“Our weight room was the size of a closet,” he said. “Now, when you go to a major college, it’s unbelievable the amount of equipment that’s available. At the time, we didn’t have a strength coach. Your football coaches were your strength coaches. It was only in my last two years of college that we got a strength coach. That’s when Syracuse built a room with Nautilus machines to help improve our conditioning.”
A typical training regimen three decades ago followed a simple motto: no pain, no gain. For Gordy’s generation, this skewed method of thinking has created long-term and residual health effects.
“I killed my body,” he said. “Getting bigger was my decision, but I went totally overboard with it. All those people who said I’d never make it, I was out to prove them wrong. Anytime I didn’t want to do a workout, I thought of them and it lit a fire under me.”
It was, Gordy admits now, the wrong approach to training.
“Back then, no one knew how to work out properly. I used to lift three hours a day, bench-pressing religiously. I blew out all my joints but was bigger than a brick house. It seemed worth it at the time, but looking back, it was overkill.”
Because of Gordy’s experience, when his sons reached the proper age to begin a fitness program, Gordy made sure they did not repeat his mistakes.
None of the Gronkowski boys played organized football until they reached eighth grade. Keeping them away from the game was a conscious decision by their father, who claims there were several factors behind that choice.
“First off, they were all too big,” he recalled. “They would have had to lose a few pounds to make weight restrictions, and I didn’t believe in diets at that age. Also, as a former player, I went out and talked with coaches in Little League football, and some of the coaches didn’t know what they were doing. Not all of them, but the majority of coaches were there because they wanted to make sure their kid got to play.”
A focus on technique or helping players improve was not evident at that level. Most of the time, the fastest kid was put in the backfield and told simply to run until he was caught.
“When my kids played baseball and hockey, I could tell they were far ahead of everyone else athletically,” Gordy said. “My big dream from the start was to get them all college scholarships, so I had a bigger plan for my kids than Little League football. The reality is, I didn’t want to burn them out at a young age. I didn’t want them to hate the game.”
Gordy admits that his approach was unique and probably would not be advisable for the parent of an average kid.
“For the normal family, playing youth football might be the only time the kid gets to play,” he noted. “As a boy grows, he might be cut from his high school team, but at a young age, he’s the same size as everybody else. It’s different for everyone, but in that situation, playing football might be a good thing.”
Gordie Jr., the oldest of the five Gronkowski brothers, was a multisport athlete at Williamsville North High School, playing basketball, baseball, and club hockey. He even lettered in golf as a ninth grader. When he was fourteen, his father approached him about beginning a regular workout schedule outside of team practices.
“One of the myths to strength and performance training is that kids are too young,” said Demeris Johnson, a former NFL defensive back who trains high school athletes in Western New York. “Science tells us—and this is not me or any other professional just talking—but science tells us that the younger you start, the better. Most folks, when they think of strength training, they think heavy weights. But at six years old, kids can do core training: sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups. I’m not saying put a six-year-old on the squat rack, but at that age he can start with core mechanics and speed.”
“Kids can start training at an early age, but they have to go about it the right way,” Gordy agreed. With his experience in fitness, Gordy understood how to set up a proper regimen. He didn’t want to start a kid too young, because he believed that could have a negative effect on muscle growth. But when his son reached eighth grade, it was time. Gordie, however, wasn’t interested.
“I didn’t really know or understand how important training was or how it would affect my life,” Gordie reflected, looking back many years later. “My dad didn’t push me when I was younger. He gave me the option and let me go.”
It wasn’t until Danny, the second son, broke his ankle during a football game in eighth grade that a workout program began in the Gronkowski family. The fact that Gordy owned a fitness equipment store meant that their basement was stocked with weights and workout machines that Gordy used himself.
“This injury gives us a perfect opportunity to start working your body,” Gordy preached to Danny. “Let’s start the program now.”
Dan agreed. It was a slow go at first, according to Gordy. Father and son met in the basement. Gordy supervised, lying down on the weight bench to demonstrate proper form. He kept his back flat on the bench, elbows close to his body, slowly raising and lowering the bar. Initially, Danny didn’t have enough strength to lift an empty iron bar, let alone one with weights on each end. So he began using a broomstick to master the movement.
“An Olympic bar weighs forty-five pounds, which doesn’t seem like much, but that’s heavy for an eighth-grader,” Gordy noted. “We started with light weights, three reps of fifteen. There were three rest days in between each muscle group. And I stressed flexibility. We stretched and then stretched some more.”
Gordy taped a colored poster to the wall showing the human body and its different muscle groups. He taught his son that each exercise targeted a different muscle group, teaching about biceps, triceps, and quads.
Once his technique was mastered, Dan gained strength in a short period of time. Gordie, by then a high school sophomore, noticed the change, second-guessing his decision to avoid workouts. Suddenly he wanted to train, too.
“Danny was getting bigger and looking great,” Gordie recalled. “He was quicker and more athletic, and that made me think that maybe I needed to try this out. Even though he was two years younger than me, in a short time he was playing on all my varsity teams in high school.”
Much like Gordy tried to emulate his older brother in the 1970s, Gordie found motivation from his younger sibling.
“There’s no question that Danny was his inspiration,” Gordy said. “But I wondered if Gordie starting at sixteen would be fighting an uphill battle. We had already lost two years of potential when Gordie jumped into this.”
Although Gordie began late, hard work compensated for lost time. Soon it became a family tradition that training began when a boy reached eighth grade. In a short time, Chris, Rob, and Goose were looking forward to that benchmark.
Gordy supervised the fitness program, making sure his kids performed safely.
“The key was light weights and a lot of reps,” he said. “I never maxed out my boys. Once they got comfortable and had the right form, I moved them up, increasing by two and a half or five pounds at a time. When they performed an exercise the correct way without struggling, I moved them up again. I never had them do anything that could hurt them or cause injury.”
When it came to increasing their speed, Gordy sent them to a specialist. He had heard about a former NFL player in the area who trained high schoolers.
Demeris Johnson played for the Miami Dolphins from 1992 to 1996, then spent training camp with the Buffalo Bills before his career ended. Wondering what to do after football, Johnson began using his experience to help younger relatives work out and increase their speed and strength to improve on-field performance. When word of mouth spread, he opened a business.
“Basically, I brought the training methodology that I received at the pro level down to the high school level,” Johnson said. “The tag line for my business was, ‘To perform like a pro, you must train like a pro.’ I brought the intensity that a professional athlete should bring to his work.”
At the time, a group of boys trained at West Seneca West High School, whe
re Johnson’s son attended school. He quickly gained a reputation for overseeing intense workouts. Speed, agility, strength, and power development were vital. Gordie recalled that many boys found themselves stooped over, winded, even throwing up.
“My goal was to get guys to quit,” Johnson noted. “If you got through my training, you could last through any type of adversity that you might face on a field. It wasn’t only about the exercises. I tried to help young athletes accomplish their dreams, because I was one of them once and know what it’s like to succeed at a high level.”
Like any concerned father, Gordy was initially skeptical of Johnson, wanting to meet him to see firsthand what the program was like before he committed. The two spoke via phone, and Johnson suggested Gronkowski bring the boys for a one-day trial. With his four oldest in tow, Gordy oversaw a morning workout in a small, steamy wrestling room at West Seneca West High School.
“I wanted to see if he was just a moneymaking guy, someone who grabs quick cash and goes,” Gordy said. “I didn’t want my kids training the wrong way. I wanted to make sure he knew it. With my background, I knew a lot of it, but didn’t always have the time to do it. Once I saw how he trained, he was exactly what I was looking for.”
One session was enough to convince Gordy that Johnson knew his stuff.
“That was our introduction to each other,” Johnson recalled. “Afterward, he shook my hand and said, ‘You’re the man.’ It was later on when we sat down and talked about goals for his boys. Gordy became a good friend of mine. I gleaned tips from him and came to respect his business savvy.”
Gordie recalled that summer of 2002. He had completed his freshman year on the baseball team at Jacksonville University and knew that he needed to take the next step in his development.
“I had grown three inches that year and needed to improve my footwork to become quicker, more athletic, and get a better step off the bag at first base,” he said. “My brothers were doing a training course for football, so I joined in. We worked three or four days a week. By the end of summer, I’d never been in better shape. I lost fifteen pounds of pure fat. My body was ripped and cut. My flexibility was better.”
Johnson’s program helped develop fast-twitch muscles. He taught the boys correct running form, with hips aligned and arms pumping. He showed the importance of proper footwork and keeping muscles loose.
“A warm-up alone was like a whole day of running,” Gordie said. “That’s how intense this was. One day we did four-hundred-yard sprints around the track. Other times, it was shorter, one-hundred-meter sprints. Another test was a contest to see how fast you could get off a starting line, twenty times. We also did ladder drills, then worked abs afterward. It was one of the most ridiculous workouts I’d ever seen.”
For Gordie, results were immediate. He had greater endurance and appeared more fit. When he returned to Jacksonville, coaches were impressed with the improvement. The year before, he had been slower than his teammates. Now he was among the fastest. With a grin, Gordie mentioned an added bonus: girls noticed his bigger muscles and sculpted abs, approaching him on the beaches in Florida that fall.
“The cool thing is that I was motivated by my brothers, you know?” Gordie said. “We did it together. I was nineteen, Danny was seventeen, Chris was fifteen, and Rob was thirteen. Glenn was too young, but he did the program later. It was hard work but worth it, because we’re all such big guys that we needed to learn our bodies. With the sun beating down and sweat pouring off us, the first thing we did when we left the track was stop at a gas station and pound Gatorades.”
In typical bragging-rights fashion, Gordie is quick to point out that by summer’s end, he was the fastest of his brothers. Johnson confirms this, adding that Gordie was also older and had a year of college training.
“Gordie was faster and would tease all his brothers that he was better,” Johnson said. “The Gronkowskis were very competitive. They used to go at it pretty good.”
Despite his initial skepticism, Gordy never had second thoughts about Johnson’s training. He remains impressed with the gains his boys made.
“Demeris worked with their feet every day, jumping rope and doing crossovers and plyometric boxes,” Gordy said. “It was done the right way, not so kids would be lying on the ground, thinking, ‘No pain, no gain.’ It was a different way of training. At the end, after they all trained with Demeris, Gordie was the fastest. He had been running a five-six [forty-yard dash], but all of a sudden he dropped a second off that. He ran a four-six after smacking a baseball. I couldn’t believe it. That kind of gain is amazing and makes a huge difference to an athlete.”
The current family home has an expansive basement, with a pool table and five giant wooden trophy cases, featuring memorabilia from each boy’s career. Behind sliding glass doors are footballs propped on tees, scores painted near the laces. Various team helmets, jerseys, and game programs are arrayed on shelves. It is the type of display that might be found inside a hall of fame. Gordy updates the contents regularly, and the boys love looking at evidence of their achievements.
Across the concrete floor, on the far size of the room, sit more than two-dozen angled benches and workout machines. Stray free weights and metal clips litter the floor, towels draped from the edges of bars. There are swaths of rubber mats, and the G&G Fitness logo is painted on a wooden base supporting a squat rack. Under a glass-block window, near white-backed insulation, hooks protrude from the walls. On them are stretched leather back supports and dangling jump ropes.
This is where the boys pushed themselves and each other.
“When the boys were growing up, we were in the basement every day,” Gordy said. “When Danny and Gordie started lifting together, the other guys got excited and started working out with each other.”
With the boys pushing one another, Gordy stepped back to let them develop. All were motivated by competition, not by their father preaching to them. Gradually, Gordy found himself less of a factor in their daily workouts. That was fine with him, because it freed up his time.
Sometimes friends were invited into the workout circle, but none proved to be as committed as the five Gronkowski brothers.
Often a friend would want to work out with one of the boys, so they would set up a regular schedule, but the friend would last only a few weeks before giving up. “Some people just aren’t into it,” Gordy said. “It takes time and energy. I told the kids if they wanted to take it to the next level, they needed to keep ahead of everybody else. How do you do that? You work out in the basement.”
Regardless of workouts, many experts agree that the most important factor in health and fitness is nutrition. Putting the proper fuel into a body has more of an effect than heavy weight training. It’s why all the Gronkowskis watch what they eat.
“You get energy from eating the right food and exercising,” Gordy said. “What you put into your body is important. Our family developed a diet around protein and glutamine. Potato chips and dip and all that stuff went out of my diet. Very seldom do you catch me eating chicken wings. I stay away from anything greasy.”
Even today, in his early fifties, Gordy is a stickler for nutrition.
“I have a protein shake every morning for breakfast, and I exercise for at least twenty minutes. Weights help with definition and keeping things strong, but now I’m not lifting to get big. I don’t lift heavy at all. I just try to maintain. I use light weights and good form to keep everything from falling apart. Plus I add in cardio two times per week.”
Training and nutrition were integral parts of the Gronkowskis’ success. But they weren’t the only factors. Sibling rivalry played a part, as did their father’s mindset. He used to clip inspiring quotes from athletes, coaches, and other successful people, attaching them to the refrigerator door. The boys read them over each time they went for a snack.
There were words of wisdom from coaching great Vince Lombardi, suggesting that second place is for losers. Another: “Perseverance: it’s not whether
you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.”
Gordy also employed “teachable moments.” When the kids watched sporting events on TV and were inspired by a crushing block, a fluid run, or a diving pass reception, Gordy reminded them that success was a product of hard work. When the boys cheered, Gordy knew he had a captive audience.
“You think that guy got there by watching TV?” Gordy chided. “No, he got there by training. You guys are good, but what’s going to take you to the next level is getting into that basement.”
Years later, Gordy smiles at the memories, amazed at how far his sons have come. All the workouts were done with an eye to the future.
“My goal in life was to get them to college and get that paid for,” he said. “It’s the whole reason we started training. Anything after that was a bonus.”
Gordie playing summer baseball in the Cape Cod League.
Young Gordie Gronkowski.
4
Gordie Jr.: Doesn’t He Know the Rest of the Family Plays Football?
“I’m the only brother in the world who can say he has three younger brothers playing in the NFL.”
—GORDIE GRONKOWSKI, JR.
IN THE FALL OF 2011, Gordie Gronkowski, Jr., returned to Western New York for a few days before preparing to make yet another move—this time it was Ohio—where a new phase of his life was set to begin. He had recently finished the baseball season with the Southern Illinois Miners of the Frontier League. The team made the playoffs and he’d batted .308 on the season.
Coming home was a time to catch up with old friends, play golf, see his family, and eat Mom’s food. The highlight of his weekend was watching younger brother Rob catch seven passes for one hundred yards, including two touchdowns, when New England visited Ralph Wilson Stadium to play the Bills.
Growing Up Gronk: A Familys Story of Raising Champions Page 4