James Harrison's Version of Volleyball Involves a Giant Medicine Ball
With the Fourth of July around the corner and summer officially upon us, it's high time for even the biggest, strongest, and most disciplined humans on the planet to put down the dumbbells, open a cold one, and, relax, even if only for a moment. Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker and documented weight room psychopath James Harrison, however, is not a human being, and his preferred variety of summer recreation looks a lot like maybe the hardest freaking beach game I've ever seen in my life.
As first noted by the esteemed presidential fitness historians at Deadspin, hurling a medicine ball over a volleyball net isn't some magnificently evil fitness regimen that Harrison cooked up during his last preworkout powder-induced fugue state. No, this is a friendly game of Hooverball, which takes its name from President Herbert Hoover, whose personal physician invented the game nearly a century ago in an effort to keep the Commander-in-Chief fit. Although no video exists that could corroborate this claim, I feel reasonably comfortable asserting that James Harrison is better at Hooverball than its namesake ever was.
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I honestly threw out my back just thinking about doing this.
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The best part about these clips is that, even while sprinting around in the sand to corral a projectile that weighs God knows how much and the immediately propelling said projectile back over the other side, James Harrison never stops talking shit to the visibly hapless, blessedly naïve gentlemen on the other side of the net.
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If James Harrison shows up at your beach cookout this weekend, medicine ball in tow, and asks if you want to play a game, I humbly suggest you offer to keep score instead.
Watch Now:Drinking the World's Worst Beers at the World's Best RestaurantJay Willis is a staff writer at GQ covering news, law, and politics. Previously, he was an associate at law firms in Washington, D.C. and Seattle, where his practice focused on consumer financial services and environmental cleanup litigation. He studied social welfare at Berkeley and graduated from Harvard Law School... Read moreRelated Stories for GQNFLNFL