CHAMPAIGN — It’s a common offseason trope. You hear it every year.

Player X is in the best shape of his life. Couldn’t feel any better heading into the season.

Cliché? Certainly.

But when Giorgi Bezanishvili says he’s feeling and moving the best he ever has? You can take that for the gospel truth. The Illinois junior is rarely anything but straightforward.

Bezhanishvili’s offseason, of course, is a continuation of the “Body By Fletch” regime every Illinois men’s basketball player has grown familiar with. Strength and conditioning coach Adam Fletcher has developed a reputation for his ability to change bodies in his time in Champaign.

Bezhanishvili, though, has taken the opportunity of late to make the world his workout space.

So don’t be surprised if you stumble across the 6-foot-9, 245-pound Illini forward bear crawling the steps atop Krannert Fine Arts Center.

Those railings on the steps leading to your stoop? Bezhanishvili can turn them into parallel bars.

And, yes, that was Bezhanishvili you saw hanging upside down from a tree limb in a unique stretching method for his back.

“I just randomly thought of it,” Bezhanishvili said about the additions to his workout regimen. “I started running outside and saw some stuff and was like, ‘Let me get creative.’”

Bezhanishvili hanging upside down in trees or using fallen ones to work on his balance is a throwback to his youth growing up in the Republic of Georgia. Regular trips to the village where his grandparents lived meant plenty of time outdoors.

“I always grew up outside — always playing, always climbing trees and always doing dumb stuff probably,” Bezhanishvili said.

That changed somewhat when he moved to Vienna.

“Vienna is not that wild,” he said. “It’s a big city with 2 million people.”

Bezhanishvili’s return to his roots, as it were, was about more than just adding some unique exercises to his workouts. The time he’s spent outdoors also served as way for him to connect with his family having not been back to Austria or Rustavi, Georgia, in more than a year because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s the longest time I’ve been away from my home,” Bezhanishvili said. “I don’t think anybody could really imagine what it’s like to be away from your home, from your family and from your food and culture for a year-and-a-half and still have to work and get better at your craft.”

Needless to say, it’s taken a toll on the 21-year-old Bezhanishvili, who turns 22 on Nov. 16.

“I feel like going outside and being in nature, I kind of can relate to home,” he said. “When I go home, I go with my family to a picnic outside. We spend time in nature. It’s just really peaceful. For mental health, if I just sit at home all the time, I just keep thinking about my family. Sometimes I cry and miss them, but when I get outside it’s a little bit easier. I connect with some animals. They bring me peace. It has been really helpful for me to get through this craziness.”

You can follow along with Bezhanishvili’s outdoors workouts on his Instagram page (@cherrigiorgi). He decided to share what he was doing as a way to encourage other people to get outside.

“We all need to be outside more and not in a building or office or at home all the time because that’s how people are depressed,” Bezhanishvili said. “Just being at home is not that great. I feel like for anybody it’s great to be outside in the sun and being in the fresh air. We have great fresh air out here in Champaign.”

Bezhanishvili said he’s seen the physical benefits of his outdoor workouts translate to his time in the weight room with Fletcher. The less structured body weight workouts help. The benefits, though, have been more than physical.

“It’s so mental, too,” Bezhanishvili said. “It’s not just a physical workout. When you do it outside in nature, you kind of listen to your body. What is your body telling you? You’re breathing way differently. You can also do all those things in the weight room, but you just realize those things when you’re outside.”

Bezhanishvili views his time spent working on himself as a choice. Dealing with life in a pandemic hasn’t been easy. How he has managed, though, is telling.

“When it’s tough times what are you going to do?” he said. “You’re going to make a choice for yourself. I feel like I’ve made the right choices the last seven months. I have grown in many different areas just as a human, as a basketball player, as an athlete and as a student maybe a little bit even though school is not really my strength.

“Just in general, I feel like day to day I have made right choices that brings me to today where I’m very confident in my game, very confident in who I am, what I am and what I do for this university, for my team and for my family. It has been a huge learning and growing experience for me.”