The Hard Way

Fear-inspiring workouts from the training logs of Jerry Rice, Walt Stack, and other fitness paragons.

By Cory Johnson

Jerry Rice
Wide Receiver, San Francisco 49ers

Dedication is a word often used far too loosely. But in the case of Rice, an athlete known as much for his ungodly regimen as for the fact that he's arguably the greatest pass catcher in NFL history, it truly seems to apply. Just two weeks after reconstructive knee surgery last season, for instance, Rice decided he'd been lollygagging long enough — so he ripped off his splint in the middle of the night and headed straight for the weight room. "Jerry — he's unreal," says San Francisco Giants All-Star left fielder Barry Bonds, a friend who himself tries to follow his pal's off-season program. "He just works harder than anyone else."

Rice's six-day-a-week workout is divided into two parts: two hours of cardiovascular work in the morning and three hours of strength training each afternoon. Early in the off-season, the a.m. segment consists of a five-mile trail run near San Carlos on a torturous course called, simply, The Hill. But since five vertical miles can hardly be considered a workout, he pauses on the steepest section to do a series of ten 40-meter uphill sprints. As the season approaches, however, Rice knows it's time to start conserving energy — so he forgoes The Hill and instead merely does a couple of sprints: six 100-yarders, six 80s, six 60s, six 40s, six 20s, and 16 tens, with no rest between sprints and just two and a half minutes between sets.

For the p.m. sessions he alternates between upper-body and lower-body days. But no matter which half of his body he's working on, the volume is always the same: three sets of ten reps of 21 different exercises. Yes, your calculator's right: That's 630 repetitions a day.

"Is that all?" you might be tempted to ask. "Well, there is one more thing," replies Raymond Ferris, Rice's personal trainer who, going beyond the call of duty, often performs the regimen alongside his star pupil. "We crawl across the parking lot and see who has enough strength left to open the car door."

Walter Stack
Ultramarathoner

Before becoming the world's most famous senior-citizen distance runner, Walt Stack (who died in 1995 at age 87) first got into shape the old fashioned way: He worked as a hod carrier, ferrying supplies to bricklayers, stonemasons, and the like on his broad shoulders. But in 1965, at 57, he decided that eight daily hours of hard labor just wasn't enough. So he ran the first of what would eventually become 62,000 lifetime miles, crafting a highly visible training routine that made him a San Francisco institution — though many a Bay Area commuter was heard to mutter that he instead should've been committed to one.

"I'm going to do this till I get planted," he'd say, and indeed he nearly did. Every day for 27 years, until sidelined by failing health in 1993, Stack would set out on his bike and ride the six hilly miles from his Potrero Hill home to Fisherman's Wharf. There he'd strip off his shirt — to display the tattoos of peacocks, wild horses, and bathing beauties muraled across his broad, rawhide chest — and run over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and back, 17 miles. Next, Stack would jump into the Bay for a one-mile swim in choppy water he called "colder than a landlord's heart."

Perhaps even more impressive than his daily routine, however — and a timeless reality check for those who may feel compelled to boast of their fitness exploits — was the perspective with which he viewed it. "All this work I'm doing," Stack once said in the midst of a bridge crossing, "it don't mean shit."

Will Gadd
Athletic Gadabout

The 31-year-old Gadd is what you might call a Renaissance jock. He has made more than a dozen first descents of North American rivers. He's won the Canadian sport climbing championships three times. Last winter he earned the mantle of world's best ice climber at France's prestigious Courchevel Invitational. And he recently claimed the world paragliding distance record, having soared from Hobbs, New Mexico, to just south of Amarillo, Texas — a 179-mile flight that took six and a half hours.

But surprisingly, Gadd achieves this crossover prowess by taking things one game at a time, using intense sport-specific routines to prepare for each successive challenge. Say the next item on his agenda is a sport-climbing event. He'll run through a four-day routine, rest two days, and then repeat the cycle ad nauseam till showtime.

Day one is three hours of strength training, consisting of a 30-minute warm-up on the climbing gym wall, an hour's work on the campus board (a training device that looks essentially like a ladder nailed to the wall), 20 one-handed pull-ups with each arm, and a few "quick laps" up routes rated 5.12 or higher. Day two encompasses all of the above, but with a longer climbing session — four hours on the wall — and then another hour at the rock gym to correct weaknesses revealed outdoors. On day three Gadd backs off a bit, starting with just one hour of aerobic work — albeit an hour in which he aims for 2,000 feet of vertical gain — followed by a couple hours of "easy" climbing wearing a 15-pound weight belt. With day four, however, things return to normal. Which is to say, quite abnormal: Gadd climbs two 14,000-foot peaks before the sun sets. "This," he says, utterly failing to see the irony in his declaration, "is the day I really pound myself."

Robyn Benincasa
Adventure Athlete, Judo Champion

Pray that Benincasa never takes a liking to your sport. In the last five years, the 31-year-old firefighter from Solana Beach, California, has become the toast of the zestfully masochistic world of adventure racing, first as the star of an all-woman team that famously outlasted a squad of Navy SEALs at the 1994 Raid Gauloises, and more recently having been picked to fill the female slot on a team that's swept the Eco-Challenge and the X Games two years running. But apparently joining the world's elite in a single sport isn't enough for the 5-foot-7, 156-pound Benincasa: Four years ago she decided to try her hand at judo, and predictably, last May she won the U.S. national championship. But even more fun than winning the title, she says, is training with — and beating the tar out of-would-be tough guys. "These 200-pound men think they're going to take me, and they can't," she says with a chuckle. "But every once in a while I throw them a bone and let 'em pin me."

How did Benincasa become the bully of her proverbial schoolyard? She credits a workout routine that includes 90-minute weight sessions twice a week and at least one daily aerobic stint of anywhere from one and a half to five hours. Oh, yeah, then there are also the judo workouts: two hours apiece, three times a week. And oops, almost forgot, there's a little something extra on Tuesdays: a hilly, 12-mile run at race pace with triathletes Paula Newby-Fraser, Greg Welch, and Scott Tinley, followed immediately by a stair session in which she runs 125 steps at least 40 times, first touching each, then skipping a step, and finally hopping up on one leg. "My friends call me the human cockroach," she says by way of explanation. "I guess the idea is that if there were ever a nuclear war, I'd be the one left standing."

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