Terrell Owens; Philadelphia Eagles wideout Terrell Owens had a simple plan for becoming an NFL star: build the body and the rest will fall into place. It worked

Muscle & Fitness, Oct, 2004 by Joe Wuebben

SIX days a week, Terrell Owens, Philadelphia's most coveted and controversial athletic procurement since Allen Iverson, wraps himself in rubber bands, linking his ankles together and his hips to his wrists as if shackled. He then mechanically performs a punishing circuit of exercises that teaches him to keep his weight "central," not out over a limb, which on Sundays this autumn would mean he's lying on the turf instead of employing basketball-like moves on would-be tacklers after making a catch. Owens' personal trainer, James "Buddy" Primm, casually calls it Star Wars training because "that's how far ahead it is," and predicts it will enhance TO's balance, power, jumping ability, coordination and endurance. "It'll be scary," warns Primm.

NFL defensive backs are scared as it is. Owens, 30, already embodies the league's most sought-after breed of wide receiver: menacing size (6'3", 226 pounds), breakaway speed, Charmin-soft hands and, most importantly, a level of productivity matched only by pass-catchers like Randy Moss of the Minnesota Vikings and Marvin Harrison of the Indianapolis Colts. His new team, the Philadelphia Eagles, has reached three consecutive NFC championship games and lost them all. But with TO split out wide, the notoriously unforgiving Philly fans feel this is their year to win a Super Bowl. No pressure or anything.

If TO has one deficiency, at least as far as the media is concerned, it's his mouth. His open criticism of teammates and coaches of his former team, the San Francisco 49ers, led reporters and fans to label Owens a "cancer" to the team. Other incidents, like signing his autograph on a football with a Sharpie immediately after catching a touchdown pass during a Monday-night game in 2002, have further fueled an image of arrogance and disrespect for the game of football, which remains his second favorite sport, behind basketball. It was perhaps these episodes that induced his trade from the 49ers to the Baltimore Ravens this past off-season (which Owens appealed and eventually got nullified in another case of negative press), then to the Eagles.

Gridiron supremacy and cantankerous persona aside, TO possesses a third dimension that's clearly more relevant to this magazine's readership in its likeness to bodybuilding: a richly muscular, chiseled physique consisting of no more than 6% bodyfat that, when not hidden beneath a jersey and shoulder pads, exhibits the countless hours of work that went into its development. And not merely from Owens' own efforts, but from the exhaustive education and trial-and-error research of an exclusive team of trainers, scientists and performance gurus, as well. It's a body that can most aptly be described as fine-tuned.

* Growing up in Alexander City, Alabama, the oldest of four children, "Terrell was always doing something," says his mother, Marilyn Owens, who had him when she was 17 years old and had to work two jobs throughout TO's childhood to make ends meet. "He could ride a skate-board unbelievable ... and dance. He used to tell me when he was a kid, 'I'm gonna be somebody. Ain't nothin' I can't do.'"

At Benjamin Russell High School, Owens, a four-sport athlete--baseball, basketball, football and track and field--was by no means a standout: no all-conference, all-state or any such accolades. "I was just one of those athletic guys," he says in a Southern accent. "I wasn't a star right off the bat. It was like I was a success in the making."

Freshman year, the lifting started. The varsity football coach would tell the underclassmen, in reference to the juniors and seniors on the team who seemed colossal to the then 6'1", 175-pound TO, "If you want to be like these guys, this is where it starts, right here in the weight room." "That stuck with me," says Owens. "That was embedded in my head, so I always felt like I had to lift weights to get better."

His senior year, a recruiter from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga visited the school. Not for TO, but rather to watch game film on one of his teammates. Evidently, Owens caught his eye, because UTC, a Division I-AA school from the seldom-publicized Southern Conference, offered him a football scholarship. "When I got there, I didn't really think too much about football," Owens says. "I just thought it was a way for me to go to school, because I couldn't afford it otherwise. I was green to a lot of stuff." (Owens was so naive that he thought he was at Tennessee-Knoxville, a D-I power-house and winner of two national championships in its history. "He thought he was a Volunteer!" laughs Primm.)

TO didn't exactly take Chattanooga by storm at first, catching just six passes as a freshman. "We had to do our 40s [40-yard dashes], and guys were clocked at 4.4 and 4.5 [seconds]," recalls Owens. "I got clocked at 4.6, and I knew that was slow. So I just kept lifting weights." He soon became so obsessed with getting stronger--and better--that while classmates flocked to keg parties, he went to the gym. Eleven, 12 o'clock at night, it didn't matter; he'd go lift, on top of the training he did with the team. "That was the thing: I was always doing extra stuff."