The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance

by Tom Brady

It was one of those days. I was “in the zone.”

My ability to sustain my peak performance over the past ten years is almost unbelievable to me.

But I suppose that’s what peak performance really means—continuing to get better year after year—or at least that’s what it means to me.

At its core, the TB12 Method focuses on developing and maintaining something that many people have probably never heard of: muscle pliability.

Every year we seek to improve—and I would love for you to do the same.

sustained peak performance isn’t about luck. It’s about hard work, dedication, discipline, and the support of my great team.

My ability to sustain my peak performance over the last ten years came from rethinking how to train, and, specifically, how to train with pliability.

also believe the TB12 Method can inspire a movement that radically reforms the way we train and helps us live a more natural, holistic, healthy lifestyle while lowering our risk of injury, increasing our vitality, and taking our performance to the next level.

As far as pliability is concerned, an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

I define pliability training as targeted, deep-force muscle work that lengthens and softens muscles at the same time those muscles are rhythmically contracted and relaxed.

pliability is the missing leg of the traditional strength and conditioning model of aerobic activity and lifting weights.

But by incorporating pliability training into your workout regimen, you’ll be able to sustain your own peak performance in ways that minimize the risk of injury. If an injury happens, pliability training will put you on a faster road to recovery.

We all need to become active participants in our own health.

consider how pliability training, and a commitment to a holistic and disciplined lifestyle, will lead to a more enjoyable life that allows them to achieve any goal they set for themselves.

One of the goals of the TB12 Method is to combine our physical peak with our mental peak, while extending both of them for as long as possible.

Today, I look back and think, Thank God I did it differently. Thank God I had the courage to step outside the conventional wisdom. Thank God I followed what my heart, mind, and body were always telling me—

What if, instead of accepting injury as inevitable and a part of what it means to play sports, trainers and coaches began incorporating pliability training into the traditional strength and conditioning system, educating bodies to absorb and disperse the forces placed upon them?

To my mind, everyone can benefit from greater pliability and a balanced body that allows more oxygen-rich blood circulation and increased vitality.

week. As I go into my eighteenth season, I now do pliability training four days a week, and among strength, conditioning, and pliability, I spend roughly one-half of my time on pliability training.

Ability allows athletes to achieve. Durability allows them to continue achieving. And pliability makes both possible.

But I just finished my seventeenth season, the Patriots won the Super Bowl, and not a lot of players have ever started at quarterback in the NFL at the age of forty.

I’m still always improving and learning.)

And when you’re all done with your workout, leave me a message on my answering machine.” For every message I left him, Glenn promised to pay me a dollar. For every day I didn’t leave Glenn a message, I would owe him five dollars.

Like I said, in order to achieve goals, it takes a great support system.

“the peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best of which you are capable.”

I believe any one of us can always do more, and better, if we work to develop the right mind-set.

Playing the way I am today, after seventeen seasons in the NFL, requires focus, discipline, and an openness to doing things differently, and that’s been true ever since the Patriots won our first Super Bowl in February 2002.

worry about the things I could control, and not worry about the things I couldn’t.

And the lesson was, when things don’t go your way—or, rather, what you don’t think of as your way—there can be a variety of opportunities that may not be obvious in the moment but that through hard work, preparation, and persistence can present themselves over time and make you better.

If I don’t treat practice like a game, there’s no way the coaches will let me play in an actual game.

I’ve never believed that entitlement has any place in team sports.

If another guy is more capable of doing the job, it’s his right to play.

The thing is, over the previous three years, I’d grown as a person and as a player, gained more experience, and learned to compete really, really hard.

I didn’t mind the competition; competition brought out the best in me.

I was still learning a lot about who I was

Physical pain was something I’d been dealing with since high school. Not knowing any better, I assumed that was just the way it was. So I did what I’d always done: I iced my arm and shoulder, rested for a day or two, and waited for the pain to come back. It always did.

An NFL season has four preseason and sixteen regular-season games, and the Patriots have made the playoffs almost every year since I’ve been the starting quarterback, which adds up to between twenty and twenty-four games per season.

After a couple of years of two-a-days, plus the pounding my body was taking every day on the field, I got to a point where the tendonitis in my right elbow was so bad I could barely throw the football.

Heavier loads lead to even more imbalance and more muscle compensation, which lead to more injuries.

The reason for this book is to educate others to take a more preventative approach to injury.

In the health and medical worlds, there’s been plenty of talk about the benefits of wellness and preventative measures to keep people from getting sick in the first place. Why don’t we do the same thing in sports training?

Along with the championships I’ve been fortunate to be a part of, I’m also proud of the mind-set and approach I’ve taken to push myself to a different model of training that creates and enables my own sustained peak performance.

I’ve been faster every year for the last six years, and have also broken my own personal bests in agility and functional strength tests. Over the same period, according to conventional wisdom, this doesn’t happen to athletes in their thirties.

It was the second game of the season—the first after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Sometime during the 2004 training season, one of my teammates, Willie McGinest, saw me taking time off practice and took me aside. Like me, Willie was from California, and he’d played college ball at USC. He was a linebacker, one of the most talented players on the team, and a major contributor to our Super Bowl wins in 2001, 2003, and 2004. Willie had a certain aura and charisma about him—he was “the Godfather” of the locker room—and he’d always been like an older brother to me. Seeing what was happening, Willie suggested I meet with his body coach, who at the time was Alex Guerrero. Without that meeting, the TB12 Method would never have come to exist.

When Willie recommended that you do something, you did it.

A sore throwing arm didn’t necessarily mean the end of my career, but I was beginning to wonder whether I could continue to play in pain until the day my body just gave out. But was that any kind of real solution? Looking back, I wasn’t in enough pain to realize I needed to change what I was doing.

Alex grew up in California and studied traditional Chinese medicine in college.

Alex, on the other hand, had spent his life and career studying and combining Eastern and Western perspectives and creating a holistic, mind-body approach to sports performance and well-being.

The recovery he and I later engineered following my ACL injury really cemented our relationship, and over time we developed a set of principles that have become the foundation of my performance training.