Drew McIntyre Feels Better Than He Did At 30 After Changing His Fitness Routine

Drew McIntyre recently altered his fitness routine, and he says that he feels better know than he did 10 years ago at 30. The WWE star has always had a stellar physique, but he’s improved even more over the last near-year and says that it was important to do as he’s getting older.

McIntyre detailed the changes he made and why he did so in his appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. He noted that he had an opportunity where he had time off and wasn’t injured, so he took the chance to assess himself and do things that make the hard life of wrestling easier on him. You can see highlights below:

On Changing His Fitness Routine:

“Roughly nine months ago, I’d had five weeks off, which was the first five weeks off I’ve ever really had in my life. I came straight from school to WWE to being released back on the road a few weeks later, where I was like, oh my goodness, I’m not injured. I’m not doing rehab. I’ve actually got this time off, let’s have an honest look at myself, especially approaching 40 and wrestling 25 years, everyone thinks I’m as old as Punk or something, but I’m not, old man. But honestly, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, what’s going on with you? Let’s take some inventory here. Okay, good shape, one of the best built guys in WWE, that’s cool, but things are starting to catch up. Things are hurting. Is there anything you can do about that? I never really followed a diet. I was still eating burgers all the time, pizza all the time, sometimes eating two times a day, sometimes eating eight times a day. I decided to get a trainer who actively came to my garage and worked with me and helped me out with training and diet and the big thing, mobility, which I’ve never done, proper mobility work.

“I worked with Rob McIntyre for years. He’s phenomenal, but he was sending my workouts, especially when I moved to Nashville five years ago, and it was a lot more difficult not working one-on-one with him. Having this new trainer, Jeff, coming to the garage and pushing me. He’s five foot tall, five foot wide. He’s a very angry little man, and he was pushing me through my paces. But the big difference was the mobility work. I couldn’t throw a super kick, not that I wanted to, because everybody and their mother throws a super kick these days, but I’d love to be able to and have the choice to do it, but my hips were so tight, it just wasn’t physically possible. Things were locking up. I was aware, oh, my goodness, maybe you’re closer to the end than the beginning, not just because of your age, but because of how my body felt and going through all this mobility work. The new diet, which reduced inflammation dramatically, I not only saw a difference in how I looked on screen, but how I felt overall. I was throwing head kicks, I could literally kick Omos in the face right now, and I feel better now than I did at legitimately 30 years old.”

On What He Works On:

“It’s more active stretching, and these things I never heard of, called CARs [Controlled Articular Rotations]. So all the boys and girls out there, if you’ve not heard of CARs, it’s just basically creating space in the joint, with the hips, with the shoulders, you can do it with anything, the hands, the fingers. But it’s for me specifically, the biggest difference maker was in the hips, the knees and the shoulders. I really thought to stretch my shoulders, I would spend 20 minutes in the gym just holding stretches made zero difference whatsoever. But now doing some active stretching and some prehab, instead of rehab, like when I tore my bicep, for example, and I had rehab, I was doing things to strengthen up the knees, strengthen up the shoulders and these CARs creating space in the joints and movements I may actually do in the ring. And I just could not believe how good I felt as the month started passing by.”