We could have told him that!

[jpinkc]

Hey Folks,

Great article on Tony Gonzalez, the all world tight end for the Chiefs in this morning s KC Star. The quote I liked:

"Gonzalez has been remarkable this year. It’s hard to imagine that a 30-year-old tight end who has made every Pro Bowl since 1999 could take his game to a new level. But that’s what he’s done. He’s blocking better. He’s catching everything. And — this is new — nobody can tackle Tony Gonzalez now. He runs like John Mackey after the catch. This is a new-found power Gonzalez says he picked up in the Dominican Republic.

He was there during the offseason, and his hotel had an archaic weight room — Gonzalez said it looked like something out of the middle ages. Gonzalez, like most athletes, had spent his time working out on aerobic, anaerobic, automatic, ergonomic new-fangled machines. He walked into this weight room and saw … a barbell for doing leg squats. Gonzalez had not attempted a leg squat in six years, but he had nothing else to do. He started doing leg squats. At first it hurt so much, he couldn’t sit down. He kept going. Soon, he was squatting 330 pounds.

He’s convinced that work has made him a different kind of player.

“I don’t have to say I’m different, you can see it,” he says.

The last four games, Gonzalez has averaged 100 yards receiving per game and more than 17 yards per reception. Coming into this season, he’d averaged just about 12 yards per reception."

OK, I was under the assumption that these guys were all squatting and doing DL. I'm on FL2 and Tony G's comments makes me wonder if I'm not working out harder than a lot of the NFL guys!

[Lou Schuler]

The question I have is why he had to go to the DR to "discover" exercises everyone here knows how to do. I hate to be a cynic, but is it really a coincidence that the DR happens to be a place where training drugs aren't illegal?

[Chris Correia]

Originally Posted by Lou Schuler

The question I have is why he had to go to the DR to "discover" exercises everyone here knows how to do. I hate to be a cynic, but is it really a coincidence that the DR happens to be a place where training drugs aren't illegal?

Yes, you are old, so you are cynical.

But what the heck WAS he doing in the DR?

[Lou Schuler]

I don't even follow pro football, so I don't know who's who or what's up with anyone's performance.

But in my many years of following baseball, I can pick out the moments when reporters gave readers plenty of reason to suspect drugs had a big role in a player's success, but didn't realize that's what they were doing.

My favorite was when Baseball America wrote a short piece about Jose Canseco, saying that he was a middling prospect before he had a monster final season in the minors, followed by his Rookie of the Year season for Oakland. The writer just mentioned in passing that he'd gained 30+ pounds of muscle in the offseason (just a couple of months, really) before his breakout year.

Another was when the New York Times Magazine did a big profile of Barry Bonds, and just mentioned in passing that he gets constant blood tests to test esoteric things like liver enzymes. Why would a healthy athlete in his 30s need regular tests for liver enzymes? The reporter didn't think to ask.

So now we have a Pro Bowl football player who goes off to the Dominican, comes back stronger and faster so he can "take his game to a new level" at age 30 (which is geriatric in the NFL), and he attributes his success to an ill-equipped weight room?

He could be telling the truth -- like I said, I don't know anything about the guy and know little about pro football in general. But you have to admit it doesn't really pass the sniff test.

[Espi]

Lou, I should have suspected it.. I was like "WHAT? 'Don't these guys have access to weight lifting' ... as I hadn't read that crucial bit 'DR/Dom. Rep.'.
Yeah, sure... no you aren't being cynical, just 'in-the-know'.

[ParanoidAndroid]

I saw this story on sportscenter this morning.