Super Bowl: how Tom Brady’s weird diet, quirky workouts and special pyjamas keep him in top shape at 41

When Super Bowl LIII kicks off in a few days, the starting quarterback for one team will be six months from his 42nd birthday.

New England Patriots superstar Tom Brady will become the oldest quarterback to start a Super Bowl, and could become the oldest to win one as well, if he collects his sixth.

The fact the average age of an NFL player is 25, and the average career spans about three seasons (Brady is in his 18th season) makes the California native’s illustrious career even more mind-boggling.

So how does he stave off Father Time? The notoriously private athlete has opened up a bit lately, letting cameras into his off-field life via Facebook series Tom Vs. Time, and he has released a diet and fitness book which has received as much applause as mockery.

Here’s a look at some of the weirdest things Mr Gisele Bundchen does to stay youthfully exuberant:

Food and diet

Outlined in his diet and exercise book The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance, Brady has an incredibly strict food regime that is heavy on the vegetables and light on pretty much everything else. He also drinks heaps of water and electrolyte infused drinks (up to 25 a day) plus multiple organic protein powder infused shakes before and after training sessions.

The list of things Brady does not eat is almost as long as the things he does: white sugar, white flour, MSG, iodised salt, tomatoes, peppers, nightshade vegetables in general, olive oil, canola, mushrooms, bread, pasta, alcohol, soy, white potatoes, dairy and coffee. He also isn’t much of a fan of fruits, however will have the occasional banana with a smoothie.

The goal is to eat foods that are alkalising (lowering the body’s pH count), meaning they help decrease inflammation and promote healing in the body – it’s a diet regime which has the scientific world heavily divided.

This idea comes from his family’s personal chef Allen Campbell, who is a believer in the methods of eating a plant-based diet (although Brady is not a full vegan). The method became famous after Colin Campbell’s (no relation) book The China Study which found that consuming large amounts of animal products including dairy led to increased risk of death.

Some of Brady’s weird diet quirks have been debunked outright by scientists (eating fruit is considered pretty healthy and drinking lots of water does not prevent sunburns), and he took heaps of internet trolling for some of the recipes in his book which include avocado ice cream and buffalo cauliflower tacos with celery slaw.

Call it quackery, however Brady’s five Super Bowl rings and four Super Bowl MVP awards tend to speak louder than any negative press he gets for his quirky eating habits.

Physical workouts

Brady’s YouTube channel offers a pretty neat inside look at what he does to keep in shape off the field – athletes are getting more odd in their methods when it comes to trying to gain and keep an edge and Brady is no different.

One drill features Brady playing dodgeball, however he is wearing his football gear and has dropped back into a mock pocket. Another shows Brady holding in a push-up position while a trainer pummels his midsection with boxing mitts.

Brady is also a big believer in “pliability” training, which is a fancy way of combining stretching with deep tissue massage. It was invented by Brady’s trainer and business partner Alex Guerrero, who Brady calls his “Body Coach”, and is seen as mostly a marketing gimmick (Brady has TB12 shirts for sale that bearing the “pliability” slogan).

However there is science behind the idea of using flexible resistance bands instead of free weights when training. A medical study published by the The National Centre for Biotechnology Information journal found it was better for doing specific exercises such as squats and arm presses.

One of the funniest quirky recovery methods Brady uses has to be his specially made pyjamas from Under Armour. These bad boys will run you US$200 and include bioceramic particles which apparently absorb infrared wavelengths emitted from the body, and then reflect them back to the body, which somehow helps with sleep.

Once again, a lot of it sounds like junk science at best, however the placebo effect has been scientifically proven. So believing that something is working is sometimes half the battle.

Mental training

The three-time league MVP does a lot when it comes to building a strong mind and mental outlook. Recently he revealed on Instagram he is a big fan of W Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Side to the Mental Guide of Peak Performance, a book that originally came out in the 1970s but is still lauded as groundbreaking.

The book outlines how athletes can overcome nervousness and perform better in key situations by letting the subconscious take over during matches. It also talks about rewriting the relationship between player and coach as more equals.

Brady is also a notorious film watcher and note taker. He has binders for each season, in which he keeps game logs, film clips and even scribbles from team meetings. Before and after each game he watches film of himself and his opponents, and goes to great lengths to learn everything about his competitors’ tendencies.

Brady also does regular cognitive exercises, using Brain HQ, in which users play games that are supposed to increase mental performance in life. However a recent large scale study funded by the BBC found they do not really work and only increase memory specific to that particular task.

One thing Brady does that is backed up by science is going to bed every night at 9pm and waking up at 6am without an alarm. Countless athletes are touting sleep as a huge part of their training. Waking and rising (naturally) at the same time each day is great for a person’s circadian rhythm, which regulates one’s metabolism.

Brady has also benefited from being the underdog at every stage of his career, being drafted late and having to work his way into a starting role, which he credits for creating a strong sense of internal drive to succeed.

Pseudoscience or not, his accolades, which qualify him in most eyes as the greatest NFL player of all-time, make it tough to argue with the odd things he does to stay atop the football world in the sport’s most scrutinised position.