It would be really easy for us to oversimplify the training process and say that all an athlete needs is more reps. Focused reps that break down what they do on the field/pitch/course/court into their smallest component parts and then build back to the actions they will need during competition.
But, in order to do that, we would have to willfully ignore the rest of what goes into the growth of a human. To us, that wouldn’t make sense. But the current landscape for training, particularly in the baseball space, does exactly that.
Most athletes don’t get nutritional support until they are in the rarified air of high-level collegiate sports. But how many reps should they take on fast-food before they get there?
And why should the players be the only ones getting nutritional support? After all, the whole family ends up involved in the sports schedule.
Parents and siblings end up with the same drive-thru that their player counterparts are getting when time runs too thin to cook. Which means they end up just as impacted by the lack of time for nutritious meals.
Parents Are Already Trying to Work Magic to Support Their Athletes
There is no such thing as “finding time” in the jam-packed schedules of modern families. But parents bend over backwards to try to build in the extra time required to support their children. Many find themselves heading into work early, working through lunches, and borrowing minutes wherever they can to make sure they can get their players to practice, training, and games on time. This takes an already busy schedule during the school year and turns it into what feels like an impossible puzzle to solve just to find the time to get the laundry done, let alone cook!
There’s an overwhelming amount of advice on the internet of how to juggle the demands of this busy season of life. Meal prep, stop wasting time on social media, habit stack, reduce choice…and there’s an influencer behind each piece – usually with something to sell.
This is not another piece of advice. Actually, this is the opposite of that. I’m writing to tell you that you have been duped into thinking that doing it all on your own was the only way to do it. Don’t feel bad, I used to take it as a personal moral failing that I couldn’t somehow get enough rest, workout enough to keep myself feeling good, keep the house reasonably tidy, be a dedicated manager and employee that was always there when my team needed me, juggle coaching and parenting responsibilities, AND somehow cook nutritious and delicious meals for the family every night to be served at the perfect 2 second interval when all of us where magically home at the same time before getting us all to practices and games on time.
For the vast majority of families, the math doesn’t math on this laundry list of daily to-dos. Even with both partners being all in and helping to lift the burden together (I know I’m lucky in that way), it can feel impossible to keep up.
But what if there was a little that could be taken off of our plates by doing things in community? What might that look like?
If we had a facility tomorrow, I know how I would approach this problem. And no, I’m not about to do my member’s laundry for them… although sometimes I wonder if my neighbors have dropped off their laundry while I wasn’t looking because the pile has grown so big, so quickly, that it couldn’t possibly be just 3 days of our laundry!
Instead, I would want to build a program for lunch and dinner for our members. One that allows them to try things they may never have tried. That is built on simple, whole foods and locally sourced ingredients whenever possible. One that allowed me to multiply my efforts to help feed my family well and benefited our community of athletes and their families at the same time.
The Inspiration
I love to bake. It’s been a love language of mine since I can remember. But making foods that are really not great for my loved ones all the time started to feel more like a bad habit and less like love these past few years. I guess it’s because I’ve baked with increasing frequency since the lockdowns of 2020. I know I’m not alone there, but this past year, I started noticing that maybe it was too much sugar for us to be consuming.
Last holiday season, I found myself rewatching The Christmas Chronicles with my boys. When we got to the second one where Jack and Kate are having dinner at the North Pole with Mr. and Mrs. Claus, I knew I had found my mission. For those that haven’t seen the movie, in the scene, Mrs. Claus leads the children into the dining room to an indulgent display of sweet treats – all of which are made with ingredients that are actually healthy!
This is revealed to Jack when he becomes apprehensive about eating desert before dinner. Mrs. Claus explains that she experimented with recipes until she could make “all the food you hate look and taste like all the food you love.” Broccoli, lima beans, and carrots are cited as the real ingredients of what otherwise looks like cakes, pies, and cookies.
While I’m not going to access North Pole levels of magic anytime soon, there are so many nutritionists, foodie content creators, and fitness buffs that have spent years working on recipes that more or less accomplish the same goal. Something that tastes like a cheat day but actually fits your health goals.
What’s more, these same folks have also created some seriously delicious recipes for every meal of the day! But how many of us also have time for experimentation? On top of already hectic schedules, making a new recipe that you might want to throw in the trash doesn’t sound like the best use of one’s time.
Hope From Creators Trying Viral Recipes
Thankfully, there are a few accounts on social media that are dedicated to trying these healthy recipes and giving them a rating so the viewer gets an idea of whether or not they are worth it. Many of them are included in the repository of recipes that I have been building over the past year. You may already be familiar with some of my favorites: Liam (@theplantslant2431), Louis Howard (@LouisHowardpt), or Stefan Bodegrajac (@MacroMagicStef), MS nutritionist Marianna Moore (@Mariannas_pantry), and fitness instructor Madelaine Rascan (@madelainerascan). While I don’t have any plans on creating content like theirs, I do appreciate the way they try recipes and give us their honest opinion. Actually, if I see more than one of them has tried something and both have liked it, it gets a higher priority on my list.
Each of these creators has a justifiably large following on social media. But if all of us are separately experimenting on the other side of their posts, we are missing the multiplier of community.
I realized this after making this recipe from Marianna Moore. It was exactly what I didn’t know I needed in my life, so obviously, I sent a picture of it to a friend and told her she needed to make it sometime soon too.
And then it hit me.
What if we built a program around trying new-good-for-you recipes? One where everyone in the community could come to a tasting monthly. Nothing stuffy like a wedding tasting, but something fun and inviting that encourages you not to look at the ingredients (other than for allergens) and just see if you like it.
How cool would that be?
That got me thinking further. What if you could find a great recipe and add it to a repository of recipes that are due to be tried? Could you then get the same satisfaction of supporting the goals of finding new and delicious recipes without the stress of the shopping, cooking, and cleanup?
We could keep the recipes open source for anyone who wants to leave the tasting, head to the store, and get all of the ingredients for themselves and get to work. AND we could build out a program where families could order meals prepped for the week. Maybe eventually for every meal with some sweet treats included!
We are a long way out from that vision. We first need a place to make the food and gather. Ideally it would be at our facility where families were already coming for their players to train and for them to find community and a place to stay active themselves too. We’re not trying to create more to-dos unless we find a way to take something off the list.
Come to Train, Leave with Dinner Handled
We know that asking families to sign-up for a membership with our facility is bigger than just the time that their player would be putting in. That’s because we are parents too. We get it. We know how quickly an hour-long training session turns into a 2-hour round-trip, especially where we are in upstate NY. I joke that everything is a half hour away up here, but it’s not really entirely untrue.
So, if a family is going to choose our facility, what is going to be the incentive to travel that 30 minutes to us instead of 30 minutes in a different direction to train somewhere else? All equipment and programming being equal – nutritional support could definitely be one of our biggest differentiators.
Beyond our members, it would be a great employee benefit to have nutritious meals for staff to partake in during business hours with opportunities for them to get support outside of working hours too. Selfishly, I know that my family and our closest friends will be the ones working the majority of the hours the facility is open, at least at first. And I know that making time to cook dinner is only going to get harder when we open. But if I already had someone in charge of making sure that these meals were getting made, that would be one thing off my never-ending-business-owner’s to-do list too. That feels like support. And love. And exactly what we need to be able to have the time to stay active and be better today than we were yesterday.
What do you think dear reader? Would you be down to participate in something like this? If you could spend about the same amount of money on made-for-you meals as you do on groceries right now, would you mess with the meal prep service?
I read and appreciate every thought you put in the comments. Thank you for being here.
