Aaron Donald has been retired for more than a year now but he’s still torturing NFL players. They just happen to be the ones he likes now.
We heard last month about Los Angeles Rams linebacker Jared Verse accepting Donald’s challenge to go through an “old man workout” at his home. After hanging up his cleats last offseason, the three-time Defensive Player of the Year appears to remain very much in game shape and publicly offered to show the 24-year-old Verse his regimen.
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We got some fun social media video from the workout in which Donald appeared to be enjoying himself, while Verse appeared ready to admit he had made a huge mistake.
As it turns out, Verse was having an even worse time than the video showed.
Speaking with reporters on Thursday at training camp, the reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year provided an account of what exactly goes into an Aaron Donald workout:
“We do four workouts, it’s all cardio. VersaClimber, bike, lunges and core. Four rounds each. You do that, you’re already tired. Then you do four sets of core, two different workouts so it’s like eight different workouts, four sets each. We do all that and he’s like ‘Are you ready for the real workout?’
“I’m like ‘Bro, I’ve been here for 45 minutes, what are you talking about?’ We go to the weight room, it’s all arms. That’s why he’s big as hell. It’s like eight different circuits, four sets each, I’m there for an hour and a half.”
Things got pretty dire for Verse, whose potential escape plans didn’t work out. The experience left him unable to move his body and joking (we think) about staying far away from the future Hall of Famer:
“His wife came in laughing at me, I told her to call the police. I’m not even joking, I’m dead serious. I told her to call the police. She wouldn’t do it. I tried to lie and say my mom was at my house and I had to go let her in. He told me to give my keys to his manager or assistant or something and they would go let my mom in. So I wasn’t leaving.
“Finished the workout. I’m dead tired, I’m exhausted. I had a plan to go jump in the sauna afterwards, didn’t happen. Had plans to watch film, didn’t happen. Went home and I didn’t work out for another day and a half because I couldn’t move my body … He needs to stay away from me and if security sees him on the property they need to take care of him.”
Speaking more seriously, Verse acknowledged the intensity of the workouts taught him a lesson he has started applying to his own routine:
“No doubt about it, that workout was psychotic. I’m never doing that again. He did change my workout routine, though … It was definitely the mindset that you got to keep going.
“The one thing he kept saying throughout the whole workout, and he doesn’t really show too much in the video, ‘Think of the fourth quarter.’ Everyone’s good the first and the second, third, but what about the fourth? That’s where you make your money.”
Verse was the 19th overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft and was a standout as a rookie, posting 66 combined tackles, 18 QB hits, 11 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks for a Rams defense that needed all the help it could get after losing Donald to retirement. That effort earned Verse both the Defensive Rookie of the Year award, which Donald won in 2014, and his first career Pro Bowl honors.
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Donald, meanwhile, finished up a career in 2023 that saw him make the Pro Bowl in all 10 seasons of his career, first-team All-Pro honors in eight of them, three Defensive Player of the Year awards and a Super Bowl ring.
