Get Moving

At his retirement press conference, Andrew Luck talked about being stuck for years in a cycle of injury → pain → rehab that felt “unceasing and unrelenting.” He said he hadn’t been able to live the life he wanted, that the process had taken the joy out of the game, and that the only way he saw out was to stop playing.

You don’t have to be anywhere near that extreme to recognize the pattern: ignore it, tape it, rehab just enough, repeat. For a lot of QBs, that pattern doesn’t fully stop when the career ends — it just shifts from hamstrings and shoulders to back pain, sleep issues, weight changes, stress, and quiet worries about the future.

On the research side, for former NFL players, work from the NFL-LONG project has found that basic health habits still really matter. Former players who reported more frequent moderate-to-vigorous exercise and fewer sleep problems also reported better overall well-being and a stronger sense of meaning and purpose across almost every age group they studied. In other words, even after a long, physical career, simple things like moving your body and getting decent sleep are tightly linked to how you feel day to day.

For the general population, a huge analysis pooling data from more than 30 million adults found that even relatively small amounts of activity make a real difference: about 11 minutes a day of moderate movement (like a brisk walk) was linked to a 23% lower risk of early death, along with lower risk of heart disease and some cancers, compared to doing almost no activity.

You don’t have to train like you’re in camp for your habits to pay off — “a little, consistently” moves the needle.