Sign Up for the SAPT 3rd Annual Thanksgiving Lift

Thanksgiving morning we will be hosting the SAPT 3rd Annual Thanksgiving Lift. It goes without saying that it is an utter blast, and a great way to prep your body for the inevitable engorging to take place during the Turkey Feast later in the day.

Sign Up Details

We're actually having a sign up this year, to ensure that we're not overcrowded and everyone has ample room to move around. You can sign up for either 8am or 930am. We'll be shutting down at 11am. Please contact Kelsey, at kelsey@studentathletept.com, and let her know what time you'd like to arrive, and to make sure you have a spot.

Also: Note that you don't have to be a current member of SAPT to join in the fun. We love to use this as a time for friends, family, and those who simply live locally (or not so locally, as we have those driving up from Richmond), to share a good time before heading off to our respective celebrations!

50% OFF: The 50/50 Training Challenge

The 50/50 Training Challenge - 50% OFF for 1 Special Team!

If you're a regular reader of SAPTstrength, you've no doubt noticed our recent introduction of Mental Mondays which is leading the way to SAPT's additional focus towards mental preparation and coaching. Well, Mental Mondays are merely the tip of the iceberg in new service offerings that are directed at one specific portion of our mission statement:

Our mission is to provide quality comprehensive training products and services to help facilitate and educate our clientele towards athletic and intellectual success on every level from amateur to professional. To achieve our mission we will conduct business with the following responsibilities in mind: obey the law, take care of our employees, take care of our clientele, respect our competition, respect our environment, participate in our community...

I crafted that statement over 5 years ago. Happily, we've been adhering to this mission quite well. But, there is one main area that still needs work:

• "...help facilitate and educate our clientele towards... intellectual success on every level..." This one's now in our crosshairs!

Since we've recently teamed up with CAPE Performance Mental Coach Brian Levenson, SAPT is now capable of formally addressing the intellectual (or mental) success of our clients!

Our first official combined service offering is called The 50/50 Challenge.

This challenge is a grueling combination of physical and mental training challenges to help your team improve cohesion and learn to handle & overcome adversity. *Think of this as similar in end goal to ropes courses, but with a direct link to tangible performance indicators and much closer to sport itself.

Throughout this one-day physical and mental intensive session, you and the team's coaching staff will learn how to reinforce your team’s and each individual’s mental approach to all aspects of training.

Your athletes will finish the day with a thorough understanding of how their mental game impacts and affects everything from their rehab programs, weight training, practices, and - ultimately - wins and losses.

Uncover and discover a secondary layer of benefits reaped from your team’s regular practices, strength and conditioning program, and competitions as the 5 Primary Physical and Mental Training Themes converge throughout the day:

1. Focus and Concentration 
2. Team Cohesion 
3. Preparation/Routine 
4. Energy Management
5. Controlling Controllables 

Coaches: Steve Reed and Brian Levenson

Location: The SAPT training facility

Date: We will try to stick to Saturdays (but this can be customized)

Time: 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM for this special offering

Cost: 1000.00 per team 500.00 for one special team!

Why the deep discount? It's simple, we've already booked some local NCAA D1 college programs and need the chance to get in a practice run to work out any kinks that may pop up!

If you want to take advantage of this offer, you must have a team that is available to come to the SAPT training facility for this challenge NO LATER THAN SEPTEMBER 1st!

Email, ME: sarah@studentathletept.com, to get signed up!

After all, you don't have to lose games to learn how to handle adversity!

Rentable Practice Space: You Want It, We Got It

Beginning Monday, August 13th...

Rentable Practice Space Available:

• Features:
• 35' x 35' open area for sport specific skill development.
• Get creative! We think it's perfect for baseball & softball, basketball, soccer, dryland training, golf, lacrosse, and more!
• Group and Team reservations WELCOME!
• "Freelance" skill instructors WELCOME!*
• 3-Batting Cages
• 15' x 40'
• Ideal for soft-toss and tee work
• Group and Team reservations WELCOME!
• "Freelance" skill instructors are WELCOME!*
• Maximum 3 athletes and one coach per cage (or 4 athletes).
• Or, Take the Cake, with a TOTAL FACILITY RESERVATION!
• 40' x 80' open space
• Benefits:
• Make reservations online & from your SMART PHONE. Easy peezy.
• Monitored by SAPT staff to ensure a safe, clean, and welcoming environment is maintained at all times.
• A low total facility capacity is enforced to encourage a safe & spacious training environment!
• Pricing:
• 35' x 35' skill space - $30.00 per hour
• 15' x 40' batting cage - $40.00 per hour
• 40' x 80' total facility - $150.00 per hour
• Location:
• 3831 Pickett Road, Fairfax, VA 22031

Ready to roll?!?! Contact Ryan at ryan@studentathletept.com or 800-511-9685 ext. 7 to get setup!

Limited reservations available beginning Monday, August 13th. Book today before the rest of NOVA gets wind of our little gem on Pickett!

*Skill instruction is subject to SAPT's review and acceptance. No, personal trainers or strength and conditioning coaches, please.

Olympic Trials, Wimbledon, Where I've Been

So, today is my first post in about 4-weeks. It feels kind of awkward... like if you've been purposely avoiding someone and then run into them at a store. I, of course, haven't been purposely avoiding my posts, I just feel kind of bad that I've been breaking my own rules. You see, we have two simple rules for SAPT posts: get it up by 10am and make sure there is fresh content every day of the week. Obvisouly, I break the 10am rule almost every week and recently had to break the fresh content rule, too.

Sigh! It couldn't be helped... I have at least four partially finished posts marked as "draft" just waiting to be completed.

Well, here's a quick wrap-up of some recent events:

1. Two track athletes I coach at Mason made it to the Olympic Trails. One went for the long jump and triple jump and the other for 400m. I'm proud to say David made it to the FINALS in the 400m. WOW. He said it was pretty amazing to be running next to the legends he grew up watching on TV.
2. Wimbledon is easily my favorite sporting event of the year.Easily! I started watching it when I was bored one summer (I think I was about 14 years old) and got hooked. To this day I can't really explain why my love of Wimbledon does not extend to other major tennis tournaments. Serena Williams is also easily my favorite female athlete. I feel strongly that if the other women trained in a way that would help them gain a little of what Serena's training and genetics have provided, we'd see a lot more power and explosiveness in the game. Tennis players at the college level are notorious for placing little value on the type of physical preparation that will help "first-step" and other power indicators.
3. My training is in the toilet.
4. We've got two new service offerings that will take place at the old SAPT on Pickett: Team Training (we've received about a bazillion requests for low-cost team training over the years, so here ya go!) and Batting Cages designed for soft-toss and tee work. Stay tuned for the roll-out of both! More info to come shortly.

That's it. Sorry about not providing any eye-candy. Maybe I'll get a chance to update this later on.

Monday Musings: New Facility, Backpacking Europe, and Deadlift Foot Placement

Gotta make this one brief today... 1. I'm thrilled to say that, last Friday, we successfully moved SAPT into our new location last Friday. To those of you who train with us, you can look forward to a climate controlled environment during your next session!

Also, thank you again to all those that came to help us move.  Your assistance was MUCH appreciated, and we're extremely grateful that you gave up your time on Friday to aid us.

Our new address is 3160 Unit E, Spring Street, Fairfax, Va 22031.

2. This October, I'll be fulfilling a childhood dream of mine by going backpacking in Europe. Thanks to pretty much the most awesome boss, SAPT team, and wife, that I could ask for, I'm able to take a couple weeks off to backpack through Ireland, Switzerland, and Italy.

Needless to say, I'm already as giddy as a little schoolgirl for October to arrive, as I've been literally dreaming about it (and slowly, very slowly....been saving up for it) since I was twelve years old.

For those interested, I'll be glad to share more details in the future, but for now I did want to share one of the things I'm most excited about: Canyoning in Interlaken, Switzerland.

One of my good buddies did this last year, and told me it was literally the experience of a lifetime. Basically, you take a bus up right into the heart of the Swiss Alps, and then repel, jump off, and slide down the canyons and waters of Switzerland to return to the bottom.

Here is a video of what I'll be doing, you can catch the gist of it in the first 45 seconds of the vid:

While in Switzerland, we also plan on visiting Schilthorn, the breathtaking summit of Burnese Alps, upon which a revolving restaurant sits. The restaurant, Piz Gloria, was actually a setting used during the old James Bond Film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Here's a picture of the location:

Needless to say the entire experience will be pretty surreal and I'm definitely open for suggestions from those of you who may have traveled Europe before.

3. My friend Tony Gentilcore recently uploaded a brief video explaining the "ideal" foot placement for deadlifting. Given that he discusses what is easily one of the most common mistakes I see (both in commercial gyms and in people entering SAPT for the first time), I thought I'd share it here:

Hope everyone is having a great start to the week!

SAPT is Moving Today

So it's 615am, and in fifteen minutes I'll be heading to the Magic Kingdom (that would be, the SAPT facility) to join the SAPT crew - along with a few awesome clients/athletes who're helping - to pack up our facility and move it to a new location. We will be doing this ourselves, as none of the moving companies returned our emails/phone calls. I have a sneaking suspicion that part of it has to do with the fact we're a gym. Sarah already gave some details on the new space, HERE, where you can see a few pictures. She has been working her butt off and been doing more "behind the scenes" work than I ever thought would be possible or necessary, so a huge thank you to her for helping us get the new digs!

It goes without saying that this move has been much anticipated. In case you were unaware, up until now we have not had a working HVAC unit, which means no climate controlled environment (yep, I realize this a first world problem, but still...). There are a four things I'm particularly looking forward to:

1) Air conditioning in the Summer. Training in the heat isn't so bad....it's just when you begin filling up the spaces between the keys on the keyboard with your sweat dripping that you know the 105ºF+ degree weather is a bit too hot for office work.

2) Heating during the Winter. Having your fingers stick to the pullup bar is always interesting.

3) Actual office walls. You'd be surprised at how many people feel they can walk, uninvited, into your office and snoop around when you work in a cubicle as opposed to an office with a door. Not to mention, it will be nice to place phone calls without music blaring and weights smashing in the background.

4) The same awesome, warehouse training environment with the concrete walls, no mirrors, and a large bay door.

This should be an all-day event, so, for you office workers in the crowd: If any of you are in the area, and want to help "undo" your day spent in cervical flexion, shortened hip flexors and kyphotic posture, you are welcome to come help. A gold star being the reward for your aid.

And with that, I'm out. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

For future reference, our new address is going to be:

3160 Unit E Spring Street Fairfax, Va 22031