On game day, I'm as nervous as a pig in a packing plant.
I threw up before every single football game I played, and I did so up through my NFL career. It was good pressure. It was pressure to be good. It was pressure to be the best. It was pressure to want to win.
You get to the ninth inning and your stomach is clear up to here. But it's not because of your job. It is because you want to win so badly.
Before coming here I had a minor back problem and I thought whenever I play Pakistan I get a back problem.
Swimming is probably the ultimate of burnout sports. It's ironic because millions of people who swim as their regular exercise love the meditation aspect of it; you don't wind up with any orthopedic injuries. But when you swim at a world class level for hours and hours - the loneness of the long distance runner.
It's not like I had to throw the football and deal with that as well. It was more disheartening, to be honest with you, just to kind of see how the National Football League really is.
Kazemi has to understand that nobody is going to tell him he has to go back to Iran if he misses a shot.
You can't wrestle forever. It's a very physically taxing job. There's no doubt about it. Physically, and more importantly, mentally.
Being on stage isn't so tough compared to the football pitch.
We are professional footballers. How to cope with the pressure is one of the things we have to learn.
I play enough tennis during the year; I'm sick of it by the time I get home. So the last thing I want to do is go out there and hit more balls.
Suddenly in the end when it's over, you feel a big weight on your shoulders. That's the role of the captain. Unfortunately, it's sometimes like that in sport.
Any football player will tell you that in July you get this dark cloud over you if you know camp's coming.
I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and was a very competitive (and stressed out!) gymnast before getting into entertainment, but it was never the actual gymnastics that was my true love. I loved the performing aspect of it all.
What athletes do may not be that healthy, the way we push our bodies completely over the edge to the degrees that are not human. I've said all along that I will not live as long as the average person.
Boxers are going away and not getting decisions and are losing, so it's not looking good for us, is it, as a nation? Thanks for pointing that out. It's put even more pressure on me now. I don't mind that at all. I love pressure.
It was another nervous Tim Henman match - I'm not sure how he manages to get through them, let alone us!
