Power Forward

Former NHLer Gary Roberts on getting pumped for your personal fitness faceoff

Get pumped for your personal fitness faceoff with Gary Roberts

RE YOU LOOKING to kick your workout routine into high gear? Eager to rediscover the fitness glory of your youth? Pumped to push the “no pain-no gain” mantra to the limit? Well, forget it. If you’re serious about wanting to train like a top athlete, the only mantra you need to memorize is “sensible diet, stretching and safe exercise progression.” Sure, it doesn’t sound as cool when screamed from the bench press. But it works.

Just ask former National Hockey League (NHL) star Gary Roberts, known for most of his career as a player dedicated to fitness and nutrition. Each day, the 48-year-old, who played professionally for 22 seasons with six different teams – including the 1989 Stanley Cup Champion Calgary Flames – before retiring in 2009, is in the gym pumping iron by 6 a.m. Then, during the off-season, he spends the next eight hours training some of the NHL’s best at the Gary Roberts High Performance Centre, an elite fitness facility in North York, Ont.

“My body actually feels healthier … than it probably did when I was playing,” Roberts admits, “because I lift weights, I do some cardio, I play a little hockey, and nobody’s hitting me.”

When Roberts isn’t putting the likes of NHL superstar Steven Stamkos through single leg lateral explosions, squat jumps with 40 kilograms of weight draped across his shoulders and treadmill sprints, he and his team train regular folks looking to amp up their workout routine. So, how do you kick off your breakaway toward training like a top athlete?

1 Take a walk … to the grocery store. “It doesn’t matter what level you’re at,” Roberts says. “The nutrition is the same … It’s about lean protein and as much raw [vegetables and fruits] as you can eat. You’ll see so many more benefits quickly by adjusting the nutrition first.”

2 Ease into a routine of light training to see what fitness level your body is at. Start at a safe pace, says strength and conditioning coach Matt Nichol, who trains pro athletes and Olympic champions and has worked alongside Roberts.

“[If] they grab a pair of running shoes they haven’t worn in 10 years and try to run five kilometres, then their knees are sore … people think, ‘I’m washed up. I’m old,’” Nichol says. “No, you’re not old. That was just a stupid progression of exercise.”

This is also where Roberts tosses the “no pain-no gain” concept out the window. “Even with our pro athletes, our first phase is general strength and corrective … re-balancing of the body. We don’t just throw them in the gym and say, ‘Okay, guys, you haven’t worked out for three months – here’s a 135-pound hang clean. Go for it.’”

And don’t forget: stretching before and after exercising is key.

“There’s stretching and there’s proper stretching, isolating the proper muscles at that time,” says Dr. Kanwaljit (Sunny) Dhillon, a chiropractor who specializes in sports rehab at Total Body Rehab and Wellness Centre in Ajax, Ont. That

means “making sure the muscles from your upper body to your core … to the lower body are stretched to prevent sprain or strains of muscles, ligaments [and] tendons or potential tears of muscle fibres.”

Dhillon recommends stretching the trapezius and pectoral muscles, as well as implementing some range of motion movements to accommodate the neck and shoulders. Activate your core and abdominal muscles with basic movements (e.g., crunches) on an exercise ball, while stretching your hamstrings, calves, quadriceps and hip flexors to help keep your lower half loose.

3 As your workouts progress and you’re ready for strength training, the Roberts regimen calls for “a lot of body weight-based moves that are very hard to accomplish, but safe.” One example is an overhead medicine ball split squat: hold the medicine ball over your head with your feet apart, one in front of the other. With your back and arms straight, lean forward on the front foot until your thigh is at a 90-degree angle. Do 10 reps per leg. Or try a bodyweight plank: face down, put your elbows on the ground, be as tabletop as you can in a plank position and try and hold it for 30 seconds.

Of course, as Dhillon notes, when it comes to strength training it’s important that both the weight you lift and the number of repetitions are appropriate for your body. And if you can’t handle much weight, there are always alternative exercises, like squats against the wall with an exercise ball in your mid- to lower-back region (“Back straight, knees generally shoulder width apart … go down until knees are at 90 degrees, rest for three to five seconds and then raise up until in standing position. Repeat.”) where you’re only using your own body weight. “We want to still do what we did when we were younger. As [we] get older, [we’ve] got to realize [we’re] not going to be lifting the same amount or going for as long.”

Ego, however, isn’t always the problem. For many boomers, joint pain and arthritis can literally put a cramp in their fitness aspirations. Just don’t use that as an excuse around Nichol.

“It’s a huge cop-out,” Nichol believes. “I see guys who are 45 who say, ‘I can’t do this or that because I’ve got arthritis.’ Well, you’re eating inflammatory foods all day long, you don’t sleep at night, you’re not stretching, you’re not doing core exercises … so don’t tell me about your arthritis.”

Simple exercises that can be done outside the gym, like single-leg balancing (stand on one leg and brush your teeth with the opposite hand and then switch), can help dramatically alleviate joint pain.

“It would blow your mind the number of people who come in with nonspecific knee pain who we’ve fixed without any kind of surgical intervention,” Nichol says, “just by loosening up the soft tissue, mobilizing their ankles and their hips, getting their core more active and [them] being cognizant of proper posture.”

Finally, when all the stretching, crunching, lifting, pushing and pulling are done, recovery is key. What’s the best way to recover? Why, another type of workout!

“As all of us get older, it’s important we take recovery and restoration really seriously,” Nichol says. “So, we incorporate yoga into our training, we incorporate meditation. Nutrition is probably the most important tool we use for recovery.”

And as added inspiration, Roberts points to one boomer client of his who lost 33 pounds in his first year of training and who claims his company’s profits rose by 30 per cent since he changed his nutrition and lifestyle.

Yet another reason to give working out like an athlete a try – not only does your body start to resemble a hockey star’s, but your bank account just might as well.