Top 77 James Haskell Quotes

In my limited experience, you have to make your own decisions in life and experience things for yourself.

Frittatas are delicious, convenient, and can even be eaten cold – perfect if you’re working against the clock to make your morning meeting.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been asked what I do for a living. When I say rugby people say: ‘Yes, but what’s your other job?’

In reality, rugby is finite and unpredictable, so players need to have skills off the pitch too.

To get any win, especially against a Welsh side, is very satisfying.

I’ve been written off more times than some of the government’s tax returns but I just keep plodding along.

I don’t think my parents imagined I’d represent England when they first drove me to mini-rugby at Maidenhead. I was only five but mum lied about my age to get me out of the house.

Do I respect my competition? Yeah. Do I always think that I could do a better job? Of course.

My favourite Heineken Cup memory as a player was undoubtedly sharing in Wasps’ final triumph in 2007.

If you get an opportunity to win any silverware you take it.

You just shouldn’t be spending your summer watching TV.

I hate losing and I think it’s good to feel a stab of anger if it happens.

I do not want to gain a reputation for lacking discipline because I always look to play within the laws.

Unfortunately, there tends to be an easy way of doing things in life and the Haskell way. As a 12-year-old I knocked my front teeth out while chasing a friend in the rain. I’m the type who offers to serve wine at drinks parties and accidentally pours it down one of the guests.

At most grounds you’re not particularly conscious of the crowd but in Cardiff, with the roof closed against a good Welsh team, the noise is impossible to ignore. It can be loud enough to put you off your game and the Welsh undoubtedly possess some of the most passionate fans in the world.

Actions always speak louder than pre-match words.

All players want nice things to be said and written about them and you have to take the reverse in equal measure.

When I was about 15, I learnt that training hard doesn’t get easier, you just learn to push harder. That’s a powerful mentality to master.

You bring your strength to the game – that’s what I’ve learnt, and that’s what I try to bring to England.

I love deejaying and got the opportunity to do a music production course online and loved it, but I am about as musically talented as a house brick.

The best players aren’t necessarily the biggest.

I reckon every player feels much the same on the eve of a Six Nations championship. We all want to finish top, win the title and do our respective countries proud in the process. We’re also aware a lot of other people are seeking precisely the same thing. Pessimism and optimism collide like two ferrets in a sack.

Statistically, there have to be more gay men in rugby than we know about and I would hate for them to be going home from training and feeling depressed or feeling like they need to live a lie.

It is difficult for people across the world to be comfortable with their sexuality. We need more education and awareness.

I’m a white middle-class public schoolboy so I’m not particularly tough. But it turns out I don’t mind going in the cage. I can dig in. And it’s interesting watching people spar and train. There’s no anger. It’s all technique and delivered with venom.

People think of rugby players as being tough but it’s another thing to stand in front of someone and get kicked, punched, taken down. In rugby you have two contact sessions a week and you play a game on the weekend.

In order to pack on the most amount of muscle from your training, you need to train specifically for hypertrophy.

I was diagnosed with ADD when I was 14. Weirdly enough, I then learnt, through doing different things, to concentrate.

My first memory is being taken for Indian food at the Cookham Tandoori on the High Street – I remember the poppadoms, the onions, the chicken tikka.

I was consuming the most food when I came to Wasps. I was eating six meals a day – 250-300g of protein, 300g of carbs, 250g of veg, six times every day. It was extensive, horrific. And tedious.

Front squats and trap bar deadlifts are the two best big compound movements for quad growth.

If no one ever made a mistake we’d never get anywhere. One side would keep the ball until half-time and the other team would do the same for the whole of the second half.

The bottom line is that players have to be responsible for getting themselves in the right frame of mind.

I like to think I am honest and open.

I don’t want to become a player who spends half his time running round after the breakdown, because that won’t get the best out of me.

Wherever I’ve played, I only affect the breakdowns that are in front of me.

International rugby is an unforgiving arena.

I was always on to the next thing. I didn’t celebrate all the little moments in my career that I should have done, I always focused on what was next, how could I do better.

It’s one thing to get beaten by a side who are a lot better than you, it’s quite another to know you’ve thrown victory away in a game you should have won.

We can’t have tech just for the sake of it. To maximise the potential of technology solutions you have to understand how to use them.

There is nowhere to hide as an international back-row forward.

I’m all about helping people understand more about exercise in general and more specifically on occasion, about certain key parts of their body and physique.

It must be very daunting being an individual sportsman.

I’m always pretty fair-handed.

If you want bigger arms, target the triceps, not the biceps.

If you have any ambitions to improve and be a world-class side, you have to be very tough on yourselves.

If you want to build a larger physique that actually makes you look like you lift, you need to train your shoulders, back, triceps, glutes, and legs more frequently. You probably also need to suck it up and train them harder than you ever have before if you want them to grow.

It was so important to have stuff outside of rugby so you have a life balance. I took a lot of criticism for that earlier in my career and thank God I ignored what everyone else said and did what I was always going to do.

I’ve always been confident in my rugby ability but with England I had to adjust my behaviour.

We owe it to players, young and old, to train them thoroughly so that they can take full advantage of the insights that tech offers them. And what is true in sport also applies more widely to business.

There’s no doubt that ‘the plank’ is one of the best core exercises on the planet.

Good nutrition must be at the core of all that you do training and health wise.

People make very many comments in life when they don’t have the background or the knowledge.

As soon as you’re put on a pedestal, you’re easily knocked off it.

I can’t have cinema popcorn because it’s all full of sugar, unfortunately. Well, I do have it and I don’t have it. I love movie night and there’s lots of healthy brands of popcorn nowadays, so it’s good as a snack.

I like my boxing and jiu jitsu and that kind of stuff and one thing I always enjoyed from an early age was shooting. My godfather got me into it. It started with airguns and shotguns and that kind of stuff.

Matches aren’t won on the training field and there is no point flogging experienced campaigners unnecessarily.

I want to do presenting, I love DJing, I love writing but none of it’s a guaranteed job so it’s still very scary.

At some point, the power side of the game has to peak, players can’t get much bigger. Guys will be doing more footwork and explosive-speed stuff.

I’ve got a 20 inch neck, a narrow waist and big bulging thighs so stuff off the rack doesn’t fit. It’s a nightmare to shop for shirts and trousers that are going to fit, because they’ll be tight in one place and all baggy everywhere else.

There’s only one Lawrence Dallaglio and there’s only one James Haskell.

If you’ve got aspirations to be tested to the absolute maximum you want to be in the starting line-up.

We’re removal men. It’s hard labour. I’ve come to the conclusion being a forward is probably the worst thing in rugby. Looking at backs, they play kick and laugh, run and clap and we get absolutely flogged.

As a schoolboy I can recall playing three games a week and not even feeling it.

People talk a lot about the Welsh fans but English supporters are also among the world’s best.

I love Twickenham. It’s the best place on earth to go, even when it’s empty.

I wanted to play Super 15. I wanted to develop some maturity, some leadership and to work on my skill set. Also I want to have played all round the world.

My best games for England were under Eddie Jones. Eddie got the best out of me. He understood that I needed an arm around me, needed my tyres pumped up.

If your form dips as a back-row forward, it is best to address the areas you know you’re going to be heavily involved in.

Some people think of players and supporters as ‘them’ and ‘us.’ The truth is that we do what we do because we are all fans at heart.