Specialization in Sports

I'd like to think at 27 years old  that I am not too far removed from youth sports, but they have dramatically changed since I was a member of the Boston RedSox for the better half of my little league career.  Now I ask kids what team they play for and they reply with names unfamiliar to me.  These aren't names like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants.  They have their own teams.  Club teams and super league teams that travel and play year around.  Baseball overlaps with football which overlaps with basketball.  These kids go from one competitive season to the next without a break year after year after year.

"John what are you saying?  My athlete should choose 1 sport and drop the rest???"

Well... It depends on the age of the athlete.

From a very young age it is very important for kids to do as many activities as they possibly can.  Baseball, basketball, football, tennis, swimming, gymnastics, wrestling, etc.  The more the better.  Each sport has its own skill set that will add to the overall coordination of your child.  The hand-eye coordination your son will get as he learns how to hit a baseball will carry over to football when he learns how to watch the ball  all the way into his hands.  There is a ton of good that will come about playing as many sports as possible, non more important than keeping the amount of time sitting on the couch playing video games as low as possible.  It is sad when you see a young kid at 10 years old who cannot do a body weight walking lunge without falling down.  The most coordinated young athletes are always the ones who are busy with many different athletic activities.

It is in the best interest of the young athletes to continue competing in different sports throughout their youth.  The skills they get from a variety of sports will benefit them greatly as they transition into high school sports.  In fact, there has been many studies about good athletes who specialize in one sport at young ages.  From these studies it has been proven that these young athletes reach their "peak" much sooner than athletes who are involved in many sports.  These "specialized" athletes will be all-stars in middle school but fizzle out by the time their senior year rolls around.  Of course this is all ok if your daughter is Maria Sharapova and tennis was decided for you at an incredibly young age due to the fact that female tennis players turn professional at ages 16 and 17.  If your dream is to play in the NFL this is not the case.  It is physically impossible to play professionally until you are in your 20's.  It would not be wise to specialize and reach your "peak" at age 16 when you should still be improving all the way up to your mid 20's.

Fast forward a couple of years to the beginning of high school.  Lets look at two examples of two athletes similar in athleticism and build.  Athlete number 1, Billy, plays basketball, baseball, and football and is good enough to make each team.  Like I mentioned earlier there is no breaks in between sports anymore.  As soon as basketball is done baseball starts and so-on and so-forth.  Billy will probably be a little above average in all three of his sports for the rest of his high school career and will undoubtedly battle a few injuries along the way.  College ball in any of the three sports probably will not become a reality because he wasn't exceptional in any one of his sports.

Meet athlete number 2, Tommy.  Tommy is similar to Billy in every way and has played the big 3 sports his entire life.  When he gets to high school he realizes that baseball and football are his two best sports and he decides to drop basketball even though he is good enough to play on the team.  Now he has an off-season in which he can rest and get ready for his other two sports.  During this off-season Tommy realizes that it is his dream to play college baseball.  For a good three months  he is dedicated to become bigger, faster, and stronger.  He goes from a 155 lb skinny kid to 175 lbs during his first offseason and his fastball went from 82 mph to 85 mph.  He repeats this cycle every year while Billy is still busy playing basketball.  By the time Tommy is a senior he weighs 205 lbs and can throw 90 mph.  He has many offers from many different schools and playing college ball is not a dream but a reality.

While these are two hypothetical stories you see these examples all the time in real life.  Specializing at the high school level is very much recommended.  At the max athletes should choose 2 varsity sports unless they are a freak of nature and will get a scholarship regardless.  These athletes are few and far between.  The off-season is a time to rest from your sport while you attack every weakness in your game.  Your body should be priority number 1.  Athletes need to get into the gym and become bigger, faster, stronger, and more explosive by the time their sport rolls around again.  In doing so they can relax their minds for a little while, rehab nagging injuries, and turn their bodies into an indestructible machine.

If the athlete's goal is just to enjoy high school and college is something that is not important, then by all means play every sport possible.  But if your dream is to play at the next level you better think about your whole body of work.  Your game has to be real nice and so does your body.  Athletes cannot get continually better when they are playing in competitive seasons year around at the high school age.  They will burn out, get injured, or stay average.

Dad vs. 776 lb tire

There are those that will

and those that won’t

Those that do

and those that don’t

The video I posted is of my 52 year old father flipping a 776 lb tire at my training facility Flex Athletic Performance.  My dad has worked his ass off for many years for a trucking company in which he drove a truck and lifted heavy shit up all day long for more than 30 yrs.  From these experiences day in and day out my dad developed what I like to call "Man Strength."  Man strength differs from strength from lifting weights in that my dad might not be able to bench 300 lbs, but I'm pretty sure he could knock the hell out of most people who do so regularly at places like Golds Gym!  

It was Super Bowl Sunday and my family and friends were watching the game at my house.  We started talking about the kids who were flipping a "450 lb" tire at my facility and about some other people who have tried and failed.  My dad looked at all of us and "Guaranteed" that he could flip the tire!  Said he had delivered those things in the past and could flip it with ease!  We weren't gonna argue with him so we just nodded.  I didn't think he would come close.

Next day my dad came into the gym and told us that he was there to flip the tire.  He told us that he was only gonna do it one time and to "Get the camera ready!"  

Wow... Thats about the worst tire flipping form you are gonna see on a successful flip!  I wouldn't have wanted it to go down any other way though.  The "Man Strength" that I was trying to describe earlier jumps out of that video.  There have been way too many things that were hard in my dad's life that he overcame to just let go of that tire when it got heavy.  Make no mistake about it,  that was one helluva struggle!

Now, let us finally clear up a major detail about this story.  The tire most definitely does NOT weigh 450 lbs.  It weighs 776 lbs.  After his triumph my dad was determined to figure out exactly how much the tire weighed.  A shot in the dark guess is how we arrived at 450.  He took the model number and make of the tire and printed out the results.  Our tire was one "heavy, expensive bastard."  It's weight was 776 lbs and the price of it brand new was $3,500! Had my dad known beforehand exactly how heavy the tire was he would have never tried it in the first place.  

How powerful is our mind?  

My dad's mind was made up in my living room on Super Bowl Sunday that he could flip the tire.  That's all it took.  My dad goes to the gym on occasion (wish it were a little more).  He cannot bench press 200 lbs and he definitely wont even attempt to squat or dead lift more than 135!  He knew that he could flip the tire and he did it.  Plain and simple.

There have been a few people who have flipped this tire and many more who have gotten stoned cold by it.  Some of the guys that have been successful are not as "strong" in lower body strength or upper body strength as some of the people who've had NO success flipping the tire.  The kids that do it are the kids that know they can do it.  They walk up with confidence and explode into the tire without thinking about it.  "There are those that do and those that don't." 

While training you can learn a whole lot about somebody from something as simple as flipping a tire.  You see qualities in men that seem as if they are pouring right out of their skin.  Attitude, desire, determination, and in my dad's case; resilience.  I have great respect for people that are able to overcome obstacles in life.  Sometimes its the strength we have learned from experiences outside the gym that help us most inside of it.  Some guys get it.  Some guys don't.  Life is not about flipping tires but it's about never quitting.  I've learned way too many things to mention from my dad and this was just another reminder that he is still king! 

Tire Hall of Fame:

Mitch Bingham (Alta)

Nik Wolford (Alta)

Landon Fisher (Riverton)

Zane Smith (Brighton)

Zach Miller (Jordan)

Rob Gueck

Sr. John Madsen

Yours Truly 

Come give it a try!

DESIRE vs. WANT

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  

Our Deepest Fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us."

-Marianne Williamson-

No matter what it is you want in life you will not get there unless you truly desire the destination and embrace the journey.  This could not be more apparent then it is in the  world of sports.  I look back at my life and can point to the exact moment that I KNEW I was going to change.  My athletic career would be decided by me and me only.

During the summer going into my sophomore year at Hunter High School we were encouraged to lift weights with the football team if we planned on playing in August.  I always thought myself to be a pretty good athlete and strength was something that never crossed my mind.  On the very first day a group of my friends (all new sophomores) walked into the weight room for the first time and was asked to 1 rep max our bench press.  None of us could press much weight, but I was definitely the "weakest" of the bunch. I vividly remember 95 lbs come crashing down on my chest.

In what was really a terrible moment for me and my confidence, looking back i am so thankful for that to have happened.  You see, that was a moment in which I realized how skinny and weak I really was.  Right then and there i "Desired" to be the strongest I could be.  In that moment I realized how essential it was to put some muscle on my frail frame.  Without this tragic realization that I was not the athlete that I thought I was, I would have never gotten very far in my athletic career.  At that moment not one person in the world would have bet 5 dollars that I would someday play football for the Oakland Raiders.  

The point I'm getting at is this.  Everybody wants to get stronger.  Everybody wants to loose weight.  Everybody wants to jump higher.  Everybody wants to run faster.  There is a huge difference in wanting something and truly desiring it.  From that day until right now I have been in pursuit of the strongest, most athletic "me" that my genetics would possibly allow.  I have a perfect picture ingrained into mind of what the perfect me looks like and how it performs.   This "perfect me" is something that I will never reach, but it keeps me focused on how I should live my life everyday.  

The opposite of this then is the person who wishes they were a little stronger.  This person typically goes to the gym aimlessly in pursuit of strength and size but never gets anywhere and then makes excuses like his genetics just wont allow him to get stronger, bigger, and faster.  A potent combination of science and hard work is needed for success, and even more importantly a diet (i hate the word diet) moreover, "lifestyle" is needed to achieve optimal results.  The biggest problem with all of this is that things just don't happen because you want them too.  You have to put yourself on the line and will all of your goals, dreams, and aspirations to come true.

TO MANY PEOPLE WANT SHORT CUTS TO REACH THEIR GOALS.

In the health and fitness industry there are a lot of things that people do that make me shake my head.  HCG Diets.  Wow.  The people that market these kind of things for money are sick.  And the people that believe that this shit really works are even sicker.  Lets see,  Eating an apple and an egg pretty much all day seams like such a great Fu@#ing Idea.  Eating 500 calories and injecting who know what into your body... Whats wrong with that??? Not to mention (coming from people who have done this "diet") You are not supposed to workout while doing this! I hope these claims seem ridiculous to everybody who reads this.  

In the athletic community you have performance enhancing supplements, steroids, HGH, and all kinds of stuff equally stupid as HCG Diets.  I cant tell you how many times guys will go up to other muscle heads at the gym and the first thing they say is "DUDE!, what are you on BRO!"  They don't say "Wow, how do you train?"  or "How much time and work did it take you to get to where you are now?"  This is a terrible problem enhanced by news stories about professional athletes testing positive for steroids and other performance enhancers, but that's a topic for another day. 

These are huge problems in society and athletics and we need less people enamored by "quick fixes" and more by good old fashioned hard work.  Whatever your goals are; whether they be losing weight, gaining muscle, increasing vertical jump, getting a better job, whatever, you first need to DESIRE it and be willing to tap into your right to be "Powerful beyond measure."  We all have this inside of us but we have to be willing to pay the price.  The price is blood, sweat, tears, and hard work.

Special shout out to all of my athletes who work out at FLEX Athletic Performance!  These guys and girls are most definitely on the right path and they inspire me everyday.  We all have big dreams at FLEX and push each other to the limit everyday.  Proud of all my peeps and everybody else who realizes that just wanting is not good enough.  Go out and get shit done!

keep striving,

John Madsen