Hey, sorry for the long break from the blog.  Got wrapped up in the holidays and played a little catch up with everything, now I'm finally caught up to this again haha.  

Been putting in a good amount of time at Defrancos, which is perfect timing because of the winter break a lot of the college athletes have come back for their workouts.  Also, a ton of baseball guys have started coming back in for preseason training.  Pretty much all of the guys are top level pitchers (D-1 to MLB pitchers), and I've been learning a ton from their training as I had little to no experience with baseball guys.  Rite now we have them throwing on flat grounds in a range, for example 75-82 mph (which may be 70-75% of their max for example), mixing in lighter and heavier balls for them to throw.  I think I may have had an old post about this but we'll progress them to more specific work as the season nears.  For most guys we're getting them their volume back to game specific numbers then the speed will come next (CF long to short prinicple).

Also been seeing some stuff the coaches haven't used before. In this case the athlete's coach still want him hitting the O-lifts so to make sure he gets those in the coaches at Defrancos kept those in the athletes workout.  

With everyone coming back and needing certain things in their program to keep their coaches back at school happy, you begin to see some weird programs out there.  Certain guys from college and the pros have programs that don't entirly make sense and I think may be a case of the strength coach not really having a good grasp on training knowledge.  I don't like to put anyone down or belittle coaches but you see how there are people in certain positions that quite frankly don't truely understand the what, why, or how to get their athletes better, they just throw basic principles at them because its what they learned.  They never questioned why or thought is there anything better I could be doing with my athletes? For example one of our MLB pitchers' program calls for their pitchers to be tested in a long distance run, max sit ups in a minute, and other tests testing muscle endurance rather than strength or power (which is what they truely need to be a successful pitcher).

Still have the same mid day crew of pro football guys mixed with some fighters, D1 football players, and a WWE hopeful.  Interesting mix but they all work very hard and consistently get great results from the program.

With all the athletes coming back and getting work in I've been getting to work more with the athletes on a one-on-one basis.  I get to take them through their warm ups, and progress them through their workouts checking form and seeing how the athlete is doing that day to regulate intensity and volume of the workout, and get to know the athlete on a more personal level which I love.  

Check out this one boxer I got to work with, ranked top 15 in his weight class on the pro level.

Still learning an incredible amount everyday, getting more into CF concepts and looking forward to getting more into the Soviet coaches and their priciples (vertical integration, hi lo, etc.).  Also, keep picking stuff up from the coaches that are great tweaks or ideas for programs, such as hip mobility on upper days and shoulder on lower days to keep the athletes healthy without messing with their work capacity for the workout that day.

I'll be uploading more soon, should be some good stuff cause all the NFL crew comes back next week!