Willie M

Health Secrets

Ø      Make your health a priority. The body is an amazing machine and if you give your body a chance to become very healthy, you will benefit from it more than you can ever imagine. You will feel amazing, be full of energy and pretty much unstoppable. Treat your body like the most important thing in the world. It you take care of your body, he will take care of you. Make your health a priority will be reflected in your daily choices and actions (i.e. washing your hand, drinking water instead of soda, etc.) and this can make a big difference in your performance and your ability to achieve your dreams.

Ø      Commit to getting pain free once and for all. How on earth can you live your passion and perform as a human being if you’re in pain? Pain is insidious because we are so skilled at adapting to and working around it. Don’t live with pain; seek qualified therapists to help you get rid of it. The investment is often worthwhile.  Also, many chronic injuries that develop over time can be prevented simply by listening to your body, which will send warning signals well in advance. Preventative therapies like chiropractic, deep-tissue massage, yoga and acupuncture are among the best ways to “tune in to” your body and create a more resilient physique.  

Ø      Listen to your body. Don’t ignore pain. Pain is the alarm system of your body. I know that elite softball players are suppose to be “tough” but ignoring pain is not being “tough”, it’s being stupid. It will affect your game if you don’t look after it right away. Better to catch problems early than after from them later. Injuries take forever to go away. If don’t want them, don’t welcome them in the first place!

Ø      Build your “Performance Team”.  All of the world’s best athletes have a group of specialists that looks after them.  A performance team should be comprised of least your coaches (team coaches, pitching and/or hitting instructor), a physician and a physical therapist. Welcome additions to a performance team would be a sport psychologist, a strength and conditioning coach, a chiropractor and a massage therapist. 

Ø      Buy quality cleats and running shoes. You will be spending so much time in your cleats and in your running shoe training that you want to have quality. It’s not time to try to save money here. Investing money in good cleats and good running shoes can really help preventing injuries. A lot of lower body injuries can be attributed to poor footwear.

Ø      Get your eyes checked. It is surprising how many people don’t know they need glasses or corrective lenses until they actually try them on. If you can’t see well, don’t expect to hit well.

Ø      Take great care of your throwing arm. Arm or shoulder injuries are tricky, take a lot of time to heal and can really hinder your ability to perform. Warm-up properly, apply ice after heavy use, and stretch. At the first sign of pain, seek immediate treatments. 

Ø      Ask a qualified therapist or training to complete a functional assessment on you and follow their recommendations. In a functional assessment, the therapist or the trainer will look at your posture and test your flexibility, your mobility and the strength of your stabilizers and postural muscles. Then, they should be able to give you specific exercises and stretches to do to help fix the problems. Every athlete has some form of weaknesses and correcting will help you prevent injuries and increase performance.

Energy Systems Secrets

Ø      Your goal is to build an endurance base, not to become an elite marathon runner. Do over do aerobics. Focus on building a solid base of aerobic endurance early in the off-season and later (2-3 months before the season), focus on building speed by doing sprints instead. Doing too much aerobic conditioning can be detrimental and hinder your ability to develop speed, strength and power.

Ø      Use the speed ladder. The speed ladder is a wonderful tool to do conditioning and develop foot quickness, speed, and agility. 

Ø      Do intervals. When doing training your energy system, try to work by intervals instead of long, steady-state “cardio” sessions.

Ø      Here is an example of interval work: 1 minute very hard followed by 1 minute easy repeated 10 times. Interval work takes less time and builds up your capacity to recover from more intense efforts.

Ø      If you need to lose weight, focus on aerobics a little more. Try working out in the morning. You should focus on losing weight during the off-season by doing extra aerobic work. It is not recommended to try to lose weight during the competitive season as you will often also lose strength, speed, and power. 

Ø      Flexibility Secrets

Ø      Stretch for 45-60 seconds. It has been shown that you have to hold a stretch for at least 45-60 seconds to make real significant gains in flexibility. For very tight muscle, try repeating a stretch 2 or 3 times.

Ø      Stretch after every exercise session. Develop the habit of stretching on a regular basis; a better range of motion will help you prevent injuries and will also help increase your performance.

Ø      If you need a quick improvement in flexibility, use the PNF technique. The PNF technique is an advanced stretching protocol that helps athletes makes quick and impressing gains in flexibility. PNF stretching has to be done with a partner. Seek the assistance of a qualified therapist or trainer to show you how to do it.

Ø      Lifting by itself may increase your flexibility. If you focus on using the full range of motion, lifting may help you increase your flexibility. A good time to stretch is also between sets. 

Ø      You don’t need to warm-up to stretch. While a warm muscle is more compliant, you can stretch anytime anywhere. There is no limit to how much stretching you can do. Stretching is easy, effortless and makes you feel good. 

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Strength Secrets

Ø      Develop a stable, strong and powerful core.  The core is the musculature of the lower trunk which is comprised of all your abdominal, low back and hip muscles. The core is responsible for transferring power from the lower to the upper body by stabilizing the trunk and generating rotational power. To train your core properly, you must integrate into your routine exercises that will (a) involved many muscles of the core and (b) force the trunk to stabilize. The key is to target deeper abdominal muscles such as the transversus abdominis, a deep internal abdominal muscle that plays a key role in stabilizing the trunk and transferring power from the lower to the upper body.  

Ø      Stay away from leg raises or a floor-based crunches or sit-ups (or close variations of them) as they only focus on training one abdominal muscle (the “six-pack” muscle) and this muscle doesn’t help in transferring power or generating rotational power. Any other core exercise is likely to benefit you, especially is the meet the two criteria mentioned above. 

Ø      Focus on whole-body exercises that use lots of muscles and joints in coordinated action and use your muscles the way they’re designed to work instead of those that are force muscles to work in isolation. Here are a few of the best strength training exercises that you can choose: squat, lunge, deadlift, bent-over row, BB and DB presses, dips, military press, pull-ups, etc. 

Ø      Stay away from machines. Machine training is not sport-specific at all. It doesn’t train the muscles the way they are used on the field. In other words, machine training doesn’t prepare your body to perform on the field. Instead, focus on bodyweight, free weight and stability ball exercises. However, there are a few exceptions: the lat-pull down, the seated row and any cable exercises that involves more many muscles are good machine exercises.

Ø      Stay away from leg presses. People love the leg press because they can load it up with insane amount of weights and they feel strong and powerful. Many people think that it’s a good machine because it involves most of your lower body muscles. However, it “isolates” the lower body and doesn’t involve any muscles

Ø      from the trunk or the upper body. You will be much better with squats, deadlifts, lunges, etc. 

Ø      Don’t abuse the bench press. The bench press is a good upper body strength builder. However, abuse and overuse of this exercise to produce a lot of shoulder injuries. If your shoulder is not healthy, your performance will greatly suffer. Do it mostly to build strength whenever your do sets of 1 to 8 repetitions. 

Ø      Don’t think that the Smith-machine replaces real squats. The Machine is a “standing” leg press. It’s no substitute for real squats and it’s certainly not better than the leg press. Even if it looks a lot like a squat, it doesn’t force your body to stabilize because the machine doesn’t it for you. Stay away from it.

Ø      The weight or resistance has to be heavy enough to make strength gains. If it is too light, you will not make gains. Progressive overload is one of the basic principles of strength training. Make sure that you also keep increasing the resistance as you get stronger.

Ø      The goal of each workout is to get better. Try to set new records every workout. While it will not happen every time, it will force you to push yourself and work hard.

Ø      To build strength and power, you must train hard but less frequently, with plenty of recovery time between workouts. More is NOT better. Intense workouts with quality recovery are the key to building strength and power. 

Ø      Control the speed of your lifting. To build strength, you must lift slowly. A general rule of thumb is to lift the weight in 1 to 2 seconds and lower it in 2 to 4 seconds. The only time where you want to lift quickly is when you are training power (explosive strength).

Ø      Vary your program every 4-6 weeks. The more conditioned you are, the faster your body adapt to any training program. After that, it reaches a plateau. Elite athletes usually change their program every 3-4 weeks to make sure to keep making gains. You can change the exercises, the number of sets and reps, 

Ø      the rest period, the speed of lifting, the order of the exercises, the training frequency, etc. 

Ø      There is no magic system of exercises, sets, and reps. Everything works but nothing works forever. You have to change what you do frequently.

Ø      Build your body using a logical order. Use the following progression: 1) develop stability and muscular endurance using 2-3 sets of 12-20 repetitions, 2) develop general strength using 2-3 sets of 8-12 repetitions, 3) develop maximum strength using 3-4 sets of 4-8 repetitions, and build power by lifting explosively using Olympic lifts, medicine balls exercises or plyometrics. The number of sets and repetitions will vary depending on the type of training you will be doing.

Ø      Use Olympic lifting to build power. Most of the world’s best softball players use some form of Olympic lifting in their training. Olympic lifting is the use of cleans, snatches, and all of their variations to build power. Olympic lifts are very technical so before you start using Olympic lifts, seek guidance from a qualified strength and conditioning coach. 

Ø      You’ll get better results by working your butt off on a bad program than you will loafing through a good program. There is no shortcut for hard work in the weight room.

Recovery Secrets

Ø      Take a few weeks off at the end of a season. It’s important to give your body a couple of weeks off at the end of the season. If you don’t, you’ll pay the price later. This transition period is also the best time to heal any nagging injuries. 

Ø      Take time off when needed. The human body undergoes significant changes each day: fluctuating moods, varying levels of hydration, and powerful hormonal shifts. We often feel those effects in our workouts and practices – you know those days when you feel lethargic and no energy. These days are normal; your body is telling you it’s time to take it easy or rest. Listen to your body and whenever you feel tired and have no energy, it’s

Ø      perfectly acceptable to shorten up your workout or give yourself a day off to replenish and start over the next day especially considering that at that time the body is not receptive to training and exercising would be detrimental to your long-term progress. 

Ø      Active rest is dynamic recovery. Active rest is an integral part of every successful athlete. To help your body recover faster, try to take an easy walk, a light jog, a calming bike ride or a relaxed swim. Anywhere between 5 to 30 minutes will be helpful. Moderate exercise has a great healing power and accelerates the recovery process.

Ø      Treat yourself to a massage. You can go for a relaxing and stress-relieving massage or a sport massage which involve more aggressive deep-tissue work.  A massage will enhance your recovery by promoting the removal of metabolites, decreasing muscle soreness, decreasing muscle fatigue, and increasing metabolism.

Ø      Apply ice is to be used after every training session and every game. It should be applied in regions that have been submitted to hard work (i.e. arms, shoulders, legs, knees, etc.) or might have suffered light traumas. It is suggested to use cold therapy for about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the desired tissue depth.

Ø      Use hot-cold therapy or contrast baths. Contrasts bath may help eliminating the toxins within the body (“flushing” theory) in addition to treating localized muscle spasm and providing pain relief. The theory is that contrast baths induce a pumping action within the muscle. Alternating vasoconstriction and vasodilatation penetrates muscle tissue to a superficial depth. The key is to immerse a specific body part or the whole body alternatively in hot and cold water for periods of 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Continue the procedure for a total duration of 10-15 minutes.

Stress Management Secrets

Ø      Manage your stress. Some stress is excellent but too much stress is highly detrimental. When you are stressed, the body

Ø      released a hormone – cortisol – that will hinder the recovery process. Too much stress is often associated with lethargic period, lack of results in training and in competition and mild depression.

Ø      Breathe through your nose. Catch any top softball player right before the start of an important game and you will see three things: a total relaxed focus; a calm, loose body; and deep breathing in through the nose and out of the mouth. A simple way to deal with stress in one swift motion is breathing through your nose. Deep breathing is what elite athletes use to control pre-event tension, and this simple, effortless, highly effective skill will work for you in most stressful situations. 

Nutrition Secrets

Ø      Drink a lot of water. You’ve heard that hundreds of time for a good reason: water does wonder to the body. You should always carry a bottle of water with you. As a rule of thumb, try to have at least 7-8 glasses of water a day. 

Ø      Coffee increases alertness. Every sports nutritionist will tell you that coffee dehydrates and that it should be consumed in moderation. However, taken in moderation, coffee can help you increase performance because it increases your alertness. Sharp alertness is crucial to react quickly defensively or read the trajectory of a pitch and decide whether or not you want to swing at it when you are at the plate. 

Ø      Don’t over do energy drinks like Red Bull are quick fixes. Try not to become dependant. They are full of chemicals that your body doesn’t like. 

Ø      Go for Sports drinks like Gatorade and Powerade.  They are designed for athletes and have been engineered not only to hydrate but also to provide real energy (carbohydrates) and replace electrolytes. You should definitely consider taking sports drinks especially if you are going to quite active for more than 90 minutes.

Ø      Never go hungry! Softball requires mental sharpness, alertness and quick judgment to perform. Your brain lives off blood glucose exclusively. Blood glucose is sugar or carbohydrates circulating in your bloodstream. When you are hungry, your blood glucose is low which means that you have a low functioning brain and reduced mental sharpness, alertness and judgment. This is especially important when you play several games in a day. Make sure to feed yourself on a regular basis. 

Ø      Coffee, sodas, juice and tea don’t count! As you know, you need to keep yourself well-hydrated and these drinks won’t do it as they more are likely to do the exact opposite: dehydrate you. To stay well-hydrated, rely on water and sports drinks. 

Ø      Feed the machine with appropriate foods! Whatever you put in your mouth is what your body is going to use to repair itself. If you put cheap food in your mouth, your body is going to use cheap food to make new cells. You are literally what you eat! Your body is an amazing athletic machine and it requires high-quality food to function at a high level.

Ø      Eat to be healthy first; then eat to perform. There is no point at using advanced nutritional strategies if your foundation isn’t right. Focus on eating healthy first by developing sound nutritional habits and only then, you can consider using advanced nutritional strategies to boost your performance. 

Ø      Create a world-class shopping list. Here are the ten best foods taken from the grocery lists of the world’s best softball players: tomatoes, flaxseed oil, red grapes, nuts, whole grains, salmon (and other fatty fish), blueberries, spinach, green tea, and broccoli.

Ø      Focus on natural whole food, organic if possible. These foods are what your body has been designed to eat and contain all of the essential nutrients that the body needs to grow, repair itself and stay healthy. Don’t buy into the hype of food companies that claims to “engineer” superior food. You can’t outsmart Mother Nature; nothing will ever beat natural, whole food! 

Ø      Avoid processed foods as much as possible. Your body is not designed to eat cheap, processed food loaded with chemicals. Processed food is low-quality food. It doesn’t provide your body with all the nutrients it needs even though it’s fast and usually inexpensive. Stay away from it as much as possible.

Ø      Eat a variety of food. You can only get all the nutrients you need by eating a variety of food. Humans are creature of habits and people tend to eat the same thing over and over again. In fact, the average person typically consumes only about 10-12 foods 90% of the time. Even if it’s healthy food, this lack of variety can lead to deficiencies.

Ø      Fresh is best. Nothing can beat fresh food. The fresher it is, the healthier it is. 

Ø      Replace coffee with green tea. Green tea – and we are talking about the authentic loose-leaf stuff – is one of the most powerful substances on the planet. It has one of the highest concentrations of antioxidants of any food or beverage. Green tea is a mainstay of the Japanese diet, which may account for their remarkably low incidence of cancer.

Ø      Juice up your performance. The simple act of juicing will take your physical performance to another level. Eight ounces of vegetable juice a day is the simplest, most cost-effective and powerful way to boost your health nutritionally. The best part is that even if you don’t eat all your veggies every day, you can just drink them in five minutes!

Ø      Eat something right after you exercise. You should always eat something within 15-30 minutes of the end of your workouts, practices, and games. Doing so will accelerate your recovery because at that time, your body is starving for energy and nutrients to recover and regenerate itself. Choose high-quality foods. A mix of complex carbohydrates and protein is the ideal. 

Ø      Focus on quality proteins. Eat at least one lean, quality protein per day: fish, egg whites, lean ground beef, tofu, or beans. If you do that while avoiding the “simple or refined” carbohydrates like white flour and sugars, your body will highly benefit from it. 

Ø      Eat enough. Most athletes don’t eat enough to meet their energy needs. As an active person, you have much greater energy needs than a sedentary person. You have to provide your body with the required energy because if you don’t, you will feel tired and lethargic, your performance will suffer and you are not likely to feel that you get anything out of your training session. 

Ø      Eat 5-6 times a day. Eating often throughout the day increases your metabolism, helps build more strength and power, and increases the flow of energy throughout the day. Elite athletes eat small meals throughout the day. The key is not to overeat but to eat smaller meals more often. 

Ø      Don’t buy into the supplement hype.  More than 90% of nutritional supplements don’t work and are worthless. Quality nutrition will provide you with most, if not all the nutrients that you need to perform at your best. Some supplements might be useful to make-up for specific deficiencies such as calcium or iron. However, in most cases, nutritional supplements are not worth the money.

Ø      Scrutinize foot labels before you buy. This is not a conspiracy, but doesn’t it seem as though food manufacturers are trying to hide things from us? Learn how to read food label and decipher its meaning. Also, if r eading the list of ingredients of a certain food requires contains words that you can’t even pronounce, takes more than five minutes and a magnifying glass to read, something is wrong. Go for foods that are made simply. 

Ø      Watch out for the suffix “ose”. Anything with the suffix “ose” means sugars. Instead of writing sugar as an ingredient, food companies try to hide it by using more complex, technical terms to confuse you.

Ø      Minimize simple refined sugars. Simple refined sugars are usually found in processed foods like chocolate, white bread, fries, and so on. You want to focus on ingesting complex sugars which are typically found in fruits, vegetables and whole grain products.

Ø      Use alcohol in moderation. Not only alcohol dehydrates you but it greatly interferes with the body’s ability to perform at an optimal level.

Ø      Always pack healthy food when you go on the road. Sometimes, you will not have access to any healthy food. Your choices might be a hot dog, a bag of chips or a chocolate bar. Fruits, yogurt and granola are just a few examples of healthy food that you can pack up.

Sleep Secrets

Ø      Make a point of sleeping at least 7 hours, preferably 8 every night. Adequate sleep is the most important factor affecting recovery. Most athletes are chronically sleep deprived because of their busy schedule. Sleep is often the first that will be sacrificed in order to get things done. However, lack of sleep severely hinders your ability to perform

Ø      Be in bed by 10:00-10:30. Recent advances in the field of sleep has shown that your body is programmed (from millions of years of evolution) to do most of its physical repair between 10:30 pm and 2:30 am and most of its psychological repair between 2:30 and 6:30 am (when you have your most intense dreams). So, if you consistently go to bed too late, you are missing a lot of your physical repair time – which is essential for a physically active person. Unlike what you may think, going to bed late and getting up later will NOT shift this period. Make a commitment to be in bed by no later than 11:00 pm and you body will thank you for it.

Ø      Learn to catch 20-30 minute naps. Longer naps will make you drop into deeper sleep states which will disturb your alertness during the rest of the day, and may interfere with proper sleep at night. If you are really sleep deprived, then go for a 90-120 minutes nap – the length of time it takes to go through a full cycle of sleep.

Ø      Regular sleeping hours are very important. The top athletes in the world go to bed and get up pretty much at the same time every day. Your body needs that consistency to get high quality