Kamaru Usman Quotes

When you get off five or six months, and you're not competing as an athlete, you want to get back out on the field.

Obviously we've got a lot of science behind football these days and we've got a lot of people that can advise us on how best to look after our bodies.

The N.B.A. is not an easy job. As you get older, you play this game for 82 games a year, and you play 11 or 12 years, your body tends to break down.

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing.

What if you didn't have education for sports? People with a natural inclination for sports, athletes without any kind of education, without any kind of training, they would just be couch athletes instead of the world class Olympians that we have.

I never thought of a career in athletics.

I didn't know what it meant or what it took to be healthy and be prepared for 82-plus games... Injuries come with sports. I know that. But you can be prepared, get your body as prepared as it can be through practice and weights.

To be a top-class athlete, you have to train hard, you have to eat right, you have to get enough rest. I feel the way golf is going nowadays, you have to treat yourself as an athlete.

I learned what I need to do in the long jump, what I needed to do in the javelin and I've been able to rectify those events. It's been a bit of a learning curve, which is good.

When I was in college, I learned to really take care of my body and figured out what works best for me and what doesn't work for me when it comes to my nutrition. That helped so much on the field because soccer is such a fitness-oriented game.

I want to stay involved in sports in one way or another.

The thing about the NBA, any pro sport, is, guys don't know how to take care of their body.

I played all kinds of sports when I was young: tennis, handball, basketball, some soccer. I focused on basketball when I was 16 or 17 and then came to the U.S. when I was 20.

Up until the age of 16, I was very focused on sport - I played a lot of football. Then I tore my ACL and had to stop playing.

I don't see myself coaching gymnastics. I see myself involved in the sport in the future but involved in other things as well.

What would I have studied at university? Football!

I still work on it almost every day in the gym. You have to know your body and that also means knowing when it's time to rest. Sometimes the coach will manage me and give me a day off so that I'm right for the weekend.

I love working with athletes. They're all very demanding.

I want to play football at a high level.

Top European clubs are always progressing with what they can do off the field. Training is getting more scientific, and we are constantly getting more educated on nutrition.

I wanted to play football, and my football coach told me if I wanted to be a football player, I should wrestle. That's why I started to wrestle.

My job is to keep my players fit and fresh for the important games.

Sport is an essential element of education.

Women's tennis is getting faster and the girls are getting more athletic, so I need to push myself to become a better athlete. I think 2013 showed me, like a few other years how important being healthy is and how I must listen to my body. During this off season I have been a little smarter on how I train and how I treat my body.

When you look at athletes, they have fundamentals.