What’s up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
A little late on the video this week and I apologize, but you can see I’m not in my
normal surroundings here.
I am in a hotel out here in San Diego.
The MLB, Major League Baseball, Winter Meetings.
ATHLEANX, we’ve got a great opportunity this year to present
our RX Supplement line up to the Strength Coaches in Major League Baseball as they are
now NSF certified for sport which is a major distinction.
I think that it talks about the quality of what we do and how dedicated we are to the
science behind what we do.
And we’re out here just talking to the guys about it.
But, in the meantime, every time I get a chance and get together with this guy right here.
This is Rick Slate.
He is the Director of Strength and Conditioning for the Atlanta Braves.
He was my mentor during my time with the New York Mets.
For 3 seasons this guy and I were basically attached at the hip,
and we just always love getting together and talking about strength and conditioning.
I mean, it’s what we do.
It’s what we love.
It’s what we breathe.
So I figured I would be a little bit late on the video, but be able to make up for that
by bringing this guy in for just a quick talk.
We’ll go over a few topics.
I think the one thing I wanted to hit on the most is the one thing that you and I have
been talking about more than anything in these last 2 days and that is,
there is no replacing Rest and Recovery when it comes to helping guys, especially natural,
drug-free guys, get bigger, get stronger, perform better, right.
So, that being said, what is it that, and Rick, like I said, is still now working with
every level of the Atlanta Braves, lots of athletes, guys that are performing at their
top.
What is it about Rest and Recovery?
I tell these guys all the time, ‘You can either train hard or you can train long, but
you can’t do both.’
Some guys still debate that.
What is it that you find?
Rick: I think the number 1 thing we’re starting to see now in this industry the last almost
3 years coming here in Winter Meetings, is the common theme.
You know, we had outside professionals come in and speak to us, and the common theme has
been about food, supplementation, and training,
and managing that process of overtraining and managing the fatigue.
Plan 162 intuitively, we’ve experienced as support staff,
and you can understand how grinding it is, so to see what the players go through.
And this is a very high volume sport.
Thousands and thousands of point repetition and we have a ‘more is better’ mentality.
So, my job coming into the Braves is to create a vertical model
not only in the training component, but the Rest and Recovery, food, supplementation component.
And what I wanted to do is seek out the best supplements possible.
Number 1 goal, NSF.
If it’s not NSF certified, we can’t have it within our walls.
And then come up with training protocols that are safe, sound, and productive
that are Baseball-first approach to optimize the opportunities that our young athletes
have, and get them the best possible supplements to promote the recovery process.
And joint mechanics is something that we’re starting to really get an understanding about
the value of joint integrity, range of motion, quality workouts.
It’s not about quantity on our side of it.
Jeff: I mean, the whole thing about joint mechanics and movement, that was the, that
was the essence of my presentation here today was about the fact that when you have pain,
and pain will come from inflammation, and inflammation will come from overtraining,
you will alter your mechanics of your movements.
And I don’t care if it’s an athletic movement or if it’s a simple exercise in the weight
room.
You can to alter your biomechanics.
When you do that, you shift loads in 2 different ways.
1, you shift them away from the muscles that are supposed to be doing the exercise or the
activity in the first place,
or you become inefficient in that activity and you underdevelop the muscles that you’re
trying to target in the first place.
The second thing you do is you shift those loads to joints that are usually ill-equipped
to handle them.
so, perfect example, I always say like in a squat, if you have a bad knee,and you try
to squat, you shift that load away from the quads because you just can’t handle it.
You lack the strength in your quads, you shift it to your low back.
Your low back takes on too much force that it cannot handle, the low back breaks down,
then guess what?
We perpetuate that cycle over and over again.
The ‘more is better’ you said, you mentioned that in your response.
I have a lot of guys watching that, especially that haven’t trained for all that long,
um,
the ones that haven’t trained for all that long that think the way I did.
I know I did as a younger guy, that more is better.
I mean, it was so ridiculous.
Where I used to literally do sets throughout the day before I went out thinking that if
I can pump up a couple sets, thinking ultimately that was going to be a good thing.
I was just completely pounding myself to the ground, but some guys, I mean, that more is
better mentality has to change.
Rick: Yeah.
And that’s what we’re trying to do here with the player.
Look, understand what we’re trying to do is create routines to help their careers and
to lengthen their careers,
and for them to receive all the benefits of that long career.
Now, how do we do?
Through food and supplementation, sleep management, hydration,
getting proper supplementations at the proper time and understanding that joint integrity
as you talked about, through weight training, when you make that compromise to move away
from pain?
That same thing happens when you start altering your delivery, or altering your swing.
Jeff: oh yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Rick: You’re going down a very vicious cycle.
Jeff: You also learn bad movement patterns and habits too.
Rick: No question.
No question.
Jeff: So that there’s no turning back once you go down that path.
Rick: Then you go into a hitting slump, or then all of a sudden, you’re not locating
your fastball, or your changeout, or commanding your pitches as you should be
because you’re moving away from joint pain.
And in the big scheme of things, you start looking at the length of careers and the financial
components of these careers,
joint integrity is going to be a real important component of how we can lengthen and get a
guy back to playing effectively when he’s 34, 35, 36, 37.
Jeff: Well, I say too, you know, that it’s not just, you know people focus on, if you
are focusing on recovering in the first place, that’s a great thing because we know how
important it is.
But people ignore the joint component of that.
I say, ‘Guys, look, the muscles that connect to the bones via the tendons, they cross the
joint.’
So the joint is just as important as muscle recovery.
It’s all one complete picture as we always talk about here at ATHLEANX.
You’ve got to look at the whole.
So, a good question would be because this is a common question, what is the value of
supplementation?
So, I’ll tell you my quick answer that I always tell these guys.
Supplementation is just that, it’s supplementation.
You better be supplementing efficient, high-intensity training with a good diet.
You cannot, Guys.
Supplementation is supplementation.
However, there are things that you will supplement with, especially some of the things that we’ve
discussed here
in the Winter meetings that are unattainable through your own nutrition at least in the
dosages that has been proven to be effective for the purpose of training, but what is your
stance?
Rick: Look, the most important thing that I’ve learned, I want to train and be efficient
for as long as I possibly can and from an athletic standpoint, it doesn’t matter which
sport you play.
Jeff: Even these guys that aren’t even playing sports but are just working out.
Rick: People just love golf.
I mean, it’s a sport, like working out, like you say.
I want to be able to squat something when I’m 70.
I want to be able to do a Pull Up, a Push Up, and be functioning and mobile when I’m
70.
So, it’s that old statement is, ‘If I knew back then what I know now.’
As far as the quality supplementation, what’s available, you know, I’m going to be a pretty
mobile and efficient person you know as soon as I get into my senior years.
And young people don’t see their journey yet.
And you know everyone out there has heard of it, but you’ve got to live it and experience
it and then get to that age where it’s like,
taking quality supplements, getting quality food, getting quality rest, something we heard
a great presentation on and what that could do for you.
So, it’s something, you’re developing a routine
whether you’re a professional athlete, you’re a weekend athlete, or you just love to train.
And that routine is food, good supplementation, good sleep and what sleep can do for you,
and
obviously having great training programs that manage loads at appropriate time, appropriate
levels, appropriate frequencies and you tie all that in together,
you have an opportunity to train for the rest of your life at a real high quality level
and live a functional, you know,
prosperous life when you get to where we are as far as being able to be impactful.
Jeff: Yeah.
I can’t, I mean I remember one time being in a gym in a college, at college, and there
was an older professor who was working out there, and he was in incredible shape, you
know.
And I remember going up to him and saying, ‘What do you do?’
He said, ‘I am consistent.’
He said, ‘I have been consistent at this for the last 25 years.’
He says, ‘This to me is a lifelong journey.’
You know, and I think the reason why we’re here now, the reason why I’m still here
even though I’m not directly involved with the New York Mets on a day-to-day basis like
I used to be with Rick.
I’m still involved in the game.
I’m still involved in how I can contribute to improving the athletes’ journeys as we
just talked about
because I feel like this is a super critical concept to understand and more people have
to understand this whole picture, this complete picture of Rest and Recovery
and this complete picture of training and nutrition and that being said, guys, I always
tell you.
It’s all about that 3 prong component and this whole weekend was all about
that 3 prong component being discussed amongst the best trained coaches in the world.
Nothing has changed.
That’s always going to be the case.
I try to put that all together for you guys in our ATHLEANX System.
It’s all about those 3 prongs, and I give you guys progressions to try to do exactly
what Rick said,
progress you from Day 1 to Day 2 to Day 3 in the manner that you need to to manage your
overall volumes and manage your overall stresses so that
you’re not doing too much and your body can’t recover from it.
And we kind of wrap it all together, and of course we have our ATHLEANRX Supplements that
really, I feel,
bolster that process and make you, you know, enhance your recovery especially, again, if
we’re talking about drug-free athletes.
If you haven’t already even heard about our ATHLEANRX Supplements or joints mechanics
specifically which is what I was presenting on this weekend,
head to ATHLEANRX.COM and you can check all of those out, and of course our 90-Day Training
plan that kicks off as AX1, that’s available at ATHLEANX.COM, too.
In the meantime, Rick, we, him and I always enjoy our opportunities to get together.
Rick: Always.
Jeff: We’re off to the Cheesecake Factory which is pretty much par for the course wherever
we are in a town that has one for dinner.
But, you’ll see more of this guy.
We’re going to be doing some more stuff together in the future here, especially as
we build up our RX Supplement line.
I think we’re pretty excited about it.
Anything else you got to say?
Rick: I just, look, understanding where we are in the professional sports having an NSF
quality product.
What you have going out and created is vital to our success in athletics,
in all athletics, and when you start going down that path of using the 3 things we talked
about, food, training, and supplementation,
it gets me excited to realize that the quality of what we’re trying to do on these 3 areas
that can really get diluted and get really confusing for a lot of people,
that it’s really simple.
I tell my athletes all the time and our front office.
It’s really simple what we do, but it’s not easy.
And as soon as they can grasp that, and start really taking control of their decisions of
making safe, sound and productive decisions, it’s an unbelievable journey to be able
to train
the levels that which we try to get our athletes to train in, and they recover and come back
and want more.
That’s what makes it really special and exciting.
Jeff: Alright, guys, so again, that’s it.
Hopefully you definitely found the messages here to be very consistent in that you can’t
overlook any one of those components,
and you’ve got to make sure at all cost you’re respecting Rest and Recovery if you’re
trying to build muscle, if you’re trying to improve your physique,
if you’re trying to improve your performance, if you are a natural athlete, and I think
that’s the key.
Alright guys, make sure if you like this video, leave your comments and thumb’s up below.
See you soon.