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

by Tom Brady

To me, and within the TB12 Method, pliability is the missing leg of the traditional strength and conditioning model of aerobic activity and lifting weights.

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

I still remember Glenn saying, “I want you to do one hundred jumping jacks, twenty-five push-ups, and twenty-five sit-ups every morning.

I shined at baseball, which I played throughout high school as a catcher and left-handed hitter. In addition to playing football, I was on the varsity baseball team my junior and senior years, and the Montreal Expos picked me in the eighteenth round of the 1995 MLB draft.

Army wrote something like, Thanks for sending us your tape, but it doesn’t look like your skill set fits our offense. (Well, they did run the triple option at the time. Funny, and true.)

I would have loved to attend the University of Southern California, which recruited me, but the University of Michigan was interested enough to send a recruiter, Bill Harris, out West, and in April of that year Michigan offered me a scholarship, and USC didn’t.

There’s a big difference between playing college football and playing football in the NFL. I didn’t know it at the time, but at Michigan I was doing half the workload the NFL demands, and at half the intensity, too. When you play college football, the season is only twelve or thirteen games long, and you practice and work out no more than four hours a day. Also, there are probably only four or five games during the college season that are truly intense, in which the two teams are of the same caliber and are evenly matched. The NFL is different. The job begins at 7:00 a.m. every day and goes until 6:00 p.m. Every game is a heavyweight brawl, and the intensity never lets up. 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. In short, when I began playing for the Patriots, it was double the practice and double the intensity. Until 2011, NFL teams had what they called two-a-days—twice-daily practices with very intense throwing.

Strength training, in which you use free weights, machines, or your own body weight at higher and higher levels of volume or intensity, mixed with shorter and shorter periods of rest, is designed to increase muscular strength and endurance, which in turn allows your muscles to handle even more weight; whereas conditioning focuses on aerobic exercise, plyometrics, calisthenics, and exercises based on real-life motions—basically any way to elevate your heart rate and make you break a sweat in order to prepare you for competition. You do cardio and lift weights and do your best to find the right balance between them.

Pliability and hydration go hand in hand, and one can’t really exist without the other.

At the same time—contrary to what the media thinks—I won’t always turn down a cheeseburger or an ice cream cone. I just won’t have one every night, and I won’t have ten of them, either. Last year, my wife and I went to Italy, a country that presents a lot of temptation. Yes, I brought along my electrolytes, as well as my protein, nutritional supplements, and TB12 Snacks—I had to be ready to play football two weeks later—but in Italy I definitely ate some things that were not TB12-compliant! My brain and body needed that downtime. Too much of a bad thing is bad for you, but too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing, either.

As a pro quarterback, I train about four hours per day—and I’m committed to making every hour of every day count.

Too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing.

Neuroplasticity is all about generating and regenerating neural connections—which happens only when we train our brains the same way we do our muscles.

By rhythmically contracting and relaxing your muscles in a lengthened, softened state through pliability sessions, you make connections between the brain and the body, which is known as neural priming.

(Think of pliability as the new “warm-up” and “cool-down.”)

primed,

what does "primed" mean?

Just as you can’t do strength training without conditioning, you also need to find the right balance between strength, conditioning, and pliability, depending on your sport or activity, and the intensity with which you do it.

I believe that at a minimum, most younger people should dedicate 20 percent of their workouts to pliability.

Why do baseball pitchers today need Tommy John surgery on a regular basis? Too much overload, and not enough muscle pliability!

Quarterbacks, pitchers, and golfers are all what are known as “rotational athletes.” That means they need to rotate their trunks or arms as they do their jobs.

At TB12, about 90 percent of the time clients work out with resistance bands.

Drinking enough water helps our bodies maintain good metabolism and digestion, lubricates our joints, and keeps oxygen and nutrients circulating to our muscles.

At the TB12 Sports Therapy Center, we recommend that everyone, even nonathletes, consume at least one-half of their body weight in ounces of water every day.

From my perspective, eating well means eating mostly plant-based whole foods, foods rich in fiber and essential fatty acids.

I take a multivitamin, vitamin D, vitamin B complex, an antioxidant, essential fish oils, protein powder, and a probiotic.

My general discipline and pattern is to sleep from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.,

As I contract and relax each muscle, Alex, using optimal pressure and forces similar to those I experience playing, training, or carrying out the daily acts of living, strokes through that muscle, in isolation and always toward the heart, for twenty seconds on average. Rather than working all the muscles of my body simultaneously, he focuses on each part of each muscle—the outside (lateral), the inside (medial), and the middle.

the positive-intentional trauma exerted on me through targeted, deep-force muscle work during pliability trains my body and brain to deal with the negative-unintentional traumas that I face in games, practice, or any other environment that’s beyond my control.

today my workouts consist of 25 percent strengthening, 25 percent conditioning—and 50 percent pliability. If I were twenty-two again, I would devote a quarter of my workout to pliability and the rest to strengthening and conditioning.

After a lifetime of lifting weights, for the past seven years I’ve used resistance bands almost exclusively. The difference is profound.

Electrolytes are chemicals and nutrients that are already present in our bodies in the form of potassium, sodium, magnesium, and others.

Drink at least one-half of your body weight in ounces of water every day.

electrolytes are chemicals and nutrients that are already present in our bodies in the form of potassium, sodium, magnesium, and others.

The calories you get from an apple are different from the ones you get from an apple pie.

Many people have conditioned their bodies to a nutritional regimen made up of lots of white or pale-looking foods—french fries, potato chips, white bread, chicken nuggets—that don’t exist in nature. A friend once told me that when his young son was asked in school where ketchup came from, he said, “A bottle.” He had no idea that the source of ketchup is supposed to be tomatoes.

Nutrient-dense, high-fiber foods, on the other hand, not only give us more energy but also, thanks to their natural fiber content, make us feel fuller faster, and with smaller servings.

I know that local and organic food often costs more, but the way I see it, I’m making up those savings in decreased health-care costs in the long run—and, most important, I feel better and have performed better as I’ve eaten healthier. It’s impossible to eat the cheapest foods while also eating the best foods. Eating healthy is an investment I make in myself.

A few warm-weather foods that cool the body include cucumbers, asparagus, avocados, broccoli, and celery. On the list of cold-weather foods are root vegetables, fennel, oats, quinoa, and rutabaga.

Many believe the best sources of dietary fat are essential fatty acids, especially omega-3 and omega-6 fats. These can be found in sardines, wild game, flaxseed and flaxseed oil, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and canola oil.

AVOID REFINED CARBOHYDRATES The negative effects of eating too many refined carbohydrates, which are in junk foods and fast foods, include excessive insulin production, excessive fat storage, and elevated blood sugar levels. I try to keep my insulin levels balanced, since the more stable they are, the lower my inflammation rates will be. For that reason I try to avoid eating anything that comes in a box or a bag, as well as foods containing white flour or added sugars. That means I try to limit cereal, white bread, white rice, pasta, cakes, and cookies. Less inflammation is the key for me.

(If a food has fewer than 0.5 grams of trans fat in it per serving, by law its label is allowed to say “0 grams of trans fat.” So always read the label.)

Saturated fats, which are found in red meat, milk, butter, cheese, palm oil, and coconut oil, also increase the risk of heart disease. Of the two, saturated fats are “better” than trans fats, but try to limit your consumption of foods containing either. I will very rarely eat anything with these types of fats.

this is in direct conflict with Vinnie Tortorich's "Fitness Confidential" philosophy.

THE FOOD INDUSTRY The way we eat has changed more in the past fifty years than it had in the previous ten thousand. There are around forty thousand products for sale in a supermarket. Most are manufactured by one of the ten or so multinationals that control our country’s trillion-dollar industrial food system. Most people define “food” as any substance we eat that provides proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Our body’s cells absorb and metabolize these nutrients, which in turn give us energy and ensure continuing growth in our bones and muscles. But most of what we buy in the supermarket are food-like products or compounds marketed and sold to us as “food.” They’re not food. They’re refinements or inventions that someone made up. Consider what the industry does to fruits and vegetables, too. Green apples, bananas, and tomatoes ripened by ethylene gas are available all year round, but are those real? Moreover, a lot of studies show that the mineral content of our soil has declined steadily since the 1950s, along with the nutritional value of the fruits and vegetables that grow in that soil. The way I see it, food companies are more like chemical companies than anything else. But we keep eating what they sell us and then wondering why the rates of disease and obesity are so high. Our bodies become toxic when we ingest toxic chemicals. Just go into the grocery store and scan the ingredients on a can of soup or a jar of peanut butter. Ascorbic acid. High-fru...

Alkaline or neutral ash helps the body thrive, whereas eating too many acidifying foods leads to a condition called acidosis, which makes us more prone to infections, colds, flu, low energy, fatigue, sore muscles, joint pain, hip fractures, bone spurs, poor concentration, and mood swings. All of these things are opposite to what I need as an athlete. Strongly acidifying foods include white rice, bread, butter, cheese, yogurt, and beef. The optimal goal is an 80/20 balance between alkalizing and acidifying foods, and a pH balance of 7. By decreasing the percentage of acidifying foods in your diet, your body is better able to neutralize whatever acids it produces during digestion and protect itself from further acidity.

try to eat as many green vegetables as you can—they’re rich in chlorophyll, which gives them their green color—along with beets, green cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, garlic, onions, radishes, bell peppers, and squash.

The cut of meat, chicken, or fish you eat shouldn’t be any bigger than the size of your palm. It should be accompanied by at least two palms’ worth of vegetables.

Here’s a tip: If I’m in a restaurant and I order something savory, like fish or a steak, I make sure to order a lot of vegetables on the side. I eat them first, so by the time I get to the steak, I’m already pretty full.

Athletes who burn a lot of calories can get away with eating up to 50 grams of added sugar a day, but for most people I wouldn’t recommend more than 25 grams per day.

Try to give yourself around three hours from when you finish dinner to the time you go to bed. The body’s metabolic burn rate starts slowing down at night, and sleep is when our bodies should be recovering from the day’s activities. That’s why eating late at night isn’t a great idea. Your body can’t prepare for recovery when it’s digesting the food you’ve just eaten.

The most important trace minerals are calcium, copper, magnesium, boron, phosphorus, potassium, silica, and zinc.