Secret to Brady Success? 'Ever-Present Guru'

NYT profiles QB and his all-around adviser/trainer
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 27, 2015 2:20 PM CST
Secret to Brady Success? An 'Ever-Present Guru'
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady speaks at a news conference in Foxborough, Mass., Thursday, Jan. 22.   (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Political writer Mark Leibovich switches gears for a lengthy profile of Tom Brady in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and, no, it doesn't offer any revelations about the Patriots' deflated footballs. But Leibovich got rare access to the QB—"it would be hard to name an athlete of comparable fame and accomplishment for whom the public has less of a feel"—and the resulting headline of "Tom Brady Cannot Stop" provides the gist. The idea of life after football doesn't seem to compute for him. Brady may be relatively ancient for a quarterback at age 37, but he has every intention of playing at his current level into his 40s. One reason has to do with another person who features prominently in the article, Alex Guerrero, "his best friend and ever-­present guru for training and many other things."

Brady insists that Guerrero's unorthodox training regimen, with its focus on physical, emotional, and spiritual fitness, is why he's still playing as well as he is. The piece illustrates one example after Brady suffered a potentially serious calf injury in practice and hobbled over to Guerrero, who "worked to 're-educate' the muscles in the affected area so they would not, in a sense, behave as if they had been injured." Brady thinks "massage" isn't the right word. "It’s like giving a chef flour and eggs and saying, 'OK, we’ll make biscuits,'" he says. "Well, sure, everyone is going to make them different. But Alex is perfect at it." They've even started a business together called TB12 that Brady says will make Guerrero's techniques widely known. Click for the full profile, in which we learn that Brady's father thinks his son's time with the Patriots is destined to "end badly" for one simple reason: "I know what Tommy wants to do. He wants to play till he’s 70.” (More Tom Brady stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X