I Worked out With Austin Ekeler for a Day and Here's What I Learned
Los Angeles Chargers running back Austin Ekeler takes Matt Harmon through his diet and a simple upper body workout that anyone can do on their own.
Video Transcript
AUSTIN EKELER: But, yeah.
MATT HARMON: Do you need me or no?
AUSTIN EKELER: No, this is just the warm up.
MATT HARMON: [LAUGH]
AUSTIN EKELER: These are just for the warm-up, I just do a few reps. Just pump them out, till it feels good. I just do a few reps until it feels good.
[INTRO MUSIC]
MATT HARMON: Welcome to "fEATS," a journey with NFL stars, athletes, celebrity workout fitness professionals, where I'm learning more about their journey and how they approach fitness and their lifestyle changes, after going through something of one myself. And today, I'm lucky to be joined by Los Angeles Chargers running back, Austin Ekeler. Austin, thanks for hanging out with me.
AUSTIN EKELER: Yeah, absolutely.
MATT HARMON: I appreciate it.
AUSTIN EKELER: Thanks for having me.
MATT HARMON: What are we going to be getting into here today?
AUSTIN EKELER: Today, we have an upper body workout. I'm excited to take you through it.
MATT HARMON: I feel you're already staring me down. Can he do this though?
AUSTIN EKELER: No, I was like--
MATT HARMON: Because, like--
AUSTIN EKELER: I'm actually inspired by what you've accomplished. I think it's great. And it's awesome.
MATT HARMON: Yeah, I've lost 100 pounds, but like--
AUSTIN EKELER: Right.
MATT HARMON: --you're an NFL football player.
AUSTIN EKELER: Right.
MATT HARMON: You can teach me a lot more on how to take that next step.
AUSTIN EKELER: Exactly.
MATT HARMON: And that's what we're really learning about here today. So we're going to get into Austin's workout, his diet, everything. Let's jump right into it.
I first want to talk about your diet a little bit. What are you eating on like a typical day?
AUSTIN EKELER: Your diet is just as important as the workout, so it's important to stay consistent. For every breakfast, I have the same breakfast. I usually have some oats, I have some egg whites, some fruit, and then I'll put it in a blender with almond milk and blend that up every morning.
MATT HARMON: Oh, man, so that's the blender.
AUSTIN EKELER: The blender, yeah.
MATT HARMON: It's all together.
AUSTIN EKELER: Yeah, the blender, it's all blended, it tastes great. It's like a little fruit smoothie. Typically, my most common lunch-- or slash dinner-- will be rice with ground turkey, or like tuna, and some sort of protein in there, chicken as well, and some sort of carb. And it's just staying consistent, and staying clean, and staying lean helps me throughout the year to stay compact.
But we're hitting the bench press, and as a football player, being able to block and tackle is a main priority. That's what the game's about. So bench press is pretty important for both of those key things.
When I'm doing my upper body days, I start out with bench, I usually go pretty heavy. And then get into more auxiliary lifts to get my heart rate up.
Let's do a few reps until it feels good and then we'll move up. And for my chest workouts, I usually do, kind of, a pyramid for the first workout. Especially for bench, where I go 8, 6, 4, 2.
MATT HARMON: If you're a person like me, what's a good benefit that I'm getting out of the bench press? Besides just getting the chest popping, you know.
AUSTIN EKELER: In everyday life, I would say it's more so just the balance of strength throughout your body. You don't want to have an imbalance, like where your back or your legs are stronger than just the rest of your body. So it's just important to keep balance throughout the entire body.
[LAUGH] You're good, you wreck it, nice.
MATT HARMON: I feel warm.
What's your ideal cheat day?
AUSTIN EKELER: I wouldn't say it's even like a cheat day. It's like just, when you eat like sugars or sweets or maybe foods that are more fatty, it's just all about doing it in moderation. It's not doing it consistently, it's putting some space and time in between your next one. So if I'm eating a bowl of ice cream today, I'm probably not going to eat another bowl of ice cream for like another couple of weeks.
As I talked about earlier, it's about balance, when it comes to your body's strength. So there's a lot. There's different muscle groups in your pecks. You need balance, and there's more ways to work your pecks than just doing regular flat bench. So I'm going to move to the incline now, so we can work the upper part of our pecks, and also the front of our delts as well.
MATT HARMON: When's your preferred time to workout?
AUSTIN EKELER: I prefer getting up in the morning, get up and get in the gym. And that's just what I prefer, just because I like to start out the day with a workout. It gets my endorphins running, makes me look forward to the rest of the day. And I feel like I've accomplished something if I completed my workout in the morning. And I have the rest of the day to look forward to.
That's pretty good. You've done an incline bench before, huh?
MATT HARMON: Maybe a few times.
AUSTIN EKELER: Something that's really important, though, is your breathing. It's really important to breathe during your sets. Some people really start to struggle, and then they'll start to hold their breath, and their head will get really red. It just allows your muscles to breathe and you don't get as tired if you're actually breathing during your set.
MATT HARMON: He's right.
AUSTIN EKELER: Keep that in mind.
MATT HARMON: Give me your least favorite exercise or like part of the body to work?
AUSTIN EKELER: For me, I like to work short burst, shorter amount of reps, and move a lot of weight. It's when I start to have to do, like when I'm working out with the team, I have to do like 10 or more reps.
MATT HARMON: Yeah, like the high rep type of stuff.
AUSTIN EKELER: Right, the endurance training is really where I get exposed. I'm not very good at those types of lifts. So those are my least favorite.
MATT HARMON: How do you motivate yourself though to, like, just, to get in there and do it.
AUSTIN EKELER: Like everything, you know, like your diet, like, you know, the workout plan. And just, it's just being consistent, staying to a routine. And then it just becomes second nature.
And so we're going to pair that with a ball drop, where I'm going to drop the ball you're going to explode up. It's more so for athletic movement. You know, when you're blocking or tackling, it's just that quick twitch muscle. Which is basically what all football is, just most quick twitch little motions.
MATT HARMON: Austin, when did you start playing football?
AUSTIN EKELER: I started playing football pretty young, seven or eight probably. That's when I started playing a lot of sports, my first sport was soccer. But football, I played flag football for a couple of years, I think, before actually making the transition to tackle.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: Yeah, seven or eight, and ever since then, I've never missed a season.
[BREATH]
MATT HARMON: Last one.
AUSTIN EKELER: Nice.
MATT HARMON: This is going well so far, I feel like.
AUSTIN EKELER: [LAUGH]
MATT HARMON: Was the goal always to get to the NFL, to do it professionally?
AUSTIN EKELER: The goal? It wasn't. I didn't even actually know I was going to play professionally until my junior year, or even attempt--
MATT HARMON: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: --until my junior year of college. When I was approached from my head coach, he was like, hey, you know, you have some skills that you might be able to take you to the next level. So I went to a small school, so you know, I had my job lined up, I had the internship.
MATT HARMON: What were you going to do?
AUSTIN EKELER: I was going to go work in the oil and gas industry.
MATT HARMON: Oh, really.
AUSTIN EKELER: Right, so I was going to be working for a company called Noble Energy out in Denver, Colorado.
MATT HARMON: OK.
AUSTIN EKELER: Yeah, I kind of told them, I was like, look--
MATT HARMON: Pretty different career path.
AUSTIN EKELER: I was like, look, I told Noble, I was like, look, I have a situation to go live out my dream and my passion. That's what I've been putting in a lot of effort into for as long as I can remember. So I'm going to go try it out at least. And if no, I'll come back, you know, and have a career with you guys.
MATT HARMON: Has your life kind of changed in any major ways since all that's happened?
AUSTIN EKELER: Socially, that's probably the only major change.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: Just as far as like, in appearance, or in a presence. In the LA culture and industry out here, it's just, people just know my face.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: Which is pretty special.
We're going to transition into some upright rows.
MATT HARMON: OK.
AUSTIN EKELER: And as far as a football player, just shoulder stability is so important. Just because we're using our upper body and our arms so much, especially when we're hitting people. And sometimes you're in an awkward position, especially as a running back.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: So just having shoulder stability is very, very important. It's crucial just to not getting injured.
MATT HARMON: All right, how many reps you want me to do here?
AUSTIN EKELER: 8.
MATT HARMON: 8, OK. Yeah, narrow your grip a little bit. Yeah, there you go. You're just pulling straight up. Nice, right above the chest. Good.
This is going to work your delts, the top. It's just a different way to work your shoulders. A lot of people will overhead press or maybe even do flies.
And being a football player, we have a lot of lifts that correspond with other lifts. We do cleans. And so when you're cleaning, from the ground, you're pulling. So we'll do upright rows to help that.
MATT HARMON: To help that, yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: So they correspond with other days and they all compliment each other.
MATT HARMON: What's the most memorable moment, so far, in your NFL career?
AUSTIN EKELER: I would say, probably, this last season. Melvin Gordon was holding out, so I was a starting running back. And it was the first game of the year, we were playing the Colts. I had three touchdowns in the game.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: We ended up winning the game. But the game--
MATT HARMON: I remember, because he was on my fantasy team.
AUSTIN EKELER: If you had me on your fantasy team that game, you loved me that game. But no, the game ended up going into overtime. And we received the ball. And I ended up scoring the game winning touchdown.
So that was probably the most memorable moment. And just, you know, the team was coming around me, and everyone's like, yeah! Yeah, let's go! It was obviously a team effort, but just when you are the one scoring the touchdown, it just feels like, I don't know, you just helped the team accomplish something. Because that's the goal, it's scoring.
So we're going to be hitting some alternating overhead shoulder press. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to have the weights behind my head, and I'm going to go 1, 2, and alternate.
MATT HARMON: What is the mindset that goes into being an NFL football player and athlete, you know, that those of us who are just trying to make it happen at the gym really don't have to dive into.
AUSTIN EKELER: You know, I think it's really personal to every person. What I mean by that is that I think it comes from life experiences.
MATT HARMON: Sure.
AUSTIN EKELER: And how your mind set develops when you're young. I remember, when I was younger and every summer, if I wasn't playing sports, I'd always be building fence, like, doing manual labor. That was my mom's-- me and my mom's ex-husband, that's what he used to do. So that would be the family business in the summer and we'd go build fence.
MATT HARMON: Wow.
AUSTIN EKELER: And you know, there was no room for complaining. And we'd have miles of fence to build, and we just had to put our heads down and do it. And I hated every minute of it, but it taught me how to work hard.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: And so I think that was kind of my situation that taught me, like, you can work hard and you can do it, you've got to push through.
My favorite core workout to do is a straight legged sit up. So we're going to be laying on the ground. And if you can't do it at first, you can always put weights on your legs to help you. But you're going to have, literally, your legs straight, you're going to lay on your back, hands right here in your chest, and just saying straight up.
MATT HARMON: Core's stubborn.
AUSTIN EKELER: You can't work core like arms, or chest, and legs. Like, it takes a little bit extra for your core to develop. So you've got to put a little bit extra in. That's why I'm doing some type of core every day, whether it be oblique or my actual abdominals.
MATT HARMON: All right, Austin, well, you took me through the whole workout. We did the upper body, we did a little core, everything like that. How are you feeling after this?
AUSTIN EKELER: I'm feeling pretty good.
MATT HARMON: Like, I'm ready to do a lot more than that!
AUSTIN EKELER: It's not too bad. It's not too bad. No, it was good.
MATT HARMON: I think the cool part for me was, like, you know, I get to, kind of, pick your guys' brain.
AUSTIN EKELER: Right.
MATT HARMON: You know, because you know so much more about this area than I do. And like, you know, the part about, you know, how you're working different muscles while you're doing some upright rows and where you're actually hitting everything. I think that's the thing that people can try and take away from this.
AUSTIN EKELER: It's about consistency. It's about balance between your food, your actual workout. And so this was an upper body day, you know, tomorrow will be a lower body day for me. So it's not just balance through your muscles, through your entire body.
MATT HARMON: What would you say to somebody that, kind of, wants to get started on their own fitness journey? You know, you're talking to someone like me six years ago, or whatever, just someone out there at home.
AUSTIN EKELER: What I would like for people to get out of a video like this would be, you know, to stay consistent. Because your body is the only thing that you truly have in life is your body. You are stuck in this, this is you. And so it's very important to take care of that for your longevity. And it doesn't have to be with lifting weights like this, it could be body weight.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: It can be like I'm running and doing jumping jacks, just staying active. Would be the biggest takeaway that I would like for people to know. Some people like to do yoga, some people like to do group boxing classes, things like that. Whatever it is that you find your niche.
MATT HARMON: Yeah.
AUSTIN EKELER: And you know, find your time of day to fit it into your routine. And then, I promise you, you'll get your endorphins going, you'll feel better, just mentally, and about your body and looking forward on the outlook of life.
MATT HARMON: Austin Ekeler, thanks so much for spending time with me today. I really appreciate it, man.
AUSTIN EKELER: I appreciate you, Matt.