Leadership the lost characteristic

Leadership is a quality not seen in a America as of late.  I have been woring with athletes and teams for the past 10 years and I have seen a huge decline in the number of athletes who step up and take charge of a team.  10 years ago when I started working with high school teams there was always someone or a group of  individuals who stood up to take charge of the team.  When the team was not performing up to standard it was the leaders who stood up to right the ship.  Leadership is a characteristic that is earned not given, and when you finally earn it, it is something that is very difficult to keep.  The reasons:

You must take responsibility for your team or organization when things are good you pass praise onto the team, when the team struggles you take blame.  You do not pass the buck to someone else or make excuses of why you or the team played poorly.  Being a leader means taking responsibility and owning up to whatever happens.  Whether it is good or bad. This is not easy to do.  We are human and we like it when things are going great but tend to shy away when things go bad.

Also being a good leader you need to stand up to your own team to hold them accountable for their actions.  If they do not show up to practice then the leader needs to call them out and make sure it does not happen again. This is not easy to do because many athletes of today feel like they do not want to hurt their buddy or someone elses feelings.   We have a need as humans to feel accepted by all.  The problem with this is that you are not going to please everyone. So we need to understand we need to do what is best for the team so the TEAM can be succesful.    leadership is a characteristic that needs to be rediscovered again for high school, organization and many other entities for Americans to succeed.

Passing blame onto someone else shows you are a coward and that you are weak and you need to look inside yourself to right your own ship to become a leader.  Remember leadership is earned and now is the time for your to step up and earn it.  Unleash Your Potential.

www.exsp.biz.

Eradicate the Softness.

Dave Brixius

Explosive Sports Performance

 

The Greates Machine Known to Man

The greatest machine known to man is the Human Body.  Plain and simple no other machine out there can do what it does.  Take a computer for example, without someone telling it what to do it does not work.  If it breaks it does not repair itself, it needs an outside source to fix and tell it what to do.

Now take the Human Body it does not need someone telling it what to do, it just does it.  When it needs to breath or the heart needs to beat it does it.  When it wants to take a step it does it, or catch a pass it just does it.  The human body can even fix itself in many instances.  For example when you get a common cold, the human body will fix itself and get better almost all of the time.  It also changes over time, as we get older we change.  We grow bigger, stronger, and more productive in almost everything we do.

Here is a question I propose to many people, if the human body is the greatest machine then why do we neglect it.  I see people everyday put tons of money into their cars, house, pools, etc…But they put almost nothing into taking care of themselves.  They neglect the body the one thing that can make them feel good or bad.  We as a society have forgotten that you only get one body, once the heart stops beating that is it.  It is over.  So why don’t we then take care of ourselves so we can live a more productive life and make the greatest machine known to man more efficent and healthier.  You can also buy a new computer, car, and house.  They have not come up with a way yet to give you a new body once the one you have expires.

Go out there and unleash your Potential.

Check out the new ESP website coming soon.

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6 things you need to succeed on the field.

Every athlete needs to develop certain areas to make themselves successful.  Without one of these areas the athlete could be vulnerable and never reach their full potential.

The first areas that an athlete needs is a proper and correct warm-up:  The reason for this is to get the body ready for competition, and to help prevent against injuries.  Too many athletes just jump right into a workout with out getting the mind and body prepared for what it needs to do to be successful.  Even with strength training, going through a good and sound warm-up routinue will help prevent against soreness and strain that may occur when working out. Doing Dynamic or movement stretches will help prevent many problems that may occur.

Second area would be the development of Speed.  The saying goes Size hurts but Speed Kills.  This is true when discussing this with an athlete on how you can become a more dominate player.   You need to develop a sound program of running mechanics and speed drills to improve your performance.

Third area is strength training.  Having a good solid strength program that focuses on developing muscles to aid in your performance is key.  Just lifting to lift should not be the goal of an athlete.  You need to develop a strength program that will take and enhance your performance on the field.  Finding a quality trainer who understands how the body is suppose to move and work for each sport is the key.  Just moving a lot of weight does not quarantee success.

Fourth is a good fundamental core program.  Most people dont know exactly what the core is. I hear it all the time I got to work my core.  When you ask them what that means they usually just think the ABS.  That is only a small part of the core region.  The core region is made up of not only the Abs, but the obliques, the hips, low back, and especially the glutes.  The glutes are so important to helping an athelte excel but they are usually very week in most individuals.  Having a program that address these areas is a must for each athlete to perform at their best.

Fifth area would be power and explosion.  Each sport requires you to generate power while performing .  If you watch a sporting event you can see power/explosion in every play.  For example baseball requires power from the pitcher to throw the ball and the batter to hit it.  In basketball when a player drives to the basket that requires power or to dunk that is power.  You need to develop this area to make yourself a well rounded athlete.

Sixth area is you should always cool the body down.   Do not just pack up and leave.  Make sure you get your body ready for the next day or next workout by returing it to a relaxed state.  Make sure you stretch out with static or hold each position for a certain amount of time.

Do not fall into the trap of getting big.  Obtaining more muscle is great, but it must be done the correct way with a sound program that focuses and covers all of these areas.  If you are not receiving this from your current program then do something about it.  NOT ALL PROGRAMS ARE CREATED EQUAL.

Unleash Your Potential  to become a dominate force.

Dave Brixius

Explosive Sports Performance

www.exsp.biz

Are you training for domination or just training?

Training to be a great athlete does not mean we just go Bench Press and Squat and then all of a sudden we become a great athlete.  We need to train the correct way to get the most out of each workout.  I listen to so many athlete that they were “grinding” or in english working hard on their workouts.  This is great but what are you doing to work hard.  I could go out and run 20 miles at a good steady pace and say that I worked hard.  But if I want to increase my  speed, that is probably not the way to go about it.  Do not just workout for the sake of working out, have a purpose and then come up with a plan or have a qualified person come up with a plan for you.

If you are an athlete then one of the main things you need in your workout is explosive training, and I just do not mean plyometics.  I mean you need to make certain regular exercises and turn them into an explosive or power movement.  Such as the push-up which we take and turn it into a power movement.  (watch the video clip on one of our explosive push-ups).  Learn to develop exercises that will enhance your performance.  If I am a baseball player, I want exercises that are going to improve my core power, explosion and help to prevent against injuries.

Figure out what it is that you need to improve and what is demanded of the activity or activities you participate in.  Once you figure that out then go and work on them.  Make yourself a more dominate athlete by turing your weaknesses into strengths and saving yourself a lot of wasted time of just training.  Train with and for a purpose.  Now go and Unleash your potential.

http://youtu.be/zeJvGTKWTR8

Explosive Sports Performance (www.exsp.biz)  Eradicating Softness

Going above expectations

Most athletes want to be remembered as great.  Many of us would like to be remembered as the best of all time at our position or the best at our sport.  The reality is most will never achieve this.  Think for a second of how many athletes there are in the world who want to be remembered like this, hundreds, thousands, millions?  There are so many athletes out there who want something more of themselves.  They want to become great but they need to ask themselves what are they doing to become great.

If you are a high school athlete working in the off season 3 times per week, you are probably not putting in enough time getting better.  Because at the college level you will have to work harder than just 3 times a week to make it, and if you want to go beyond college than you better work even harder.  To be great you need to go beyond a personal expectation to have an opportunity to be remembered as great.  All to often we just do what is expected of us just so we can get by.

As an athlete you need to set expectations for yourself and than come up with a plan on how to accomplish those expectations.  What are you doing that sets yourself apart from your competition.  If you are working out 3 times a week is that good enough for you to become great?  What if your competition works out 4  or 5 times per week so they can be better than you.  Are you going to raise your expectation of yourself so you can be the best?  You need to figure out how much you are willing to sacrifice to achieve your expectations.

Get ready to Unleash Your Potential on your competition.  Go above your expectations to find that success in life.

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The Power of FEAR

As young athletes or  young people we think we have all the time in the world to accomplish something.  We put things off that we could do now.  There are many different reasons we do this but maybe the main reason is FEAR.  Fear is such a powerful thing, it can make you accomplish great things or it could keep you from accomplishing anything.  Today’s athletes seem like they have a Fear of success; instead of failing.  This would seem backwards to most people.  They almost seem like they don’t want to try hard or work hard because if they lose or fail the fall from being towards the top is a long way down.

FEAR can be scary, it can definitely hold athletes back from accomplishing many great things.  But as a trainer my job is to take that Fear and turn it into a positive.  Turn it into something that the athlete can use to strive to become better.  For example, my Fear is failure, I do not want to fail at anything I do, so I push myself to achieve greatness at all things.  I do not always succeed but I learn many great lessons from my failures.  We as athletes, coaches, parents have to turn the Fear of something into a positive, so we can achieve greatness on all levels.  We need to strive to be better today than we were yesterday.

FEAR can stop any person dead in their tracks, but it does not mean we quit or give up.  We need to pick ourselves up and conquer the FEAR.  FEAR is powerful and needs to be controlled or we will never become successful.

Remember Unleash Your Potential.

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How to fix or improve your speed!

Speed is something all athletes want to have.  There are still people out there that say you are either born with it or you are not.  Most of us by now should know this is not true.  I believe that we can work on our speed to improve it just like we can work on anything in our life to make it better.  We just need the right direction or tools to help us improve.

Here are just a few ways that I get my athletes to improve their speed:  Fundamentals are the key.

1.)  The first fundamental all athletes need is PROPER RUNNING MECHANICS.  So many athletes do not know how to run correctly and they do more harm than good to themselves.

2.) Work on improving your hip mobility and stability.  Over the decades we as people have become tighter and tighter as a society.  For us to improve our speed we need to work on becoming more flexible in the hip region and also stronger in that region as well.

3.) Develop strength in your legs.  Many athletes want to improve their speed, but they do not take the time to develop strength in their leg muscles.  Most athletes I know tell me they rather run instead of strength train their legs..  They hate working legs because it is hard.  You need to develop better leg power and strength especially around the hip area if you are going to improve your speed.

Work on these three areas and you will see an improvement in your ability to increase your speed.  Remember this is just the basics.  Get these three things down and then move on to more complex drills etc..

Continue to Unleash Your Potential everyday

www.exsp.biz  New website will be up and running real soon.  So check back often.

Single leg jump to box

Single Leg box jumps are a great exercise to see if there is a weakness on one side or the other.  This is also a great drill to work and build your jumping and power.  The key to this, just like any jumping exercise is to make sure you land with knees slightly bent to decrease the amount of force through the knee joint.

When performing this jump, use a box that you feel you can jump up to and stick the landing.  You do not want to land on the box and be falling all over the place.  First squat down holding one leg in the air and then explode up and land on the box with a soft, quite landing.  Step back off and perform the exercise again on the same leg.  Make sure to do 8 reps on each leg for 3 sets.  This is just another exercise to help develop power.

http://youtu.be/TdCMNwbRQRQ

Unleash Your Potential!

Be on the lookout fo ESP’s new website.  www.exsp.biz.  We are also pleased to announced 3 of our athletes that we train are going to  NFL camps this upcoming weekend.  Athletes aspiring to be something greater.

From an unknow player to one of the best NFL wide receivers in the game today.

 

The NFL draft takes place this weekend a time when many young gentleman will become celebrities over night.  Some will be great and some will not pan out the way many people thought they would.  So I thought back to 6 years ago and I asked this question:

What does it take to be a great NFL player?

Skill, talent, determination, luck?  It takes all of the above.  What are your chances of making the opening day roster after being drafted the 3rd to last pick of the NFL draft? Slim to none.  Well I had the fortunate pleasure of working with that gentleman.  Most people I spoke with told me he would not make it and he should not get his hopes up.  Well 6 years later that same guy just signed a multi-million dollar contract to continue with the same team who drafted him.  He has won a super bowl and is on target to be there all time leading receiver and also have the most touchdowns in team history.  Great accomplishment for a player who played at a college that no longer has a football program.

It goes to show that with dedication and a desire to prove your critiques wrong you can accomplish many great things.  We will all be tested and put down thoughout life but the people who stay on course and work to accomplish their goal will be successful.  Life is not easy or kind at times we will all fail and struggle to get back up, but we have to set our sight on our goal and how we want to achieve that goal.  Hard work and desire always pay off.  It might not show in the beginning but eventually it will.  Just like this late round draft pick who worked his tail off and has become one of the best wide receivers in the NFL today.  Hard work is the key to success.  It does not matter what other people say, it only matters what you say and how you want to accomplish your goals.

Go Unleash Your Potential and show all how great you really are.

www.exsp.biz

 

Value of working hard to achieve your Dream

I have been working with athletes for over 10 years and the stories that come from them, truly inspire me.   I have an athlete right now that if you asked me two years ago if he would receive any division one offers,  I would have told you NO.  The reason why is because he did not push himself to be better.  He went through the motions and did not perform to the best of his ability.

Something changed in this individual and to make this story short about 1 year ago while we were training  he asked me to help improve his explosion.  Explosion training is by far my favorite style of training to teach.  So this was right up my alley.   We worked usually 2-3 times per week on his technique and fundamentals, which made him more explosive and improved his first step.   We spent many days going over every little thing we could possibly do and with all of his hard work and dedication it finally paid off.  He got numerous schools offering him a scholarship and he committed this past week to the school he has wanted to go to for a long time.

The reason for this story is no matter if you are an athlete, coach or parent the determination  and dedication that this one athlete possesses is also inside of each and every one of us.   We all have the ability to take our performance to the next level or achieve what we want in life but we give in and do not push to be better.    This athlete found something that motivated him and that is why he is successful when it comes to chosing the college of his choice.   For anyone of us to be successful in what we do we need to be focused, have desire, determination and heart.   Nothing is impossible as long as you want it bad enough.  This young man proved that and to find out more about him go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/Explosive-Sport-Performance/41759050537 .

Way to Unleash Your Potential Andrew

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