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Fitness hacks from Zdeno Chara, Jae Crowder, Rebecca Lobo, and more

Eight pro athletes, trainers, and health gurus tell you how to eat, find time to workout, and get in the zone.

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Gevvie Stone

Cambridge-based rower and 2016 Olympic silver medalist

Something is better than nothing. There have been times when school or other life commitments have gotten in the way of my ideal or scheduled workout. I’ve found it’s easy to use that missing time as an excuse not to do the workout at all, especially when I’m already tired or feeling overwhelmed. However, it is important to use whatever time is remaining to do something. Small blocks of exercise do add up!

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Walter Norton Jr.

Director of training, North Reading-based Institute of Performance & Fitness

We try to get people to think about three things working together: their training, recovery/sleep, and nutrition. Most people tend to do one really well, because they enjoy it and they’ve made it important. There’s another that’s average to good. And there’s one that they’re pretty poor at, relative to the other two. We try to get them to understand that they’re all equally important.

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Jae Crowder

Boston Celtics forward

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The best fitness and training advice has to be: Listen to your body. At times, you get going and you think you need to work, work, work, and your body is going to get fatigued at some point. Take care of your muscles and they’ll hold up. My trainer in college, my second year, he saw how hard I worked and how I never did anything to recover. He asked me about that. Ever since then, it stuck with me. When you’re tired, it doesn’t mean go harder. It means take care of your body.

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Nancy Clark

Newton-based nutritionist and author of “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition” guidebook

My mantra is: Fuel by day. And if you’re going to diet, diet by night. I encourage people to have a dinner-like breakfast and breakfast-like dinner. Most people eat backward. You have a coffee for breakfast, then you say, ‘’Better have a salad for lunch,’’ then come evening you’re starving. And when you get too hungry, you make the wrong food decisions.

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Rebecca Lobo

ESPN women’s basketball analyst, former UConn and WNBA star

Find something you enjoy. When I was an active player, I did not like running because it meant pushing my body to a point that was very uncomfortable. After I retired, I learned that the right pace would allow me to love jogging. I learned to enjoy exercising and not just see it as the unpleasant means to an end. I also found some High-Intensity Interval Training workouts that I love and that I can do in even the smallest hotel room.

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Matthew Slater

New England Patriots special teams captain

For me, it’s been about flexibility. Flexibility translates to not only on-the-field performance, but injury prevention. I first received advice about flexibility from my father as a youth athlete and that’s been reinforced with [the Patriots] strength coach, Moses Cabrera. He’s done a great job in helping me improve over the last four or five years. My dad always said [about injuries], “You can’t make the club in the tub.’’ Your body gets in some tough positions on the football field. If you’re able to bend and move, a lot of times that saves the day.

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George Mumford

Newton-based mindfulness teacher and author of “The Mindful Athlete”

With anything that you do, if you don’t do it in the moment, you’re not going to be as effective. You’ve got to be able to let go of what happened and focus on what is. Everybody knows when you’re locked in, when you can see clearly and make the right decisions on the fly. Usually, with athletes, you talk about being in the zone. The best way to get there is not to try to get there. The best way to get there is one moment at a time.

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Zdeno Chara

Boston Bruins captain

Always do it right. Don’t take shortcuts. That’s advice I was getting from my dad. He always said: “If you do it, do it right. Don’t cheat. If you’re supposed to do 20 reps, do 20 reps. I’d rather you do 21 reps than do 19.’’ He told me, “Make sure you don’t take shortcuts and the hard work, the extra work, will always be paid back.’’ That’s something a lot of people say but not a lot of people probably keep up with.


Shira Springer covers sports and society for NPR and WBUR and writes a column on women’s sports for the Globe. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. Interviews have been edited and condensed.