Gritty on the Gridiron

 It is very hard to stay in shape between ages 25 and 35. What do the people who stay in shape all have in common? They either diet right, exercise well or both. Exercise and dieting come down to one attribute in a person, discipline. Dieting right calls for you to have balanced eating habits; eating 2-3 meals a day depending how much you weigh, filled with all the proper nutrients. Complex grains for carbohydrates, meat, fish and chicken for protein and fat, fruits for sugar, vegetables for vitamins, water and more carbs, and dairy for more protein and calcium. Will dieting correctly mean you will be skinny? Not necessarily, but it will mean that you will have a healthy body. How skinny a person is or how much one weighs is directly correlated with how many calories one eats during the day. The more calories you eat the larger you will be and the smaller number of calories you eat the smaller you will be. If you would like to be healthy, eat a balanced diet. In terms of grains thi...

 When I got to college, something that stood out to me was the number of athletes majoring in economics or finance. This begs the question, do college athletes work less hard in the classroom because these are easy majors, or do athletes just have the aptitudes necessary to succeed in business. I would theorize it is the latter and not the former. To succeed in business, you must be hard working, confident, analytical and good at dealing with different personalities. I would argue all of these traits are what make an athlete great as well. To be great in a specific sport you must practice all the time and not just practice all the time, do the correct kind of practicing. This would be similar to successful businesspeople who are notoriously known for working long hours and even working evenings and weekends. An athlete must be able to get it done in "crunch time" or when the game is tied, and it comes down to one play, which takes confidence from the athlete to say that he or...

Blood, Guts, Glory: These are what are on the line when playing many impact and combat sports. Football, Boxing, MMA, Ice Hockey are just some examples of sports that are high impact and extremely hard on the body. These sports have high probability of injury during play and can cause long-term harm on the body. The question is... why do people play them? Is it the intensity of the moment and adrenaline rushes that come with competition, is it for the die-hard fans in the stands who bleed their teams colors and would aggrandize the athletes image when they win, or is it the awards and accolades that come with winning? The answer is likely all the above.  As a former high school and college football player I used to live for the moments in games where the game was tied, and it all came down to one drive, one play or one stop. I can think of one specific drive in high school where we needed a touchdown to win the game and we converted on multiple fourth downs to win the game. Even te...

 Every athlete at some point in their athletic career has to hang up the cleats. In retirement, it seems like every former athlete buys golf clubs and starts hacking away, but is golf the optimal retirement sport? As a former college athlete, I have tried many different athletic avenues since hanging up my football cleats. From frequenting the tennis courts (I also used to play competitive tennis), to playing pickup flag football with friends, to trying my hand at the oldest modern sport played (golf), I have tried it all. Of all of these sports I would say that golf is the one sport that everyone plays, but, it is easy to play golf, much harder to be good at. I have been playing golf regularly for four years now and still have trouble breaking 95, it is crazy to me that some golfers who are not pros can shoot in the 70s. I saw this first hand in October 2023, when one of my golf buddies hooked me up with another friend from college who is a very polished golfer. The three of us pl...