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There’s no easy path to the NFL, but Bighill’s was more challenging than most. At 5-foot-10, he’s more Molehill than Bighill, which is why he didn’t pass the eye test for major college recruiters and ended up at Division II Central Washington, in Ellensburg. There, he conducted himself like a walk-on, only one late practice arrival from being cut, even though he was a first-team Division II All-American linebacker, one who made it a point of pride by being the last guy out of the weight room.
“He (Bighill) has the biggest drive of anyone I’ve ever known,” Wildcats teammate John Koopman told the Ellensburg Daily Record. “I’d get a nosebleed just trying to keep up with him.”
That was seven years ago, when Bighill was an undergraduate in exercise science, a university discipline he gravitated to expressly to make himself a better football player.
“I was just infatuated by ways to increase my performance level,” Bighill says. “I knew I’d have to be a physical specimen to play at the elite level. I started young by subscribing to muscle fitness magazines, training hard and learning ways to be a better football player and a better performer. In college I studied the science of what actually translates into better performance.
“The drive has always been there. I’m willing to put in more work than anyone else. I think that’s why I’m in the position I am now.” ...
Abdominal crunches, rack-rattling lower-body weight training, squats and legs curls, cardio work on the treadmill or stationary bike, Bighill is capable of turning gym watchers into gawkers by the sheer intensity of his workouts.
Still, it wasn’t enough. He wanted to transform and toughen himself down to his core. He found his answer in Rob Williams, a kinesiologist and personal fitness trainer from North Vancouver whom Bighill believes has made the difference. Bighill began working with Williams two-and-a-half years ago, months before he was named the league’s most outstanding defender.
No coincidence, says the linebacker.
“I’m probably 300 per cent better since I starting working with Rob,” Bighill maintains. “I was always aware of how I was executing things, technique-wise, and trying to be specific with movement. But I was missing some of the key things that you really need to make it to that top level. He focused on some key points I wasn’t using. It made everything I was doing that much better.”