The Real-Life Diet of Reggie Bush, Who’s Still Doing Strength Training to Alleviate the Pain of 11 Years in the NFL

You see guys not even get touched [get a] torn ACL. Odell Beckham Jr. in the Super Bowl tore his ACL and pretty much ended his career. He hasn’t really recovered since, but it’s all from turf. Unfortunately, NFL owners still believe that turf is the cheapest, most cost-efficient way in a league that annualizes billions every year. It’s not adding up to me. It’s a repetitive cycle, and it’s going to continue. It’s unfortunate. It will continue until the players decide to stand up and say, “Listen, we don’t want to play on turf anymore.” The thing is, all players hate it.

You would just get rid of it completely? No turf ever again?

Never ever again. No sports should ever be played on turf. I’m coaching my son’s flag football team. I complain about the turf that we have to play on. My son was going for a touchdown, he got pushed, he landed and banged his head on the ground. Now he’s lying on the ground, hurt. If that’s grass, he’s landing on something much softer.

He’s nine years old and I’m mad about this! Imagine grown men who were 200-300 pounds playing this ultra-violent game on the worst turf. Players are scared at the end of the day. Whatever the players want, they can get. They hold the ultimate power, which is to just sit out. Unfortunately, that is the only way they will be able to have leverage in their negotiations with the Players’ Association versus the NFL and their collective bargaining agreements. Two things: We don’t have guaranteed contracts in the NFL, and we’re put on the worst surface. You’re talking about a league where I can sign you for five years, 100 million. Something happens halfway into year one, and I don’t like you? I can cut you. That’s a nightmare for most people.

What did you think when you started to see all the high-tech performance stuff show up in the NFL?

I can speak to the hyperbaric chamber, because we had a chiropractor that a lot of the guys used to go to in New Orleans, and they had [one]. I actually bought one as well. It’s funny. I bought one and then never used it. It was just a waste of money. But I honestly don’t know if it helped me at all or not. I slept in that thing. I would take naps in it at my chiropractor’s house. I don’t know, man. It’s just based on if you believe in it or not. Supposedly you’re breathing the most pure oxygen, the most pure air, and your body’s supposed to heal that much faster … meanwhile, I’m in pain every day. Waking up in pain, going to sleep in pain. I don’t know if those hyperbaric chambers actually work, but they started showing up probably three years into my career. In college, we never used anything like that.

Were you thinking, “I’m already pretty fast, why would I need this stuff?”

It’s more of a tool to help you heal. It’s not necessarily a performance tool to help you play better or run faster. I think to literally notice the effects you’d have to sleep in that thing seven days a week.

Growing up, one thing that I heard a lot when I was playing sports was “You can’t teach speed.” I feel like we’ve seen that change a little bit. Now the idea is that the foundation has to be there, but you can train yourself to get faster. What do you think?

I think you can definitely train yourself to get faster. Everybody has their limit. What’s your potential? When kids ask me how to get faster I tell them to go run track. Track and field, in my opinion, is the way to learn how to run faster. It focuses on your hip flexors, hip flexibility, explosiveness, your running pattern, your running gait, speed, agility, all that. All three of my kids run track, and I’ve seen them get faster since they started. I didn’t start until I got to high school. I wish I had run track when I was younger because I would’ve been even faster. If you can even imagine that. Right?