My junior college baseball coach, Joe Antonio, was a tough, demanding coach. I played for him at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York, from 1995 to 1997, and those two years were some of the best of my life.
Coming out of high school, I was a solid player. I started on varsity for three seasons and earned All-Conference honors as a right-handed pitcher in my junior and senior years. I was good, but untested—a big fish in a small pond from a rural part of the state, a town with only 55 graduates, no traffic lights, no fast-food joints, surrounded by dairy farms and cornfields, living in a bubble of naive bliss. I did grow up with electricity and running water, and I wasn’t the subject of any “Best” or “Most Likely To…” quips in the yearbook.
So off I went to Syracuse to play for Coach Antonio. Syracuse isn’t a huge city, but it felt enormous compared to my hometown. A three-story building skyline seemed tall; fine dining options existed beyond a rotating hot-dog rack at a gas station; there was Old Navy and Applebee’s. The city lights, the late nights, and the energy were a big change.
Coach Antonio’s style was the complete opposite of my laid-back high school coach. He was a hard-nosed, perfectionist leader who yelled and cussed—though not at the players—held us to high standards, and expected things done a certain way. If you didn’t pull your weight, he’d let you know, sometimes even during warm-ups. In the first week of tryouts, many players from bigger schools dropped out. I don’t know their reasons, but my guess is they were coddled or weren’t willing to put in the work. Many assumed they’d make the team on past accolades alone.
For me, the toughness wasn’t unbearable. If you did what you were told, worked hard, and didn’t slack, he was in your corner when college programs started contacting him about players. I did just that: I showed up on time, followed directions, trained hard, kept my mouth shut, and stayed after practice to lift and sprint with teammates. I did get chewed out at times, but I didn’t take it as a personal attack. He was trying to teach me, to prepare me for the next level in baseball—and in life.
He helped me become a better player, and I ended up with several scholarship offers, eventually playing at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. More than that, he made me a stronger, more resilient man—traits that still shape my work as a fitness professional today.
What’s my point? Sometimes I want to tell young (and sometimes older) fitness professionals to shut up and listen. Eric Cressey and I often say: You have two ears, two eyes, and one mouth. Use them in that order. Listen, watch, learn… then speak.
I was talking with a student who was close to graduating, and all he did in our ten-minute chat was complain about professors—about how this one was an idiot and that one had no idea what she was talking about. I wanted to say, “Dude, shut the eff up. You haven’t done anything. Just because you read a site and host a side podcast doesn’t make you God’s gift to the field.” Yes, some things we learn in school are outdated, and open discourse between professor and student is valuable. But there’s a fine line between questioning and being a know-it-all.
The same goes for aspiring trainers chasing a quick payday. Things aren’t going to happen overnight. You won’t wake up tomorrow with a six-figure brand, you won’t work with pro athletes on day one, and you won’t open a 10,000-square-foot facility next week. It can happen someday, but only if you put in the work, consistently, over the long haul.
Maybe those things will happen. But not until you shut up and do the work.
In the end, maybe my classmates knew something I didn’t back then.
