Professional volleyball player April Ross is working hard to regain her strength and fitness after welcoming a baby boy in November 2023. Ross, 41, shared a video of herself wearing black shorts and a USC Olympian shirt, lifting weights and doing mat exercises. "THREE weeks until Huntington AVP! Switching up my program one last time to focus on power and speed 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼I'm not where I used to be 😅, but I'm SO much farther than where I was three months ago ☺️ starting from literal scratch//ground zero (my quads cramped trying to do body weight lunges-that's where I started 🙈) and 30 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight 🤷🏼♀️ Still a ways to go, but proud of how far I've come 👊🏼 And HUGE thanks to my little village who I could NOT do it without 🙌🏼❤️❤️❤️," she captioned her post.
Ross' volleyball training is unsurprisingly intense. "We're on the sand practicing two-and-half hours a day, six days a week and our coach specifically runs a really high-cardio practice, so you're dead tired afterwards," she told Daily Burn. Ross also lifts weights for two-and-a-half hours, four times a week. Her favorite move? Romanian deadlifts. "I feel like I can do those anywhere, if I'm stuck in a hotel or something. I can't do lunges — no matter how good of shape I'm in — without my butt getting sore."
Ross tries to enjoy a mostly plant-based diet with minor exceptions. "If it comes from the earth and hasn't been processed, I eat as much of it as I want," she told PEOPLE. "I try to follow a vegetarian, plant-based diet as strictly as I can. If I'm really craving meat I allow myself to have it in limited amounts, especially if my training or competition volume is higher than normal. I know my body pretty well at this point in my career, so I do what I feel is best for me. I find that eating this way has increased my energy and allowed me to maintain really high training loads."
Ross loves to cook at home whenever possible. "My go-to protein is either salmon or steak or one of the Beyond Meat proteins," she told Bon Appétit. "Then I'll add veggies, rice, pasta, or rolls and butter. I try not to eat within an hour and a half of competition, and that's cutting it close. Ideally, I'm done eating two hours before a match so I have plenty of time to digest."
Ross focuses on building strength, not being skinny. "For me, I value the power of my body, and I think I'm a little more muscular than you might expect," she told ESPN. "I don't consider myself thin, and I'm not trying to look great in a bikini — I'm trying to be as strong as possible and as powerful as possible for my sport. I don't feel like you should ever sacrifice strong for skinny. Strong is just as beautiful, and especially in sports, it's essential. I just never want to see any athlete sacrifice sustenance and fuel and taking care of their body in order to try and achieve this kind of skinny body type."
Ross uses a weighted vest to give her workouts an edge. "I do a lot of cardio on the sand or beach volleyball movements with a weighted vest, so I get plenty of funny looks," she told ESPN. "If I go out on the weekends, I can tell I'm getting looks like, 'What is this chick doing?' But I've accepted this is what I need to do, and I'm not going to be embarrassed by it."
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