Whenever I see stories like this I go back to the heyday of the NHL's New Jersey Devils in the 1990s and early 2000s. They had a defenseman named Scott Niedermayer who was criticized for skipping the team's off-season workouts. But he wasn't just sitting by a pool and playing golf every day. He spent the off-season traipsing around the mountains of British Columbia with his brother (also an NHL player) hunting mountain lions, so he always showed up for training camp in superb condition.
He was one of the fastest skaters in the NHL even late in his career, and was inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame after he retired.