John Salley Quotes

I've had one very bad ankle injury but otherwise I've been incredibly lucky with my fitness. I've worked hard at it and I've always been fit even compared to other players. That sustains you through various parts of your career, but I am 36.

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.

Playing professional sports, it's important to eat healthy and take care of your body. In the offseason, rest is really important to me.

What I'm doing with my body and with my golf game, I'm trying to extend the longevity of my career.

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.

I came back from my ACL injury and won MVP. So, what's a groin? What's an adductor? That's how I look at things. I feel like if you just continue to take care of your body, working out, making sure you're in shape and you stay on top of your game, you can play as long as you want.

Truth is, none of us professional athletes are ever 100 percent healthy. We just decide what we're going to tape up and push through without making it worse.

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.

I just feel like it's my job to take care of my body. I play a contact sport, 99.9 percent injury rate. As far as being injury-prone or getting hurt, it's going to happen. But it's my job to take care of my body, come week in and week out.

I love playing sports. I'm overly eager and aggressive and not very skilled, so it leads to many small injuries.

When I was about 18, I started to think that I could have a long sporting career.

I'd grown up an athletic child, a competitive soccer player since age 4, with stints ranging from months to years in gymnastics, softball, volleyball.

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.

Athletes at all ages are bigger and stronger than ever before. And they are being encouraged - sometimes even incentivized, as we recently learned was the case on at least one National Football League team - to play to injure.

Your body's really only meant to compete at the highest levels of combat sports for a few years.

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.

Professional tennis has become an extremely physical and unbelievably competitive sport. Injuries are the bane of tennis players, and it goes with the territory.

As a player, I was fortunate to work with coaching and medical staffs that underscored the importance of utilizing injury prevention exercises, which contributed to my healthy and long playing career.

I had to decide whether I should try to play pro football after high school or try to pursue my powerlifting career.

Would I still be playing at the top level at the age of 37 years if I had any weaknesses?

I study this sport.

Fortunately, I'm OK with my body. I try to take care of it. I played a lot of games over a season for several years, so, touch wood, I will stay fit and healthy.

It's a very violent game, and bodies take a beating, so you want to make sure you do everything you can to get your body back. It's just something you have to do.

We're professional athletes. I feel like I got treated better in college wrestling. I had a physical therapist on hand at all times, no matter what, when I was in college.

Tennis is such a physically demanding sport, and it can be so rough on the body at the pro level.