makes contact with my body, my muscles are pliable enough to absorb what’s happening instantly.
PROPER HYDRATION
Most of us aren’t close to being properly hydrated. Hydration, in fact, is one of the easiest, most important things we can all do right now to enhance our pliability. Drinking enough water helps our bodies maintain good metabolism and digestion, lubricates our joints, and keeps oxygen and nutrients circulating to our muscles. Even more than nutrition, proper hydration is essential to maintaining healthy, pliable muscles.
At the TB12 Sports Therapy Center, we recommend that everyone, even nonathletes, consume at least one-half of their body weight in ounces of water every day. At 225 pounds, that means I should be drinking 112 ounces a day, minimum. If it’s an especially active day, I’ll drink anywhere from 200 to 300 ounces of water. Sometimes I think I’m the most hydrated person in the world.
HEALTHY NUTRITION
Eating poorly undoes many of the benefits you get from exercising, and risks endangering healthy muscles. The more nutrient-dense food you eat, the better your body can generate energy. By adopting the proper nutritional regimen, you create a healthy inner environment that allows your body to thrive.
From my perspective, eating well means eating mostly plant-based whole foods, foods rich in fiber and essential fatty acids. No processed or fast foods, sugars, or fats. Minimal amounts of caffeine and alcohol. In the same way pliability complements and completes the traditional strength and conditioning model, nutrient-rich food allows our cells to absorb what they need. Find what works best for you.
SUPPLEMENTATION
It would be great if everyone had the benefits of a mostly plant-based, real-food nutritional regimen, but that often doesn’t happen, because of our busy lives. That’s where supplements come in. At TB12, we define the word supplement literally—as an add-on, or supplementation, to the foods we eat. The right supplements can’t take the place of proper nutrition, but they can help ensure that you get the daily vitamins, minerals, and nutrients your body may be lacking.
Through intense workouts, and a lot of running and throwing, I push my body to its limits. Since 2000, I have used supplements as a way to help my body work hard and recover quickly. Along with electrolytes and trace mineral drops, every day I take a multivitamin, vitamin D, vitamin B complex, an antioxidant, essential fish oils, protein powder, and a probiotic. I’ll talk about supplementation more in a later chapter.
BRAIN EXERCISES
In the past, brain exercises were reserved mostly for people with brain injuries, or those facing diseases like early-onset dementia or Alzheimer’s. But the research we at TB12 have done reminds us that the brain is an organ that we need to exercise in the same way we train our bodies. To my mind, I need to get ahead and stay ahead of brain injuries, especially in the off-season, and I try to keep my brain as healthy as possible by ensuring it gets the right amount of cognitive exercise, along with proper hydration and the right nutrients.
TB12 brain exercises are based on what we now know about neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to keep changing and learning over a lifetime. The exercises I do increase the amount of sensory information my brain takes in and improve my ability to process and store that information. They improve my fast-recognition abilities, narrow my focus, and increase my pattern recognition.
BRAIN REST, RECENTERING, AND RECOVERY
No real peak performance training can take place in our bodies unless we do it in conjunction with our brains. Our brains are our control centers. We can exercise our brains to create greater neuroplasticity and generate new neural connections. Another way to keep our brains as healthy as possible is to ensure they get the right amount of exercise through cognitive training.
Creating a healthy inner environment through hydration and nutrition isn’t enough. Does it matter what you eat if your mind-set is negative or angry, or you have poor self-esteem? At TB12, we encourage clients to focus on the right mind-set, and also to make the time to reflect and recenter. So many people have written books on how to achieve the right state of mind, and I have read many of them. I am an optimistic person who chooses to focus on things that bring me joy. More important than formal meditation is developing a positive mind-set that allows you to achieve everything you want to achieve.
One of the simplest things anyone can do is create a regular routine for sleep. My general discipline and pattern is to sleep from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., which gives me nine hours of uninterrupted therapy and regeneration. I also want to make sure my body remains in a state of recovery even at night. I do this by wearing bioceramic-infused functional apparel and sleepwear. The advantages? It increases energy, promotes recovery, and improves performance. If my opponents aren’t wearing what I wear, I’m getting the edge on them even when I’m sleeping.
Doing self-pliability on my left calf, always stroking toward the heart.
CHAPTER 4
PLIABILITY: A DEEPER DIVE
THE MISSING LEG
At the core of the TB12 Method is our belief that injury prevention and wellness through pre-hab is achievable and necessary for athletes and active individuals. If injuries occur, we believe that there are faster, better, and more sustainable ways to recover than traditional rehab.
The key is in complementing traditional strength and conditioning training with muscle pliability. Pliable muscles are softer, longer, and more resilient: they help insulate the body against injury and accelerate post-injury recovery.
IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT all athletes want to achieve their goals. In my experience, most athletes are great at following the systems or disciplines that are in place, and often do not question rules and directions. A lot of the time, that’s a great approach for athletes. But sometimes if that system or discipline is misguided or incomplete, it limits the ultimate potential of those athletes. Unfortunately, bad systems are often built on earlier bad systems, and athletes are often trained within those systems. Believe me—I’ve seen it. But our health is our responsibility.
This is especially true for younger athletes. Not knowing any better—and why should they?—they buy into the system and discipline of strength and conditioning over and over again. That isn’t a bad thing, necessarily; the problem is that they rarely give any thought to why the system exists, or what exactly they’re being disciplined around. If the strength coach says, “Do fifty reps,” you do fifty reps. If the trainer says, “Six laps around the field,” you start running. Which brick wall do you want me to run through now, coach? You do what you’re told, and the positive feedback and affirmation you get keep you following the pack. After all, if you challenge the system or ask why you’re doing that press or lifting that load, you risk getting sidelined or kicked off the team. Why am I bench-pressing four hundred pounds? you may wonder, or Why am I lifting weights three times a week?, but you keep those questions to yourself. In that way, an embedded system and discipline only gets more embedded.
Many athletes also grow up equating great workouts with working out longer and more often than anyone else. They also believe that the best workouts require lifting the maximum amount of weight. Why lift two hundred pounds if you can lift three hundred? Why run a half marathon if you can run twenty-six miles? Even people who don’t play a sport but who want to keep fit go to the gym and work out, say, forty-five minutes on a stair climber or stati
onary bike, followed by another half hour doing the maximum number of weight or circuit-training exercises possible.
This idea—focus on the most workouts and the longest workouts and you’ll get better at all the things you want to improve—makes sense up to a point. In football, for example, there’s a widespread belief that working hard in the off-season means you should do wind sprints and weight lifting. And yes, by doing those things you can improve your general athleticism. The mistake comes when you believe that by working hard and being able to run and jump, you’ll become better at your job, which I don’t believe is entirely true.
There’s a difference between a strong or a fast athlete and a well-rounded athlete. At football combines, for example, coaches ask players to lift weights, sprint, and jump. To them, that’s what being a good athlete means. Now, those are three specific linear skills—but are they really a measure of great athleticism? To my mind we shouldn’t define athleticism only one way. Athleticism has something to do with speed and strength, but not everything. It also requires coordination and mental toughness. Ask people to list the world’s greatest athletes, and most will name someone who has all those attributes versus, say, the world’s strongest man or the world’s fastest human.
