In his Patriots prime, you could argue Vince Wilfork was among the strongest players in all of football. Built like a freight train at 6’2”/325, Wilfork cemented himself as a first-round pick with his Combine performance in 2004, famously logging 36 bench-press reps at 225 pounds. Now six years removed from his last NFL game, Wilfork only recently resumed lifting weights, describing his first time back in the gym as a humbling experience.
“When I finished football, I just walked. That’s what I’d do. I might do some push-ups here and there, but I walked. So I never lifted weights until like this year,” said Wilfork during his appearance Thursday on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. “The first time I went to the gym, I couldn’t lift 185 pounds. You’re talking about a guy—my warmup was 315. So now here I am in the gym, with my wife, and I got weights on that I used to look at that the little wide receivers would lift, and I can’t even lift it now.”
Undeterred by his bench-press debacle, Wilfork quickly pivoted to another exercise, only to find a similar roadblock in store, barely able to make it through five pushups.
“I said I won’t worry about this, let me just do my pushups. I’ll do five sets of 10 pushups and I’d be good,” said Wilfork, who claims to have lost about 80 pounds since his retirement in 2017. “But I couldn’t do five pushups.”
While eye-opening to say the least, Wilfork’s discouragement quickly gave way to humility and acceptance, marveling at the strength and athleticism he once had, gifts the 41-year-old realizes he may have taken for granted.
“I’ve always been strong. When I first started lifting weights, I’d be lifting 275, 300. But now all of a sudden, away from football, weight loss, away from the game and not lifting, I go in and basically have to retrain myself as a normal person,” said Wilfork, who was recently elected to the Patriots Hall of Fame. “It put it in perspective for me.”
Ex-athletes can often have a hard time assimilating back into regular everyday life, though Wilfork, the ultimate gentle giant, seems better equipped than most to make that transition, generally displaying the same cheerful optimism that made him a beloved player in New England for so many years. Just don't get him going on this current Patriots team.
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