A.J. Ouellette may have gone viral with his offseason body transformation, but the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ star running back didn’t do it for the views.
“I didn’t think it was going to take off and be front-page information,” Ouellette told 3DownNation. “I didn’t like the way I was feeling at the end of last year, not being able to run and do all the stuff I’m used to. My body kind of got a little fat, I should say.”
The 29-year-old ball carrier stunned fans when he unveiled a newly shredded physique at the end of February. Through a nine-week training and eating regimen, Ouellette dropped from 225 pounds when he started the offseason to 200.6 on weigh-in day, dramatically changing his appearance in the process.
The inspiration for the extreme change came courtesy some friendly banter at his offseason training facility,
“I was talking trash with all the coaches at my gym back home in Ohio: ‘You can’t stick to a diet because you don’t have the discipline.’ Basically calling each other fat,” Ouellette chuckled. “Don’t let me flip that switch, I’ll go to a dark place and you’ll lose. Luckily, the coaches at the gym also have that switch and found a dark place because everyone had a crazy transformation. We all threw in money and we let the kids from the gym vote on who won.”
All participants dropped at least 20 pounds by the time the challenge was finished, with Ouellette deciding not to push himself any lower than 200 in order to maintain a reasonable playing weight. While a desire for bragging rights may have triggered the massive cut, he had other motivation to alter his body entering the offseason.
After joining the Riders in free agency, Ouellette was limited to eight regular season games in 2024, recording 130 carries for 550 yards, 16 receptions for 147 yards, and scoring three touchdowns. The two-time East Division all-star battled injuries beginning in training camp and averaged 4.2 yards per rush, which ranked last in the CFL among players with over 100 carries.
“I had a labrum issue in my hip and it was getting achy, achy, achy. Talking to some other doctor, I had some shots put in my hip to try to stop the pain,” Ouellette explained. “So many shots weaken tendons and my quad tendon ended up getting tendinopathy in it, there was little tears in my quad. Any time I made a cut and my quad had to contract, it was a sharp pain being sent through my hip.”
Though he was at his best come playoff time, Ouellette’s production wasn’t what Saskatchewan hoped for when the Green and White made him the CFL’s highest-paid American running back in free agency. The two sides quietly restructured his contract in the offseason to include $18,000 less in hard money in exchange for a $40,000 signing bonus.
The Roughriders brought in Ouellette’s former Toronto Argonauts teammate, Andrew Harris to be his new running backs coach. The two were in instant agreement the veteran back needed to create more fluid movement in space and become a bigger threat out of the backfield in the passing game.
“Andrew agreed I needed to slim down a little bit. He showed me videos from his career. They were highlights and he said: ‘Pay attention to the way I look and the way I move at the beginning versus the way I look and move in the middle,'” Ouellette recalled. “You can tell that he bulked up, he was having trouble breaking tackles and moving. His balance wasn’t there, so he sent me a workout regimen balance-wise and for mobility. I took those and some other workout things I thought I could add in a little bit different and better methods.”
The gym wager was a perfect opportunity to test out the effectiveness for his new strategies, starting with his diet. Ouellette began his weight-loss journey with a 48-hour fast and then transitioned to a carnivore diet, eating one evening meal a day in the evening for the first two weeks. Though he later added a lunch which included fruit and a protein shake, dinner time continued to be at least 200 grams of protein with no carbs or greens in order to prevent inflammation.
“I had a lot of elk, beef and eggs. I’d have steak two times a week. I would make a giant bowl of ground beef and eggs and eat that throughout the week. I have salmon one or two times a week,” Ouellette said.
“The hip joints were feeling great in that two months. Then you go out to celebrate, you get ice cream, you get pizza, and you’re like my shoulders, my elbows, my ankles are sore — done with that kind of food.”
In addition to the eating changes, Ouellette’s dramatic trim-down was accompanied by alterations to his workouts. He wanted to be cautious about the risks for tendon or muscle tears while at a calorie deficit, that meant pausing lifting heavy in order to focus on eccentric and isometric training with speed work.
While that helped burn localized fat, it also had the fringe benefit of making his head coach happy. Corey Mace had made a point about asking his gym rat power back to dial back his rigorous in-season workouts and stop squatting excessive weight in order to preserve his body. Ouellette still intends to lift at least three times a week in-season but will be applying some different techniques.
“I do think you need to squat heavy to stay at your peak. I don’t need to be squatting 700 pounds in-season,” he acknowledged.
“I’m still going to work out. I’m going to still have my three days — my post-game lift, my strength day, and then my power day — all in there. It’s going to be a change to where I’m not putting a bunch of weight on my back and moving it. It’s gonna be set in different positions balance-wise.”
Between moving less weight in the gym and carrying less weight on his frame, Ouellette’s viral transformation could generate even more yards in 2025 than it did social media likes.
