Men's Health feature on Tom Brady details severe elbow tendinitis that limited Brady in '06
On Tuesday, Men's Health released a series of articles that featured New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who spoke about fitness, diet, family and football.
One article written by Ben court went into detail about Brady's personal trainer, Alex Guerrero and how Brady first got turned onto Guerrero and his use of traditional Chinese medicine. Brady's explanation not only answered the question but also highlighted an injury back in 2006 that we were not all aware of.
"It was 2006—Brady was already a three-time Super Bowl champion, but his QB rating that season was only 87.9, almost ten points below his career average of 97.7—and he was suffering severe tendinitis because he threw so much and lifted so heavy," Court wrote. "The cycle of throw-ice-repeat reached a crisis point—he had to take days off from practice. 'My teammate Willie McGinest said to me, ‘Dude, if you want to keep playing, you gotta go see Alex.’ "
Brady then mentioned how a decade of various pain seemed to have vanished once Guerrero began to work on him.
“I had forearm muscles that were like rocks and a biceps muscle that was like a rock. I had my biceps pulling this way and my forearm muscle tugging that way, and the tendon was just on fire,” he says, tapping his elbow. Guerrero felt the inflamed tendon, Brady says, and “said that what we’re going to do through pliability—although we didn’t even call it pliability then, because we had to come up with a word for it—is effectively lengthen the forearm muscle and lengthen the biceps and triceps through deep-force work. Alex did it one time, and I was like, ‘What? The last ten years of my life I’ve been in pain, and now, after he’s worked on my forearms, biceps, and triceps, there’s no more pain in my elbow?’ It clicked for me right away.”
This is telling. Aside from his torn ACL in 2008 and a knee injury in 2018, there hasn't been very many known severe injuries for the 42-year-old QB over the course of his career. Elbow tendinitis is a troubling ailment for someone who is throwing a football 30-40 times a game, let alone any practices throughout the week.
Brady's 87.9 QB rating in '06 is the 5th-lowest of his career, and the 2nd lowest since that season. We now know why it ranks as one of the worst of his career.
