UrbanUpdate

Tim Grover has a vivid memory of meeting Michael Jordan in 1989. Jordan, still seeking his first NBA title, had a simple message for the man ostensibly tasked with pushing him: "You better keep up."

For 15 years, through six NBA championships, two retirements, and a baseball stint, Grover kept up, helping Jordan stay in remarkable physical and mental shape. For the latest episode of The Assist on GQ Sports, Grover—who also trained Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade—tells all about working with the G.O.A.T.

In the '80s, Grover's dream was to train the best athletes in the world without being employed by a pro team. He pitched himself in handwritten letters to the entire Bulls' roster...except Jordan. Some time passed, and Grover got a phone call from the the Bulls' athletic trainer, who said they had a client interested in Grover's services. A meeting was arranged. "I go over there," Grover remembers, "I knock on the door, and guess who opens the door?" MJ.

Grover asked Jordan for 30 days to prove himself, which he clearly did. Grover's original goal was preventing injuries, rather than strength and conditioning, as many trainers were aiming for at the time. Grover was ahead of the curve on tracking his client's movements, though that wasn't so easy 30 years ago. He was a human FitBit, waking up early to watch tape from Jordan's previous game and manually marking how many steps Jordan took. There was a lot of rewinding involved.

"The training programs were totally developed around that methodology," he says. "If something didn't work [during a game], I always felt it was my fault. If he missed a game-winning shot, even though I wasn't out on the basketball court, [I thought], what could I have done better?"

As the Bulls started running off multiple championships in a row, Grover says Jordan recruited teammates like Scottie Pippen and Ron Harper to his first-thing-in-the-morning workouts. If you missed a workout, you'd hear it from a "trash-talking Michael" at practice later in the day.

Setting up workouts wasn't always easy—throughout Jordan's career, Grover had to book his own flights, because he wasn't part of the team. He also became MJ's unofficial golf club guardian after Bulls coach Phil Jackson told Jordan he couldn't take his golf clubs on the team plane anymore. Grover dutifully moved the clubs from city to city, because "that was part of [Jordan's] training regimen," he says. "I knew how relaxed it made him from a mental standpoint. It helped him get into the zone."

To hear the complete story about training with MJ—including the adjustments Grover instituted as Jordan got older, and how Jordan's baseball workouts differed drastically from basketball workouts, watch the full episode of "The Assist" below.

Read MoreYoung Michael JordanBy Glenn O'Brien

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