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Movement is the foundation of youth. The older we get, the less we move and the more pain we experience. Everyone wants to move better to accomplish the tasks which they desire: athletes want to jump higher, run faster, react quicker, and everyday exercisers want to perform daily tasks efficiently without pain.

Coming in to Train 4 The Game in September of 2009, my training style reflected a mixture of my past: football, lacrosse, rugby, Crossfit, Olympic lifting, rock climbing, and yoga.  My training being fractious, I had no cohesive view of how to incorporate all the requisite movements and motions of my past into one training system.

When it comes to fitness, the season is a time for maintenance. The offseason, however, is a time for improvement. In the offseason, mediocre players have the opportunity to become good, and good players have the opportunity to become great. The offseason is where your game goes to the next level. How does this happen? It all begins with an honest assessment of your game and a training program that fits that assessment. Answer a few of these questions and see how well you know your game:

Basketball players want to jump higher. Golfers want to hit farther. Swimmers want to kick harder. Every athlete committed to improving his game knows he has to hit the gym to reach his full athletic potential. Unfortunately, there are many athletes not making the improvements they desire despite tireless efforts and innumerable hours in the gym each week. Similarly, there are countless individuals relentlessly working out to reach their fitness goals to little or no avail.

As a trainer, I cannot tell you how many fitness fads, trends and myths have been run by me. I’ve heard everything from “I heard if I walk on a treadmill slowly for 3 hours a day I will only burn fat” to “I heard that if I do squats I will change the fat on my thighs to muscle.” Here’s the deal, ladies: you need to exercise and eat properly to see the results you want. You need to weight train correctly. You need to challenge your body and push your limits in the gym if you want to see a change.

So, I snuck out of work early the other day (as I often do . . .shhh), to pick up my 22 month old. I like to get there when they are on the playground and hide on the step so I can watch her before she realizes I'm there. It was 73 degrees and sunny in mid-November (got to love Austin, right?). At first I just saw smiling faces, laughing and happiness. Then, I started to observe their movements. After all, I do it at work all day, so it's hard to leave it behind.

This is something that we hear with some regularity, whether a new client is coming in for an evaluation or whether we’re out in public talking about Train 4 The Game to prospective clients. As a matter of fact, a gentleman, who appeared to be in pretty good shape and wearing workout clothes, mentioned this to me the other day at the store.

Taking a deep breath in and a deep breath out, I say to myself, “I will.” The two little words I would recite to myself over and over again before every race, before every high jump attempt, and before all the other big events in my life. Today, is no different, I say the same thing as I walk through the doors of my old stomping ground of 4 years, Texas State University. The day has come where I give my last college presentation. After this presentation, I was finally done.