WHAT’S IN A NAME?

You are given a name at birth long before we have the ability to speak or even comprehend what such a label may mean. You then spend your life shaping the character and creating the identity that will forever be synonymous with that name. As Shakespeare wrote, “a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet”, so it can be argued that a name is nothing more than an arbitrary label. So where am I going with this?

When it came time to name our company, my wife and her design agency, Alfa Charlie, instilled in Dana and I that choosing the right name was of the utmost importance. The meaning behind the name would shape our entire brand, how it is portrayed to our customers, and guide our future decisions and the companies direction… no pressure though!

Symbiotic Training Center

START WITH ‘WHY’

Dana and I chose to start this journey together after I had recruited Dana to work alongside me for a regional training company. I thought we could collectively create a better template for training youth athletes, and roll it out to the masses. Dana and I were having great success with our higher-level athletes by creating individualized programs based off of thorough assessments. So much so that we began to realize just how blatantly ineffective the popular model of generalized training to the masses is for youth athletes, in particular baseball and softball athletes. We were left with the option to compromise our beliefs for the sake of conforming to an existing model that was so clearly broken, or stick to our guns.

Loosing your job and the salary that comes along with it quickly helps you realize your priorities, and when starting your new company the ‘WHY’ becomes obvious. Neither Dana nor I are willing to sacrifice the quality of the product we offer our athletes. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…” When it comes to training we can do without the pain, but when it comes to starting our own business, pulling up carpet and tiles for a couple of days means it comes with the territory!

SYMBIOTIC

The idea came after a lazy afternoon spent watching a BBC documentary on Netflix about the symbiotic relationship that fungi have with other plants, which was absolutely fascinating! By allowing a fungus to live on a tree for example, the tree is able to have access to and absorb more nutrients than it could by itself. The fungi in turn suddenly have access to a vast system of roots far greater than that of its own. Some days later this made me think of the situation Dana and I were currently in. We were already sold on the idea that together we could accomplish far more than we could separately. By further partnering with like-minded people such as Kahl Goldfarb and his company Water and Sports Physical Therapy, suddenly the goal to provide a new and one of kind training experience to baseball and softball athletes in Southern California was within reach. Combining our unique skills, passion, and unwillingness to sacrifice quality for quantity, we have since been able to create a symbiotic relationship enabling us to provide world-class service to our athletes.

Symbiotic Training

SO WHAT?

So why am I telling you this? Well other than introducing our kickass company Symbiotic Training Center and our relationship with Water and Sports Physical Therapy, I’m taking an unapologetic jab at the mediocre training unfortunately being sold to baseball and softball athletes! Sure there are some major exceptions, and I hope to highlight the excellent work some of them are doing in the near future. It will be impossible however to document our journey as a company and share our experiences without questioning the practices of some of our peers. The Sensei himself Eric Cressey once said in regard to programming, “What boxes does it check? What are the alternatives?” By no means do we think we have everything figured out, in fact we have far more questions than answers, however our promise is to always return to our WHY? Why do we use the techniques that we do? How do we know they are working? Is there a better way?

More often than not there is a better way, so we’re constantly realizing our mistakes and refining our approach. Which, in turn reiterates just how outdated and nonsensical some of the most popular current training models have become. One size does not fit all in regard to improving human performance and quality of life, and all too often it fits nobody whatsoever!

And so the journey begins…