by Tom Brady
3. The person receiving pliability expands and contracts the muscle rapidly and simultaneously. Repeat on the other side.
CALF (GASTROCNEMIUS AND SOLEUS)
1. The person receiving pliability lies facedown as the person giving pliability grasps the ankle.
2. Using one or both thumbs, the person giving pliability strokes upward through the muscle, toward the heart.
3. As the person receives pliability, he or she rhythmically contracts and relaxes the calf muscle. Repeat on the other side.
FRONT OF LEG (TIBIALIS ANTERIOR)
1. The person receiving pliability sits with his or her left leg extended, as the person giving pliability grasps the calf just above the anklebone.
2. The person giving pliability strokes upward through the tibialis anterior muscle toward the heart.
3. As the person receives pliability, he or she rhythmically contracts and relaxes the tibialis anterior. Repeat on the other side.
BACK OF THE THIGH (HAMSTRINGS)
1. The person receiving pliability lies facedown with his or her right leg extended. The person giving pliability places both hands just above the underside of the knee joint.
2. The person giving pliability begins stroking upward using both thumbs.
3. As the person receives pliability, he or she rhythmically contracts and relaxes the hamstring muscles. Repeat on the other side.
FOREARMS
1. The person getting pliability extends the left arm as the person giving pliability presses his or her thumb against the wrist.
2. Using maximum pressure, the person giving pliability strokes through the muscle all the way up to the elbow.
3. As the person receives pliability, he or she rhythmically contracts and relaxes the forearm. Repeat on the other side.
BACK OF SHOULDER (POSTERIOR ROTATOR CUFF)
1. The person receiving pliability is in a comfortable seated position. The person giving pliability places both thumbs on the shoulder blade.
2. The person giving pliability strokes through the muscle toward the heart.
3. As the person receives pliability, he or she rhythmically contracts and relaxes the upper arm. Repeat on the other side.
A pliability session with Alex, who’s working on my right shoulder and applying pressure in the direction of the heart.
Resistance-band push-ups are great for strength.
CHAPTER 6
WORKOUTS
FROM COLLEGE AND ON THROUGH to the pros, I used to follow the traditional method of working out. Everything was weight based. Twenty minutes to warm up and raise my heart rate, followed by forty-five minutes to an hour lifting weights, then more cardio to finish. Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, I worked my upper body. Tuesdays and Fridays were devoted to my lower body, whether it was dumbbell squats or single or double leg presses, three or four sets apiece. In between there was core work—crunch sit-ups or rollouts—and back work.
There’s no doubt that lifting weights builds denser, thicker muscles and makes athletes stronger—and my strength numbers showed it, too. Fact is, you’ll get better at anything in life in which you invest time and energy, whether it’s lifting weights, jumping rope, scuba diving, or running marathons. Still, most of the time my workouts left me hurting. Sure, I was getting stronger, but I was a long way away from allocating the right proportion of my workout time to what could allow me to sustain success longer—namely, pliability and its amplifiers.
The goal of traditional weight training is to create maximum strength—which is different from optimal strength. Maximum strength refers to the most/longest model, which I talked about earlier—doing more reps of more weights—whereas optimal strength is the strength that you need to carry out the job you have to do. The goal of pliability is optimal strength.
Once I discovered pliability, I began incorporating different tools and techniques into my workout, including resistance bands.
Football-specific band workouts.
WEIGHTS VERSUS RESISTANCE BANDS
At TB12, around 90 percent of what we do—and I do—involves working out with resistance bands. A lot of athletes show up at the TB12 Center with a fixed idea about how resistance bands work, and some even associate them with rehab. Many are surprised to find that resistance bands work their bodies functionally better than weights do in terms of resistance, versatility, and maximizing efficiency. Bands allow for a big, fluid range of motion. They help build strength and power while keeping your muscles longer, and making them less dense, than they would be if you used heavy weights. Bands can also help limit inflammation and overload. They condition you aerobically while complementing your pliability. By targeting accelerating and decelerating muscle groups at the same time without overload, they also mirror your body’s normal, everyday functional movements. Together with pliability, they create a balanced approached to staying healthy over a long period of time.
Weights aren’t harmful by themselves. What is harmful is how most people use weights. Imagine your body is a pickup truck. It’s weighed down with a thousand pounds of bricks in its cargo bed. This is what weight lifting does to your muscles, ligaments, and joints. Now imagine your body as a pickup truck that’s towing a thousand pounds of bricks behind it. There’s minimal weight on your structure. This difference, between load and resistance, is the difference between what weights and bands do to our bodies. Sometimes we see older people working out with bands, or doing water aerobics or tai chi. It turns out that they know something the rest of us don’t. So, what sense does it make to place excess load on your joints when you’re young and healthy, either?
After a lifetime of lifting weights, for the past seven years I’ve used resistance bands almost exclusively. The difference is profound. My muscles are more balanced and functional, especially for the movements I need to perform as an NFL quarterback. Resistance bands clearly work better for me.
Lifting weights is a man-made phenomenon. Ninety-nine percent of the population doesn’t need to lift hundreds of pounds of weight at a time. But often our culture takes its cues from athletes. This weight-lifting model has been glorified and marketed in the culture—but that doesn’t mean it’s functional, or even that it works very well in isolation. It needs to be complemented to maintain balance.
TRAIN AT THE SPEED OF YOUR SPORT
As a football player, the workouts I do mimic the movements I make over the course of a season. One of our central beliefs at TB12 is that you should train at the speed of the sport you play, too. In my job, I need to throw, run, cut, and respond quickly to changing conditions as I stand in the pocket. That’s different from the job of a runner, whose workouts may focus on improving his speed or race times and who should be concentrating on speed, agility, and cardiac endurance rather than on leg presses or squats.
Alex always says, For long-term peak performance, you can’t train slow and move fast. Over a short window of time it may be possible, but lifting heavy weights and moving fast at the same time is not very sustainable. And it’s certainly not sustainable if you want to maintain optimal pliability. Maybe younger athletes with natural pliability can—but they’ll be sacrificing durability and longevity. Lifting heavy and moving fast is counterintuitive and counterproductive. Why? Because without knowing it, you are neural-priming your muscles to work slowly and deliberately, not just during your workouts but when you play your sport, too. If athletes work out slow and heavy, their bodies can get confused. In our experience, by not connecting on-field work with off-field workouts, athletes will most likely end up overloading, compensating, and getting injured. Basically athletes are training their bodies and brains one way off the field and asking them to do something entirely different when they’re on the field. Why wouldn’t their bodies get confused? In sports, you need to think fast, and train fast—especially over the long term.
For that reason, my workout consists of quick bursts of exercise using resistance bands. Alex and I will do twenty seconds of one exercise,
followed by a twenty-second rest. Another twenty-second exercise, followed by another twenty-second rest. We do this over and over again. When I go out onto the field on Sunday, I don’t want my brain to think—or play—slowly. That’s why I train fast. From the first play forward, every single one of my muscles is firing at 100 percent and is balanced, in its most optimal state.
In short, I train the way I want to play, based on the needs of my sport. That’s why I’ll end up playing the way I train. That’s why I train all year in a holistic, integrated way.
FORM FIRST
At TB12, we emphasize the importance of proper form during workouts. You should always start in a biomechanically neutral position—knees over feet, hips over knees, shoulders over hips, a firm core—because if you’re not in proper alignment, you’re conditioning your body to be out of balance. Let’s say that you’re doing ten push-ups. After the seventh push-up, your chest is straining and you feel fatigued. You’re having a hard time finishing the exercise. But your brain says, “Keep going! Fight hard!” It asks other muscles to step in to help you finish. It could be your lats, your triceps, or your butt—your brain calls on any muscle that will help you achieve your goal and finish what you set out to do.
But to me, form first means engaging only the muscles you should be engaging for the movement you are attempting to do. That’s how you keep the proper balance.
Once I sense my form breaking down, I know I’m training my brain the wrong way. Other muscles are compensating for the muscle that should be working, and unless I stop, my brain will learn a new behavior—in this case, a negative one. Athletes often say, “I did ten reps!” But what if after the fourth or fifth rep, their form begins breaking down? Form first. Otherwise you’ll begin activating muscles that shouldn’t be activated, and you’ll be training your brain to store bad behaviors. As a football team, why go out to the practice field and run fifty plays the wrong way? If you’re going to practice, practice the right way. Therefore, if you are going to train, train the right way.
RESISTANCE BANDS: A PRIMER
At the TB12 Center we use three different kinds of resistance strengthening. The bands aren’t necessarily unique to us. It’s more how we use them that sets what we do apart from other training approaches.
SHEATHED BANDS. These bands have handles, which is why they’re used primarily for exercises that emphasize the upper body, though you can use them to target other areas of your body, too. The bands are sheathed and handled and made from latex. They come with a strap that fits around a door or that can be anchored against any wall or solid surface at varying heights.
LOOPED RESISTANCE BANDS come in different thicknesses, which correspond to different intensity levels. These bands can go around your knees, ankles, or waist and allow you to do the same motions you would do with bars and free weights.
SHORTER-LOOPED RESISTANCE BANDS, which are smaller and thicker, also loop around your ankles and knees, and are a great way to add resistance and difficulty to agility skills or squats.
RANGE OF RESISTANCE
The band you should use depends on your size, strength, level of athleticism, and experience. But unless otherwise noted, the thirty-six exercises in the next three sections are suitable for beginner, intermediate, advanced, and elite athletes. If an exercise feels too easy, go up to the next color band, or adjust the distance that you’re standing from the wall, door, or anchor point.
LOOPED BANDS
BEFORE YOU START
• The exercises ahead are not necessarily unique to TB12. What is different are the creative additions or variations we apply, and the pace at which the exercises are performed.
• The exercises combine cardio with strength training at the same time. If you do, say, a twenty-minute, high-intensity workout using resistance bands, you don’t need much cardio before or after. Your heart rate will already be elevated, I promise.
• The category listed (upper body, core stability, lower body) indicates the part of the body where you will feel it most, though the exercises may activate multiple areas.
• To monitor your form, we recommend you exercise in front of a mirror, or alongside a partner who can give you feedback on your form, or even record yourself on your cell phone.
• Make sure you maintain the right biomechanically correct form—knees over feet, hips over knees, and your core engaged—before you start, and stop performing an exercise the moment your form starts to break down.
• In these exercises, our TB12 body coaches emphasize ground force production, which we define as the ability to transfer energy from the ground, through your body, and into the function you’re asking your body to perform. For example, when I stand on the field with both feet planted, I’m generating force up through my legs into my torso, and then up into my shoulders and throwing arm. Without good core stability, I wouldn’t have access to that level of strength and force.
• Do each exercise for twenty seconds, or until your form starts to break down. Over time, as you build up endurance and increase proficiency, you’ll find yourself doing the exercise for the full twenty seconds.
SHEATHED BANDS
12 UPPER-BODY EXERCISES
We all need some degree of strength in our upper bodies, whether as athletes or simply as we carry out the acts of daily living—opening doors, reaching for something in the hardware store, gardening, moving furniture, pushing a baby carriage, carrying luggage, or mowing the lawn. Most upper-body exercises also call on our core and lower body, too. How often during the day do we use only our upper bodies, after all? The answer: Not often. What’s great about these first twelve upper-body exercises is that they’re explosive and quick-movement, but also low-tension. That reduced tension prevents overload and limits the risk of getting hurt. Like all the exercises in this book, they mimic many of the common movement patterns each one of us performs every day. Is there an order to them? To some degree, but switch them up now and then so that your brain and body are better able to adapt to new forces and stresses on command. For example, a typical workout is three sets times ten reps. If you do that same workout every day, at the same speed, with the same color band, you aren’t creating any new neural priming. So try two reps, or four reps, or change the level of resistance—it will keep your body guessing. Also, the exercises shouldn’t be hard, and they shouldn’t be easy. The goal is to create tolerable resistance and stress without overload.
1. SINGLE-ARM CHEST PRESS WITH VARIED LEG POSITIONS
EQUIPMENT: RESISTANCE BANDS (SHEATHED OR LOOPED)
In this one, the goal is to activate your upper body while keeping your lower body stable. This exercise engages the chest through pushing and pulling and increased resistance in order to build strength. It becomes even more challenging when you switch stances.
RESISTANCE BAND POSITION: ELBOW HEIGHT, OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE
Facing away from the wall, door, or anchor point, start with your legs together. Keep your posture upright and your core and glutes contracted. Hold one band underneath your elbow.
Step forward with your left foot. As you do, bring your right arm holding the band forward, making a continuous in-and-out motion. Continue this motion at a fluid pace for twenty seconds.
Switch to the other side and repeat.
2. SINGLE-ARM ROW WITH VARIED LEG POSITIONS
EQUIPMENT: RESISTANCE BANDS (SHEATHED OR LOOPED)
When we pull ourselves out of bed or out of a chair, we’re performing movements similar to the ones in this exercise. Again, just by varying your leg position, you’ll make this one even harder.
RESISTANCE BAND POSITION: ELBOW HEIGHT, OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE
Start in a split stance, facing the wall, door, or anchor point. Keep your posture upright and your core and glutes contracted.
Hold one band at elbow height with your arm extended, then bring your arm toward your body tight to your rib cage. Continue this motion at a fluid, continuous pace for twenty seconds.
Switch to the ot
her side and repeat.
3. ALTERNATING ARM PUNCHES
EQUIPMENT: RESISTANCE BANDS (SHEATHED OR LOOPED)
This exercise gets your upper body moving, and moving fast. It focuses on explosiveness in your upper body, as you maintain stability in your lower body. It’s a lot more challenging than it looks!
RESISTANCE BAND POSITION: ELBOW HEIGHT, OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE
Stand with your back facing the wall. Contract your core and straighten your spine.
With both hands gripping a band, and grasping the bands under your elbows, punch forward with alternating arms. Maintain full arm extension for each punch, and proceed at a fluid, continuous pace.
4. ALTERNATING ROWS
EQUIPMENT: RESISTANCE BANDS (SHEATHED OR LOOPED)
Similar to the previous exercise in explosiveness, this one calls on your back, biceps, and triceps to move your upper body with control.
RESISTANCE BAND POSITION: ELBOW HEIGHT, OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE
Crouching slightly, maintain a neutral stance, with your chest, neck, and head raised. Squeeze your glutes and your core.
