No tomatoes and lots of sleep – how Tom Brady has avoided middle-age slide
Guy Kelly reveals the fitness regime that helped the American football icon win the Super Bowl again
WHETHER you are a diehard NFL fan who stayed up all night to watch the Super Bowl (nope, us neither) or thought simply everyone was talking about a superbowl, there is one fact that everyone should have woken up to: Tom Brady, winning another title at 43, is pretty impressive. And a little depressing for the rest of us.
Brady, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, won his seventh Super Bowl on Sunday, as he guided his side to a 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.
It was his first season with the Buccaneers after a 20-year run with the New England Patriots, and he has no intention of retiring.
Seeing Brady calmly go about winning again – despite being the same age as his opposite number’s mother – left many asking: “What is his secret to avoiding middle-age? Can I have some?”
We’ve done the work, so you don’t have to.
Here’s the Tom Brady Guide to Never Ageing. Buckle up.
His daily schedule
A day in the life of Tom Brady is reported to look, precisely, like this:
5.30am: Wake up, drink electrolyte water and smoothie.
7am: Breakfast with his partner, the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, their two children, Vivian Lake and Benjamin Rein, and sometimes his son, John, with his former partner, the actress Bridget Moynihan.
10am: “Beach time”.
Noon: Lunch.
3-5pm: Training or a workout 5-6pm: Post-workout pliability. 6pm: Dinner with his family. 7pm: Review films, strategy with his coach, plus charity work. 7.30pm: Family time. 8.30pm: Bed time.
Fun! Gisele must love it.
Diet
No caffeine, white flour or sugar, dairy products or gluten. No vegetables that could cause inflammation, such as tomatoes, mushrooms and aubergine.
It’s all dark leafy greens, grass-fed protein, whole grains and legumes.
It’s an 80/20 plant-based/animal protein diet, and on game day he has a jam and almond butter sandwich. Oh, and water. Gallons of it. He tries to drink “a couple of hundred ounces” of electrolyte-charged water a day, about six litres. Assume that any gap in the schedule is spent urinating.
Exercise
Brady’s workouts are specifically tailored to his status as a senior citizen of the NFL. His schedule is said to be managed by the trainer Alex Guerrero, Brady’s business partner in his health and wellness brand, TB12, and always begins with a “deep force” four-minute massage that prepares 20 muscle groups for a workout. The main session, outside team practice, might begin with 40 minutes of resistance bands, then planks, lunges, squats and crunches. Heavier weights are avoided in case they tear muscles.
After that it’s another massage, before a workout with his teammates or a surfing session. Tired? One more to go: another pliability session before bed, to make sure aches and pains are kept at bay.
Higher-level stuff
Meditation, of course. To become “emotionally stable and spiritually
nourished”, Brady practises the transcendental kind, as well as yoga.
According to Guerrero: “Emotional stability allows you to have spiritual awareness. I always tell him and Gisele they’re the most spiritual non-religious people I know.”
Brady used to keep a statue of the Hindu god Ganesha, “remover of obstacles”, in his locker.
He’s interested in keeping his reactions sharp with frequent brain-training and neuroscans. He uses apps like BrainHQ, which was designed for people with memory loss, to improve his reactions on the pitch and allow him to scan the field, decide on a play and throw a pass all in a split second.
Sleep
Brady gets a firm nine hours a night, or tries to. He is famously keen on sleeping: in 2002, when he won his first Super Bowl, he made headlines for taking a nap until 12 minutes before kick-off.
Today he takes sleeping just as seriously. The mattress has a layer of diamond memory foam. The bedroom thermostat is fixed to between 16C (60F) and 18C (65F). He has no screens in his face at least 30 minutes before bed. And the pyjamas are “bioceramic-infused sleepwear” from his sponsor Under Armour, which cost $200 and supposedly improve “energy, promote recovery and improve performance”.
See? There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t be winning Super Bowls at 43, too! (© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021)