Athlete Unleashed: A Holistic Approach to Unleashing Your Best Inner Athlete

By Aaron Robinet

Back Cover



We all have two roads upon which we can choose. The first road is to allow our limiting beliefs such as fear, anger, and doubt to shackle us and hinder our ability to achieve our true desires in life. Athlete Unleashed helps you navigate the second road, which allows you to break free from those shackles, find your passion, and gives you the steps to unleash your best inner athlete!

Back when I was a high school baseball player, guidance and strength training for high school sports was not too advanced. The unfortunate truth is that for current athletes, the training practices have not advanced much. Current training practices are little better than general run-of-the-mill fitness for most of our athletes, and they deserve better. They deserve a program that allows them the chance to compete at the highest level they desire, while achieving peak health and fitness.

Whether you are attempting to make the team, or you are ready to achieve your next level of athletics, this is the book for you. Athlete Unleashed helps guide you to find your passion while guiding you in addressing the key components to become more successful. These components include developing the proper mindset, balancing your work effort with the appropriate recovery, specific nourishment for your needs, the right movement for your success, the steps for injury prevention, recovery from injury, and the planning for your season—as well as your future!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646546992

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Athlete Unleashed

A Holistic Approach to Unleashing Your Best Inner Athlete

Aaron Robinet

Copyright © 2020 Aaron Robinet

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books, Inc.

Meadville, PA

First originally published by Fulton Books 2020

ISBN 978-1-64654-698-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64654-699-2 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

I want to thank my parents who gave me love and the skills they had. To my brother for teaching me life lessons that I needed. For all those that guided me along my journey.

I especially want to thank my wife, Dannie, for being the rock when I needed and the amazing encourager I have grown to rely on. Without you, this book would not have been possible!

Warning

The information in this book is not intended as a replacement for any type of medical advice. Prior to taking part in any physical exercise program, it is advised to get a medical clearance by a health care professional. Aaron Robinet is not responsible for any accident or injury (including death) as a result of participating in any type of exercise, wellness, or holistic program, including following the principles presented in this book.

Your Passion Is Calling!

Are you ready to answer the call of your true passion? What is your true passion? Is your passion to become a professional athlete? If you are looking to take your sport to the next level, and the next, what are you going to do to make this happen? What are your steps? Do you know what you need to do in order to turn your passion into a reality?

Consider this, only 7 percent of high school athletes go on to play college sports at the college varsity level. Only 2 percent of all high school athletes play at the Division 1 level, with slightly less than 2 percent of those being scholarship athletes. Of those that play in NCAA sports, only 2 percent of those athletes become professional athletes! I bring these staggering statistics up not to discourage you. Rather, I want to point out that if you want to be part of this exclusive club of athletes, it will take more than just raw talent. You need a systematic plan to maximize your best attributes while addressing potential weaknesses. To do this takes more than the right workout plan. You must also address your nourishment with the right foods that work best specifically for you. You need to look at your setbacks and losses in your athletics as an opportunity to discover where you need to focus to become better. You will need to look at how to put together the best workout plan for your specific needs based on your sport, your position, as well as your personal areas that you’ll need to address. You also want to reduce your injury risk. Ninety percent of all high school athletes report some sort of sports-related injury, while 54 percent of student athletes report playing injured. We will address how to avoid injuries and deal with injuries, if they arise. Knowing whom the people are that you can count on when you’re dealing with the challenges that are inevitable during any journey through life is vital to your success. We will address how to increase your ability to have good communication with those important people in your life.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. (Benjamin Franklin)

Without putting a plan into place, you virtually have no chance of succeeding in your sport long-term. Planning takes two forms: planning for your ultimate success and having the plan in place for what you are going to do once your competitive phase of your athletics comes to an end. We will cover both of these plans in-depth.

The purpose of this book is to help you compete to the best of your ability and reach the highest level you can achieve as an athlete. This book is also to help you navigate life after competition. I wrote this book to keep you from suffering a major failure that leaves you making excuses as to why you didn’t succeed or why you quit, constantly thinking of the could-haves and should-haves while living in the past, instead of creating the fabulous life you desire. This book is about taking the best part of you forward on the competitive field and beyond. Sports teach so much about life, if you are willing to learn, listen, reflect, and apply the lessons! My goal is to help you discover the deeper meaning of your existence while helping you become the best version of yourself.

Although sports have become more and more scientifically based, we are going in a different direction. For all the breakthroughs scientific approaches discover, there is an absolute need for you to understand what you, your body, and your soul need to be at peace, in the chaos of life in sports and beyond the competition. Science is based on probabilities. These probabilities are based on the numbers of people in studies. This book is based on one person—you! This book will help you discover your best self and what you need in order to compete at your best, regardless of what everyone else is doing. I believe that to be the best athlete you can be, it is necessary to understand and tap into your best attributes while addressing areas where you might be weak. This can only be done when you understand and communicate with your body. You must understand how far you can push yourself and where your lines of balance end. As well as how far outside these lines you can push and for how long before you suffer the ill effects. We will address these in great detail so that you have an understanding of how you can push yourself to limits you never thought possible, with a greatly reduced chance of your body, mind, or soul breaking down.

My Story

If everything went right, could I have made it and achieved my goal? It’s possible. But my life didn’t work that way because I didn’t have the tools at that time to achieve my dream, even if I could have achieved my actual goal.

I am flawed! I am not perfect because I am human. A better way to say this is I am not perfect, which is proof that I am human!

When I graduated from high school, my passion was baseball, and my dream was to play for the New York Yankees. I even had a plan that might have taken me several steps closer.

However, by the end of that summer, I had quit my dream, stopped pursuing my passion, and I was left with a crisis of identity! This ultimately led me to gain weight at a rapid pace, and by the time I was twenty-one-years old, I was obese. I weighed 272 pounds and felt that I had no chance or ability to turn things around.

To understand what happened, I need to take you back, way back in my life!

My family was a typical one. There was my mom, my dad, and my older brother. My dad has hearing issues, which stem from his twenties when he was on the flight line while serving in the United States Air Force. He is almost completely deaf in one ear and has trouble hearing out of the other. When I was young, I had a speech impediment. I had a difficult time enunciating words. So much so that I had to have surgery on my tongue to help correct the problem. Imagine being a five-year-old child that had speech issues with a dad that would have a hard time hearing even if the child’s speech was clear. Then there was my older brother, who was two and a half years older and had recently lost his only-child spotlight due to his younger brother arriving. To compensate for his need for external attention, my brother used to pick on me. For me in this situation, I felt like I wasn’t heard, that I had no voice unless I was loud and angry. As a result, to get attention, especially from my parents, I would throw tantrums. These tantrums would bring me the attention I needed. Yes, these tantrums served a purpose at that time. When my brother would pick on me, I would loudly draw attention, and he would get punished. In short, I was learning subconsciously that being loud and showing anger was good because I got what I wanted.

Fast forward to my fifth-grade year. We lived in San Jose, California, the area where I had grown up and lived all my life to that point. My parents had purchased a house on ten acres in Loomis, California, approximately two and a half hours away from my hometown. My parents wanted me to experience living in a small town where everyone knew each other. Of course, this is ideal in theory, everybody knowing one another and getting along with each other. Reality proved much different! We moved midway through that school year, as soon as our new house had become available. It was a challenge to adjust to a new school where kids saw me as an outsider. For me being introverted, that ten-acre property felt like a safe haven. I would often just play alone when I was home from school. But when I was in school, it was tough. I was bullied, teased, and really felt like I didn’t belong. Both my brother and I went to the same school, Loomis Elementary, which was a K through eighth grade school. My brother was in eighth grade at that time. I remember one day that first year, I had just been bullied, and I was thinking of how I didn’t like the school or the kids. I looked on the other side of the playground and saw my brother being dragged across the playground by two kids against his will. All I could think was I hate this place. It felt like there was no peace! It made me so angry, yet at this point and for a long time to come, I had no constructive outlet for that anger.

When the school year ended, I was able to go to Massachusetts to visit my mom’s side of the family in Leominster, Massachusetts, just west of Boston. I stayed with my grandfather and my aunt, Lisa. There was also a lot of family that I was able to visit in the area. This felt like home away from home. My grandfather liked to treat me to Friendly’s, and he and I went many times during this trip. Friendly’s was a basic American cuisine but also served the biggest, most elaborate sundaes that you could imagine. And I had plenty of sundaes on that trip! Too many! By the time my trip was complete, I had put on quite a few pounds. When I went back to school, I had to deal with those classmates that I didn’t get along with plus another reason to fear being teased and bullied, those extra pounds. My first order of business when I got back to school was to drop my weight any way I could. I did two main things: I skipped lunch, and instead, I would be first in line to check out a ball during lunch recess. I played some sport each lunch recess without eating lunch. And having the metabolism of an eleven-year-old active boy, it worked.

However, that year was extremely tough. Not only did I have my sixth-grade classmates picking on me, but I also had some of the fifth graders also picking on me. It was humiliating! Sixth grade was difficult for me because I still felt like I really didn’t fit in. That spring, there was a field trip for a few days to the coast. This trip was to see the tide pools and the sea creatures and experience the ocean environment. I had zero interest in spending several days 24-7 with these kids that I didn’t even want to be around even for a few hours. When it was time for this trip, there was one lone sixth grader that wasn’t on that trip—me! In fact, I never even showed either of my parents the permission slip for the trip so I could hopefully ensure that I didn’t have to go. However, where was I spending my time? With those fifth graders I had no love for either.

On the last day of sixth grade, I was so happy because I was finally done with that horrible year, that horrible grade, and had a few months away from those kids. Then I got my report card. When I open it up, my heart sank. My teacher’s recommendation was for me to repeat sixth grade. I was humiliated. I just wanted to crawl into a cave and never come out! I was faced with repeating that grade again, this time with younger kids that were already bullying me, and my impending setback was more ammunition for them! When I arrived at home, my mom called me from her work. It was as if she had a premonition as to the exact moment when I arrived at home.

The first question she asked was Did you get your report card?

Yeah, I reluctantly answered.

What does it say about your grade next year?

I didn’t know I could sink lower than I already had earlier. I don’t know, I answered.

It should be right there! she responded.

I can’t find it! I replied.

Looking back, I imagine how she probably thought, if this kid couldn’t find that easy-to-find information on the report card, maybe he needed to repeat sixth grade. Finally, I broke down crying and told her. It says that I need to repeat sixth grade.

She said, Okay. We ended the phone call and never spoke of it again. When the information for which teacher I had the next year arrived, it said I was in the seventh grade. I was so relieved!

This was also the summer that I played organized baseball for the first time! It was such a delight. I loved everything about the sport. And I played with a lot of kids from other schools. These kids seemed more accepting of me. I think, in part, because the language of baseball is as much about what you say through your play on the field as the words you speak. You are also on the same team playing against other teams. This was the first time I felt truly accepted since we’d moved from San Jose!

From this point on, I felt more confident, and I started to make more friends, both in baseball and back at my school. When I started high school, it was easier for me to make new friends. By the time I was a senior, I felt such a passion for baseball, and I was ready to take my passion to the next level!

During my senior baseball season, one of my nemesis joined the team. His name was Mike. He was one of those kids in that fifth-grade class when I was in sixth grade. He was now a junior, and I was a senior. This should have been water under the bridge, right? But Mike was more a symbol of my troubles to come that year, not the reason. We were both pitchers. Admittedly, he was better than me, at this point. And he was very cocky! To make things worse, I had an off year on the mound. I had less control of both my pitches and of my anger. My anger had been mostly dormant since my sixth-grade year. Yet my anger would serve to bite me in my ass that year! Up to this point, my best communication was in the sport of baseball with the pitches I threw, the balls and strikes. However, during my senior year, my communication breakdown was on full display. Yet no one, especially not me, understood this was what was happening. When I would be pitching, I would throw a pitch I felt was a strike, and to my dismay, the umpire lacked the understanding and called it a ball. Are you blind! I would scream in my head with my stern stare. Yet I wouldn’t actually say a word. Instead, I would think, Okay, let’s throw the next pitch in the same place so he can understand his error! And Again, you call a ball? At that time, I lacked the skill to change my communication style with a pitch in a different location. Yes, I was stubborn. This was when I had some control of my pitches. There were other times on the mound that I just had less control and became angry with myself. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. I was supposed to get to the majors. I was supposed to play in the Cathedral, the house that Ruth built for