Toni Kroos Quotes

When I got to professional ball I used to play 150 games every year. It depends on how many games there was.

I don't think you ever feel 100 percent throughout a season. If you ask any player, I don't think they ever feel 100 percent fresh every week.

I am used to training 10 to 12 sessions a week, so I have the physical and mental endurance that comes with being an athlete.

There's a lot of guys who can bowl 150 km/h when you give them the ball when they're fresh in the morning, but can they do it late in the afternoon when it's boiling hot and they're bowling their 20th over for the day? I want to be able to do that and I want to be the only guy who is able to do that.

The cutter has really helped me stay in the game longer and helped me get past the five, six innings a little more consistently.

Over the season you have waves. It is very hard to go through the whole season at the same standard and winning games in the same way.

It's a 90 minute game for sure. In fact I used to train for a 190 minute game so that when the whistle blew at the end of the match I could have played another 90 minutes.

The thing is the game is getting tougher and tougher and we have to ask a lot of our bodies.

He's going to be around a long, long time, if his body holds up. That's always a concern with a lot of players because of how much they play. A lot of guys can't handle it. But it looks like he can.

Take a look at all of them: Marichal, Jenkins, Spahn - what do you think made them successful? They conditioned their arms by pitching more, not less, starting from when they signed their first contract.

For decathletes, our event goes all throughout the day so you're trying to go up and down and up and down emotionally and physically and you know mentally you're just on a roller coaster.

Because a football game is just sixty minutes, but I'm training six, seven hours in every day. So, going for sixty minutes becomes easy. More importantly, I think that your muscles mature and can move in all different directions.

Athletes peak for the Olympic Games and can take months to get back up to that level.

My best tennis at my peak was when I played a lot of matches.

Staying more controlled mentally stemmed from taking my fitness more seriously. When you're doing track work, sprints and so on, it's pretty painful, but that does make you feel better prepared and therefore mentally stronger when you're going into a match. You know, without a doubt, that you are strong enough to last.

Nobody can walk on a track and beat me unless they have an extraordinary day and I have a bad day, which I keep from happening.

You don't want to hit your peak until late in the season.

My first few years in the league, I was relying on my athleticism to get me by, because that's what got me to the NBA. The problem with that is, you end up getting really, really tired by February.

I think fans oftentimes get an inferior product on back-to-back games, and I think that has to be the number one thing that gets addressed for the fans and for the players - the elimination or the drastic reduction of back-to-back games.

It's always difficult when you have had a game in midweek to get to a final.

Where the marathon starts is after 30 kilometers. That's where you feel pain everywhere in your body. The muscles are really aching, and only the most prepared and well-organized athlete is going to do well after that.

Players can play bad, and certainly when you have only three days or six days training sessions in your legs, and you have to play 45 minutes. Everybody can say that it's easy to step in, but it is not easy.

I see a lot of guys and their stamina is at an all-time low in the fourth quarter, and I feel like mine is still where it was in the first quarter of the game.

Some of my fights in PRIDE, I felt tired. I would train on the punching bag and feel great but then get tired in my fights.

In spring training, I just try to spread everything out so I can be 100 percent before the season starts. I don't want to start feeling like I don't get it once the season starts. I want to be 100 percent on Opening Day.