As you may or may not know...

As you may or may not know I work with young athletes for a living.  Which you should know based on my previous postings... Anyway, I work with young athletes; technically 7-18+ but mostly I work with the older kids so let's say 12 and up.  Not that it exactly matters.  Either way, I love my job and I'm actually about to write something really positive about it, which in it of itself I think is an amazing thing that I get to do.  When I spend 12 hours at work just to go home and return in another 12 hours, it actually doesn't make me that upset because I know what I'm getting myself into. Oh and by the way this might be a somewhat serious posting so if you are looking for the lighter banter that drips in sarcasm that I usually write, I would turn around now.  I would suggest checking out buzzfeed maybe??

So with the job that I have, I literally get to watch these middle and high schoolers grow into better athletes.  And if nothing is going to boost your confidence as an athlete in high school, running faster and being more agile definitely will at any level; all the way from the kid who maybe wasnt going to make the team at all to the leading scorer.  And as their performance coach I sometimes think about how my life would've been different if someone like me taught high school Lisa the things that I know.  That's a little confusing even to me so I'm going to try to break it down a little more.

My life as an athlete:

So here I am maybe age 4 or 5 rocking a bomb dot com outfit and some goalie gear.  I never played hockey but boy did I want to.  I used to get home from school every single day, lace up my roller blades and play roller hockey either with my neighborhood friends or against the invisible team that would always let me win.  I also played in every youth sport league you could think of.  At one point I was the only girl in the baseball little league and man did I crush it (until I broke my nose that is)... so I think it's safe to say that I was an athlete growing up.  Since my high school kind of sucked; admit it, the people there... really? They were all kind of losers, I mean it was plattsburgh, and most of them are still there.  And not only that, but they all thought they were being followed by a full filming crew 24/7 and were going to be the next show to make it on MTV.  To get away from all of them I channeled my energies into all of the sports.  I played soccer, swam, played basketball, ran on the track team, and raced mountain bikes.  Now don't get me wrong here, I had plenty of people help me out a lot along the way, but future Lisa could've helped young, struggling, lack of confidence Lisa a lot.  I do remember one soccer coach in particular though.  When I was in like 5th grade he taught me everything I know about soccer IQ.  When someone would come at me while I was playing defense and get around me- it never struck me to, instead of backpedaling, turn and run by them to get on the other side of the ball- until he taught me how.  Now I didn't end up playing soccer all the way through high school... but I still play now, so suck it senior year coach!  Now my basketball coach in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade I actually owe a lot of thanks to and Mrs. Wilson, if you're out there I hope you understand what you did for me.  I didn't realize until I started working at Parisi that female athletes and male athletes have very different approaches to sports and working out in general.  Believe it or not girls can be afraid of athletics and working out.  They think it makes them seem like a lesbian, or boys won't like them or they will get big legs or any other stereotypical thing you can say about female athletes.  A little more on that later, but it helps young females to have someone show them that it is ok to be an athlete, and that is what Mrs. Wilson did for me... she was the best, wasn't she?  Now I didn't end up playing basketball though out high school but good news for me, when I stopped playing junior year I joined the indoor track team.  OHHHH the indoor track team...

Here we are after going through the lost and found in the girls locker room >>> that was a fun team.  Not only a fun team but also the first time I learned how to lift weights.  Actually this wasn't my first time lifting weights, I remember doing some sort of strength and conditioning camp in the summer of 9th grade with Brett Willmott, who I owe a lot of my athletic abilities to as well.  He taught me the 101 of olympic lifting and how to front squat and a whole bunch of other stuff but that's all I can remember.  So doesn't count- sorta. Not that he's not the man either, (he might be one of the greatest coaches I've ever worked with.  He was my college track coach as well and has so much coaching experience under his belt.  He's actually more of a role model for me now as a coach than when I was an athlete) but I have a hard time remembering the time I spent with him when I was younger since I just wasn't that into it then.  Anyway, my indoor track coaches were still in college though, and really only had the job because they ran track themselves (sorry Mehan and Vern, but it's kinda true).  They have since grown as coaches and have done a great job creating some fantastic track athletes, but when I was on the team it was like their 2nd year coaching.  Practice went a lot like this: go out for a run on the cold snowy streets of plattsburgh, anywhere between 1.5 and 4.6 miles.  When you got back it was either time to practice starts, handoffs, hurdle or jump form or you would go into the weight room.  Since my brother was a jumper for the outdoor team and I had been to the previous season, that's what I did for indoor.  There was another girl jumper on the team and we actually managed our way around the weight room with the help of Vern, our trusted jump coach.  He would have us leg press and squat (very intelligent of him) but then sometimes I definitely remember doing bicep curl pyramids with the EZ curl bar???  And I had absolutely no idea what I was trying to do.  One thing I try to do at Parisi is quiz kids on what exercise we're doing and what muscles it uses and why we're doing what we're doing.  When I was lifting I would just do it, I didn't realize that the hamstring and glutes were the dominant muscles while leg pressing and they were the same muscles used in running and jumping.  And that didn't even get any better in college (confession of a fitness professional- I didn't know that bench pressing what a chest exercise until I graduated college) BUTTTTTTT!! in Vern's defense I did jump the furthest of my life that season.  And that includes the season I spent jumping in college before they switched me to a hammer thrower.  And you know what the best part is... no one made the connection for me that lifting weights was the reason why I jumped so far that winter.
So here's what I'm concluding about my athletic career based on what I know now and what I just told you.  If someone had bothered to help me make the connection between lifting and my athletic performance I probably would've stuck with it for longer and probably would've been a better athlete in college and might've played a different sport all together instead of longing to be on a team sport.  But that's kind of a different story.  ANDDDD now that I know what I'm doing- I can squat and deadlift more than when I was a division 1 athlete, I can do more chin ups than I ever had, and my push up form in pretty spot on... look at this kid.

Training female athletes and what I would've told high school Lisa:
The greatest part is, I don't even feel like my talents are being wasted.  I LOVE training athletes.  Especially female ones.  When I first started at Parisi it was just another job for me.  I hadn't had the joy of training athletes so I didn't realize how much I liked it. To be perfectly honest it continued to be 'just another job' until I found my niche.  Once I was done paying my dues and only training the kids under 12 I graduated to the older kids, and that was not as easy as it sounds.  I spent plenty of time sitting in the corner, head in hands after getting completely worked by 9 year olds, taking the 2-3 minutes I got before another working.  It was after I started working with the older kids and the middle and high school females that I realized what I get to do for them.  I get to be that coach that makes it ok for them to like sports.  I get to explain to them that chin ups work the same muscles as the ones used for proper arm action and how that makes them faster.  I think it is very important for young female athletes to lift weights since it helps so much with injury prevention, ladies your ACLs can thank me later... not only that but I LIKE making them like it- and they love it!  I had a group of 6 or 7 girls over the summer that got so into working out and strength training that they would try to pick some of their own exercises, and I would let them since most of the time they would pick the right ones.  And the way I do it, you ask??... well I turn up the beyonce (another strong, independent, female role model), we don't 'train chest'- we 'do push-ups' (to get away from the negative connotation that comes along with training a specific muscle group, even though doing push-ups won't make you look like a big scary man- women don't have the proper hormones for that), I create a positive workout environment (I like to show them how proud I am of them when the squat the 50 lb dumbbell for the first time, and I like to compliment them on how strong they look and how ok it is that they do look strong), and I talk to them like they are on my level.  Now if I could just get them to show up to workouts on time...

If I could go back and coach high school Lisa, the amount of confidence I would inspire in that girl would be unreal.  I would inform her that yes, the soccer team is better when she is on the field and she is one of the faster female athletes in the school and not to hide her talents because of her crippled self esteem.  I would've also bullied her into doing a lifting program that not only helped her run faster and jump higher but I would've shown her that lifting weights was definitely the reason why it was happening.  AND I would play for her beyonce albums cover to cover to show her what a real queen B sounds like!