CC Sabathia was once the biggest pitcher in baseball—both literally and figuratively.
The former Cleveland, Milwaukee, and New York Yankees ace stands an imposing 6’6” and at his peak weighed a whopping 342 pounds. His size was only outweighed by his accomplishments on the mound: Sabathia had a 19-season pro career and retired a six-time All-Star, Cy Young Award-winner, World Series Champion, the winningest pitcher to debut in the 21st century, and only the third left-handed pitcher to notch 3,000 career strikeouts.
But even though he was one of the most dominant athletes of his generation, Sabathia still found that he had health issues in part due to his size. He was concerned about what his weight might mean for his future health since his family had a history of issues like hypertension and heart disease, but the wakeup call came in 2018 during a workout session with his trainer, Dave Paladino. “I was in there working out, and he was like bro, you’re white,” Sabathia says, pointing to Paladino. “You need to go get checked out.” When Sabathia went to the hospital, he couldn’t make it through a stress test and wound up needing a stent because of a 90 percent blockage in an artery to his heart.
The transformation that followed didn’t just happen overnight. Sabathia retired after the 2019 MLB season, and the weight came off after 18 months of hard work. Sabathia says that now, he trains six days per week in the gym. The results are obvious: Sabathia looks jacked, with rippling arm muscles more fitting for the football star he was in high school than for one of the most successful pitchers of the last 20 years. He’s also a podcaster, cohosting the popular R2C2 show on Spotify.
Sabathia and Paladino (who also helped Action Bronson with his staggering fitness transformation), walked the MH crew through one of the retired MLB star’s arm day sessions. Now that the weight is off, he’s in maintenance and muscle-building mode. “It’s all curls and beach stuff, so it should be a fun workout,” he says, before joking with Paladino about his practice of supersetting every exercise with hammer curls to build his biceps. Once you’ve worked as hard as Sabathia to come back from such a serious health scare, you’ve earned the right to do some vanity workouts.
CC Sabathia’s All Show, No Go Arms Workout
Warmup
Superset
4 sets of 15 reps
4 sets of 15 reps
Workout
4 sets of 10 reps
4 sets of 15 reps
4 sets of 15 reps
Superset
4 sets of 15 reps
4 sets of 20 reps
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