Six-time NFL All-Pro Terrell Owens may come with controversy but there's no arguing that his chiseled body are the result of hard work.
"If I want to be the best receiver in the NFL, part of that is catching, and X and O’s, but an even greater part is away from the game of football," the 35-year-old Mr. Owens says. "It's the way I eat, the way I train, the lifestyle I choose."
T.O.'s Workout
Mr. Owens started his pro career in 1996.
At 6-foot-3 and 223 pounds, Mr. Owens is a physical speciman.
He has changed his lifestyle habits over the years. Mr. Owens says during his first three years in the NFL, he would go out drinking with teammates during the week. "I knew that if I wanted to be the best and perfect my craft, that meant cutting out the drinking, bad foods, and soda."
Mr. Owens says all through high school, college and his earlier years in the NFL, he "pumped a lot of iron." He then realized that lifting 300 pounds wasn't necessarily going to make him a better football player. "I needed to start doing position-specific workouts," the wide receiver says.
Mr. Owens started doing more dumbbell exercises to isolate targeted muscles and also started incorporating resistance bands to help reduce the risk of injury that comes with lifting heavy weights. "The bands gave me the same workout without the pressure on my joints," he says.
The bands must be anchored to something in order to stretch. Sometimes Mr. Owens stands on them; sometimes he wraps them around the leg of a couch or he might hook them to a door frame. To work his deltoids (shoulder muscles), Mr. Owens might stand on the bands, grip the handles with his hands, and then raise his elbows up and out to shoulder height. He then might curl the handles up toward his chest to perform a bicep curl. To make push-ups more challenging, he adds resistance by wrapping the band around his back .
During the season, Mr. Owens practices with the team two hours a day, three to four days a week. In the off-season, most workouts take 45 to 60 minutes and comprise about 10 different exercises, such as leg extensions, leg curls, dumbbell bench presses, bicep curls with resistance bands and abdominal work. Mr. Owens takes about 45 to 60 seconds of rest between sets before moving on to the next exercise. "I'm a no-nonsense guy when it comes to the gym," he says.
The Diet:
During football season, Mr. Owens is conscientious about his diet.
During football season, breakfast is usually a bowl of oatmeal and eight to 10 scrambled egg whites. He might have a banana or low-fat yogurt for a midmorning snack. For lunch, he'll have two baked chicken breasts, or 10 ounces of grilled turkey breast, and a baked sweet potato. Fruit, a small green salad or about 20 almonds is his afternoon snack. Dinner is usually 12 ounces of grilled fish or eight ounces of grilled lean steak, with steamed brown rice or whole-wheat pasta. His evening snack is steamed or raw vegetables.
Even when he's on the road, Mr. Owens looks for healthier choices. "I'll ask restaurants to hold the cheese or bacon on salads to keep it healthy," he says. When he's traveling for an extended period, he'll hire a chef to prepare healthy meals.
"Resting the body is just as important as working it," Mr. Owens says. He takes a two-week break from working out the first two weeks of the off-season to recover. During the season, he tries to get eight hours of sleep a night. He is also careful about resting injuries. For example, Mr. Owens recently had to miss the Bills' first two pre-season games due to a sprained toe and he has participated only in individual positions drills, rather than full practices.
Quick Fix:
"If I can't get to a gym and I'm in a hotel room and I have a set of bands, I can still do more than 140 exercises," Owens says.
