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My thoughts on Recruiting Services for High School Athletes

One evening as I sat down in my office finishing up a consult with a parent and her son who was a football player, the mother asked me what my opinion was on hiring recruiting services to help her kid get more looks from schools.

My answer:

They definitely could be beneficial; however, they aren’t always necessary.

Some recruiting services are outstanding. The reality of it is, the premise of success is based upon the recruiter’s cultivated relationships with college coaches, universities and the gamut.

A downside to using the services for some families is the investment. Determining if it is worthwhile depends on how much you value what they offer, and how much faith you have in your child’s ability to earn a scholarship at the next level.

But here is the reality, if you and your child have a computer, a phone, an email, a social media account, and are persistent, you will not need hire a recruiter.

At the end of the day, it is about marketing, putting the athlete in front of coaches as much as possible, and consistently.

Pretty simple.

It does not take that much time make a list of school, go on their respective websites, collect the contact information to the coaches, and shoot over an email.

Making a list of 40 schools and reaching out to each, you will for sure get feedback from at least 5 of those schools, and begin cultivating a recruiting relationship.

In addition, some of those schools will probably have a few camps where your kid can actually be able to work with the coaches on a more intimate basis where they can get truly evaluated, and begin communicating.

No it is not the prettiest way to begin the recruiting process, but it is way to learn how to really “sell” the athlete, and also develop the networking skill and resilience necessary to build character.

Again, this is not to disregard recruiting services in any way, because there really are some great companies with great people who strive to get your child an opportunity. However, if you can not afford one, then learning and teaching your child how to create his or her own opportunity can have just as much of a return with less of a financial investment.

It’s been just over a week since basketball great Kobe Bryant tragically passed along with 8 other people along with his daughter aboard a helicopter crash.

As extremely unfortunate as that ordeal has been, it definitely puts things into perspective for me personally about how fragile life is, what’s really important for a meaningful life, and how we are not guaranteed our next breath.

As great as Kobe was, this tragedy highlights the fact that no matter what our status is, we are all human subject to our ultimate fate at any time.

However, during his time on earth, Kobe did some special things, accomplishing some great feats. His mentality and approach to challenge was inspiring for people across the world, and inspired this post containing 24 things to focus on to create a more fulfilling life:

• Stop wasting time doing things that don’t fuel your real happiness. Because life is NOT guaranteed, it is a waste of time to be doing hollow things. Do what makes you happy.
• Family is everything. It’s easy to take those you love for granted as if they will always be there. But the reality is that any one can be taken away at any second. Appreciate and make the most of the time you do get with them.
• Stop sitting on your dreams. If there is something that you have been wanting to do, then go for it. You have the potential. Just plan and take action. Not to be too candid, but either your dreams will come true first, or your last moment on earth will happen first.
• Don’t be afraid to take risks and step outside of your comfort zone. You will never be able to grow and reach your fullest potential if you don’t.
• Embrace challenge. You will inevitably get tested in life, and there is no way around it. Use them as opportunities to learn and become better.
• Minimize procrastination and prioritize. Start working on things that you want to do now rather than continuing to put them off. Once again, there is no guarantee that you will be here tomorrow.
• Invest in yourself and never stop learning. The day you stop learning is the day you stop growing. Read a book. Watch national geographic. Learn a language. Keep nurturing the hardest working organ in your body. The brain.
• Take care of your body. It is your temple. Exercise and prolong life as best as you can. You don’t have to train strenuously daily, but do something. Don’t succumb.
• Encourage other people and be a positive light in their life. Pass on good energy to others. Make others feel good about themselves.
• Travel and take trips outside of your everyday circles when possible. That can be a weekend drive somewhere, or a 2 week getaway. When you step outside of your bubble, you can gain clarity on where you are, and come back refreshed with stress alleviated.
• Minimize screen time and social media. “Dark news” is more fluidly dispersed because of technology and can literally rewire your brain and cause depression. Step away from it every now and then and be present.
• Just smile. Studies show that the simple act of smiling will trigger happy feelings, and can alter the emotional landscape of the day. Smiling is the gateway to being happy.
• Invest in your sleep. Good sleep means better production and a better mood. Something as simple as being in bed just 30 minutes earlier can change how effective you are throughout the day. Essentially, being well rested will allow you to be more present and available.
• Make an effort to NOT keep your feelings in. Good or bad. This will turn out to be one of the most compounding, emotionally burdensome things you can do. Talk to your partner, your friend, or safe person. Let it out.
• Set goals and work towards something. Don’t float around. Be intentional about accomplishment. Why float aimlessly in this sea we call life. Open the sail and add some direction.
• Be intentional about your day. Fuse your day with purpose. Be present. Complete what you do. Go to sleep knowing you made the most out of your day.
• Social Media whether we like it or not is today’s way of getting and spreading the news. Well, use this as an opportunity to share positivity rather than negativity. Let this be the way you contribute your 1 cent to making a small positive impact on someone else’s day when they scroll their timeline. It compounds over time.
• It takes so much more mental and emotional energy to harbor anger towards someone. Whenever possible, forgive and forget over the small things. Why take up compartment space in your mind and heart fostering anger? Use that energy to produce.
• Hang on to your real friends. It seems like the older you get, the more difficult it is to find people who will always have your best interests at heart. Keep the good ones close.
• Don’t just tell your wife, your husband that you love them every day. Show them. We can say “I love you” and mean it every single time, but show it to. It doesn’t have to be a major action. A small gesture like a hug, a date, cooking dinner can go a long way.
• Be appreciative. Say thank you. Rid yourself of entitlement. Let people know that you appreciate everything they do for you.
• Don’t feel guilty about rewarding yourself. You do something good, then treat yourself. Being thankful also includes thanking yourself. You deserve recognition for what you do too. Don’t let the self-appreciation wells go dry.
• Pray and meditate. Isolate yourself every now and then and just be present with you. We talked about taking getaways to get clarity and perspective, well meditating and withdrawing to the self is a different way of doing the same. You can calm the senses, shift out of a sympathetic state to a parasympathetic one, and become at ease and gain just as much clarity.
• LAUGH AND HAVE FUN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE !! Laughing and enjoying your time is proven to alter the hormonal landscape within you. Not every moment calls for a laugh, but seeing humor in things will create more joy.

Firstly, I wanted to wish you a Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year !

Both personally and professionally, 2019 has been one of the biggest learning experiences in my life to date.

As a father, a husband, a coach, a businessman, and as a person.

It has been all about striving to keep balance, keeping focused, taking the good with the bad, and celebrating the good more and not dwell on the “not so good”.

2019 has been by far one the best years WPT has ever had in terms of athletes and clients getting great results, increased memberships, and innovative coaching systems like introducing the mobile training app to athletes during the second quarter to not only further individualize programming, but also add more value and provide more than just sessions, but guidance and coaching accessible outside of the gym.

Another key takeaway for me this year has been consistency.

Despite the past 2 weeks being up and down with my weekly emails that go out, I was adamant in making sure that I sent them out on a weekly basis. So much so that it didn’t feel right if I didn’t send an email off.

Since March, emails have been consistently going out weekly, with a few hiccups here and there. But this was a huge step for me.

With so much noise that comes through your emails daily, like bills and spam, email is and will remain for me a platform where I can communicate authentically to you and share messages that, I’m gonna sound cliché here, comes from the heart and provide real value.

Thank you for letting me share them 🙂

With that said, I wanted to share with you 9 big takeaways from 2019 that helped me to stay productive and keep moving forward.

Lesson 1.) I mentioned this already, but the biggest key to producing has been consistency. It’s not what you can do every once and that will steer you in the direction you want to go, but what you choose to do daily. You don’t have to hit homeruns every single day, but taking consistent strides in the right direction is guaranteed to get you there.

You don’t need to workout for 2 hours every single day. If you can make it to a gym, then 10 minutes is sufficient. Just do it consistently. I challenge you this year to be consistent in striving toward your goals.

Lesson 2.) Start small and don’t overwhelm yourself. I am probably the biggest culprit when it comes to this one. You know you have stuff that you need to do, you know it needs to get done, and you only think about EVERYTHING that needs to get done instead of breaking it down into smaller pieces and just starting.

Start small and progress. It doesn’t need to be an entire feat all at once. See the larger picture and scale it down. It’s almost like putting together a 1000 piece puzzle. You are going to get frustrated if you try and rush putting it together, but if you first section off the similar pieces, work on that area, then on to the next, you will eventually get the puzzle done. Go piece by piece.

Lesson 3.) Stop trying to do things perfectly. Occasionally I was slower to execute ideas because I thought they needed to be absolute perfection before being completed. All this did was kill time instead of simply executing the ideas and just correcting them as I went.

Now there isn’t anything wrong with being a perfectionist on occasion. Hell sometimes it’s necessary. But if you adopt the perfectionist attitude in every single thing that you do, it might get done, but you will slow down production unnecessarily waiting for everything to be perfect.

Just DO, correct, and learn from your mistakes as you go.

Lesson 4.) Lighten up on self critique. I was so hard on myself this year in retrospect. Constantly thinking about where we “should” be as a business, or how much further along I should be in life. If it was supposed to be, then it would be. As my mentor says, you are where you are supposed to be. Just continue to build.

I couldn’t really improve if I kept being too hard on myself. I couldn’t relax. I would create a hamster wheel of negative thoughts instead of focusing on the good that had been done. Yes there are going to be days where you don’t achieve a specific result that you wanted. It happens. Just adjust and try again. You can’t dwell on it because it just kills time and confidence.

You will probably always be your own toughest critic, but you should also be your own best encourager.

Lesson 5.) Don’t go it alone. I have had a tendency to burrow into my own shell whenever I am going through things. Instead of reaching out, and asking for help, or confiding in those in my closest circles to help or give me advice, I would close myself off and try to deal with it internally. Not good.

Whenever I opened up about what I was going through, I always gained different perfective and got a little more clarity and peace of mind.

If you are going through it, reach out. If you are wanting to start something new, find someone else to go along for the ride who will support you throughout the experience. Don’t go it alone if you don’t have to.

6.) Don’t bring your worries from work home. It’s a steady balance. Regretfully there were days where business-wise I may have been dealing with some things that affected my mood at home. I wasn’t as mentally or emotionally present as I should have been while home with my family because I was carrying the weight from the day on my shoulders with me.

I had to learn to just let go and enjoy time with my family and be present. Work isn’t meant to be taken home.

Simply put it just felt better turning off and just being with family. Still a feat I am trying to master.

7.) Take time for you. Take breaks. Step away when it’s necessary. My goal this year was to go on at least 3 vacations, and take more weekend trips.

Each and every time I took the time away, I came back more productive. And I intend on doing the same thing this coming year. I felt like I had plateaued and lacked creativity if I was doing the same thing in the same places daily. So taking the time off was necessary.

Even if its for a few hours, just a day, or a long weekend, for your own health, and those around you, take time off when you need so that you don’t burn out.

8.) Be intentional daily. As part of the business mastermind I am in, we are given an agenda every quarter where we break down must do’s on a weekly and daily basis.

They are called the Big 3. It involves taking some time the week before and clarifying what are the 3 biggest tasks you need to accomplish this week to move you closer to your goals.

This has been priceless for producing. It makes everything I have done for the day intentional, making every week seem like a step forward.

I could have been having a “rough” week, but if I managed to get done what I said I would get done for the week, it was a win.

Instead of drifting through the days, set some type of goals along with mini goals that you strive for each day and give you a better sense of purpose.

9.) Work in spite of fear. There hasn’t been more than 2 days in a row where I have not awoken with some type of fear or anxiety about what I am doing.

The goals I have personally, for my family, especially business can at times seem so big that it literally scares me and creates anxiety. Sometimes debilitating.

As time has gone on, I learned that the anxiety and fear never really go away, you just have to go in spite of it and focus on the big picture. In a sense, it should fuel you.

2019 was one of those years where the fear and anxiety were extra amplified some weeks, and not as great others. I just had to go.

There are going to be some things in your life that you know you need to do, but are afraid to start. But imagine what you might miss out on if you let fear continue to paralyze you? Your goals should scare you, not stop you.

Fear is just a part of the process, especially when you venture out from your comfort zone. Let 2020 be a year where you take the chance despite having fear!

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I hope that you had a very Happy Holidays and an incredible New Years celebration.

Cheers to another revolution around the Sun and your future accomplishments that will happen during.

-Coach Willis

The other week I was asked on what my thoughts were on using Heart Rate monitors to completely to guide training.

There are some users who believe that it is the end all be all of getting great results, while others like myself think it can be effective if used correctly.

Like I always say when I am asked about a particular modality when it comes to training, there is a time and a place for everything.

It depends on what your goal is.

For elite endurance athletes, keeping tabs on heart rate before, during, and after training sessions will reveal a ton about how the athlete is adapting to the workout. This is important to know because cardiovascular strength for endurance athletes needs to be at a certain level in order to maintain elite status.

Endurance athletes rely mostly on the aerobic energy system, so seeing heart rate fluctuations provides great insight.

For general fitness, using heart rate guided training is a different case.

It has its benefits, and it has its drawbacks.

There are certain programs that are based on the premise of keeping your heart rate at a certain level in order to have a perceptively effective workout.

The intention is to keep the heart rate in a” fat burning” zone by doing high intensity activity with little rest. Orange Theory is well known for this mode of training, with more and more gyms adopting the same concept of using heart rate monitors to not only visually see heart rate on a screen, but motivate clients to “keep up” with the pace of others and beat a score.

Often time what you will see is compromised form or technique for the sake of doing more movement or activity just to get a higher score.

This can be absolutely effective, however, is this a way you should train every single workout? Everyday?

Do you really need to send your heart rate through the roof 5 days per week if you are just training for general fitness?

No not really.

There are multiple factors that go in to this like fitness level, your training goals, even your schedule.

A truly well-rounded fitness program will have a global approach, meaning you will not only focus on workouts emphasize a high heart rate aerobic capacity, but also focus on building strength, power, stability, and movement quality.

Training for max strength is just as much neurological as it is muscular. If you are training to increase your overall max strength, then it’s necessary to have increased rest times between sets (or complexes) so that the nervous system is close to fully restored.

The same is true for increasing max power. Rest should be increased for the nervous system to be nearly fully restored; hence, you don’t want to work against fatigue. This means it’s not necessary for your heart rate to be up. As a matter of fact, this can work against the intended effect of increasing max strength or max power. The primary energy source here is the ATp-CP system (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate-Create Phosphate).

This is the energy system primarily used for activity that lasts between 1-8 seconds. Shorter bursts, and can take up to 10 minutes to recover.

Strength and power endurance on the other hand allows for a little more increased heart rate as the goal here is to maintain power and strength output while resisting fatigue. This is the bread and butter of your Orange Theories and cross fit “style” programs.

A truly effective fitness program will cycle between the different modes of training and progressively build off the previous phase, no matter the fitness level.

When training for pure power, or strength, what the heart rate says really won’t mean much if the goal is to stay in a fat burning zone. You will be disappointed.

So my thoughts on using Heart Rate guided training is that it can be good, and it can be not so good.

Using them can be a step in the right direction. But when you solely workout out every single time just to keep a high heart rate, or get the highest amount of accolade points in a program, long term this can be problematic.

I will say that using them in a class setting does make you want to work harder and increases competition.

If you have set a goal, and what you are doing is working, then keep going. However, if it is not, then consider change.

I encourage you to cycle between different modes of training throughout the year so that you not only avoid plateaus but accrue results that last longer.

Use heart rate monitors sparingly. Consider how much stronger you have gotten, how much more flexible, improved balance, mood. Heart rate won’t tell you this ALL of the time.

What is your favorite part of the holiday season? I absolutely love being with family. The laughter, creating new memories and sharing past experiences is something that I look forward to each year. For some, this can be a stressful time of year trying to make sure everything is perfect. At times, it seems like the holidays can come and go and the only thing that lingers is the extra weight gained.

I have a few tips and tricks that will help you avoid this unwanted weight gain.

Often, there is so much preparation involved for holiday meals. You can spend all day in the kitchen only to devour the meal within a few minutes.

In fact, the average person consumes 3000-4500 calories on Thanksgiving Day. For some, this is double the caloric requirement for weight maintenance. Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season with shopping, decorating, parties, cookies and cocktails. With all of the hustle and bustle, it’s no surprise if your exercise routine changes as well.

You might be too busy to get to the gym so make sure you have a back-up plan like using the WPT virtual coaching program or have someone keep you accountable for meeting your exercise goals.

Here are 3 tips that can help take the holiday focus off of food and on to making memories.

1. Eating quickly could lead to overeating. It takes your brain about 20 minutes to receive the signals from your stomach that you are full. Take at least 20 minutes to eat your meals. Take your time, chew, swallow and repeat slowly.
2. Did you know that putting food on the table and having it in plain sight increases your intake? During the holiday meals, sit away from the food, or leave the food in the kitchen. Whatever you do, don’t be the one sitting in front of the pumpkin pie. Chances are, you will eat it! I use this in reverse in my house. I leave the healthy food out and within reach while the unhealthy food is up high and out of sight.
3. Are you the type of person that takes a bite and has food on your fork ready for the next bite before swallowing? Put your fork down between bites and savor the flavor of the meal. This trick will help slow your intake allowing your brain to receive the signals that you are full. If you are feeling ambitious, you can try using a small fork to decrease the amount of food your fork can hold.

It is almost inevitable, at some point the holidays will be stressful. But take the small moments to enjoy your family and friends by talking, laughing and catching up so you can bring in the New Year with gratitude.

For more tips and tricks on keeping a consistent caloric intake over the holidays, schedule a time to chat with me. I’d love to help you reach your health goals.