Fight Club
What was the man behind the wheel heading north on Interstate 95 thinking every morning for 45 minutes? He had become a ghost in the past eight months, his legacy tarnished by an embarrassing season. He was lampooned for the first time in an otherwise special career. He had tumbled from the mountaintop with such force that he was nearly unrecognizable. Was this really Darrelle Revis? Is this how it was going to end for one of the best cornerbacks of this generation?
Maybe Revis replayed the images of his nightmarish final season with the Jets in his mind during his drive from Hollywood, Fla., to the new place that would help rebuild him. Maybe he never thought about those painful moments at all when he walked into the XPE Sports (Extreme Performance Enhancement) facility in Boca Raton each day to recapture what had been lost.
Or maybe every bit of that nightmarish year served as fuel to re-make a prideful player accustomed to dominating the NFL landscape.
“He heard all the talk,” said 14-year veteran wide receiver Anquan Boldin, who played an instrumental role in Revis’ comeback that kicks off Sunday when the Chiefs face the Jets. “He heard the chatter from people saying that he didn’t still have it and that he wasn’t one of the top corners in the game anymore. Any time you hear reports like that — whether you say it out loud or not — that’s something that you want to dispel.”
Revis ventured into the unknown with Boldin and XPE Sports founder/trainer Tony Villani to re-make his body and mind through innovative training techniques. He tried new methods to jolt his 32-year-old body until the Chiefs signed him last week.
He worked with a passion that he had lost somewhere along the way. He worked in virtual anonymity five or six days a week with a hell-bent 43-year-old trainer and three-time Pro Bowl receiver, who wanted to breathe life into the man with a mythical island.
“You see the fire,” said Boldin, who has trained at XPE Sports for years. “You see it in the way he trains. Guys who are content definitely don’t train as hard as he was training. They’re definitely not there every day putting in the time — sometimes twice a day. When a guy’s content, he’ll find every excuse not to work as hard. He’ll find every excuse to take time off. Darrelle was there pretty much every day working and competing his butt off.”
Revis was referred to Villani by former Jets teammate Marcus Gilchrist and others before working with him for the first time in March. “I could see he wasn’t himself,” Villani said.
The first order of business was obvious: Lose weight. A lot of it.
Revis spent six rigorous weeks working with NFL players at XPE. When he returned to the facility in July to get specialized work with Boldin and Villani, the trainer called those players, who had gone to their respective team camps, to deliver a simple message:
You guys won’t recognize Revis now. of a career that will ultimately lead to Canton, but the trainer didn’t want to B.S. him: He was screwing up.
Before long, Villani learned something about his newest pupil that would prove invaluable over the next eight months.
“He was so open to train differently,” Villani said. “Everyone knows how much money he has in his bank account. Everyone knows that he’s making money from the Jets this year. Everyone knows he’s had a great career, but I’m telling you that he trained as hard as anyone.”
Revis, who worked out in Arizona every offseason for the past decade, was receptive to fresh ideas to re-ignite his career. He told Boldin that about 15 unwanted pounds hindered him last season. He couldn’t move like he wanted. He couldn’t play like he was used to. He couldn’t be Darrelle Revis.
So, he changed his diet and workouts to help shed the weight in the twilight of his career.
“The older you get, the lighter you need to be,” said Rex Ryan, who coached Revis at the peak of his powers. “You got to take some weight off. Because quite honestly, you can’t recover the way you used to. I think that was the big thing. Put a 10-pound weight vest on and go out and run. You don’t have that speed. The whole key for Revis is what kind of shape he’s in, because I think he’ll play his ass off.”
It took time for Villani to develop a customized plan for Revis, because he had never encountered a defensive back with such long strides. The biggest challenges working with DBs typically were maintaining quickness, while lengthening stride length. Revis, however, already covered so much ground even though he didn’t look fast to the naked eye.
“It’s sneaky,” Villani said. “He’s like a horse gliding. You almost have to have someone next to him to realize, ‘Wow, he’s moving pretty fast.’”
Recapturing deep speed was a point of emphasis given Revis’ struggles with receivers 20-plus yards downfield last year. Although Revis’ peak deep speed obviously won’t be the same now as five years ago, Villani’s techniques were designed to make him as fast as possible at this stage of career.
“Deep speed is all a formula of stride length and stride frequency,” Villani said. “Normally, DBs are behind receivers on stride length, but he was ahead of all our receivers. It was amazing. Once we figured that out, we started working on a lot of frequency drills — getting his feet down quicker so he could maintain that speed a lot better.”
Villani’s science of speed centers on a gear system. “We train in gears like a car,” the trainer said. “He definitely has an acceleration gear and a top-speed gear that’s better than it was last year.”
Villani and Boldin were driven by the same question every day: How do we get Revis better?
A few creative training wrinkles made all the difference.
Even the great ones sometimes train without real direction.
Villani had seen it so many times in the past couple decades: Players running around without a purpose. He didn’t want Revis to be paralyzed by stale methods. So, he took a chance by asking Revis to place his faith in the unknown.
He wanted to make a significant change in the veteran’s training: Rather than train solely as a cornerback, he wanted Revis to