The TB12 Method Read online

  “I’m never going to get my chance,” I used to tell Greg. “They’re giving me only three reps” (meaning practice snaps). Greg would say, “Three reps? Three reps is a heck of a lot better than zero reps. I want you to do the best you can with those three reps that they give you, Tommy. If you do anything less, then shame on you. Now go out and do those three reps well.” His words further jump-started my own competitiveness. They empowered me, actually—now I had a plan. I would leave Greg’s office and go to practice and do those three reps well. A week later, the coaches gave me four reps. Then five. Then six. As time went on, I was getting the majority of the reps. Every day during practice I was competing as hard as I could, because I knew that if I didn’t, there was no guarantee anyone would ever allow me to see any game time. I thought: If I don’t treat practice like a game, there’s no way the coaches will let me play in an actual game. So I’m always going to treat practice like a game. It’s a rule I still live by today.

  My second year at Michigan, Scott Dreisbach was our starting QB, and as the season went on, I competed with Brian Griese for the second position. After a few weeks, Brian had slowly but surely beaten me out. Overall, we didn’t have a great year, and late in the season against Penn State, the coach pulled Dreisbach from the game and put Griese in. Long story short, Griese finished the rest of the season, and we ended up beating Ohio State 13–9, though unfortunately we lost our bowl game again, 17–14, to Alabama. By now the coaches were more neutral about Dreisbach. Griese was doing a solid job, but no one was really standing out, which is why when the 1997 season started, there was something of a free-for-all quarterback competition. It was never nasty, and there were never any bad feelings—all the QBs had good relationships with one another—plus 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. By that point, I was competing for playing time with Brian Griese, Scott Dreisbach, and a new guy, Jason Kapsner, a highly recruited player out of Minnesota. In the end Coach Carr chose Brian, who was by then a fifth-year senior, as starting QB, and Brian deserved that spot. I became the second quarterback, beating out Scott, who ended up third or fourth on the depth chart alongside Jason. That year, 1997, we were undefeated, and it was a magical season, with Brian playing great and us winning every game and finishing off with a Rose Bowl victory over Washington State. Brian taught me a lot about drive and determination. Nothing was going to get in his way, and I was lucky to be able to watch him play. Looking back, I can see that he was a man on a mission, and he taught me what mental toughness really is.

  At Michigan, versus Purdue, 1999.

  Going into my fourth year, I felt that I was in a position to be the starting QB, having beaten out Dreisbach and Kapsner the previous season. With Brian Griese gone—he had graduated, been drafted, and moved on to the Broncos—a new freshman, Drew Henson, came in. Drew was one of the highest-rated recruits in the country, a multisport athlete who’d been drafted that same year by the New York Yankees. In Drew, all the coaches thought they might have found the next John Elway. Coach Carr had been heavily involved in Drew’s recruitment process, and a lot of people were really eager to see what he could do on the field. 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. During training camp that year, I worked more intensely than I ever had in the weight room and on the practice field. I really tried to take it to another level, and it paid off when Coach Carr chose me for the starting job.

  Unfortunately, we lost our first game to Notre Dame 36–20, and a week later we were blown out, 38–28, by a great Syracuse team led by Donovan McNabb. Two games in, both losses; it wasn’t what you’d call an auspicious debut on my part. At this point, almost everyone wanted Drew to come in and replace me. But Coach Carr kept me in for the next game and, as it turned out, for the rest of the season, because after those first two losses we won nine straight games to finish the year at 9-2. Then we went on to Ohio State, where, despite our team breaking a Michigan record by making thirty-one completions, we lost the game 31–16. Still, we won our bowl game, 45–31, over Arkansas, and finished the season 10-3. Overall it was a pretty good year, and a memorable one.

  In 1999, when I began my fifth season, the rivalry between Drew Henson and me had intensified. Everyone—the coaches, the fans—wanted to see Drew out there on the field, and why not? He was very talented, and he’d forgone playing baseball for the Yankees to play college football at Michigan. Still, our team was coming off a solid 10-3 season. Four days before our opening game, Coach Carr called Drew and me into his office. He announced that I was the team captain and would be starting the game, with Drew playing the second quarter. On the basis of that, Coach Carr would decide at halftime which one of us was playing better and would play the second half.

  At Notre Dame, 1999.

  Early the following day, I remember telling my dad about Coach Carr’s decision. Somehow, a member of the media got hold of my dad on the phone and asked for a comment. I think the reporter was trying to bait him—and he succeeded, too! “How do you feel about your son starting against Notre Dame?” the reporter asked. “Well,” my dad said, “I spoke to Tom, and he’s really excited to play the first quarter, and then Drew will play the second quarter.” Thanks to my dad, the media broke the story. After that incident, one of my sisters gave my dad the nickname “Loose Lips.” That nickname still fits him quite well!

  Drew and I played it out, as Coach Carr had said. During our first game against Notre Dame, I played the first quarter and Drew came in for the second quarter. Coach Carr decided I would play the second half, and we won that game, 26–22, scoring a touchdown in the last two minutes. The second game, against Rice, I played the second half, and the third game, against Syracuse, Coach Carr decided to have Drew play the second half. Midway through the season, against Michigan State, a team that also hadn’t lost a single game so far that season, I played the first quarter and Drew played the second quarter—and Coach Carr again decided to have Drew play the second half. But only a few minutes into the second series, Drew threw an interception, and Coach Carr told me I was going back in. We finished the game strongly, scoring four touchdowns on our last four possessions. But Michigan State was on fire, too, and we couldn’t slow them down. We lost, 34–31. It was our first loss of the season. I remember thinking, I played really well when I came back in, so maybe they won’t rotate Drew and me anymore. Even so, a few days later Coach Carr announced he was continuing the rotation. I didn’t think too much about it, because at least I was playing.

  The following game, against Illinois, we played at home as heavy favorites. As usual I played first, followed by Drew, and then Coach Carr picked me to play the second half. Halfway through the third quarter, the big lead we’d built up was undone by a bunch of crazy things: Illinois scored four unanswered touchdowns; a high snap flew over my head; I threw an interception; and we ended up losing a game we should have won, which meant two straight losses. After the game, Coach Carr called me in to tell me he was giving up the rotation and that I would be playing the whole game next week. As if that weren’t good-enough news, we then won our next four games against Indiana, Northwestern, Penn State, and Ohio State, before beating Alabama in the Orange Bowl and finishing the season 10-2.

  Looking back, I can understand why all those other quarterbacks were playing before I was. I also understand why Coach Carr wanted Drew Henson and me to rotate. Still, it made for a tricky college experience, considering I was still learning a lot about who I was and how competitive college football could be. During my time at Michigan, I was fortunate to be in a competitive, team-first environment. I met lots of great friends and mentors. I’d shown up on campus in 1995 as an athlete who was soft of mind and heart. Learning how to fight for what I wanted was a great experience. But with my colle
ge years behind me, it was time to see if I could make it to the next level.

  In 2000, the New England Patriots and their then quarterback coach, Dick Rehbein, chose me as the NFL’s 199th draft pick, which, if you do the math, means that I was passed over by every team in the NFL somewhere between four and six times. The scouting report said I was tall, poised, smart, and alert. Able to read coverages. I had good accuracy and touch, and I was potentially a team leader. But the positives were buried under a landslide of other stuff: Poor build. Very skinny and narrow. Can get pushed down more easily than you’d like. Lacks mobility and ability to avoid the rush. Lacks a really strong arm. Can’t drive the ball down the field and does not throw a really tight spiral. The report ended by calling me a “system-type player who’s not what you’re looking for in terms of physical stature, strength, arm strength, and mobility,” and “Could make it in the right system but will not be for everyone.” And these reports were right. I needed to get better in a lot of areas.

  In my first season with the Patriots, I was mostly the fourth quarterback on the depth chart. As usual, it was because I didn’t have the natural ability some athletes had at that age. In order to compete, I had to work harder than ever before. Fighting to be able to play is something I’ve carried inside me my whole life, and it wasn’t any different when I joined the Patriots. From my college experience I picked up a lot of great lessons, the biggest one being the importance of competition and of the need to earn my role on a team. That lesson—that attitude—has always mattered a lot to me. When I arrived at Michigan, no one ever promised I’d be the starting quarterback by my second year. Compare that with today, when some student-athletes make it a condition of accepting a college scholarship offer that they’ll see game time in their first or second year. My first year with the Patriots, our head coach, Bill Belichick, said flat-out that he wanted only one thing: competition. My response was, Hell, I know how to compete. I’ve been doing that for the last nine years. Nobody ever gave me anything. You want competition? Okay, great, let’s compete.

  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.

  I approached it just like I had at Michigan. I worked my butt off every day in practice, knowing that if I didn’t make the extra effort to treat every practice like a game, it was unlikely that the coaches would ever let me play in an actual one. I wanted to gain the respect of my teammates. Again, my mind-set back then was to always treat practice like a game, and it’s still my mind-set today. During my first Patriots season, if I scored a touchdown during a two-minute practice drill, I celebrated as if I were in front of seventy thousand people. I have to believe this had a positive effect on my teammates, who thought, Oh my God, this guy wants to practice, he wants to compete; there’s no entitlement here, this is all about the team.

  Still, I had never achieved anything without the intensity and discipline I brought to practice, and a mind-set increasingly focused on making sure my body stayed healthy and uninjured. The scouting reports weren’t totally off base. I didn’t have a natural body for football. Yes, I always had a pretty good arm, but my footwork was below average, and just like in high school and college, when I would run last or next to last before working my way back toward the middle of the pack, I was the slowest guy on the field. It took me at least a year to catch up and be able to compete with the older guys. At twenty-three and twenty-four years old, my only goal in life was to make the team, and I kept putting in the extra effort because I had to. With every level you reach, everyone gets faster, stronger, and better, and I had to work really hard just to be competitive. That’s why every Friday at 6:00 a.m., when no one else was around, I worked with our strength coach, Mike Woicik, doing speed and footwork drills, trying to close the gap between me and my teammates.

  It was around this same time that I started becoming more and more aware of what was changing in my body.

  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. 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.

  Physical pain was something I’d been dealing with since high school. Back then, almost every day after baseball practice my elbow hurt so much that I would go home and drop it into a big bucket of ice. I didn’t know anything different. If my shoulder was sore—which it was most of the time—I’d put a big bag of ice across my neck and upper shoulder. Playing catcher meant that I spent most of my time in a squat, which brought pain to my knees, which meant even more ice packs. The pain followed me to college, where my arm and shoulder ached after almost every practice and game. Not knowing any better, I assumed that was just the way it was. It was football’s fault. I blamed the sport. So I did what I’d always done, and what every trainer and coach had always told me to do: I iced my arm and shoulder, rested for a day or two, went back onto the field, threw again, and waited for the pain to come back. It always did.

  Basically, I followed the same systematic strengthening and conditioning approach that athletes at all levels and in all sports have followed for decades, and still follow today. 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. If you get injured while training or playing, you assume it’s because your muscles are weak. Your first instinct is to strengthen that perceived weakness by lifting weights. But lifting more weights isn’t the solution. The core problem is an imbalance among strength, conditioning, and pliability. So adding heavier weights to that injury and existing imbalance only makes things worse. Heavier loads lead to even more imbalance and more muscle compensation, which lead to more injuries. Strengthen, condition, get injured, go to rehab—that was and still is the nature of the age-old performance-training regimen.

  I never questioned that model or way of thinking, and no one else I knew did, either. I also didn’t consider any alternatives, because as far as I could tell, there weren’t any. Not to mention, ever since I was young, coaches and trainers had always told me that playing sports was all about dealing with pain. It was just a fact, it seemed to me, that playing sports—one of the great joys and opportunities of my life—strained and pounded and broke down my body.

  That’s when I began exploring better ways to train. The reason for this book is to educate others to take a more preventative approach to injur
y. 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? Why hasn’t the science of preventative health measures translated into the world of sports? This book and the TB12 Method are my attempts at an answer. To me, the only way to break the age-old strengthen-condition-injury-rehab model is to incorporate the most important missing leg: pliability.

  As I said, playing sports has been one of the many joys and privileges of my life. But I’ve also seen how the grind of training and the punishment that sports inflicts on our bodies takes away that joy for too many athletes. 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. This regimen is one I want all athletes of all ages to experience, and the principles that fuel the sustained peak performance I’ve enjoyed over the years are, I believe, also the future of sports training. The TB12 Method that Alex and I developed allows me to feel, play, and perform every week at levels as high as—or higher than—they were back when I was first given the opportunity to step onto the field as the Patriots’ quarterback. This is borne out by my own experience: 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.

  But back in 2000, before I knew what pliability was, my love for football, together with my innate determination and competitiveness, got me through whatever pain I was experiencing and pushed me to give the game my absolute best effort whenever I was given the chance. It was in my second year as a Patriot, in 2001, that I finally got an opportunity to play and to prove to everybody what I’d been preparing for, and what I’d always believed I could do.