Cristiano Ronaldo does not owe his ideal physical shape to his profession. Just look at his colleagues - most of them are thin, but few of them can boast of the same clearly defined muscles as the former Real Madrid player, and now a striker for the Italian Juventus and the Portuguese national team. Football provides a lot of aerobic exercise without the strength component. The popularity of the Christiano Ronaldo brand largely depends on the appearance of the athlete. Therefore, the Portuguese does not limit himself to training related to his football profession.
Cristiano Ronaldo's training is an exhausting program.
Nutrition
Perfect abs like the Portuguese footballer's are impossible without a proper diet. Ronaldo is extremely strict with himself in this regard: he does not allow dietary indulgences, such as fast food or sweet carbonated drinks. Ronaldo's diet consists of protein foods (meat, poultry, fish) and foods containing fiber (vegetables, fruits). The athlete’s weight is 84 kg with a height of 187 cm, and the percentage of fat is about 10.
The Juventus striker eats six times a day.
The bulk of calories come in the first half of the day. A hearty breakfast and a hearty lunch give you the strength to train. The last meal is no later than 2 hours before bedtime.
Diet
Cristiano breaks his daily diet into six meals, does not consume sugar, drinks protein shakes, takes multivitamins and supplements for joint health. He also eats a lot of vegetables for better metabolism.
Sample menu
- Breakfast: fruit juice, egg whites, whole grain cereal.
- Lunch: some pasta, baked potato, green vegetables and some chicken salad.
- The afternoon snack must include tuna rolls and fresh juice.
- Dinner: rice and beans, as well as chicken and fruit.
A healthy diet is combined with regular, intense training at one of the biggest clubs in the world. However, Cristiano also trains outside of football sessions.
Recovery after training
The Portuguese is widely known as an enthusiast of unusual restorative practices. After matches, he soaks in hot and cold water baths for five minutes. While at Real Madrid, Cristiano met “sleep guru” Nico Littlehales, who was invited by the head coach. Thanks to Littlehales, Ronaldo has been dividing his sleep into two parts since 2014: main (4.5-6 hours) and daytime (2-3 hours).
Charity
The footballer spends millions of euros annually on charity. He helps children with cancer, pays for treatment for victims of forest fires in Portugal, and donates a lot to the development of medicine. Cristiano cooperates with UNICEF, Save the Children, and the Red Cross. Since 2010, he has been a bone marrow donor for leukemia patients. For this reason, there is not a single tattoo on his body.
Despite the fact that Cristiano bears the title of the most vain footballer in Portugal, he remains so only on the field. In real life, the forward gives up his trophies for charity without regret. Thus, the “Golden Boot” and “Golden Ball” were sold at auction, and the funds were transferred to the construction of schools in war-torn Gaza and to the “Make a Wish” foundation, which fulfills the dreams of children with incurable diseases.
Psychology
The way Ronaldo swings is almost impossible for an ordinary person to replicate. He seems to spend most of his life in the gym. However, the athlete can give a couple of good tips to those who are trying to improve their physical fitness:
- training is mandatory, do not come up with excuses for not showing up at the gym;
- develop a training complex and follow it;
- don’t work out alone: your partner will motivate you to improve your results;
- sleep 8 hours a day.
An important component of Ronaldo's success is his complete abandonment of bad habits.
Cristiano does not drink alcohol, does not smoke, and the main goal of his life is not parties, but maintaining his body in optimal shape.
How Cristiano Ronaldo trains
How Cristiano Ronaldo trains
Match TV studies the training programs of the leader of the Portuguese national team, looks at his Instagram and talks with three physical training experts to distinguish truth from fiction. You can see Ronaldo in excellent Portuguese form at “Match!” Football 1" at 22.00 semi-finals of Euro 2016.
What I wanted to know
The topic of training a football player who runs like a sprinter, jumps like an NBA basketball player, and in terms of efficiency rivals a Kalashnikov assault rifle, seemed so obvious that Google should have been bursting with the request for Cristiano Ronaldo training. But the popular search engine communicated like football players who had flown from France to Sheremetyevo, and answered either in general or in fragmentary phrases.
Among the two coaches who worked with Ronaldo personally were Brad Campbell and Michael Clegg. The latter worked with the Portuguese back in Manchester. Two training programs were found (a fairly standard set: push-ups, dumbbell flyes, hanging leg raises, biceps curls, jumping and bodyweight squats), but each time it turned out to be difficult to establish their authenticity: who and when compiled them for the Portuguese and whether this happened In fact. It is known that when Ronaldo injured his hamstring in the spring, physiotherapist Joaquin Juan worked with him. Cristiano trained up to 6 hours a day according to an individual program, did exercises with ropes, which can often be found on Instagram among hockey players and MMA fighters, and swam in a pool with ultraviolet-treated water.
Real Madrid physiotherapist Felix Ledesma, who previously worked at Lokomotiv, noted in a conversation with a Match TV correspondent that he cannot disclose the nuances of Ronaldo’s training process without the club’s consent. We decided to start small and find out how, in principle, you can train with a personal trainer during the club season.
Maria Burova, manager of the sports medicine center of FC Lokomotiv: “It is a common practice for foreign Premier League football players to bring their own physiotherapists. And here the club’s physical training coach must be aware of the program that the player chooses with his personal trainer. As a rule, a personal trainer receives carte blanche, but on the condition that he informs the coaching staff about the training process.
How much training an athlete will do with a personal trainer depends on both the goals and the characteristics of the training itself. There are examples when a football player does one or two approaches with submaximal weight in the gym the day before the game in order to feel the muscles, strength and power.”
How Alexander Kerzhakov trained under the guidance of Maria Burova
What they say about Ronaldo's training
From what we managed to find out for sure: Ronaldo is extremely disciplined in his training and several people immediately mention the Portuguese as an athlete incredibly devoted to the regime. Cristiano eats a lot of protein, vegetables and sleeps at least eight hours a day so that his body can recover. At the same time, Ronaldo’s athleticism and his famous transformation, when after several years at Manchester United the player became noticeably larger and more prominent, make one talk about heavy weights and long hours in the gym.
Vasily Volkov, physical training coach, sports physiologist: “During a football match, moments may arise that require a football player to perform high-power motor actions, for example, to accelerate after the ball or jump as high as possible to make a header.
The ability to perform high-power movements cannot simply appear in the body - this requires muscles prepared in a certain way. It is very convenient to prepare such muscles using the tools that are available in the gym. It is not always possible to create the conditions for the muscular adaptation we need using only special football exercises. And there are situations when you need to specifically work with some muscle group, and at the same time give a break from running work.”
Ivan Krasavin, fitness trainer: “From my own experience I can say: football players have very good genetics. That is, you don’t get into professional football with bad characteristics, people there have big hearts, they have excellent oxygen supply to their muscles, and very good legs.”
What is known
Ronaldo himself, after one of his goals, could not resist pointing for a long time at the muscles of the front of his thigh, which were truly impressive in size. Kuban coach Sergei Tashuev in an interview with Match TV said that Ronaldo’s total tonnage “in the peak weekly cycle exceeds 20 tons,” and a squat of a hundredweight is not the limit for the Portuguese. The best Russian hurdler Sergei Shubenkov also noted the need to swing to develop sprint speed.
The Internet did not offer a single figure indicating the weight of the barbell with which Ronaldo squats, but told a boring story about three thousand bodyweight squats. It became interesting how Ronaldo actually squats and whether this affects his speed.
Vasily Volkov: “To be a good sprinter, you need to be born one. What I mean now is a certain muscle composition that is given to us from birth. And having already been born a good sprinter, you can develop this advantage, including in the gym.
I know how football players, hockey players and track and field athletes squat. From a technical point of view, this cannot be called full squats in the sense that, for example, weightlifters do it. There is a half squat of pure water. And accordingly, the shorter the distance you go with the barbell, the more weight you can afford. For a football player of this class, squatting 200 kg at half amplitude is normal.
But kilograms are not a goal, they are a means. From a physiological point of view, we need a thigh that will be able to perform work with a power of about 20 watts per kg of body weight. To get this, you need to pump your legs, and as your strength increases, you have to increase the weights when the previous ones stop having an effect.”
Maria Burova: “Nowadays they are moving away from maximum weights and the trend in modern physical training is to work with submaximal weights to develop power. Because it is the power parameter that is most important during the game, and the maximum strength parameter is no longer so important during the match, so setting records in the gym is not for a football player.
The average player can squat 80-90 kg, but the squat itself, although it is a great exercise, is no longer so important and indicative. Considering the risk of exacerbation of some back problems, I would generally recommend squats for 15 percent of those involved. Today there are a lot of exercises that replace squats, and equipment that makes it possible to estimate how many watts a football player has squeezed out in one repetition, and this is a parameter of an athlete’s coolness. The more of them, the more explosive the muscles.”
What do we see
Ronaldo brought 75 kg of his own weight to Manchester United. Now he weighs 80, and some sources indicate 78 kg. These are standard proportions for a football player and not very heavy weight for a man 185 centimeters tall. This circumstance does not prevent Ronaldo himself from looking very athletic in photographs, and impressing not only with his abdominal muscles, but also with his developed back, shoulders and biceps.
Ivan Krasavin: “He looks like a football player: dry, but tall and very well coordinated. I won’t say that he impresses me as a bodybuilder or a bodybuilder; there is nothing outstanding in his build, especially in professional photographs with the right light and correct processing, something can be emphasized favorably. But, on the other hand, it is clear that he not only runs, but also works on the shoulder girdle and upper body.”
Maria Burova: “Football has become more powerful in the last five years, so everything must develop. The top will be sculpted in any case, since they spend a lot of time in aerobic mode, which allows them to dry out muscle mass. About seven years ago there was an opinion: why does a football player need a top? Now, fortunately, this opinion is changing. There are a lot of athletes who pay attention to their physical training. They start working with individual trainers and physiotherapists. Believe me, we have enough players who are well built, it’s just that Cristiano is a player on whom a lot of attention is always focused, plus he is a top-class player. For example, you wouldn’t look at a football player from the second league simply because he’s well built.”
Vasily Volkov: “The purely visual feeling that a person is pumping very seriously, that he has a very powerful torso, gives a small percentage of subcutaneous fat. Therefore, again, without measurements it is difficult to say exactly how developed Cristiano’s upper body is. With a height of 185 cm, Ronaldo weighs 78 kg, in my opinion these are good proportions for football.
Moreover, a football player’s overly developed upper body is rather a whim and has no direct relation to performance on the field. Even playing with the body, blocking, is still not as strong contact as in hockey. But there is a risk of harming your endurance, since you carry an extra five kilograms in the form of biceps around the field.”
Ivan Krasavin: “Lean muscles are the result of huge waste of calories. As far as I know, a football player can lose up to five thousand in a game. There is an unrealistically promoted metabolism there, and, I think, professional nutritionists work with Ronaldo, and all the legal pharmaceutical support for recovery between training and games is appropriate there.”
Vasily Volkov: “By the way, a developed muscular system presupposes that you exercise regularly, and you use all the fibers that are in your muscles to work. You train them with a certain intensity and amplitude, which makes them ready for some extreme situations on the field. Plus, the work itself in the gym stimulates anabolic processes in the body. To put it simply, during sleep after strength training, the body repairs itself. If aerobic training destroys more - a person loses weight, including due to muscles, then strength training builds and restores.”
What does Ronaldo post on Instagram?
From what can be gleaned about the Portuguese's training from his personal photographs, we see abdominal exercises (Ronaldo has been reported to easily do three thousand crunches), balance work, bodyweight squats and shock absorber training. To put it simply, special rubber creates tension resistance. There is also a popular video where, during a training session at Real Madrid, instead of regular push-ups, Cristiano does a complicated version - with a clap, and does it at a fairly fast pace.
Ivan Krasavin: “I think he does a lot of abdominal exercises, a lot of push-ups, his pectoral muscles are not so developed, but they are quite dry. Most likely, this is functional training with high-repetition work.
That is, he can perform most of the exercises with his own weight, or with a barbell and dumbbells, but this can be 30-50 percent of the maximum.”
Maria Burova:
“Yes, training methods are changing now: training with TRX loops, rubber shock absorbers, functional training is becoming more and more popular, and they are moving away more and more from free weights and the pursuit of records.”
Vasily Volkov: “Rubber can create working conditions for muscles that are inaccessible for conventional exercises with weights. When, for example, we need to get rid of inertia in an exercise or add some instability to the movement, rubber can help with this.”
Ivan Krasavin: “The effectiveness of shock absorbers is greatly underestimated. The point is that there is no such load on the joints, plus the shock absorber creates constant tension, and it turns out that there is no phase where the muscle completely relaxes. And as you work, the more you pull it, the more stress you get.”
Vasily Volkov: “As for the appearance of the abs, this is, first of all, a low percentage of subcutaneous fat, which is not directly related to the performance of the abdominal muscles. But obviously hitting the ball has a rotational component to it, and to do that we need strong abdominal muscles.”
Ivan Krasavin: “90 percent of people will not do the kind of twist that he demonstrates in the photo, and with excess weight in the shoulder girdle, it will be especially difficult. I remember seeing this exercise in some films, it looks impressive. But I can’t call it the most effective among abdominal exercises. On the contrary, I really like hanging leg raises. It’s still better to work the rectus muscle from the bottom up, since the lower part of the fibers is attached to the pelvic bones and you don’t feel it so much when you twist the body.”
What Ronaldo himself says and does
Ronaldo will try to do everything to play against Portugal for the second time in the final of the European Championship, and at the same time prove to Gareth Bale that it is too early for him to aspire to the role of the best player of the same continent. He hit fifty again for the season and barely noticed that he celebrated his 31st birthday in February.
Vitaly Volkov: “If we talk about physical condition, then with proper and regular training, 31 years is not yet age. If you approach the training process wisely, in my opinion, you can remain at the same level for another 10 years.”
In February, news broke that Ronaldo was planning to lose two kilograms of body weight to maintain his speed and mobility. And here we can admit that Ronaldo still pays attention to his age, and you can once again be surprised at how professionally he trains.
Text: Vadim Tikhomirov
Photo: globallookpress.com; getty images; instagram.com/cristiano
Appearance
Now Cristiano is called a style icon and sex symbol. Everyone knows how attentive he is to his own appearance. Of course, at the beginning of his career, the athlete was far from ideal, and his teeth were not so straight and white, and the choice of suits was not always appropriate. But even then the football player was sharply different from everyone else. Arriving in England and starting to play for Manchester United, Ronaldo repeatedly became the butt of jokes. But the young man did not pay attention to this, answering that the British simply did not have style.
Manchester United kit manager Ian Buckingham recalls that Ronaldo was the first to wear gloves for cold matches, something that had never been done before. Soon everyone started doing the same.
WHAT COSMETOLOGICAL PROCEDURES DOES CRISTIANO RONALDO DO?
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Cristiano Ronaldo in his youth and now
His hairstyles, which are constantly changing, deserve special attention. So, on June 4, 2022, Cristiano surprised fans by once again changing his image. Less than 24 hours after Real Madrid's victory in the Champions League over Juventus in Turin, Ronaldo appeared in public with a new haircut. The years spent with Irina Shayk were not in vain: the football player became more restrained in literally everything, even the consumption of hair gel decreased.
There is also an opinion that Cristiano has undergone plastic surgery several times. In December 2015, surgeon Sydney Ohana announced that the athlete had changed his nose. Ronaldo also uses the now popular fillers - so-called beauty injections. With the help of these injections, he corrects the line of the cheekbones and lips, smoothes out wrinkles.
Personal life
Cristiano Ronaldo's personal life is full of rumors and gossip. The media call the Portuguese football player a real ladies' man. There are not enough fingers to list all the representatives of the fairer sex in whose company Ronaldo was spotted.
In his youth, he dated Jordana Jardel, the younger sister of football player Mario Jardel. Spanish model Nereida Gallardo is also among Ronaldo's lovers. The girl even met the athlete’s mother and introduced him to her parents. However, Cristiano and Nereida soon broke up, and the reason for this was allegedly the Italian model Letizia Filippi. The list of Cristiano Ronaldo's ex-girlfriends also includes Paris Hilton, an American model and actress, producer, heir to Conrad Hilton, owner of the Hilton hotel chain.
The press actively discussed Cristiano Ronaldo's relationship with Russian model Irina Shayk. The lovers have been recognized more than once as the most beautiful couple; photographs of Cristiano and Irina graced the covers of hundreds of publications. Fans were waiting for the logical conclusion of the story - the wedding, and Irina was soon credited with the status of wife, but in 2015 the model and the football player officially announced their separation. In an interview, Irina admitted that the reason for the break in relations was betrayal on the part of the Portuguese.
Irina Shayk and Cristiano Ronaldo broke up?
https://goo.gl/Xl0Uyc Posted by spletnik.ru on Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Cristiano Ronaldo and Irina Shayk
At the beginning of July 2010, the football player announced the birth of his son. The name of Cristiano Ronaldo Jr.'s mother remains a closely guarded secret.
In 2015, the tabloids exploded with the news that Cristiano Ronaldo has a non-traditional sexual orientation. The reason was the published photo of the football player with kickboxer Badr Hari. The fact that the Real Madrid player visited Morocco several times to see Hari was considered by some media to be sufficient for such conclusions. During a verbal altercation with Atletico Madrid midfielder Koke, the Real Madrid forward, in a fit of anger, called himself a homosexual. The phrase “I'm gay, but I have a lot of money” only added fuel to the fire.
However, fans are sure that there was another hype on the eve of El Classico - the match between Real and Barcelona. Be that as it may, at the end of November 2016, Cristiano Ronaldo appeared in the company of the Spanish model Georgina Rodriguez, who is 10 years younger than the Portuguese.
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Cristiano Ronaldo with his girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez
In 2015, viewers saw the documentary film “Ronaldo,” dedicated to the professional and personal life of the athlete. The fragments of interviews, football matches, and previously unpublished archival footage included in it allowed fans to appreciate Cristiano not only as an athlete, but also as a father, friend and family man.
In June 2017, fans of the football player learned that Cristiano Ronaldo had children. The twins, born on June 8 from a surrogate mother, were named Matthew and Eve. Soon he published a photo with newborn babies on Instagram and Twitter.
And in November 2022, it became known that the athlete became a father for the fourth time. His beloved Georgina Rodriguez gave birth to the football player's daughter Alana-Martina. In 2019, the Spanish media found out that the footballer’s beloved takes care of his other three children and receives a “salary” from Ronaldo for this - according to various estimates, from € 50 thousand to 100 thousand per month.
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Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina are expecting twins.
In October 2022, the athlete announced that Georgina was expecting an addition to the family.
“We are happy to announce that we are expecting twins. Our hearts are full of love. We can’t wait to meet you,” Ronaldo wrote, showing the ultrasound results.
And in December, the football player revealed the gender of his future children - a boy and a girl.
