The New Improved and Buff! Bret Boone

how a chubby, underachieving second baseman discovered the lean, mean overachiever within

Last season, a new workout--and ferocious discipline--rescued Bret Boone's career from a path of mediocrity. He'll become a wealthy man this season as one of baseball s most coveted infielders.

The bulked-up Boone slugged 37 home runs, batted .331 and had an American League--high 141 RBI--no second sacker in the American League had ever hit that many homers or driven in that many runs before. Boone helped propel the Seattle Mariners to 116 wins before they were brought down to earth by the Yankees in the ALCS (though Boone had two homers and six RBI). It was a career year, one that rewrote the book on him (that he was a journeyman player who wore down after the All-Star break). Better yet, it made him welcome again at the annual Boone family picnic. The scion of a three-generation baseball legacy, Boone often seemed burdened by following in the cleat marks left by his grandfather, Ray Boone, an infielder for six teams from 1948 to 1960 who once drove in 116 runs in a season, and his father, Bob Boone, a superb catcher for three teams from 1972 to 1990 who played 2225 games behind the plate, second-most in history, and now manages the Cincinnati Reds.

Bret, the legatee, made his debut in 1992 with the Mariners after an all-American career at USC but lasted just two seasons as a part-timer before he was traded. In 1994 he was sent to Cincinnati (where he later played with his younger brother, third baseman Aaron Boone). In 1999 he went to the Atlanta Braves, and in 2000 to the San Diego Padres. After all that moving around, all he had to show for it was a .255 career average, 125 homers over nine seasons and a bum right knee that killed any ideas he had harbored about scoring a fat free-agent deal. When the Padres, too, unloaded him, he signed a one-year deal with the Mariners for $3.25 million. Chump change.

Facing his crossroads, Boone decided he had to buck baseball's noble tradition of not working hard on conditioning. He hired a personal trainer, the former bodybuilder Tim Michaels, who runs a gym called Body Balancing in Apopka, Florida. Boone came in soft and small and came out hard and big, while at the same time leaner and narrower in the waist.

This is a combination so hard to achieve with normal exercise and diet that we asked Boone how he did it. Be warned that his regimen isn't for wusses. His workouts are brutal, his diet spartan, and there isn't much room to cheat with anything other than a pineapple slice or two. The good part is that the movements and techniques are refreshingly different as gym routines go, and are done with light weight (or even no weight). Boone told writer Mark Ribowsky how it all works. First step: Trash that devil dog.

[Q] Playboy: When did you start this training program?

[A] Boone: Two off-seasons ago. I had been playing at 182 pounds, a soft 182. I had that chunky body. I wanted to be lighter but in shape and I heard about Tim Michaels, who'd worked with Tim Raines and Lee Janzen, the golfer. I was skeptical because I'd never been a workout guy. I'd go in the gym to lift just to say I'd lifted. I really didn't know what I was doing. But when I looked at Tim Michaels, I was floored. This is a guy who's almost 50 and he's absolutely cut as you can be, a former Mr. Orlando. And when he saw me, he looked at me like, You're a professional athlete and you look like this?

[Q] Playboy: What was your body fat percentage then?

[A] Boone: Around 17 percent. It was bad. I had no functional strength. The first day, Tim put me on this device he invented that he calls the quad-maker. It's a wooden box with a ramp built at a 17-degree angle, and you sit on the incline with your knees at the top and rise up. The lower legs don't move, you pull yourself up with your quads and it totally isolates those muscles. And I couldn't do one rep.

[Q] Playboy: Quad-maker? Sounds like something sold by Suzanne Somers on late-night infomercials.

[A] Boone: And I was real skeptical at first of Tim's methods. But when I saw they worked, I knew I had to reprogram everything I thought I knew about working out. Take the bench press, for example. That's everybody's favorite exercise of all in the gym. But the chest is not a performance muscle. A big chest isn't a contributing factor in hitting or throwing, and in fact interferes with them. The hips are important, the legs, the torso, too. The biceps aren't important, either. They're show muscles. The triceps are important. They're two thirds of the arms. On a baseball swing, the rear delts and the large head of the triceps work the hardest.

[Q] Playboy: That's all very interesting, but most of us aren't looking to improve our swing. We just want to look buff.

[A] Boone: I'll work chest and biceps, too, because I want overall development. But you don't need to overdo it. (continued on page 148)Bret Boone(continued from page 110) When you do triceps and back, the chest and biceps get plenty of work.

[Q] Playboy: So what happened in 2000? All that work didn't pay off that season.

[A] Boone: I went from 182 and a 34-inch waist to 172 and 31 within three months. But I was too light. I didn't feel I had the strength that season, and then I hurt my knee and got all depressed and sat around and got fat again. I had to take it up a notch before 2001 to lose the fat and get up to 195. If you can reach a certain level of strength, you can miss hitting the ball on the sweet spot of the bat, hit it with a shorter range of motion and still drive it out of the park.

[Q] Playboy: What was the first thing that you did?

[A] Boone: Lose the excess fat. People don't understand that diet is pretty much the whole thing. You can do sit-ups all day, but if you don't eat right you won't ever see your abs. I didn't lift at all for three weeks. I just ate the way Tim wanted, cutting out all sugar and salt, meaning no ketchup, no mustard. Coca-Cola can eat the rust off a car bumper. If you put an old penny in ketchup, it will come out clean. That's how bad these things are for your body. You can't repair and rebuild the muscle you tear down in the gym with them.

[Q] Playboy: So what do you eat?

[A] Boone: When you wake up, you clean out with 10 ounces of distilled water. Then 10 minutes later you eat two or three granola bars or oatmeal to slowly raise your energy. Then you have a shake drink Tim likes called Source of Life, which is soy protein and vitamins and enzymes and stuff. The soy protein increases thyroid function, sparking your metabolism. You mix it with skim milk or juice, maybe a banana. Lunch is grilled fish, orange roughy or grouper, nothing on it, with steamed vegetables and a little rice or dry pasta. Dinner, the same. That's it. You can't eat after six P.M. except for pineapple slices. If you eat before you go to bed, the body will work all night to get rid of it instead of resting and repairing.

[Q] Playboy: The hunger must really be unbearable.

[A] Boone: It's not pleasant. That's why Tim gets paid a month in advance. But if you stick with it, the results are amazing. You can lose 21 pounds in 21 days. All your stored sodium and water is flushed out and you can see definition everywhere.

[Q] Playboy: Do you limit carbs? A lot of guys cut up that way.

[A] Boone: No. Cutting carbs makes you all puffy. You get bags under your eyes. It's just water weight loss. Carbs are brain food. You need them. You need everything, in balance. After you lean out the right way, then you add back the calories, eat bigger portions, and you get in the gym and start hitting it.

[Q] Playboy: I assume you don't mean deep knee bends and jumping jacks.

[A] Boone: Hardly. Tim has exercises you've never heard of. He's got a thing for the abs called swivels. You hang from a bar and curl your legs up in the fetal position. The sequence is middle and down, left and down, right and down. You're working internal and external obliques, which are the sides of the torso, synergistically. One muscle is connected to the other and they become very powerful because three muscles are stronger than one. It's always 10 reps in each position, so it's 10-10-10. Then you rest for three minutes and go again. With the quadmaker, it's 10 with the feet wide for the inside thighs, 10 with feet together for the outside, and back to 10 wide. Rest three, then do it again.

[Q] Playboy: With no added weight?

[A] Boone: You don't need it. It's brutal. You won't be able to walk for a while. You have to completely annihilate the muscle. It has to burn like hell. The amazing thing about it is that I could build my quads with this thing while rehabbing my knee, because it doesn't strain the knees like regular squats.

[Q] Playboy: Where do you get one of those things?

[A] Boone: They're real easy to make. You can cut out two legs on an aerobics platform, or use one of those really low-incline benches. I take mine wherever I go during the season. It folds down, fits under my arm.

[Q] Playboy: So what about the other body parts? Same scheme?

[A] Boone: Yes, but with two exercises. We call it combo training. Like with triceps, I'll use dumbbells to do extensions lying on a bench, elbows close together, with 30-pounders, 10 reps, then get up and do behind the head extensions with one dumbbell, a 20-pounder for 10, then back to the lying extensions for 10. Rest for three minutes, go again. With rear deltoids, I start with seated dumbbell lifts, arms straight up and down, bending the elbows back, with 15-pounders for 10, the bent-over lateral raises, out to the sides, with 20s for 10, then back to the lifts. Two sets. What you're doing with all these is getting blood and oxygen from different heads of the muscle flowing. The blood is more than the muscle can handle. That's why you feel that pump. You can see it, too, in the mirror. I'd get all blown up and love it. And Tim would say, "That's not you, you know. It's the pump. It'll be a while before that's really your body." But it looks awesome.

[Q] Playboy: What do you do for the biceps and chest, those useless muscles we all want to show off?

[A] Boone: Same concept. For chest, decline bench presses with a 135-pound barbell for 10 reps. Then do dumbbell pullovers lying on a bench with the weight coming down behind my head, keeping the arms stiff. I do that with a 50-pounder for 10, then back to the declines. Rest three, go again. For biceps, we do barbell curls--we call them cup and drops, because your hands are bent forward holding the bar like you're cupping water. You just use the bar, 45 pounds, for 10. Then you do upright rows with a 70-pound barbell for 10, and then back to the cup and drops for 10.

[Q] Playboy: OK, give me a good workout schedule.

[A] Boone: You could do legs, rear delts and triceps on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and chest, biceps and abs on Tuesday and Thursday.

[Q] Playboy: What about cardio?

[A] Boone: Getting on a treadmill is a waste. Lifting ramps up your metabolism much better. In the off-season I do cardio, but it's intense cardio in the afternoon after the morning workout. I'll walk 100 yards, then sprint 100 yards, walk 100, over and over for about 25 minutes. This will trick your body into thinking you're constantly moving.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a difference between your off-season and season workouts?

[A] Boone: Off-season, I'll work heavier, add weight, push it more sets. Or Tim will hold my shoulders down for more resistance on the quad stuff. During the season, I'll keep it pretty basic, but I'll still work out four or five days a week. I'll work out after games because that's usually the only time I'll have to do it. A workout will take me only 12 minutes, then I go home to eat.

[Q] Playboy: I didn't think you stopped off at the postgame buffet table.

[A] Boone: I won't get near that stuff. A big-league locker room is a nutritional disaster. They have boxes and boxes of every conceivable candy bar in the world. I don't even have a taste for that kind of crap anymore. Every once in a while, I'll go out for a big fat steak. The great thing about steak is that if you eat one at night, it will soak up the water in your body overnight and when you wake up, your skin is super tight. When I loosen up on the diet, I can get by with those organic pizzas with organic cheese. They're not bad, better than you think.

[Q] Playboy: And, of course, you wash it down with organic low-fat beer, right?

[A] Boone: Now that's a touchy subject, because I will go have a beer, which Tim hates because he never cheats. I tell him, "Everybody isn't like you. I live a different life than you." He's at home all the time. I'm out on the road here in the Badlands. And ballplayers have been known to drink a beer every now and then. I don't have many vices. I think the only one I have is chewing tobacco, which I'm going to quit for my daughter's sake. But beer, what can I say? So we came to a compromise. If I absolutely have to have a beer, I take an extra packet of this thing called Emer'gen-C, which is a vitamin C powder with sodium and potassium that I take three times a day. Beer drains electrolytes out of the body, so I'll do a Bud with a C chaser.

[Q] Playboy: Many scientists would take issue with some of your claims, saying many of them are theoretical. Since your regimen seems to work for you, do you take any other supplements?

[A] Boone: Only one, creatine. It pulls water into the muscles and blows them up and also gives you more energy to lift. Five grams, which is a teaspoon, three times a day for three days, then once a day. You do it for three weeks, back off, then start again. But you need to drink tons of water, two or three gallons a day, or your muscles will cramp up and you'll get dehydrated. That's what trainers worry about. Like the deaths of those football players in summer training camp. It could be a hidden factor because everybody's taking creatine.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever used andro-stenedione, the stuff that Mark McGwire made famous?

[A] Boone: Never tried it. I don't think andro produces the gains that people want. Besides, andro messes with your hormones, like the ephedrine in those "fat burning" pills messes with your heart.

[Q] Playboy: Why is baseball the only major sport that doesn't ban andro?

[A] Boone: Because it's part of the collective bargaining agreement. They can't ban anything that's legal. We won't let them. That doesn't mean you should go out and use something that could be dangerous, but it's a freedom issue. I don't begrudge guys for using whatever they want to use.

[Q] Playboy: Are a lot of guys juicing?

[A] Boone: Oh, sure. Without a doubt. Look at guys now. They're huge. They come up from college or even high school and they're stronger, faster, bigger. They're like linebackers. I'm one of the smaller guys around now, but I'm still bigger than 95 percent of the guys who played in my granddad's time. Even moderately big guys like Ryan Klesko and Phil Nevin, I stand next to them and I feel like Pee-wee Herman.

[Q] Playboy: And yet people suspect you of using steroids, too.

[A] Boone: I can understand that--when someone like me bulks up and hits more home runs. Look at Mark McGwire now and how he looked in the Eighties. A guy gains 20 pounds in the off-season and people are going to question him.

[Q] Playboy: What's your feeling on steroids?

[A] Boone: Who's to say someone's wrong for doing it? I don't know enough about steroids to know who's on them. I don't know if they're good or bad. If you abuse anything, there are going to be effects down the road. It's the same with anything. If you go out and have a few beers, it's not a big deal. If steroids are done in moderation, done correctly and safely, it might be an option.

[Q] Playboy: SO what's your body fat now?

[A] Boone: I know that last spring I got to 204 pounds and my body fat was 7.5 percent. That was peak condition. During the season, I'll soften out a little. I can get lower than 7.5, too. It depends on how low I want to go.

[Q] Playboy: NOW that we've declared you a hunk, how soon will you be posing in a women's magazine?

[A] Boone: That's the last thing on my mind. When I got into doing this, I didn't care what I would end up looking like. All I wanted was to get stronger and better at my craft, not be the next Backstreet Boy. Besides, I don't think my mom would let me do it.