Mark Parker Quotes

They thought that athletes that worked out with my system wouldn't be able to throw a ball because they'd be too muscle bound. Those are the misconceptions I had to go through for about 40 years.

I have got better things to do in working with my athletes who I feel are going to be involved in 2012.

We wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.

We've got teams and other countries have teams. Right now, we are going to their countries; we're finding the best athletes; we're bringing them to our team. We're training them, we're making them awesome, and sending them back to beat us. We've got to stop that.

I never really did sports growing up. Maybe that's why they intrigue me. The technology that goes into that clothing is steps ahead, so it's always been something I look towards.

I think that a lot of players and a lot of teams don't think of contact lenses as being a part of that essential gear but it truly is. You want every competitive advantage you can find and obviously having great vision is one of those advantages.

I don't recommend steroids for everyone, and I don't recommend growth hormones for everyone. But for certain individuals, I truly believe, because I've experimented with it for so many years, that it can make an average athlete a super athlete. It can make a super athlete - incredible. Just legendary.

If the Palestinian Olympic Committee or Palestinian Federation provide good facilities to the athletes then maybe I can become better than these Bahraini or Qatari athletes.

When you're an athlete and you play every day and are conditioning yourself every year, the aging is gradual.

The East Germans first used biomechanics. This meant that rather than guessing about technique and form, they could apply changes to athletic performance based on science.

A lot of times, the press guys ask why I take an hour and a half to come to the interview room, but if you don't do the massage and the ice baths and the stretching and the cooling down and the eating, and your opponent is doing that stuff, they already have an advantage.

In Serie A if you have an exceptional physique and you train very well you can destroy any opposing defense.

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.

Especially as pro athletes, at the highest level, what we put into our bodies plays a huge part in our performance.

Nowadays, the difference between athletes is really small, and if you can get an edge, why not take it.

A male athlete's peak, I believe, should be somewhere between 26 and 30.

I'm training at Phase 1 Sports in Las Vegas, and it's a very high-end training facility for a lot of top-level athletes. I have been able to add a lot of power and the endurance to keep that power going. I've always been powerful, but the muscle conditioning I've been able to add has been a tremendous amount of help.

If research can help us discover cures for diseases, it surely can improve a football team. Whether it's data analysis or biomechanics, it can give you an edge - and I'd be a fool if I didn't want that edge.

Football is not played in shorts and it's not fair to the big guys. So many guys look bad in shorts and then they put the pads on and they're football players.

You've got to turn over every stone; you've got to look for every advantage. You need to make sure you're doing everything you possibly can, not just on the field but off it, to give your team an advantage - from having a sleep expert coming to talk to your team to having an independent analysis of your team done.

I can see the whole field. I don't know why. Most coaches can see two or three guys.

I remember when I was a kid rugby players were some big guys that drunk a lot of beer but now they have proper training programs and diets and all that. And the pioneers of all that is bodybuilding.

I try to simulate as much as possible what we do on the field in my workouts, so when I get with the team I'm somewhere close.

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

Actors normally go to the gym to achieve a certain kind of fitness for a role but when you start playing a sport, then you realise that being athletically fit is a very different kind of fitness.