Bomani Jones On Tom Brady's Bizarre Training Schemes: "This Just Reeks Of 'Con'"

You’ll want to read this ESPN feature on the seemingly, curiously ageless Tom Brady, and his new book on his training methods cooked up by adviser and business partner Alex Guerrero, who has claimed he can cure cancer and concussions. But this paragraph gives you the gist:

Every day, [Brady] wakes up at 6 in the morning and immediately drinks 20 ounces of purified water, augmented with TB12 electrolytes, which, as he tells us, contain the “72 trace minerals” generally lost in perspiration. As a result, he says, he is so well-hydrated that “even with adequate exposure to the sun, I won’t get sunburned,” and he presumes that the muscles under his skin look like “beautiful tenderloins” instead of “shriveled jerky.” He trains about four hours a day, and on most days, he “does pliability” with Guerrero, who, with hands capable of generating “50 newtons of force in a single finger” — about 11 pounds — applies “targeted pressure” to Brady’s muscles. “On the rare occasions when I don’t have the benefit of working with Alex,” he either does “partner-pliability” or goes solo with a jar of coconut oil he applies himself and a TB12 “vibrating sphere.” He eats abstemiously, with few portion sizes bigger than the palm of his hand, but also with a purpose, to maintain the “alkalinity” of his body. And he sleeps in the same determinedly therapeutic fashion, repairing to bed at 9 each night in a room uncontaminated by either technology or pet dander. He keeps a glass of water by his bedside and sleeps, famously, in TB12 “bioceramic recovery wear,” which is also for sale from TB12 and which Brady also considers part of a “movement” — the “tech-enabled apparel and sleepwear” movement.

This is, by any basic understanding of nutrition, fitness, or science, a whole bunch of bullshit. It’s every bit as bad or worse as Russell Wilson’s much-mocked “nanobubbles.” It’s a scheme to get rich by exploiting gullible people. It’s hilarious but also more than a little infuriating.

Bomani Jones, on his ESPN Radio show The Right Time, has takes.

The video should be cued up to the right timestamp, but if not start at 41:10.

“You’re going into business with a dude who was selling people supplements that he said, not could help with cancer, but could cure cancer?” Jones says of Guerrero and the “TB12" training and nutrition programs. “That’s who Tom Brady’s out here doing business with.”

“Imagine somebody walk up in your crib talking about ‘I got the cure for sunburn, and that’s my homeboy, he say he got the cure for cancer ... I’m out here exercising my brain to where I know that when I get hit I tell my muscles what to do, and you, for the very very low price of $250, can get started.’”

“Tom Brady as of right now has a multi-level marketing scheme, without the multi-levels.”

“The whole damn thing feels like a con.”

That was satisfying.

H/t Ben