The sheer athleticism of former NFL player Randy Moss is nothing short of jaw-dropping. He holds the record for single-season receiving touchdowns (23) and single-season receiving touchdowns for a rookie (17). And, he’s second all-time in career regular season touchdowns (156). Most of these chart-shattering stats come from his tenure with the Minnesota Vikings, where he’ll get inducted to the Ring of Honor later this year.
These days, though, it’s not the records Moss has trampled that make him stand out from the crowd. It’s his continued dedication to fitness (he’s in the gym at least four days a week) and his commitment to spreading that passion to the masses through free bootcamp classes and active getaways.
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Randy Moss: Committed to Fit
After 14 years in the NFL, Moss, now 40, still has a regimented schedule imprinted in his DNA, just like his unmatched speed and power. So when I showed up exactly one minute late to interview him at The BodyHoliday Resort in St. Lucia, where Moss was leading beach workouts all week, he immediately calls me out for it, in his friendly southern drawl. (I’m told Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots for whom Moss played three full seasons, helped shape Moss’ punctuality thanks to steep fines and locking late players out of practice.)
After pulling back my hair for Moss’ killer beach bootcamp class that morning (scroll down to try it!), I pulled up a chair to listen in on his life post-NFL.
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On crushing a hard workout in the a.m…
“I’ve always been the guy to wake up and smell the coffee,” says Moss, who would aim to get to the gym before any other players on his team. (While playing for the Patriots, Junior Seau often beat him to it.) “I used to hear my teammates say, ‘I’m going to work out in the morning, then I’m going to go back at 5 p.m. to get in another workout.’ And I was thinking, ‘Well, what the heck are you doing in the morning, that you’ve got to go back in the evening? Because I’m killing myself in the morning. And I’m not going back again later!’” Moss still trains from about 6:30 to 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He reserves Wednesday to fish and the weekends to hang with family, swim and play basketball.
On his favorite types of exercise…
“Football training…[I was] bored with it. Then I picked up CrossFit and I just fell in love with it — the way it made my body feel,” Moss says. “[Working out] is what I’ve been doing my whole life. It became a part of me. And now that I’m a little bit older, I just have to find ways to not put a lot of hurt on my body, but a good hurt. I think with [The BodyHoliday] bootcamp, that’s not a bad hurt — if you’re in shape.”
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On maintaining a healthy diet…
“My biggest thing is, I love to eat. But the one thing I try to do is stay out of the snack room with the Goldfish and Doritos,” he says. The food he always stays away from: pork. “It’s just a dirty animal,” says Moss, who only ate two meals a day while still in the league. “I’d eat a nice breakfast or a nice lunch and then have a big dinner. I never snacked during the day. I’d never have breakfast and lunch and dinner.”
On the negative press he got while playing…
“I think throughout the course of my career, just by making things look easy, a lot of people really took that as I was coasting. They took away from how hard I really worked to be able to maintain a high level of play. And that really stuck with me throughout the course of my career. [People would say], ‘He didn’t work hard, he didn’t do this, he didn’t do that.’ But you’re sitting here, talking to a 6’4” basketball player, that came into another sport and demolished it… I really took pride in going out there each and every day — practice, workouts, recovery. I always wanted to be better than the next man. And not in an arrogant way, but our sport is a competitive sport, so any edge that I could possibly get up on my next opponent, I wanted to do that.”
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On feeling great at 40…
“I’m a true believer of taking care of your body when you’re young and then later on in life, your body will be able to take care of you. Now I’m not saying that I’m not going to have a replacement or a surgery or something like that. But right now at 40 years old, I’m good.”
On leading workouts at a wellness resort…
“The feedback that I’ve been getting over the last two years is ‘I think I’m doing enough, but [I realize] I’m not doing enough.’ What someone can get from this is a better understanding of what type of workout they’re really doing…You can challenge yourself and figure out if whatever you’re doing is it the right thing — or if you need to turn it up a notch.”
On the free bootcamps he leads in Charlotte…
“I’ve seen people’s bodies change. There’s a man out there, he’s probably lost 80 pounds. But more importantly, the movement we started in Charlotte, North Carolina, everybody has been accepting to it,” says Moss, who insists the bootcamp isn’t his. It belongs to the city of Charlotte. “We’re at Stax — that’s the name of the building — but when we put it on, it’s for the city…We just want to uplift people. That’s everything in a nutshell.”
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Randy Moss’ Beach Bootcamp Workout
Want a glimpse at what Moss does to stay so fit and healthy at 40? Try this beach bootcamp workout — the same one Moss led at The BodyHoliday, created alongside CrossFit athlete, Emily Breeze and Stax gym owner, Eric McCoy. It gets your heart rate revving and muscles burning, so you torch calories and tone up, fast. Start your warm-up with a 400-meter jog, then do 20 yards each of high knees, butt kickers, walking lunges, bear crawls and sprints. Then get ready to kick some (bathing suit-ready) butt.
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