Former NY Giant Shaun O'Hara Tackles Life Threatening Diseases

Joanna Gagis talks with former New York Giant great, Shaun O’Hara, about his life as a professional football player, what it’s like to win a SuperBowl, his commitment to teaching the community about living healthy, and his non-profit organization, The Shaun O’Hara Foundation, which raises money for those with life-threatening diseases that have no government funding.

#1920 11/16/2016

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Recently, my colleague Joanna Gagis spoke with former New York Giants football great Shaun O'Hara about life after football, his commitment to educating the community about about healthy living, and his non profit organization The Shaun O'Hara Foundation which raises money for people living with live threatening diseases. Welcome back, so pleased to be joined right now by Shaun O'Hara, who's a former professional football player, three time pro bowler, seven years with the New York Giants? That's correct. Seven years. He's also currently an analyst for NFL Network and ESPN Radio. So, you got your hands in a little bit of everything right now, don't you? Yeah. I'm trying to stay busy, you know, it's, I feel very fortunate to have played eleven years in the NFL, four years in Cleveland before I came to the Giants, but football has always been a passion of mine, and I feel very fortunate that I'm able to stay around the game and stay around for the Giants and kind of keep my hands dirty with the football field. It's more ink on my hands than dirt these days. How challenging was it for you transitioning out of a career that really forced you to stay fit, stay healthy, focus on your physical fitness, and then go to a career where you're traveling, you know, half the week during the entire football season? How do you focus on yourself? How do you make that transition? Yeah, it's definitely been a challenge, not having somebody that tells you "here are the workouts you're gonna have to do". So you really lose that structure, and you really lose that purpose for training, you know, when you're playing a sport, and you're playing football, you're training for, to get stronger, you're training to get faster, and you have all these goals. So when you no longer are training for that purpose, it takes on a different challenge, and as you mentioned the travel schedule, it's different. Every hotel has a different gym, and sometimes it's hard to get a workout in when you're hopping from plane to plane. I think the biggest thing is now I tell people, I don't train now, I workout and I exercise. It feels different? It's, yeah, it's definitely different. Before I was kind of, I called myself a meathead, I was trying to be a power lifter, and you know, be as strong as I could be now, I'm just trying to be fit, maintain a healthy lifestyle, so it's much more cardio, you know, much more, you know, wellness working out..."