Adam Copeland returned to professional wrestling in incredible shape back in 2020 and despite his years in the business being numbered, he looks just as good as he did before retirement in 2011. A large part of that is due to the company he co-founded with his childhood best friend and fellow wrestler AEW’s Christian Cage. While they were both sitting at home long retired, they began to notice that their bodies weren’t nearly as in shape as they’d like and it began affecting their health. This is when Copeland began implementing planking — a simple exercise that relies solely on engaging your core. When he started seeing positive results, Christian decided to jump on board and that’s when they created their best-selling Pure Plank core trainer.
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Copeland sat down with ComicBook to discuss the product and how it has benefited him in his professional career, especially now that he’s currently at home nursing a tibia fracture he suffered back in May at AEW’s Double or Nothing pay-per-view.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
“Yeah we don’t have an extensive entrepreneurial background. So it really all started with getting back in shape,” Copeland recalled. “We were both retired [and] we were both becoming maybe a little too comfortable in our lifestyles. Still working out and in shape, butmaybe not to where we would want to be. So for me, the big thing was my back started going out more often and I’m chasing after the kids and they’re in their toddler phase and I realized, ‘okay, hey, if I want to be around for as long as I possibly can, I need to get back into shape and then hopefully start feeling better from a physical standpoint too.’
It sounds crazy when I say this to people, but it really all started with planking. I just thought, ‘okay, that doesn’t seem too demoralizing. It doesn’t seem too crazy.’ You know, this is my starting off point. And then little by little as my time started to progress and I started trying different planks I started to get back in shape. I had gone down to Jay’s [Christian] and he just said, ‘man, you’re starting to look pretty good. What’re you doing?’ I said, ‘honestly, it started with planks.’ It really engages everything.So, as I started doing that, my lower back pain started alleviating, and I started getting abs again; feeling better again. Then diet falls in line with that, and I just started to feel like myself.
In that process, Jay was like, ‘man, there’s got to be something for this.’ What could we do to make this a little bit more comfortable for guys like us? It doesn’t [just] need to be guys too, but that’s where it started. So we did some research, saw there wasn’t really anything on the market for that, we just started spitballing ideas. I got out a piece of paper and a sharpie and just started drawing. Then we would change it, we’d adapt it here, and we started trying things. Before you know it we realized, ‘oh, we can actually do this and make this a product, maybe help some people.’”
With the product largely targeted at athletes, Copeland began to notice some of his fellow wrestlers in the locker room were trying it out for themselves and finding great results. “Yeah, that’s been really great to see because I’m not the kind of guy that walks around the locker room pushing like, ‘hey, I got this product. Do it, get it, try it.’ Little by little Claudio [Castagnoli] went and got one and Dustin [Rhodes] and all of these guys started to pick them up and find the benefits which is really, really cool.”
Less than 24 hours after his tibia surgery he shocked many wrestling fans as he was already back in the gym. He explains that the recovery has been challenging, however he’s found unique ways to help him stay in shape with Pure Plank.
“It’s been very helpful. I realized like I can still plank if anything, it’s just going to make it harder ’cause I got to put one foot up in the air. In doing that [I] realized how helpful the handles on the Pure Plank were in order to maintain my balance, stay strict and keep my form tight. If I can take five minutes out of my day to do that.Then I have less to work back from once I can really start moving and start training and all of those things. I don’t feel like I ever got out of shape, which, when you’re sitting on your butt with your leg up in the air, that can happen pretty quick. It didn’t, which is nice, and one thing I never stopped doing throughout the whole process was planking.”
For more information on Pure Plank’s mission to help people regain core strength in a comfortable, functional and fun way, visit the Pure Plank website.
