In the new issue of Transversales dedicated this Friday to Cristiano Ronaldo on RMC Sport 1, some former Portuguese teammates paraded to talk about CR7, and more particularly about his iron discipline. The young player went so far as to go to the wall to train.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s obsession with bodybuilding is no legend. The Portuguese makes it a point of honor to keep his body in shape and this is what explains his longevity at such a level. But this iron discipline, the Portuguese has held it since adolescence, when he was in training at Sporting Portugal. He did not hesitate to defy the rules to satisfy his thirst for sport.
“We had a rule: be in the center at 11 p.m. and in our rooms at midnight. When everyone was sleeping, Cristiano left his room to go train in the gym or in the swimming pool”, details Edgar Marcelino, former teammate of Ronaldo at the Sporting. “He goes to the wall to go and do weight training because it’s forbidden. As soon as he sees a boy his age or a little older who is a little stronger, he says to himself ‘I’m going to do like him’ to have the same pectorals, abounds Régis Dupond, journalist for L’Équipe.
His teammates, first witnesses of his obsession
According to Jean-Cyrille Lecoq, physical trainer, Cristiano Ronaldo suffers from bigorexia, “an addiction to sports practice. We find ourselves like a drug addict, that is to say that if I do not practice sport for different reasons, I I will be in a state of lack”. Some of his former Manchester United team-mates, like David Bellion (2003-2006), are “not surprised if Ronaldo has it” when talking about bigorexia. Edwin van der Sar is also one of the privileged witnesses of this dependence on physical exertion: “He does 1000 sit-ups a day whereas a normal player does 3 sets of 30 or 4 sets of 40. And he does this to him before and after training.”
But the relentlessness of the Portuguese goes far beyond the framework of the green rectangle. Mehdi Benatia, former teammate of CR7 at Juventus between 2018 and 2019, explains that it is “impossible to bring him on vacation if there is no gym at the hotel.” At his home, CR7 has a whole set of gear to sculpt his silhouette. Proof that on and off the field, Cristiano Ronaldo has followed the same discipline and working method since his Sporting years.
–
