November 25, 2011 | 
Author I meet lots of parents in my line of work. Out in the midwest, the best thing about life is how nice the people are. Yet, not all parents approach the sporting careers of their children in the right way. Having been through a relatively long relationship with baseball and my parents, I know what parental attributes further a child’s career and which ones potentially derail it. An emotionally healthy athlete is one who plays his sport because it adds joy to his life, not because he feels forced into it. Here’s a list of some of the things I find relevant in raising a young athlete. Read the rest of this entry »
I was recently in the local supermarket and spotted some new, Whipped Peter Pan peanut butter. As I asked myself, “why the hell would I need whipped peanut butter?” I looked curiously at a claim on the label “1/3 less sugar.” Oh, really, Peter?
You need to understand – I love calling companies out on their deceptive practices. As such, I flipped the jar around to look at the nutrition label, wondering how they managed to squeeze 1/3 of the sugar out of said nut goo. The answer? They didn’t. Not technically. Here’s an example of what they did, provided to you in town-crier format:
“I’ve created the world’s lowest fat Pizza! Come eat it! It has 87.5% less fat…it’s true! This magical pizza is called…one slice.” Read the rest of this entry »
Interested in getting your arm in shape and throwing harder this offseason? Sign up now at Extra Innings/DBSP. Second session starts Nov.29th.
If you haven’t heard of the Lake County Fielders, let me fill you in.
They were an independent professional baseball team. They were the best team in a newly formed league. They played a crazy schedule, flying to every city like big-league clubs do, visiting teams spanning from Canada to Hawaii. They were in first place when transgressions against them were brought to a head, causing the original team of players to disband. They were treated like kings by the coaching staff and fans; much less by the management. I am proud to say I was one of them, and I want to share some of our good times, not harp on the bad like the newspapers have.
This situation, of which I was a part, got national news when our team finally refused to play, when our broadcaster quit on the air, and when Jose Canseco and other position players took the mound to pitch in a game of reversed-positions. The whole summer was a fiasco; not what professional baseball should be, but absolutely what baseball should be – ridiculously fun. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m going to give a shout out to Annie Heineman, my first D-I signee. She has committed to play outfield at Illinois State University, though only a junior still in high school. If you don’t know about Annie, she is one of the strongest pound-for-pound athletes I train, male or female. At 114 pounds, her level of strength is pretty scary.
I’d say good luck to her but she’ll be hanging around for two more sass-filled years, so I’ll save it.
Here’s the little angel pinch-gripping a 25lb plate by the hub, and a 100-lb York plate by the rounded lip. Not easy stuff.
Good luck pitching to her…
I’ve recently found myself in social situations in which I have to describe my life and interests to people. As it turns out, all I bring to light is how little I have.
Since I’m a transplant to a new city, I have no family within 8 hours driving distance. I have few friends in town. I have only enough possessions to fill the trunk and back seats of my average-sized car. I have no furniture in my room aside from a bed and unused shelf; no curtains, no posters, no photos. I’m almost never home, anyway.
I no longer have Facebook – deleted it over a month ago. I watch almost no TV whatsoever, save one or two programs per week. Movies rarely capture my attention. I watch sports only when I’m in a public place that displays them; no football, baseball (I’ve watched a combined 10 innings or so of the entire playoffs), or any other sports. I don’t scour YouTube for videos or any of that worthless shit on the internet, either.
I don’t go out that much and don’t have hobbies. I really liked rockclimbing, which I did for about a year and a half, but I had to give that up because it bothered my pitching arm; I’m a little bitter about that breakup. I don’t have pets (if you knew my ex’s dog you’d understand why), don’t call my family enough, go downtown only occasionally, and rarely take trips. I don’t have any debt, I own my car and all of the equipment I bought for my gym. I make ample money and put nearly all of it back into my business. I also don’t have a girlfriend or anyone to occupy significant amounts of my time.
A reasonably accurate depiction of my room and myself.
And yet, my immediate goal in becoming better as a ballplayer and more productive as a person is to do even less. By this, I mean that I have to remove myself even further from my distractions and sit and be quiet. I have to learn to set aside time to meditate, and do so more often and for longer durations. Despite how little I have, need and want, it’s difficult.
Meditation is going to sharpen my mind and allow me to focus more intently on my work, be it on the mound or at my gym. I’ve started recently after reading Alan Jaeger’s book, Getting Focused, Staying Focused.
I had problems with negativity creeping into my mind and undermining my abilities this summer. On the mound, I found myself doubting my ability to command pitches and get outs. I couldn’t turn my mind off, and I couldn’t silence the negativity; it affected my physical performance. Being a Philosophy and Psychology major and a very intellectual, analytical person, I’ve always thrived on mental activity. Pondering things over and over in my mind was natural exercise for me. Having to suddenly find a way to ignore the very thing that has made me successful in life has proved, well, impossible. While impossible overnight, I’m on a mission to develop this ability, the ability to ignore my mind when I need to. The first step in this is learning how to sit still, let my mind wander and pay it no heed. It can chatter at me all it wants; I’ll be focusing my attention elsewhere.
So, I’ll be finding ways to take time away from whatever it is that distracts me and sit and do even less. A rollercoaster descent into monkdom.
Also – don’t pity me. I’m happy, have great family & friends, time to do the things that I value, ample quiet time when I’m not training, and few things to tie and slow me down. Despite having virtually none of the hobbies and “things,”on which most people give life a materialistic valuation, I’m living my personal dream – doing whatever I want, whenever I want. I run my business how I see fit and train in pursuit of my dreams and the dreams of my clients. Television programs, Facebook statuses and wine-tastings wouldn’t add to that.
The theme of the first part of my summer was travel, and waiting; waiting to get from one place to the next. My worst flight of the summer went from Maui to Chico, California. It was bad because we left Maui at 4:00 to fly to Kona, a neighboring island. We had an 8 hour layover in Kona, followed by an overnight flight to LAX. We then got a smaller plane and flew from LA to Sacramento, at which point we hopped on a bus and drove I think 3 hours to Chico. It was awesome.
The layover in Kona was less magical than one might think. We were basically trapped in there – it was a purgatory of sorts. Sure, we were on the coffee coast of a tropical island, but we couldn’t leave, there was only one airport dining choice, it was outdoor and could rain on us at any moment, and there was nothing to do.
Enter: Extreme Boredom Challenge. Read the rest of this entry »
A big shout out to the Black Keys, two nerdy white dudes who rock it out – Thanks for producing some great bluesy rock’n'roll!
I recently had a pitcher drive up to see me from a few hours away to see me. I asked them how the found me, and they said they just searched on Google. Thanks, Google.
I get a lot of traffic to my site from the search engines, specifically Google. It’s pretty interesting how you can see patterns and I can predict what articles will be popular based on their public familiarity. Here’s a snapshot of my top search engine terms and values assigned to them. I think these were quarterly figures, but I really don’t remember – I took this a picture a little while back.
Go to the search engine and try some of these out – you’ll find I’m on the first page of Google for a lot of them, and am one of the top 3 articles in the highest ones.
Also, look at the pattern – big names, like Gatorade G, Craisins, Asea Water (a supplement that people are now starting to hear and become curious about), Muscle Milk, Blackburns, “Talent is Overrated” (a book that Ben Brewster posted a review about) are what drive the most traffic to my site. People search my name a lot, and funny enough, you can butcher it and spell it a thousand ways of wrong and my site still pops up. THEY KNOW…
Fortunately, Google views my writing as relevant for such topics that are oft written about. The Gatorade G Series is Gatorade’s biggest development in the last few decades, and I’m one of the most relevant articles reviewing it, according to Google; I’m thankful for that.
So, I’m not really sure the algorithm they use, but when I post new things they tend to have the ability to gain a high pagerank with search engines, which in turn boosts my views and I think even furthers my pagerank. It’s a sort of circular system, I guess.
Anyway, if you’re a regular reader you might find this interesting. If not, well, go read some other dude’s lame training blog.
At my gym we are the proud owners of not one, but TWO landmine devices. These snazzy little CV joints bolt to our Rogue Fitness Westside racks, and they provide us with smooth motions for our angled barbell training.
What is Angled Barbell training, you ask? Well, you can do it two ways: jam a barbell into the corner of a wall, or place it into a landmine attachment. Then, the barbell pivots on the axis and allows you to perform movements with less than the full gravity of the barbell and an arced range of motion.
We use these a lot, and they simply provide us with an extra stimulus in the gym. Angled barbell movements are unique. The following is a video featuring one of my young badasses, Ethan Newby.
One of my favorite mostly-lateral-sort-of-rotary core exercises is the landmine twist. We do ton of these and as my buddy Daryn says, “you just feel powerful doing them.” It’s really true – you get your hips and core into it and sling that weight like you own it.
If you’re interested in performing angled barbell training in your own gym or training facility, a good place to turn is my friend and trainer Nick Tumminello. He is releasing his new instructional DVD on October 8th. The DVD will be offered at a special reduced price with Free shipping, and include bonus videos for the first week of its release. I interned with Nick for almost two years; if you turn to me for training advice, you’re going to really like his exercises – his knack for thinking up creative training solutions is part of what makes him a special guy in the industry. Click the above link or the picture below to go to his site.
I train a few female volleyball players and I’ve been out to a few matches recently to watch them play. I finally brought along my 210 fps High-Speed camera and grabbed some videos. We had been talking a lot about vertical jumping and its (obvious) implications in their sport, and I was also curious about the biomechanics of the jump and arm swing on a spike. I found some good slow motion videos of professionals to complement my amateur videos. This is worth a look before we move forward and discuss it.
I’m a baseball player, and as such have a tendency to assume other overhead motions are mechanically the same. Throwing a baseball or softball requires lots of external and internal rotation Range of Motion, strength and speed. Those without these qualities simply don’t throw as hard as those who do. The volleyball strike, however, is mechanically different, though a lot of those qualities in hard throwers likely apply to hard hitters. While there are similarities, the two are pretty different at the moment of impact. I’m not going to compare the two side-by-side – that’s not the point of this article. Rather, I want to talk about the spike beginning with the liftoff from the legs, the arm’s path as it goes through the volleyball, and implications that path will have on the training and injury risks of the volleyball athlete. Read the rest of this entry »
Grip strength is probably the most underrated athletic attribute. Soccer and other sports in which the hands aren’t used ,and faking injuries is a major part of their competition, probably don’t need a whole lot of gripping power. But, athletes of combat and implemental sports (those in which an implement, like a baseball bat or tennis racquet is used) can benefit a great deal by having stronger hands.
We have tons of innovative grip tools in my gym. Anything that is either heavy, oddly shaped or thick can be used as an effective grip strengthening tool. While there are many great options out there, here are my Top 5… Read the rest of this entry »
***This is the first part of a three-part article series: “Dan Blewett is a Pansy,” Andrew Sacks Is a Bigger Pansy,” and “Train For Sport, For Health, or For Humiliation” are parts I, II, and III, respectively. Enjoy.****
I have known Dan Blewett for longer than I care to remember, and I absolutely cannot believe that people actually listen to that hypocrite when he preaches to them about how to condition themselves to become finely tuned athletes. As I see it, Dan is the last person from whom to seek advice when trying to learn how to become a better athlete. Being a good athlete typically requires one to possess speed, strength, agility, power, and/or endurance. These are considered the four basic criteria of athleticism, and Dan possesses exactly zero of them. Simply put, he’s the most unathletic professional “athlete” I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’m counting golfers, NASCAR drivers, croquet players, and competitive eaters among those ranks.
John Daly runs a faster 40 than Dan Blewett. Backwards. And he’s more attractive to women. Read the rest of this entry »