Upper Deck Power part 5

There are times in training when "taking a step back" might be the best way to move forward. Baseball—a sport in which many athletes progress to advanced stages prior to being able to handle basic tasks—offers a case in point.

That being said, one of the most neglected areas in all of training is the development of the hips and hamstrings. Baseball, in particular, is a sport where a great deal is performed within a lunge or extension movement. Unfortunately, we see a high incident of athletes being unable to perform either well. In continuation of Upper Deck Power Part 4, we'll look at the most important developmental exercises within proper lunging and other unilateral training measures, with a wide selection of exercises from early development to more advanced ones.

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Upper Deck Power part 4

For many coaches, baseball can be the most challenging sport to prepare their athletes for. For others, it is the easiest. The reason for this is possibly answered by one of the basic tenets of Renegade Training™. Many decades ago I realized that the majority of athletes "train to train." Their dedication to their sport is unquestionable but the focus is off kilter as they are merely spending time to "look the part" rather than "be the part."

While many will criticize the young athlete and even ridicule training measures that are more concerned with esthetics, it is important to understand they are generally a product of a slickly marketed industry that sells notions and gadgets to interested parties. While training measures of the past were more utilitarian and lacked the sex appeal of the present-day, they were focused upon preparing the player for the diamond. With this in mind, the choice of exercises needs to be made with a focus on enhancing performance in the field of competition.

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Below is an open letter which was sent to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Prime Minister

The Right Honourable

Gordon Brown MP

10 Downing Street,

LondonSW1A 2AA

Sunday, 15 February 2009

Prime Minister

An open letter demanding your resignation.

Your position is untenable and, I as a citizen of Great Britain demand your instant resignation. You have no popular mandate and lack the moral authority to be Prime Minister. Your terms as Chancellor and Prime Minister have been a total disaster for this nation and your attempt to cling on to power at all costs show a complete contempt for this nation and displays your absolute vanity and thirst for political power.

I list below some of the mistakes made by you during your time in public office. If as a director of a limited company you had made similar mistakes you would be subject to criminal prosecution and banned from being a company director. As a Government minister the standards exercised should be significantly higher than those exercised by a company director, you have failed to maintain those standards and are unfit for public office.

· Banking Supervision: You transferred responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority from the Bank of England so directly laying the seeds of the current banking crisis.

· Banking Crisis: The initial response to the Northern Rock crisis was so slow as to be glacial and ultimately led to the damage done to the whole banking sector. A strong Prime Minister would have provided depositors with a guarantee that their deposits were safe and the bank run would have stopped. Ultimately the same guarantee would have ensured that the HBOS and RBS debacle would not have been so severe.

· Criminal Negligence: The entire UK banking crisis has been caused by a lack of supervision under the regulatory regime set up by you, any man of honour would have resigned upon seeing the damage caused. You however have tried to blame everyone else and accept no responsibility. You are criminally negligent.

· Vanity: You have used the banking crisis to attempt to advance your personal standing and political career at the expense of the nation.

· Lack of Judgment: You have made three serious errors of judgment in your appointment of advisers on the current financial crisis.

1. Your choice of banker to compile a report on ideas for improving public health was Sir Derek Wanless, a Northern Rock director when it imploded in 2007.

2. You appointed Sir James Crosby, the former HBOS CEO, to the board of the FSA who then had to resign after becoming embroiled in the row over failings of risk management at HBOS.

3. It now also appears that Glen Moreno will be forced out of his job, as chairman of UK Financial Investments Ltd, the company set up to oversee the government’s stake in the bailed-out banks, because of his links with a Liechtenstein trust accused of tax evasion.

· You Fantasize: By clinging to the idea that, thanks to your genius British citizens are far better placed than competitors to handle this crisis. The following two facts demonstrate that this is a fantasy:-

1. The Office for National Statistics' revelation that while the number of foreign workers getting jobs in the UK continues to grow (up by 175,000 to 2.4 million last year), domestic unemployment is rising sharply.

2. According to Business Monitor International, a research company specializing in country risk, "Britain is facing an unprecedented fall in its economic world ranking… from 12th place in 2007 to 21st in 2010". "Despite enjoying 11 years of growth between 1997 and 2007, the UK ran a budget deficit of 1.7 per cent of GDP over this period, fuelling a fiscal time bomb. Faced with the financial burden of bailing out the banking sector and kick-starting the economy, the budget deficit will swell to an unsustainable 9.3 per cent of GDP in 2009."

§ Public spending: Your 2000 Spending Review presaged a major expansion of government spending, without any significant benefit to public services, directly leading to the UK being in the worst shape of any industrialised nation to weather the current financial crisis.

§ You have colluded in hiding the full extent of public borrowing by using PFI initiatives to hide the borrowings off balance sheet. PFI is the most expensive and inefficient form of finance possible, and you have saddled the country with a debt that you cannot even quantify. Jeremy Pocklington, leader of the Treasury’s corporate and private finance team, could only give a rough estimate to Richard Bacon that the total liabilities, but not debt, from the vast majority of PFIs, but not all, from 2006-07 to 2032-33, but not beyond, is £157.9bn. That is not only astounding but unbelievable.

§ Public sector Employment: The office for national Statistics shows Public sector employment was 5,846,000 (20.4 per cent of all in employment) in June 2005, 680,000 (13.2 per cent) higher than in June 1998, whereas from 1998 to 2005 private sector employment only rose by 1,241,000 (5.7 per cent). This growth is unsustainable and wrong.§ Growth: An OECD report shows UK economic growth averaged 2.7% between 1997 and 2006, lower than in any other English speaking country.

§ Gold sales: Between 1999 and 2002 you sold 60% of the UK's gold reserves at $275 an ounce, close to a 20-year low, a disastrous foray into international asset management. Incredibly you announced your proposed sale driving the price down before you had even started. An act of supreme negligence.

· Your spectrum auctions gathered £22.5 billion for the government which caused a severe recession in the telecoms development industry leading to the direct loss of 30,000 UK jobs. Two auctions were run in the USA, the first being cancelled and re-run (for less revenue) due to damage caused to the industry. The Americans realised their mistake and tried to rectify it. The British and German chancellors copied the North American first auction; which had failed. To copy a failed economic model is normally considered a serious error of judgement.

· Your East Coast Mainline franchise auction led directly to the demise of GNER, an excellent company, which was replaced by National Express who offer East Coast mainline users a significantly poorer service. Your duty was not only to maximise revenues, you also had a duty to the shareholders, employees and customers which you completely failed.

· Anti-poverty: The Centre for Policy Studies found that the poorest fifth of households, which accounted for 6.8% of all taxes in 1996–7, accounted for 6.9% of all taxes paid in 2004-5. Meanwhile, their share of state benefit payouts dropped from 28.1% to 27.1% over the same period.

· Tax: According to the OECD UK taxation has increased from a 39.3% share of gross domestic product in 1997 to 42.4% in 2006, going to a higher level than Germany. This increase has mainly been attributed to active government policy, and not simply to the growing economy.

· You pledged to not increase the basic or higher rates of income tax however in all but your final budget, you only increased the tax thresholds in line with inflation, rather than earnings, resulting in fiscal drag.

· You abolished the 10% tax band so that you could reduce the basic rate from 22% to 20%, to make it look like you were decreasing taxes. However in fact it led to increased tax for 5 million people, and, left those earning under £18,000 as the biggest losers.

· Pensions: Your changes in 1997 in the way corporation tax is collected, directly led to the taxation of dividends on stock investments held within pensions, thus lowering pension returns and contributing to the demise of most of the final salary pension funds in the UK. By fiddling with the tax status and solvency ratios you has made them prohibitively expensive to maintain. Short term solvency ratios for what is a very long term liability make very little sense at all. So they have all but been killed off. The UK used to be the envy of the western world in final salary pension provision with the only fully funded schemes in operation. Money purchase has led to much lower benefits and the investment risk [see stock market performance over 10 years and last year in particular] is borne by the individual. This will provide a much reduced income and will lead to much greater demand on the Public pension system at a time when we cannot afford it.

· This act alone has singlehandedly damaged the pension of every person with a pension in the UK but also saddled UK corporations with a an ever growing pension liability, so much so that many companies futures are imperilled by these debts.

· Falsehoods: You used the Laura Spence Affair to beat up Oxford and Cambridge about their admissions procedures, Lord Jenkins, then Oxford Chancellor and himself a former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, said "nearly every fact you used was false.

· Inappropriate links: Given the finding that the government did not carry a proper public consultation on the use of nuclear power in its 2006 Energy Review, your brother Andrew is linked to one of the main nuclear lobbyists, EDF Energy, which could be construed as inappropriate.

· The father-in-law of your closest adviser Ed Balls, Tony Cooper (father of the Labour minister Yvette Cooper) has close links with the nuclear industry. Cooper was described as an "articulate, persuasive and well-informed advocate of nuclear power over the last ten years" by the Nuclear Industry Association on his appointment as Chairman of the British Nuclear Industry Forum in June 2002.

· Iraq War: You supported British involvement in the Iraq War against the wishes of the UK population and helped to justify that involvement by publishing false intelligence. This war has directly increased the odds of terrorist attacks on British subjects and the financial cost has had a significantly detrimental effect on the British economy.

· Military Covenant: You have not adhered to the 'military covenant', leading to a significant decline in the morale of the armed forces due to poor housing, lack of equipment and inadequate healthcare provisions. The lack of equipment has directly led to an increase in the loss of lives, and serious injuries, compounded by a lack of care following serious injury.

· The 15% VAT Rate: introduced to counter the effects of recession demonstrated a total naivety and breathtaking stupidity. Far from digging the nation out of a hole, it has saddled the country with a huge unsustainable debt.

· No one should benefit from failure: You have on numerous occasions stated that no one should benefit from failure, however your tenure as chancellor was universally recognised as a failure, but you were rewarded with the Premiership and had the gall to accept.

· There will be no more Boom & Bust: In your hubris you made a statement that was patently untrue, and counter to any economic theory. You either knew that statement to be untrue or lied or if you believed it then you clearly demonstrated your foolishness and proved that you were unfit for office.

· The UK is in a better position than any other developed country: this again is completely untrue, we have more than double the debt per head of population than any other country in Europe.

· Public Services: You have destroyed Public Services by a raft of inappropriate targets, which have led to resources being wasted by the attempts to meet those targets.

· Surveillance society: You have presided over and led to the creation of a surveillance society in which any perceived wrongdoing is used as a pretext to pass oppressive laws. You and your predecessor have both singlehandedly succeeded in making the UK an unpleasant place to live in.

These are but a small sample of your failings any of which make you unfit for public office and for which you should immediately resign.

You sir are a fraud and I am forwarding this letter to as many people as I can, via the internet in an effort to shame you into accepting your failures.

Yours faithfully

XXXXXX XXXXX

As you can see times are not good, but we here at Renegade Training (working as a TEAM) are well covered to weather these storms, take control of the situation & turn these negative times into positive times.

Together we stand divided we fall

Steven Barlow -Team Renegade Anarchy Training UK

History repeating itself?

This is England calling

History repeating itself?

As the credit crunch gets more of a grip within the UK you have to wonder how this will have an inevitable effect upon the sporting communities in wages, sponsorship & future talent development.

Will we see a gradual decline in the wages payed to sports stars?

What about sponsorship, will companies pull sponsorship to *lower ranked/rated* teams & individuals?

The development of young talent, will teams/acadamies be forced to streamline their own stables of talent?

Already there has been knock on effects within motorsports, sponsorship pulled, contracts & wages renegotiated & teams folding because of a lack of funds from manufacturers.

How long before we see this happening within the more *mainstream* sports?

How are teams going to survive if supporters tighten their own purse strings (wallets for men) & spend less & less on merchandise?

What about season tickets, if the current financial climate continues how many empty seats will teams see in the stands because people simply cannot afford the outragous prices clubs ask for to help meet their incredible wages bills?

If you put all of the above situations into a club something will have to give & the only thing that can give would be the number of players on a teams books & the wages they are payed.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Some would say a bad thing as this would waterdown the amount of outside influences coming into the UK because of the superior wages payed.

I would say a good thing & I say that simply on the grounds that just because you pay the best wages doesn`t always mean you get the best players. The reduction of overpayed & pampered foreign talent would force clubs to look at more homegrown talent, invest more in homegrown talent & in the longterm a far larger pool of talent for the national teams to choose from.

A reduction in wages would be beneficial in teaching the youngsters coming through the ranks that a big paypacket every week is not the benchmark to aim for but glory in sporting arenas & good old *pot hunting* is the true path to immortality.

The person with the biggest paypacket isn`t going to be remembered over the person with the biggest trophy cabinet.

Steven Barlow - Team Renegade Anarchy Training UK

meet Chuck Twohig

Renegade Training™ takes great pride in helping creating careers within the exciting health and fitness industry. Combining practical knowledge with value added mindset we are not only developing some of the best professionals in the business sector but also helping many achieve their goals of operating a successful practice. Each year we graduate a number of professionals that as company we are very proud to be associated with.

The past year Renegade Training™ was proud to add to our TEAM, Chuck Twohig who combines practical knowledge and professionalism along with personally overcoming a daunting weight-loss challenge. Chuck has quickly become known as a great motivator and a true professional with his clients lauding high praise on his abilities:

"Chuck goes above and beyond to help you reach your goals."

"I never thought I could ever be more motivated to workout, until I began training with Chuck!"

“The program and endless advice and support that Chuck has given to my son and his team has been far more than I had expected. I can't thank him enough!” -

For those located in the north-east corridor of the United States, Chuck's operation is eastern Pennsylvania and can be reached at: renagademst@gmail.com

For dedicated professionals interested in launching a career within Team Renegade, instructional clinics start this year in Manchester England as well as special set of camps throughout France, Italy, Portugal and Spain in the summer of 2010.

Upper Deck Power part 2

When I begin to write an article, I often sit and try to find a motivating factor. Yet now as I write of baseball, it is not only the easiest topic for me to discuss, but the most daunting as well. With this in mind, please let me explain something that I should have told you in my opening piece in this series.

To my left sits an old catcher’s mitt on the book shelf, worn and battered through time and service. It is a reminder of the past. Decades ago, this mitt and its pint-sized predecessor that I grew out of, would come along everywhere I went: to school, to the run-down old lot and to the driveway, where I would await my Dad’s return home and the start of the nightly ritual of “catch.” Baseball wasn’t just a game, then. It was part of the fabric of your life and conversation that needed no introduction.

to continue reading please visit ProSource, America's Sport Supplement Store.

Upper Deck Power - Renegade Style

Within the sporting world the notion of sport-specific training or training for sport is packed full of fallacies. Spread over rock-solid facts on how to train properly for sport is a vast array of clichés and slick marketing lines. Possibly the sport most plagued with highly questionable “training advice” is baseball.

Baseball, the grand old game, is a sport that I grew up on. The ball and glove were part of my make-up and rarely out of reach. The days and nights were filled with the game but the game was more than that, it was part of our heritage that connected with the past. I grew up hearing of stories of what it was like to dig into the batters box against a barnstorming tour of future legends pre-WWII. Regardless of how the game changed it, always maintains a brilliance that is challenging to describe.

to continue reading please visit ProSource, America's Sports Supplement Superstore