Adrian Peterson
Adrian Peterson
Adrian Lewis Petersonis an American football running back for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Vikings seventh overall in the 2007 NFL Draft. He played college football at Oklahoma. Peterson set the NCAA freshman rushing record with 1,925 yards as a true freshman during the 2004 season. As a unanimous first-team All-American, he became the first freshman to finish as the runner-up in the Heisman Trophy balloting. Peterson finished his college football career...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFootball Player
Date of Birth21 March 1985
CityPalestine, TX
CountryUnited States of America
I take football as an avenue to different opportunities. Football is not using me; I'm using football.
You look at Ray Lewis, you look at Brett Favre. I know it's different positions, but you think about the mental mindset it takes to continue to grind and play at a high level. Those are the guys that I look at that motivate me.
At the end of the day, it's hard to win against the NFL. It's a billion-dollar business, it's hard to win against it. They can manipulate a lot of different things. They can pull strings, they know people. At the end of the day, nine times out of 10, they are going to win.
Sometimes I sit back and think, 'Is this really happening?'
To be honest, I'm kind of shocked. They just threw a monkey up in here or something like that.
We came out there and we played smash-mouth football,
I would sacrifice 1,000 yards rushing to win a Super Bowl. But I want to be the first back to have back-to-back 2,000-yard seasons.
I'm all into my rap grooves. I'm checking out artists like Lil' Wayne and Trick Daddy.
With everything else that's happened to me, it was a pretty dumb injury. We were celebrating in the end zone when I took my helmet off. Manuel ran by and caught me on my forehead. It just started bleeding.
It's something to build on for next year.
We're going to have to establish some form of a passing game, ... We just can't run it on everybody.
I'm always aware of trying to put my body in different positions to test it and strengthen muscles that you don't get when you do dumbbell press or pulls or weight-type exercises.
I'll get out and do Pilates. I'll get in the ring and do some rounds of kickboxing and grappling and MMA conditioning. There's a lot of unique stuff that I do, too, that a lot of people wouldn't imagine or think about doing, like box jumps. You get a 42-inch box and dumbbells and practice working on your explosion jumping up on those boxes.
A guy like Bruce Lee, I've always been a fan. How he used to be able to move and be so quick. You look at some of the exercises that he did, and it was all majority free weight, like standing on your hands. That works every muscle. Everything is firing.