With the football season finally starting back up, you want to make sure that at you at least maintain all the size, speed, strength, and power gains you worked so hard in the off-season to attain.  Unfortunately for most coaches, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to be able to coach football, watch film, game plan, and spend time in the weight room making sure the football players are still working out in a way that will help them while in season.

The majority of football players from high school and up (no matter what position), lose an average of over 10 pounds of muscle as the season progresses.  This not only hurts a football team and the athlete in terms of their on field ability, but also increases their risk for injury as they become weaker, slower, and smaller.

A good in-season program should consist of 1 to 2 strength training sessions a week (1 strength and power session and 1 recovery session) and needs to be constantly adjusted depending on how the athlete is feeling, performing, and any injuries they might be recovering from.

For most football players who follow a good in-season training program, they won’t just maintain everything they worked in the off-season and summer to achieve, but continue to get stronger, faster, and more powerful each week.  What does this mean?  Let’s say you and your competition (either an opponent, or even someone you are competiting against for that starting spot) start off the season at the same skill level.  If you put in the extra work during the season and continue to get better as the season progresses and your competition is just concentrating on practice and games, by the time playoffs roll around you will be so far ahead of them that they won’t stand a chance.

By following a good individualized in-season program, you will finish the season dominating all the competition and be just as good on the field in your last game as you were that first practice.

Contact Genesis Athletic Performance today to make sure you don’t get left behind this season.  Email us at Info@Genesis-AP.com, or call (832) 380-5436.

D

With my wife out of town, I’ve had to fend for myself when it comes food and that has caused me to crack open the recipe book in my brain. These recipes have been created with three things in mind. To create and help build as much muscle as possible, to only take 10 minutes to prepare, to be cheap, and to have the ability to make huge batches and so it can be eaten on for the next few days.

The recipe below I created back in college, and was one of the main meals I ate consistently when putting on muscle. It has everything you need. Protein, multiple sources of healthy dense carbs, natural fats, and multiple vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.

The dish is called “Mush”, but tastes shockingly well.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs lean ground beef – grass fed preferable and at least 90% lean.
• One entire box of Uncle Ben’s Minute Rice (roughly 4 bags in a box)
• 2 cans Ranch Style Beans (or if you don’t live in the south/Texas any type of beans work)
• Your favorite hot sauce/salsa

Preparation:

1. In a non stick skillet brown lean ground beef.
2. While meat is browning, in a pot bring water to a boil. Use enough to cook every bag of rice (follow instructions on box for prep)
3. Once water is boiling cook rice in pot according to instructions.
4. After rice has finished cooking drain pot, open bags of rice, and put back into empty pot.
5. Add browned ground beef.
6. Open cans of beans and pour into pot.
7. Stir thoroughly adding hot sauce/salsa to taste.
8. Split up the pot into either 4 servings to get 50 grams of protein for each meal, or 6 servings to get roughly 30 grams of protein in each meal.

Serve with a side of spinach or broccoli and you have one of the best muscle building meals you could prepare.

Give it a shot and be sure to let me know how it tastes and what you think.

D

The Strong Always Dominate The Weak

Far too early do athletes worry about “sport specific training”.  Because of that their overall athletic development suffers.  Unfortunately it’s not the parents, athletes, or coaches fault, as they just want the best for themselves and feel that these types of programs do that.

But what most athletes and parents fail to realize, is that they don’t need “sport specific training” especially at the junior high, high school, and for the most part collegiate level.  They need to become better athletes.  I know baseball kids who spend hours after hours working with hitting, fielding, and pitching coaches when if they added another 75lbs to their squat instead they would become a way better athlete/baseball player.  You can’t perfect weakness.  It is only after an athlete has a great base strength level should they worry about utilizing workouts and exercises that are geared to their sport.  After all, I have yet to find a sport where being powerful, strong, explosive, and fast doesn’t automatically make you better in it.  If you have please let me know.

The same goes for football athletes who only worry about their 40 times when they can barely jump off the ground or squat more than 135.

You have to be strong and learn how to use that strength in order to be a good athlete. period…  There is no other way around this.

What defines strong especially at the junior high, high school, and collegiate levels?  This is where it gets tricky.  If you have an entire baseball team who can only squat 185lbs, then of course the athlete who can squat over 200 is going to seem strong.  But are they really?

Dave Tate from EliteFTS has put together a great table showing actual numbers regarding the bench press and squat that can be used to find out where you are on an athletic scale compared to other athletes across the world.

This is the bench table that takes strength levels one step further and shows what any male athlete (no matter the sport) should be bench pressing based off their body weight and the level they want to achieve athletically.

The squat table that breaks up strength levels by skill and body weight levels.

Look over these tables and see where you fit in.  Are you putting up numbers that a star would put up?  Or are you failing to even hit the numbers that any varsity letter athlete should achieve.

Now that you have numbers to strive for get back in the gym and get after it or you will get dominated.

D

Take a look at a few of the pictures below to see some of the Cy-Falls Baseball Players utilizing a slosh pipe to strengthen not just their legs but their arms, shoulders, and entire core.

A slosh pipe is basically a 9 or 10 foot PVC pipe filled 2/3 of the way with water and only weighs 30-40 lbs, but makes any exercise harder as athletes now have to stabilize their entire body to keep the pipe balanced while still performing the exercise.

Holding a slosh pipe in a Zercher postion (as  seen in the picture), or an even bigger challenge overhead, turns any exercise into a full body exercise forcing the arms, shoulders, core, upper back and lower back to resist tipping while the water shifts while trying to produce power into the ground off a single leg (especially during lunges).

They can be used instead of barbells or dumbbells for nearly any exercise and by swapping them out you will achieve a different type of strength that works in any situation.

Give a slosh pipe a try if you really want to add another dimension to your sports training and let me know how it goes.

D

Next time you watch a professional baseball game have a look at the physiques of the players. Take special note of how muscular and strong nearly every single one of them appears. That’s because they are. Compare this to the physiques of players in high school and college. You’ll notice a similar trend: those in the greatest shape (strongest) are the ones that make All-Star games and get drafted. Being muscular and bigger makes you a better baseball player.

So if that is the case, then why are most high school baseball players 150lbs dripping wet with zero muscle?  Likely somewhere in their lifetime they have been told that they don’t want to build too much muscle because it will affect their swings and/or their throwing. They’ve been taught by “traditional” coaches that baseball is a game of speed, grace, and especially hand-eye coordination, and performing only exercises training these traits should be used. It was assumed that traditional strength training would somehow interfere with those coveted traits.

Unfortunately this could not be further from the truth.

Not having any muscle at all and worrying only about “baseball skills” falls on the total opposite end of the spectrum.  If baseball is all about how far you can hit a ball and how hard you can throw one, then wouldn’t power and strength be a big component to the baseball player?  For the high school baseball athlete, this seems to be totally forgotten. This affects not only the player’s game, but their overall health as well. If you don’t have the muscle strength to continually throw a ball as hard as you possibly can, but still attempt to (like 99% of pitchers at the high school level) then something has to give.  Unfortunately the thing that gives is often the athlete’s body. They end up with shoulder or elbow problems, tendonitis or worse – a muscle tear or other serious injury that requires surgery and down time (if they are ever able to bounce back from it anyways).

Baseball is a sport that requires the whole body to be fit and strong. Everything is used to throw, hit, and run. Some areas are especially important for success (both in the activity and in staying injury-free).  Let’s take each spot on the athlete that needs to be powerful and healthy and break down the best way to achieve those results. Continue reading »

This Is Not Specific To Any Sport I Have Ever Seen

“Sport Specific Training” is the biggest buzz word in athlete performance today, but no one really knows exactly what it means.  What is Sport Specific Training?

If you Google it or ask any strength coach who is trying to sell you something, they will show you a ton of whacky exercises consisting of big bouncy balls, cones, hurdles, vibrating plates (seriously?), and whatever else they just dropped thousands of dollars on.  The problem though is this type of training has minimal (if any) carry over to the actual sport and actually hurts the athletes performance in the long run from over use and lack of absolute strength.

This is a business or trainer trying to sell you on something that looks difficult, not many people can do, seems cutting edge, but in reality provides no sort of performance enhancement to any athletes.

I See MLB And NFL Athletes In This Pose At Least Once A Game

To actually figure out what exactly “sport specific training” (SST from now on) should consist of, lets take a look at what actually makes someone a better athlete in general.

Continue reading »

There are staples for any type of training program out there. Squat, Bench, Deadlift, Overhead Press should be the basis of any good program right? Does that mean they have to always be completed in the gym? Nope.

If you are stuck in a plateau no matter what your physique or athletic goals are, then you need to do something different. You need to fix your diet, change your routine, or just change your entire workout location.

Spend a month training in your backyard, driveway, track, or nearest park, and you will blow past that plateau like it wasn’t ever there.

I can hear it now, “But I don’t have the $$$ to spend on equipment at home” or “It’s hot and humid” or better yet “I am way too strong to just lift outside… I need big heavy weights to keep progressing”. All of these are crap and are saved for the people who really don’t care about their results and instead just want to say they “work out”.

Yes it is going to be hot, but when has a little heat ever been a bad thing? Yes you always need to progress on your weights to keep getting results, and yes purchasing home equipment is expensive… Unless you think outside the box.

You want a good summer workout that will smash every plateau, turn you into a beast, and maybe even give you a great tan? Then read on and I’ll lay out a month’s routine that won’t just get results, but also be designed around equipment that will cost under $100.

First up you need some equipment.

Continue reading »

No matter how long someone has been training, at Genesis there are 2 “basic” phases athletes must go through before they are allowed to hit the specialized programs designed for the more advanced athletes. This is done for multiple reasons, but the main three are:

1. To see how dedicated they really are. Just because they are the beginner workouts, doesn’t mean they are easy. There are multiple athletes that for the first week, can’t even make it through the warm-up… not even the beginner program without dying… Do they come back? Are they mentally tough? Do they have the dedication to be the best? That is what we want to find out.
2. We want to see how an athlete can move, what his weaknesses are, and if he has any muscle imbalances. These workouts are designed to not only make a better athlete, but also as an assessment so we know what the main things are we need to strengthen to make him better. There is no reason to stick an athlete under a bar to squat, bench, clean, or do any other type of strength or power movement if they can’t even move their body weight correctly.
3. They still kick ass, and work fast. Our first phase has been known to increase an athletes bench 25+ lbs, squat 50+ lbs, vertical 2+ inches, and drop their 40 time at least .1 – .2 seconds, and for the most part they won’t even touch a weight. The weights they will touch will be things like sleds, prowlers, and weighted vests.

After an athlete demonstrates the dedication and progression needed to advance, they are able to move onto our programs designed specifically to make them the best at whatever they do.

BUT… Continue reading »

I have decided to put up a new free workout program each month that we run at the facility. These workouts are designed for athletes, but can help any gym person who is willing to put in the work achieve awesome results.

The biggest challenge with these is re-designing them to become “globo-gym” friendly, so you can do them at your local place instead of needing the equipment and space we use at our facility.

If there is a different in the workouts depending on the athlete’s goals or how close they are to their season, I will specify which day to follow and why below.

Anytime you see an A & B together, you will be resting 30 seconds between each exercise and performing a set of A, resting no longer than 30 seconds, then a set of B, and then a full rest (60-90 seconds), before repeating.

May 2010 Workout: Continue reading »

As one of the main finishers for upper body conditioning we do at Genesis Athletic Performance, Battling Ropes have become pretty popular. They have been around for a while, but are just now starting to take off. Someone even told me they saw it on an episode of The Biggest Loser a few weeks ago. Battling Ropes are a great exercise that have multiple variations and uses which is why they are incorporated into our athlete’s training frequently.

Here is an example of one of the ways we have used Battling Ropes at the facility.

You can use them for conditioning, as part of a Tabata style workout (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, repeat), to correct muscle imbalances (especially in the upper back), to teach glute and hip activation instead of moving the ropes with just your arms and shoulders, for grip strength (especially the thicker the rope), as a great way to work the core, and much more.

The problem is that it is hard to find a 50ft or longer rope that will last and is thick enough so your body has to work hard to control it. Your local building supply store doesn’t offer them, and if you purchase them online you are going to pay a few hundred bucks depending on the quality, length, and thickness you get and that isn’t even including shipping.

Because of this and me not wanting people to have to spend money to get results, I decided to do some hunting and brain storming and come up with a cheap or free alternative to use instead of ropes. After asking clients and friends for ideas and searching the internet, I discovered this excellent alternative. Continue reading »