Adama Traore is a Spanish professional football player who currently plays in the English Premier League for Newcastle United. While he is an excellent winger, Adama Traore is also very famous for his extremely muscular physique, one which he claims to have achieved without lifting weights. In this post, we will find out more about that. Let’s get started.

Adama Traore: How To Get Swole Without Weights?

Does Adama Traore use baby oil?

There is an image that is repeated before games on the Molineux Stadium sideline. Adama Traore is smeared in baby oil by one of the Wolverhampton physios. It may sound strange, but this is one of the most important strategies of the Spanish national team star.

The first time I saw him do that I thought: ‘My God, he does love himself,'” said his teammate Conor Coady on British radio TalkSport, when asked about Adama’s tactic, but the truth is that Everything has a simple explanation.

Adama spoke in his day with the physical trainers of the Wolves and asked them for advice to prevent his speed from being cut by defenders with grabs and fouls that, in a league as tough as the Premier League, are allowed and that can cause more shoulder injuries.

The agreement he reached with the team’s physios was that before the games he would soak his arms with baby oil, so the rivals would have much more trouble grabbing him. 

The strategy paid off, for example, against Sevilla FC in the Europa League quarter finals, when the Spaniard was brought down a few minutes into the match, with the referee signaling a penalty that Raul Jimenez missed.

“Because of the issue of having shoulder problems and the fouls they do to me when trying to grab me, it helps me to prevent them from doing it and also to avoid injuries,” Adama explained this Thursday at a press conference.

Over the past two years, Adama has become one of England’s most prized wingers, forming the league’s deadliest partnership alongside Jimenez. Nobody centered and finished off as much on goal as the duo of Traore and Jimenez and all this earned him being called up to three times by the senior team.

An injury in November 2019 and a positive for coronavirus in August 2021 denied him to wear the national team shirt; and he had to be at the third, at 62 minutes of a friendly against Portugal, when the one from Hospitalet de Llobregat was finally able to set foot in the books of the Red.

How did Adama Traore start his career?

It was a long road. From entering the FC Barcelona academy at the age of eight, making his debut with the first team in 2013, until that thin and promising boy had to emigrate to the British Isles.

A one-year spell at Aston Villa, which earned him his manager’s qualification as “the fastest footballer in British football in years “, took him to Middlesbrough, where he polished all the details that had held him back at Villa.

The ability, the dribbling, and the speed had always been there, but in the ‘Boro’ he perfected the tactical discipline and his stay of two seasons served him so that the Wolves, a newly promoted team to the Premiership at that time, put their claws on him and signed him to a five-year contract.

Little by little, he has gained importance in the Molineux Stadium club, culminating in the 2-0 win against Manchester City a year ago, in which he scored both goals.

How did Adama Traore build his incredible physique? 

“These are the games that make you stand out, but I’ve been working hard for a long time,” Adama said. He also explained the secret of his muscles and the absence of volume work is surprising: “There is work, as a professional that I am. I don’t do weights because I gain volume very quickly. I do other kinds of things.”

His fast and vertiginous style, compatible with that of Ansu Fati who is placed at the other end of the field, created the new Spain. A team forged on speed, dribbling, explosiveness, and yes, baby oil.

Adama Traore: A return (kind of) to Barcelona

Adama Traore was presented as a new FC Barcelona player after the club signed him on loan from the Wolverhampton Wanderers. The Spanish international returned home after he left the club in the summer of 2015 at just 19 years old. He was an athletic boy, as Ansu Fati could be today. Now, at 26 years old, he is still 1.78 meters tall, but his weight reaches 85 kilos.

The footballers of the most powerful leagues in the world are usually young athletes who control their weight by following the trainers of their clubs. Long cardio workouts and a few hours a week in the gym are usually part of a routine that includes a more or less strict diet depending on each team and coach. Professional football players generally have a much lower-than-average weight-for-height ratio. There are not many players who, measuring, for example, 1.78, reach 78 kilos of weight. Compared with a fast-wing player like Guedes, the Portuguese is 1.79 meters tall and weighs 68 kilos. Remember that weight does not necessarily imply fat. The beast, Adama Traore is a great example of that.

Adama Traore’s method to be muscular

How does Adama manage to be so strong without losing speed and balance with so much muscle mass? The first thing, which cannot be ignored, is genetics. The next thing is to think that he lives in a gym lifting weights in his spare time, but nothing is further from the truth. According to Traore himself, the many hours he spends in the gym are not spent lifting weights without stopping, but combining high-intensity routines with a series of strength exercises with elastic bands and pulleys.

An example: Perform 8 sets of 20-second sprints with one-minute rest intervals. With this, you manage to stimulate anabolic hormones. They can also be done on a bike, going from sprint to moderate speed with similar series. Be warned, If you are not moderately fit, you can have a bad time.

Adama Traore’s diet

As a good athlete, Adama Traoré’s diet is at the base of his fitness. A specialized nutritionist controls the food of the Spanish star, who is very professional and follows them day and night. Not everyone can say the same. As in the other questions, genetics is important, of course, although not definitive.

Regardless of supplements and some secret tricks, vegetables, and proteins are key in your diet, without neglecting controlled carbohydrates, which are key to replenishing energy. What are sure to be very rare exceptions are sweets and ultra-processed ones.

What describes Adama Traore?

Catalan, son of immigrants, and angry with Barcelona. This is a brief description of Adama Traore, the soccer player who made his debut in the friendly match against Portugal and who is on everyone’s lips because of his muscles. The impressive thing is to see the appearance of a soccer player who looks like a bodybuilder due to the sheer size of his muscles (something which is very unusual for professional football players). The amazing thing, which leaves you speechless, is to see the power and speed with which he runs the right wing and the ease with which it eliminates rivals. 

Adama Traore Diarra, the last ‘signing’ from Spain (he refused to play with Mali), is something more than that facade of muscles that makes him different and far from the extreme prototype that drives the ball with the elegance that the Betic Joaquin. 

How was Adama Traore’s childhood?

Adama or Traore, it doesn’t matter if they call him one way or another, he has a story that is worth highlighting. He was born near Camp Nou, in the Maternity Hospital, and his childhood was complicated. Too difficult for a boy from a very humble family. His parents came from Mali to Barcelona to make a living in the eighties and settled in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Catalonia, with a high level of crime and one of the highest population densities in all of Europe. 

He grew up in the blocks of La Florida, Hospitalet de Llobregat, a neighborhood with drug problems, conflicts, and a place where street gangs and fights proliferated. Adama played soccer in the street, he managed to stay away from those gangs that can only bring problems and confrontations with the police.

Even during his junior days, Adama Traore impressed scouts with his physical development. He was the fastest. He left everyone in the dust. He was known in the neighborhood as La Flecha and the Barcelona scouts had their eye on him and took him for tryouts. He performed well in them and at the age of eight, he became a part of La Masia. 

The progression was extraordinary in a boy who was more developed than the rest of the kids his age and who prevailed in physical duels. The technicians began to see him more as a right back, but as he was climbing categories they advanced the position so that he was a winger. 

“He’s like a quadruped because he’s able to use his legs and arms to keep running. His speed adds great power and it is very difficult to throw him to the ground”, was the definition made by Albert Benaiges, one of the youth football coordinators. Adama was a force of nature who managed to reach Barcelona’s second team and in one match, at the Mini Estadi, he dazzled Tata Martino. The Argentine coach wanted him for the first team right away.

It was Tata Martino who gave him the opportunity to debut in the first team at just 17 years and 10 months in a match against Granada. He came in for Neymar. He fulfilled his dream of arriving at Barca and playing with Iniesta, his idol. But in the club, something failed. Adama suffered setbacks and in 2015, the team decided to get rid of him and sold him, for 10 million euros, to Aston Villa. 

Adama Traore did not like how his departure was managed. He left hurt. He had turned down offers from other teams in hopes of staying and making the preseason. The club sold him and secured a repurchase option until 2018. He was never interested in him again and this thorn is the one that the Barca youth squad has.

He changed Spain for England and in a more physical competition than La Liga, he sought how to improve his performance to be unbalanced in the game of transitions, attacks on spaces, verticality, and overflow. From his time at Aston Villa, then at Middlesbrough coached by Karanka and until he arrived at Wolverhampton, he experienced a physical development that today has impressed everyone. That musculature does not seem normal in a footballer. And shockingly, Adama Traore has said that it’s not a result of intense weight training.

The isoinertial method

What is Adama Traore’s method for having so much muscle volume? The first thing to say is that it is genetic and the second is that he has a personal physical trainer, Oscar Rodriguez, who is committed to isoinertial training. Adama Traore works with high-speed machines that measure power control and muscle compensation. He grinds himself out in the gym on this machine, you see him doing push-ups with back slaps and other crazy plyometric exercises. 

Genetics play an important role, but the perseverance to follow this plan endows him with the strength, power, and speed of a muscular body.

Will Adama Traore ever play for Real Madrid?

Adama Traore has become one of the sensations of the Premier League. One of the fastest players, not to say that he is the fastest. Jurgen Klopp is in love with this footballer whom he has wanted to sign for Liverpool, but Wolverhampton sells him dearly. This summer the team asked for 80 million euros and did not lower the price for anyone who wanted to take it. The boy from Hospitalet who avoided falling into one of those street gangs, who witnessed fights at school and in the neighborhood and was only interested in football, is in fashion. Those who know him well say that he is humble, hard-working, and very disciplined. One day, they asked him if he would like to play for Real Madrid and his answer was yes because he was not happy with his departure from Barcelona.