Tom Brady Is Taking On Health Education With TB12 Method In Florida Schools

By Arthur L. Caplan & Lee H. Igel

At a meeting this past summer in Tampa, Tom Brady’s eyes lit up as he listened to an idea about what to do next. The meeting didn’t have anything to do with the 45-year-old, seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback returning to play one more season in the NFL. Instead, it was about a direction that his TB12 Foundation could take in charting a new course for public health and wellness, beginning with children.

The idea was to bring Brady’s training philosophy and regimen to schools in the area around where he currently plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This year, ten middle and high schools in Pinellas County are incorporating Brady’s training methods into their curriculum. Students and teachers in the schools selected for this pilot program are learning lessons about the basic activities, habits, and equipment that shape the Brady method. The goal is to guide kids to understanding the value that focusing on health and wellness can play both now and later on in their lives.

The program draws heavily on the TB12 Method, an approach that Brady started developing over ten years ago with his personal body coach Alex Guerrero. In their pursuit to achieve top performance and career longevity, they began building a training and wellness system based on five pillars: pliability, nutrition, hydration, movement, and mental fitness. Brady credits it with his playing more than two decades in the NFL—the longest for any quarterback in league history and a span during which he has indisputably become the best-ever at the position.

A business arm of the Brady brand has previously made versions of the TB12 Method available to the public through books, performance and recovery center locations, and trademarked products. But the non-profit arm—the TB12 Foundation—was established in 2015 “to help educate and inspire athletes to excel in both sports and life.” Personal experience with injuries earlier in his career drives Brady’s interest in the approach reaching populations ranging from student-athletes to at-risk youth to military service members to people who are vulnerable to socioeconomic or poor health issues.

What motivates Brady’s thinking is a belief that it is tough to achieve goals if you’re not preparing and performing at a top level. The way he sees it, based on his own experience and observation, most people don’t pay attention to preventing an injury until after they have sustained an injury. He is convinced that could have achieved even more than he has in his career if only he knew earlier some of what he has learned more recently.

Brady and Guerrero conceived the TB12 Foundation as a way to support providing health and wellness resources to communities that might otherwise not have access to them. The organization is already working in the towns of Brockton and Malden, Massachusetts, nearby where Brady played most of his career with the New England Patriots. There, a dozen local student-athletes at each school have been selected for TB12 programs that see them paired with body coach mentors for the entire school year.

As TB12 Foundation executive director Lisa Borges recently told us, greater involvement in schools was something on the horizon, though still some years away. But then came the idea discussed at the meeting this past summer, when Brady listened to Pinellas Education Foundation chief executive officer Stacy Baier and board member Ben Wieder describe their concept for bringing TB12 into the schools curriculum.

The idea prioritized reaching a large number of students and teachers who would be positively impacted for years to come. There would be logistics and details that needed working out across the school district, which is the 26^th largest in the United States. The TB12 Foundation would be covering costs for materials and equipment. Educators and administrators would be working on a redesign of the health curriculum to integrate principles from the TB12 Method.

There is no doubt that the allure of connecting with Brady on any type of program or activity is exciting for many kids, parents organizations, and institutions. Media attention to his professional career and personal life have led to him becoming one of the most-celebrated people on the planet. And his rate of success in endeavors both on and off the field leads those aiming to huddle-up with him to hope even more so that he says “yes”—or, as he has been known to put it, “LFG.”

Given Brady’s achievements, many schools in many places may be interested in bringing the TB12 Method to their gyms. But should schools be getting into this game? Should schoolchildren be following a method that is designed by an athlete and used by other professional athletes?

According to research sourced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the few years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, not even one-quarter of children ages 6-to-17 years-old participated in one hour of daily physical activity every day. Little more than one-half of high school students attended any physical education classes during an average week. A study published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics showed a significant decrease in youth and adolescent participation in physical activity during the pandemic. These changes, on top of years of budget cuts in many schools and districts, have left too many kids at a loss for recreation, health, and wellness education at a time when it is critical in their development.

Children who are in their middle and high school years are at an age when they are starting to become aware of and make decisions about health and wellness. What they learn can matter to themselves, their families, their teachers, their schools, and their wider communities in the near-term and the long-run. The TB12 program—with its video explainers on pliability and foam rollers for muscle stretching, stations for performing planks and hydrating with water, sheets of paper containing student self-assessments and results measurements, and so on—can absolutely be a tool to inspire that effort. It is not yet clear whether the method is best for all kids or even that it can produce results for those not quite as driven as Brady. At the least, however, it can be a gateway for more people to become aware of learning good habits in leading a healthier lifestyle.

As he nears the end of his playing career, it seems that Brady is turning toward passing along more insight into what has gotten him to where he is at. Millions of viewers will get more of that when, upon retirement, he joins FOX Sports as its lead analyst for NFL game broadcasts. Hundreds of children in the Pinellas County schools and in Massachusetts are on the receiving end already. The question is whether the appeal and endorsement of one of the greatest athletes of modern times ought to be enough to drive the physical education of every kid in America. The answer to that question, as the direction of the TB12 Foundation is showing, comes far more from community commitment than from fan admiration.