Make Your Workout Work Out

If We're Lucky, We Work Out

As we take a quick breather before launching into the full-blown workout, I ask my adidas teammates what sports they are training for. Kristin Kohler, a business-unit manager, skis and runs. Rick Woodford, a product-development manager, likes to hike, run, and snowshoe. Jaime Meredith, an assistant product-line manager who's built like a professional volleyball player, plays indoor soccer. Kim Johnson, a product tester, says she runs, snowboards, and kayaks.

Then Jaime Meredith starts to laugh: "Who are we kidding? We don't have time for sports. We work, and, if we're lucky, we work out."

And there's the rub: How can Verstegen help people like the folks from adidas -- people who, in any given month, spend more time commuting between adidas-Salomon's world headquarters in Germany and its various factories in Asia than they do commuting between home and their offices at adidas in Portland, Oregon?

But if there's one problem that Verstegen understands all too well -- in no small part because he experiences it himself -- it's the working stiff's time crunch. Today is Thursday, and he hasn't had a chance to get into the weight room all week. He's not worried, though: "Give me 25 minutes, and I'll be good for a couple of days."

Leveraging time, it turns out, is a trademark of Verstegen's -- one of the things that elevates his coaching above that of run-of-the-mill personal trainers. At IPI, every drill is designed to do double and triple duty: One exercise improves balance, endurance, and strength. Another works on flexibility, balance, and agility.

Take the "balance box squat." Balance on one leg while standing on a box. Slowly squat as if you're about to sit on a chair. Meanwhile, drop your raised leg below the edge of the box. Hold that position for several seconds. Did I mention that you're also gripping a dumbbell in each hand? Never mind that 5-pounder -- you can do 10 pounds. As you squat, do three sets of 10 curls.

In a matter of minutes, that exercise will work your glutes, quads, forearms, and biceps -- and improve your balance as well. It will also show you that by exercising the Verstegen way -- that is, with perfect form -- you can't cheat. When I tell Verstegen that at home I can lift weights for a full hour without breaking a sweat, he hoots: "You're one of those people who moans about the time it takes to exercise -- but when you get to the gym, you act like you've got all the time in the world."

Mud and a Tennis Court

IPI's campus spans 140 acres in the somnolent Florida gulf-coast town of Bradenton, where it's part of the Nick Bollettieri Sports Academy. The place resembles a Hollywood studio lot, with its agreeable sprawl of one- and two-story wooden buildings, each hugged by oleander and palmettos, and its transient population of uncannily handsome teenagers. It's not unusual to find a nearly brand-new tennis racket stuffed in a garbage can -- the result of some whiz kid's snit.

IPI itself is pretty unprepossessing. The weight room is nothing fancy, and the six trainers employed by Verstegen are humble to the point of being nearly invisible. There are no marketing campaigns for IPI. In fact, the whole operation has the aura of a well-kept secret.

The IPI story goes like this: Verstegen, a one-time linebacker at Washington State University (who went on to earn a master's degree in sport science at the University of Idaho), was given, he says, "a tennis court and a patch of mud" and told to put together a world-class sports-training facility.

IPI opened its doors in 1995. Nomar Garciaparra, who knew Verstegen from their days at Georgia Tech -- Garciaparra played ball there, and Verstegen was assistant director of player development -- came down to train. Garciaparra had abundant talent and discipline, but he was still unsung: a rail-thin kid. But the next season, after putting in six weeks with Verstegen, Garciaparra earned the title American League Rookie of the Year.

Starting with the next off-season, Garciaparra was joined by many of his Red Sox teammates for what he calls "my yearly ritual."

IPI's appeal to professional athletes and serious amateurs is clear: No one, with the possible exception of their mothers, knows the innermost details of those athletes as well as Verstegen does. "I'm the most anal-retentive individual you'll ever meet," he says. "I doubt there's any aspect of these guys' athletic needs that I haven't considered."

The day you walk in the door at IPI, you're given your own binder filled with graphs, charts, and notations outlining your personal workout regimen. You submit to physical assessments and to nutrition counseling, and then you begin the real work of building power, strength, flexibility, balance, quickness, linear speed, multidirectional footwork, and movement mechanics. Verstegen knows he'll get maximum effort from you -- because you've signed a note pledging that if you don't put out, you'll pull out.

Verstegen is so confident of his ability to make a difference that he has photos taken of all participants on both their first and their last day at IPI. His goal: to provide tangible proof of their progress.

I don't have to look far to find tangible proof of IPI's progress. After all, most participants are professional athletes -- people who live in a world where great stats translate neatly into great contracts. The evidence of such contracts is parked in a lot across from the weight room: a metallic charcoal-gray Explorer XLT; a black Mercedes ML 430; a Toyota Land Cruiser, which still has its stickers on it.