Ad Disclosure
Not Sure Whether to Be Motivated or Embarrassed After Seeing Shirtless Rod Brind’Amour Lift the Stanley Cup
Published:
The Canes won the Stanley Cup. Awesome team. A total wagon.
And I’ll tell what, these shirtless photos of Rod Brind’Amour are insane:
They don’t call him “Rod the Bod” for no reason, but the man is 55 years old and last played hockey in 2010. I didn’t look like that at 21, 31, or 41. He’s got six pack abs, huge biceps and pecs, shredded obliques, lats and everything else. It’s wild.
Emily Kaplan wrote a 2019 ESPN story outlining Brind’Amour’s routine:
Brind’Amour can’t run anymore because of his knees. “It just hit me this year,” he says. “My knees are shot. I like to run, but it’s not worth it.”
So every day, he does 45 minutes, minimum, on a bike for cardio. He does the Assault bike conditioning test players do once a week — “but only half the test,” he insists. “Just to sniff around it, so I know once a year when I’m going to do it, I can do it.”
Every day he does core work “because if my back goes out, I’m screwed,” he says. “Then, depending on my time, I have two upper-body workout days, then a leg day, and I rotate through.” Brind’Amour insists he doesn’t know how much his weighted vests weigh. “I just throw one or two on, depending what I’m doing,” he says.
Brind’Amour makes his workouts travel-proof. One of his leg days doesn’t even require equipment. “I can roll with anything,” he says. “If there’s no bike in a hotel, I’ll jump on that stupid elliptical — which I call the executive workout — like you’re just getting a half-assed sweat.”
Wait – is the elliptical considered a half-assed workout? Not sure I’ve heard anyone disparage the elliptical before, but I guess if you’re a gym rat you would view certain things as beneath you, like the power lifter isn’t going to Planet Fitness to do his sets. Personally, I think the elliptical is pretty solid because you’re not killing your knees on the pavement, or any of the turf supersites across Philly that require an extra day of recovery after playing any kind of sport on them (this is a 10th and Bigler hate sentence).
But you can go two ways with this –
You can be embarrassed at how fat and lazy you are, completely trounced by a 55-year-old man. The only things I’ve lifted lately are a Chipotle burrito, my 4 year old, and a Playstation 5 controller. Or, you can be motivated in the sense of, “well, there’s still time for me to get in shape.” If Brind’Amour can look like that, we can look like that too. We just have to work out every day and be insanely dedicated to the craft, then maybe we can lift the Stanley Cup while shirtless. There is hope for all of us yet.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com