Tom Brady tweaked his normal training methods to add more muscle so he can take more hits this season

Charles Krupa/AP

Tom Brady said he added more muscle and weight during the offseason so he can better absorb hits this season.
Brady said he wanted to focus on finding a balance between adding muscle and pliability and fluidity.
Adding muscle and weight marks a slight change in Brady’s routine, as he has in the past said that he felt too much weight lifting actually hurt players on the field by contracting their muscles.
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Tom Brady has stressed the importance of staying flexible, pliable, and not adding too much hard muscle, but even he felt he had to make a change this season.

Brady, who turns 42 on Friday, showed up to New England Patriots training camp heavier this season. He spoke to reporters on Wednesday and said adding muscle and weight was one of his priorities this offseason.

"I wanted to get a little bigger this year and put on a few more pounds and try to absorb the hits a little bit more, and I worked pretty hard at that," Brady said.

Brady didn’t say exactly how much weight he added. NFL Network’s Mike Giardi reported in March that Brady wanted to add more weight to get to around 230-233 pounds for the 2019 season. The NFL’s official site lists Brady at 225 pounds.

Brady on Wednesday said he wanted to stay fluid and that he had to find the balance between pliability and adding muscle.

"I still realized when I got here that I wanted to be a little more fluid, and get back to the fluidity that I’m used to, too. There’s a difference between getting really dense and obviously being more pliable, and that’s really what my focus was."

It’s not as if Brady eschewed pliability this offseason, but adding more solid muscle marks a change for Brady.

After the release of his diet and nutritional book, "The TB12 Method," Brady told GQ in 2016 that traditional weight-lifting doesn’t necessarily help athletes’ bodies.

"We do so many exercises in the gym through all our strength training that make our muscles short and dense," Brady said. "So now you get up and you’re doing all these active things where you’re running and cutting, and you’re asking these muscles to expand and contract. Well, you basically taught your muscles just to stay contracted."

He added: "The only way traditional physical therapy does it, they think that muscle soreness is muscle weakness. So they take muscle soreness and they go, well, it must be weak. Let’s do more strengthening. My point is, it’s not weak, it’s actually working too hard. We need to lengthen it and soften it, so that the other muscles can work, too."

Brady reportedly played through a knee injury during the latter part of the 2018 season. Brady said on Wednesday that he still loves football, feels lucky to be playing at 42, and can’t imagine doing anything else.

If Brady plays all 16 games in 2019, he’ll be the first quarterback to do so at his age. To try and keep his legendary career going, Brady switched things up a bit.

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