Athlete Journal

Stress can be a motivator or it can bring you to your lowest point. Living in a stressful state of mind can cause disease and prematurely end your life. But, if you understand how to handle your stress, you can use it as a tool to help achieve success as well. Without stress, most successful people would not accomplish the goals they aimed for. Stress can propel you into a place of critical thinking.

Let me share my story. It all started when I was a young kid in youth sports, and there was so much pressure from my family to perform, and be one of the starters on the football team. I must admit, I wasn't really that good of a player and was playing out the place. And I was in situations where I was yelled at to be tougher, to be faster, and to make the play…

I wouldn't sit back and get into my feelings but I would be active. Control the things I can control. I would commit to the process and never look back. Forget what everyone else is doing and focus on your strategy.

1. Clean up my social media. Use it for brand building and less personal. It's ok to like and retweet some things but focus on promoting things that relate to your dreams and goals

2. I would have my direct messages open for a college coach to have access to me on Twitter or instagram

3. I would post one exciting and interesting sports clip and explain what my job was on that play. I would talk about my execution

4. I would follow a few coaches in the program I'm interested in. I would tag them on the highlight I post each week. Keep in mind, do not tag Division …

As a former athlete myself, being motivated helped me accomplish plenty of tasks and goals. The problem was that I wasn't always excited about completing the task I needed to improve each day. Motivation, Dreams and Goal setting wont be enough so I want to give you some things to think about on your journey.

Build great habits: Write down a list of things and tasks you need to perform each day to improve. For example, three times a week (M,W,F), I will work on my angle breaks coming out of a backpedal at 6PM or I will work to catch 50 footballs each day to improve my hand/eye coordination. Add those to your habits of brushing your teeth, eating, etc

Build system: A system is a group of activities that work together to achieve a set goal by a certain day. For example, I wake up, Brush my teeth,…

I want you to understand what level of competition means to college coaches. Strength of schedule matters in the recruiting process. Some years back when I first started assisting athletes in the process, I emailed a coach about a player and I told him that the kid was an explosive running back that could play division I football. The recruiting coordinator says to me kindly, please don't over do it after showing me an example of an elite running back, I understood his point. My guy ended up playing division II football on a scholarship but he definitely didn't look like the other recruit. Here is the reason why from the coach.

1) He rushes for a lot of yards but he is not competing against the top defenses. He said none of the front 7 the player was playing against will be a division I player.

2) He mentioned…