MADISON, Wis. — Joe Thomas knew his post-football life needed something.
"For me, once I retired, I thought maybe just sitting out on the lake and fishing all day would be the most fun," Thomas says. "But you realize after a while you gotta have some purpose."
So that became Sports Advantedge inside the Lake Country Dockhounds stadium.
"We have three pillars for success for our kids. The first one is consistency," Sports Advantedge Owner Brian Bott says. "We want them to be consistent, day in and day out. We expect that from our staff. Everybody else. Second one is relentless effort, right? We want to teach them that working hard is very important. And so the third thing is ownership."
"I think that this place really does give a sense of community," Thomas says. "And it gives you that runner's high when you walk out of here after a hard workout. You feel like you're doing something good for yourself. And you're building that friendship and that bond with all the people that you're training with."
Thomas partnering with Badgers and Rams Tackle Rob Havensteinm who lives and trains in the area during the offseason, and Wisconsin alum Ryan Groy.
"Joe is the gold standard for what it means to be a left tackle," Havenstein says. "Everything he's done in his career. I wouldn't even say it's a friendly competition just because he's just gonna win everything. He's a better athlete. He's better lookin'. He's got X amount of more Pro Bowls. Hall of Fame, first ballot. I mean, you can't write a better story than that."
"It's crazy," Groy says. "It's awesome to be just associated with it, and had the gyms together and it is truly an incredible accomplished."
"When we had downtime at camp," Havenstein says. "We would just pull up Joe Thomas tape, just to watch. The effortlessness that he had around the football field. And because it's so, he's so smooth when he was doing it. It didn't look like he was working hard. Probably because he's not. He's that good of an athlete."
By the way, first-ballot inductee Thomas officially goes to Canton and into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, Aug. 5.
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