Extraordinary Health Magazine EHMagazine Vol 37 | Page 40

New Heights:
Looking Up to
Zdeno Chara
Garden of Life ® Brand Ambassador
By Kelly Merritt
Photography Courtesy of Steve Babineau, Getty Images
When your name is Zdeno Chara, two
things are for sure. Age is just a number
and height does matter. Professional ice
hockey is an intimidating sport anyway,
but when a player towers over the ice at
nearly seven feet tall, there’s no denying
that kind of power.
The left shooting player known as ‘Big Z’
may seem superhuman, but Chara is the
first to say he’s just a regular guy.
“Ego is your enemy,” said Chara, a National Hockey
League defenseman and James Norris Memorial
Trophy winner who serves as captain of the Boston
Bruins. It may explain how Chara has dominated in
the NHL for 21 years, yet remains one of the fittest
players in all of professional sports.
Chara’s dedication and steadfast commitment to
extraordinary health began at an early age.
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“My father was a wrestler and I saw how hard he worked, what it takes to be
dedicated and disciplined, so in many ways I was following those footsteps,”
said Chara, who shunned a lot of childhood fun to work out. “You don’t
always want to be in the gym when it is a sunny day, when your friends are
going to pool parties and seeing movies and going to clubs.”
Instead, Chara chose to sacrifice many of those good times for the life he
knew he wanted.
“That resiliency helped me overcome a lot of challenges as a really tall kid,
when everyone saw me as a basketball player rather than hockey player,”
said Chara, who got his first chance to play hockey in a different country as
a teenager, living on his own in Prague. “Here I was in a big city, taking care
of myself and it was the first real thing for me to be accountable and reliable
for my decisions.”
The experience transformed his young dreams into life and hockey goals.
He learned to be responsible and that taking care of himself was part of
earning a living in professional sports. Skipping some of what his friends
enjoyed as teenagers didn’t feel like a burden—instead it engaged and
enthused Chara.
“Looking back on those days, I learned to act like a man, live like a man
and behave like a man because you are among men playing at that level,”