Speaker 1: 0:30

My name is Antonio Williams, I'm the owner and sports director of Next Level Athletic Fitness and I have a sports training business. The sports training business is designed to help athletes of all backgrounds, sizes, age, multiple different sports. We don't stick primarily with one sport and we do this by having often a free assessment workout, because the free assessment workout kind of lets us know what muscles in your body are too weak, too short, overactive, underactive. So it takes all the guesswork out of putting together your workout program. So we know exactly what you need and that's why we're able to help our athletes get a turnaround very quickly.

Speaker 1: 1:09

And one other area that we started to venture into is injury recovery, injury recovery, injury prevention. Legally speaking, I can't say I fix injuries. So I always tell people, legally speaking, I can't say but if someone has like a raw ankle, pull growing, low back, generally speaking, when we talk a muscle, skeletal issue, like a muscle, not necessarily no skeletons or no ligaments, no bones, nothing like that I can help them regain their range of motion within about an hour or less, depending upon severity of pain. So in a lot of cases someone may walk in with a rolled ankle or pull growing, they'll limp in but they'll walk out. Wow, and I say that I mean it's like amazing because they'll have no pain. So I have like a lot of videos and social media proof and people will be like I don't have no pain. I don't have no pain, like it don't hurt no more. They'd be so surprised.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Is that always the case? No, but a lot of cases we're able to help that. So instead of saying we fix injuries, I say we help athletes regain lost range of motion following an injury, because typically that's what you do, like you get hurt, you start that injury cycle, there's inflammation or swelling, you can't really stand on, it's unstable, and what we do is go through a process of increasing the flexibility, strength of motion and then um and balance as well. We combine all those areas and we're able to get that range of motion back and actually improves in a lot of cases, because a lot of athletes will have an improved range of motion, um, after doing our recovery program. Yeah, so that's kind of like our business, our services we have to offer.

Speaker 2: 2:43

I love that and what first drew you into the athletic performance and set you on the path to becoming a coach.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Oh yeah, that's easy. So growing up I played sports all my life. I played baseball, football, track. Going into high school, I mean going to college, I played college football and then, like I was trying out for my pro day, it was the NFL pro day. It's like the pre-workout to see if you can make it to the NFL. They want to get your numbers, your stats, how high you jump, how tall you are, how much you weigh. So, going into that, I went through the workout, did pretty okay, I did decent, did okay, didn't get drafted. I mean I played arena football for several years. I enjoyed my career there.

Speaker 1: 3:23

I had came across an agent, bill Parise. He's actually, if you're from Pittsburgh, you know the Steelers or even know James Harrison. He's his agent. So yeah, so I was working with him and he had told me he said you know, if you had had decent training you probably could have made it to the NFL.

Speaker 1: 3:40

And that kind of blew my mind, because I'm like I work hard, you know I'm working, I'm putting in the hours and time, but the same thing I tell a lot of my athletes you can work really hard, just in the wrong direction, and that's where you don't want to be and that's where I was at and there's a lot of things that I know now that I should have been doing then. So once he told me that and I found out that you can actually learn about exercise science and everything like that so I don't tell a lot of people, it is because it's I don't know. That's not a bad thing, but my undergrad degree is in management, information systems, so like dealing with computers, programming stuff like that completely different field. But once I found out that you could, you can learn about sports training and how to become a better athlete, I went back and got my master's degree in exercise science to help promotion with the concentration, performance enhancement, injury prevention so pretty much the longest college major title ever.

Speaker 1: 4:32

But once I started understanding and started learning how to create workout programs and what athletes need, that's why the assessment is so important, because a lot of trainers and where people do workouts, they're just like oh, this looks cool, I want to do that. This looks good, lebron James is doing that, I want to do this. It's like you're not built like LeBron James, you're not built like Tyreek Hill, so you can't do those same workouts. You got to stair-step this and that's what we do is, when we find out what athletes need, we build that program, and that's what I wish I had growing up. So I put that emphasis on all my athletes. They come to me wanting to get better, like I need to get faster, stronger. I'm going to tell you exactly what it is so that you can reach those goals.

Speaker 2: 5:14

That's awesome. A lot of people probably struggle finding out what their strengths are, but when they come to you and they do that assessment, they're able to find out. So it looks like this is your strength, so let's go ahead and focus on that instead.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Well, actually focus on your weakness.

Speaker 2: 5:25

Whoa, yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me about that. Okay, yeah, yeah sure.

Speaker 1: 5:30

So let's say, if an athlete's really strong like their bench press let's say a football player or something like that their bench press is really strong and they want to get faster. Well, because their bench press is so strong, a lot of times they have a muscle imbalance. Their chest is too strong and their back isn't strong enough. You've got to create balance. So if I curl my arm up, my bicep bulges. My tricep has to relax. So if I work too much on my chest, my it comes crazy imbalance.

Speaker 1: 5:56

When you get that imbalance, when you're running to get your arm back, you may not be able to get it back as far as you want. That's like you see, like bodybuilders, something like that, real stiff, yes. So when you run to speed, the simple equation so a stride distance, times, drive, frequency, so basically, how far your stride is times, how quickly your turnover is. You want to have that balance and your arms and legs move together. So if your upper body is tight like this and you're not moving your upper body, then you're not going to be able to increase your strides. That's going to make you slower.

Speaker 1: 6:25

So we focus on the weakness. So, like we know your back is weak, we know your hip flexors are tight. We want to address those areas, get them better range of motion, get them activated, get them stronger and then from there you become a better athlete. That's why a lot of times we go through our recovery program. We're doing a lot of flexibility. I don't really use the term mobility because I know when I see a lot of people do mobility workouts, they kind of just keep doing the same mobility workouts and it's the same thing and you are working it, but you need to increase that range of motion. You want increased range of motion and also mobility as well. So mobility by itself isn't necessarily a great thing. You want to have flexibility too.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Okay, now that makes sense, where you do focus on the weakness to get that even better. So yes, that. And now I want to talk about mental health and injuries. How do those two go hand in hand?

Speaker 1: 7:15

Oh, so they say was about about 40% of all high school students at some point in time will experience some. That's where their mental health issues start, whether it be stress, anxiety, depression. So when you look at an athlete, when they get hurt, so of that 40%, how many of those do you think occur because they got hurt, they got an injury? So if you look at like the opioid addiction and stuff like that, a common theme is people are coming in because they have hurt, they're in pain, they're in back pain, knee pain, hip pain, just had surgery and they kind of get hooked because they don't know any better and they just maybe it's taking us to get out of pain. So when I talk about preventative, you know one, we can prevent some injuries. That's the other big thing too. 50% of all sports related injuries are actually preventable, and that's according to the CDC Center for Disease Control. Like I was saying earlier, like the example with the chest being too strong, that's the design of workout, that's a flaw in the workout training program. So they don't know they're working on the wrong way.

Speaker 1: 8:18

So but back to the mental health part. So if you as an athlete, you get hurt and you could have prevented this? You don't know any better, but you're still trying to recover. And sometimes athletes like a roll ankle is one of the most common injuries better, but you're still trying to recover. And sometimes athletes like a rolled ankle is one of the most common injuries and for a lot of athletes it's a reoccurring injury. And if you don't fix that muscle imbalance because a lot of athletes like I just want to get back on the field you know I hurt my ankle, they're hobbling around, they're trying to get back on the field, but all you're doing is progressing that injury, making it worse, you're creating more and more muscle imbalances, yeah, and and and then, once you have that, you know, then you get stressed, then you get depressed because then you're gonna feel, am I gonna get hurt again?

Speaker 1: 8:55

And then then, if you know, some athletes careers in. I was literally just talking with a great high school athlete, uh, who had to stop because you know he won so many championships but he had to stop because he kept getting hurt and and I can almost I don't want to say 100% because nothing is guaranteed, but I'm fairly sure it's due to his training and that's the other thing too is a great athlete. No one really looks at your training because you play so well. But athletes are like the ultimate compensators If they roll their ankle, they're going to find a way to play. But it just makes everything worse.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Yeah, no, don't do that guys.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:32

Come to Anthony.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Antonio Antonio, can I stop that? Oh my gosh. No, you're good, you're good, I'm getting name tag. Yeah, you do. How to improve as an athlete?

Speaker 2: 9:49

Yes, oh, what is this?

Speaker 1: 9:51

So this is a resistance band. This is just an example for the purpose of the story. Yes, so when someone wants to get faster or quicker, more explosive, even stronger, generally speaking, a lot of people will just I'm just going to work out, I'm going to do these workouts I've seen. One of the things I notice a lot with athletes is that you want to increase their flexibility and range of motion. Well, it depends on the age High schoolers they almost always need to increase their flexibility. Younger kids it's more core strength, more just strengthening their muscles and coordination. But I'm going to speak to like the older audience as well. So when I as an athlete to get you faster.

Speaker 1: 10:27

So, like I said before, the equation for speed is stride distance, how far you're stepping with each stride, and times stride frequency. So in order for your stride to be long, you need flexibility. If you don't have flexibility, each step is going to be shorter. So, to give you an example to run a 40-yard dash, the difference between that's what football players do to run a 40-yard dash, the difference between running a 40-yard desk like a 4.5 and a 4.3 is only like two feet. So it's not that far and that's basically with each step, that person is gaining about an inch or two versus the other person. So we're not talking a lot of space that creates that difference.

Speaker 1: 11:08

So in order to increase your stride and your flexibility, like if, if example, if I pull this band back a little bit and I let it go, it's not going to go that far. If I pull it back a lot and I let it go, then it will shoot across the room. That's because the further I pull this band back, the more elastic power is stored within the band. The same thing with your muscles the more flexibility you have in your muscles, the more elastic power that you can have stored. But then that's when you combine in sort of flexibility. But then some athletes may need the strength and that's the beauty of the. For me, like creating a training program is like what do athletes need to get better? So I said we go back to that weakness. We find out what is core strength, what is stability, what is flexibility, and all athletes are a little bit different, but that's how we get our athletes better through those different avenues.

Speaker 2: 11:59

I love that. And now you brought this book here today. Tell us a little bit about it and show us the cover.

Speaker 1: 12:04

Okay. So this, right here, this is how far do you want to go? This is a baseball team. A baseball team? Well, it is a baseball team. It's a book about my baseball team, the Next Level, and that's where the business came from. So our coach, coach, true, he, basically he had got, let's see, I think, maybe 15, 16 of us, you know, throughout the city, and we all played on different teams, and he put together a team. He was like I'm putting together a team you guys want to play Now? I was comfortable with my team, but I'm not going to lie, I was losing, we were losing, I was tired of losing. So it was like you want to play on this team? I'm like sure, I don't know, I don't care, and I say that because that's kind of like a theme in the book.

Speaker 2: 12:46

So back then, my nickname was John Doe don't give me more names, you're gonna confuse me.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Oh, I know right, right, especially that one, I forget. So they called me John Doe, simply because it's not like, uh, basically like so. Anytime the coach would be like all right, we're playing at this now. Imagine this is back in the 90s, so it's like cell phones communication, wasn't that so like your coach would tell you the athletes, the players um're playing, at what time to be at practice, all those particulars. He would tell their parents as well, but he would tell their kids as well. So my parents would ask where's the game at? I don't know who are we playing? I don't know. For me it didn't matter. I'm like just get me to the game so I can do work and we win.

Speaker 1: 13:26

So our baseball team, we were the best in the city city of Pittsburgh that's where we're originally from, pittsburgh and we won two out of three city league championships. We played down through River Stadium, which is now PNC Park. We played down there. We won a championship. We got to. I got to hit a game winning home run as well. I got to tag somebody out and there's some pictures in here I don't see where. Oh.

Speaker 2: 13:50

I see.

Speaker 1: 13:51

There's actually an old picture. I'm not sure if you guys can see it. This is me literally selling Next Level.

Speaker 2: 13:58

Oh my.

Speaker 1: 13:58

God. As you can see, it says Antonio John Doe Williams in there as well. This is back when gas prices were like $1.23, $1.36.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Oh my gosh, you got proof there.

Speaker 1: 14:09

Yeah, yeah, so they know. And the crazy thing is so that was at a car wash that we're using. We had a really nice jersey, so we had the fundraiser and stuff like that. So we had a car wash. I'm not going to lie, I was being lazy and what I mean by that. So when I was going out there, I was really enthusiastic really getting people to come in. So people were coming in and if you can get people to come in, you didn't have to wash the cars. So I was out there for a while and they said, all right, antonio, you got to switch. So I went and switched.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Then the cars started slowing down, yeah, and I was like, let me back out there, I'll bring that, I'll do that. Yeah, more so. And, uh, they got pictures. I'm so glad they got that now. But, yeah, the duchess of york, fergie um, she came to visit us, uh, because they wrote a book about us. Um, yeah, so we had a pretty good time, you know, just in that, and a lot of athletes in here did really well. You know, going to go to college and play different sports. Actually, to be honest, I don't think none of us play college baseball that's kind of shocking.

Speaker 1: 15:07

I know Right.

Speaker 2: 15:08

I know Right Like you guys were also deep in it. Yeah, I think that that would be like some of the next goals that you'd want to get to Right, but it's okay.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:16

Life changes, you go different paths. It happens Right. And now I want to ask you about upcoming corrective exercise speed camp that you've got coming July 12th in DC. Can you talk to us more about it?

Speaker 1: 15:28

Yeah, so I'm bringing what we do at Pittsburgh down here. I already been to Tampa Bay, I've been into DMV area, more like a one-on-one to help athletes recover I don't want to say from injuries, but that's kind of what it is. But that's what we're doing here at this corrective exercise speed camp. We're assessing our athletes for muscle imbalances. We're showing them our flexibility recovery program which is going to help them regain that lost range of motion. So a lot of athletes are going to come in. If you're sore, you're tired, you're in the middle of summer workouts, you're getting beat up, come on in. This is the perfect camp for you and I have videos like I said, the social media showing people exactly how they feel after they get done with their recovery.

Speaker 1: 16:10

So many people not even just athletes too general population people who had hip replacements. It's funny because one of the cases I had an athlete who had a snowboard accident when he tore like 90% of his ACL. So he goes to his doctor. His said it's it's pretty bad, we may need to do surgery. Let's try physical therapy out first to see how that goes, and my and he's a former after, like he, I trained him in high school then afterward you start with a work field and his doctor said, well, well, well, no. He said he's like can I, can I go to my guy instead of going to physical therapy? And the doctor said, is this someone who knows what they're doing, just like a cousin or something? So he was like, honestly, he's probably better than any guy you got. And I'm like, oh, when he told me, I'm like, don't be telling no doctor that I got better than that. But but he had that much faith in me because he's seen so much I did and at the time, even though I helped a lot of athletes recover, I never helped no one recover from an ACL tear. That's what I love about my clientele and base is they trust me. Like, if I can't handle something, there's been cases like, no, I'm not touching this, go see a medical professional, get some more information, and I usually suggest that unless I have certain assessments that we figure out. So he went out and he so he came back to me and we started working through everything. I had a game plan of what I wanted to attack and do and about think about four sessions, cause he had two weeks to work on it. So I gave him the game plan and worked with me about three to four sessions. When he went back to his doctor, his doctor said you're good, like you don't? You don't need surgery. And then, within probably a week of that, he said he basically got full range of motion and don't have any pain. I'm like are you serious? He's like, yeah, I'm like.

Speaker 1: 17:54

So when I say the corrective exercise, speed camp, we're going to be focused on that. That's like the main portion, because in order to get faster, you got to work on that. The other side of that is we're going to teach you fundamentals of speed and agility. So literally right now, we have some of the fastest track runners that are coming up in America, like in Western PA, so we got speed coming and we work on those areas. So we want to teach you exactly what you need to get faster.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Because when I look around, like on YouTube, social media, there's a lot of information. There's always a lot of information. But I like to break down the science of what you need and that's why I tell my athletes if you ever have a question or concern, talk to me, let's figure it out. But I'm going to explain to you the science of what you need to get better and it's been proven athlete after athlete, sport after sport. So that's what we'll be doing at the Corrective Exercise Speed Camp, and also we'll be doing agility core ply metrics. We're going to incorporate all that you know to a fun day and that's going to be held at the friendship collegiate academy, I believe it's in southeast dc okay yeah beautiful and it's going to be july 12th, so tune into that everybody.

Speaker 2: 18:59

And do they have to rsvp or anything, or just yeah?

Speaker 1: 19:02

you can go to our website and um, and I'll uh you can go to our website and sign up through there. Uh, that'll be would be like the cause you want to uh sign up before. I believe it's July seven, so like a week before or five days that Monday before you want to um sign up that way. That's when the registration closed.

Speaker 2: 19:18

So get on that, Love that. And I see you brought. What is this? A massage gun. Did you want to talk about that? About that?

Speaker 1: 19:24

Kind of sort of. So I see this a lot, I see people use this a lot and they'll be like, they'll be hung, they get hurt, they'll hung her down. I see that, yes, I'm like, oh my goodness, uh, actually can be bad, because you can desensitize, you can overdo it, you don't want to like. This can be good. It's like anything like a scalpel, you know, in a doctor's hand. It's a good thing and a crazy person Not so much. Yeah, exactly. So the reason why I mentioned that because when athletes get hurt, they want to hunker down on that spot and I tell people all the time don't chase pain, and what I mean by that.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Wherever you have pain, that may not necessarily be the site or the origin of the problem. So I was in grad school. One thing that kind of blew my mind about training programs is like when we first got there it was like, all right, if a client has a drop left arch in their left foot, how does that get them right? Shoulder pain, I'm like what I got to even make sense, like what do you mean? But mechanically, like there's a way, like basically how if this muscle, if your arch, is dropped in your left foot, your knee starts bowing in, your hip starts shifting your back, so it's the kinetic chain. So the kinetic chain gets off. Once one thing gets off, that's how it can affect everything else. So you want to make sure that you're focused in all these areas.

Speaker 1: 20:40

So I say this. So if I, when I say, don't chase the pain. If I grab my shirt right here, you see how my collar gets tight. Yeah, instead of me like, oh, it's just tight, let me try to loosen it up. That's not the problem. The collar being tight is a byproduct of the person grabbing my shirt. If they let my shirt go, then the collar is going to fix Same thing. Let's say you got low back pain. You got low back pain. It could be due to your students. You sit a lot. You sit on your butt. Your glutes are your most powerful muscle in your body. Those become inactive. You get tight and weak hip flexors. Your obliques get weak. Your upper, neck and back those muscles get weakened and lengthened. I love this.

Speaker 2: 21:16

Yeah, because start getting that like your head is like what?

Speaker 1: 21:19

seven, eight, 10 pounds, depending upon. If your head is leaning forward like this all day, it's straining these muscles and it's shortening these muscles. So that's when you start getting pain and complications. But let someone get low back pain. They're like I got twists or bend or move to try to get some relief, but that's ultimately not solving the problem.

Speaker 1: 21:44

So we take the same solutions to athletes when we're talking about knee pain, ankle pain, because a lot of times when I'm working with somebody they'll be like excuse me, I'm working with someone. They'll be like it's this knee, it's not that knee. I'll be like well, you want to balance it. The reason why I tell them that is because let's say and I can't say for all but a lot of times people after they get hurt, they go to physical therapy or something along those lines. They'll focus on one side, like if I hurt this knee, they focus on this side. But the whole time you're putting more weight and pressure on this knee. So now this knee is doing the work of the other knee and that's what happens. You go through physical therapy or rehab of some sort, this knee gets strong, but then, guess what, this knee starts getting weak, this knee starts being overused. So when I work on athletes, we balance their body out, um, so that helps to prevent a lot of injuries and that's what I said before.

Speaker 1: 22:38

So with this it could be good, it could be bad, depending on how you use it. But don't just drill on that one spot. Go to all other areas around it as well and, technically speaking, I would suggest that you don't use on yourself because you can't really relax. So like if I'm trying to do it on my chest in order for me to bring my arm like this, all these muscles are tightened up. If it's tense, it's not gonna get through. So like if I make a muscle with my bicep like this, if I try to dig my thumb in there, I can't get get that deep into it. If I let my arm hang and relax, now I can get in there. So when you're doing like the massage gun, if your body is tight or tense, it's not doing nothing. Psychologically it feels like it probably working and doing something, but it's really not.

Speaker 2: 23:18

Yeah Well, I'm glad that you touched on that, because I see these things everywhere at five and below. I see them on Instagram and everyone's just probably like massage gun happy, just you know. So I'm glad that you touched on that. Before I get to my final question, is there anything else that you would like to share or that I have not touched on? You have the floor.

Speaker 1: 23:36

Oh anything else? No, I actually think we touched on just about everything. I mean, you did a great job, so you kind of threw the alley-oop up and just dunking it. No, I think everything's good. I can't really think of anything else. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:53

Okay, cool, it's a team effort here. Okay, my last question Is there anything that anyone has ever told you that has resonated, even growing up? Maybe a coach told you something inspiring and now you repeat it to, maybe your friends or family, or you just like to live by it Two things.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Yeah, all right, two things. I remember this is funny. I remember in high school when I was playing football, I was working out. I was younger, so like I graduated when I was 17 in high school, so like they literally had to write me in. I think my parents signed me off when I went to college. So I say that because when I was in like like 10th grade I was really young and I'm trying to compete. And actually the year before I got to my high school, my football team was number one in the country. So we're literally like this is like I think 95, 94, 95 at Penn Hills, my high school was ranked number one in the nation. You can look it up, all right. So yeah, so they were a really good team.

Speaker 1: 24:44

So when I got there, I was trying really hard working out and I remember my coach was like he's like you keep that work ethic up, you're going to go somewhere far and this is in the summer, so I'm thinking like I'm going to be starting this year. And then I was on a bench. I was like I mean, from varsity I was on a bench. I was like, oh, but it didn't mean nothing. I mean at the time I just oh, ok, I'm doing good this year, but at the time once he told me I just knew to keep working hard and I actually was able to start and do everything like that and actually when my team needed me I was able to come in and perform. The other thing is so my roommate in college, so like I came, I went to a small Division II school, shippensburg University. It's in Pennsylvania. So we had, I think, within my five years, five people go to the NFL, which is a lot for one team at a Division II school. But one of my roommates and teammates, brent Grimes and some people may know him as he had a nickname Optimus Grimes because he made this crazy Megatron who's Calvin Johnson. He played for Detroit Lions. Brent makes a one-handed catch, not over, but by Calvin Johnson Megatron. After he made that play he got nicknamed Optimus Grimes. I say that because we're coming from a small Division II school.

Speaker 1: 26:04

And one thing it was funny that I always would watch him do. He always practiced his technique. I'm like like we'd be in here, just like in the living room or something like that. Instead of like getting up walking to the kitchen, he would get up, back pedal and then break into the kitchen like practicing his defensive back moves, like why are you doing it?

Speaker 1: 26:21

But what he was really doing was ingraining that movement to become second nature and and I didn't realize at the time and I think I'm not sure if he knew what he was doing, but he was doing it and he mastered the technique. Then when he got to the NFL he actually won a war of being like really technically sound. So that showed me, even though he came from a small Division II school, like we had good coaches but we didn't have like technically sound NFL coaches, coaches, but we didn't have like technically sound like NFL coaches. So to see him, you know, be so technically sound and kind of do it on his own, uh, it showed me that like you got to practice and redefine certain movements um all the time and become great, become great.

Speaker 2: 26:59

That's incredible, and thank you so much for sharing those two stories and what really, uh, sparked something in you, so thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 27:07

I don't probably thank you.