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WҪY9<br>The Pro Challenge<br><br>Alejo stresses that training at the pro level is very different than college ball.  In college you re accountable for your guys lifting or not lifting, he says.  In the pros, the players are accountable for themselves it affects their paycheck directly. But that doesn t mean you re baby-sitting or telling the guys,  Come on, come on. You have to work out, please, at least not in our organization. We believe in letting them sink or swim, and it works out pretty well. Everyone is treated like an adult, like a pro. <br><br>The Athletics weight room is a serious place to train, but also a good place.  Let s face it, says Alejo,  the last couple of years we haven t been as good as we d like, and there were a lot of reasons for the guys not to come and work out. To keep the weight room user-friendly, Alejo keeps the music going and all the TV'S tuned to the various games going on across the country. This promotes a good attitude, even when the team is lifting with the team they re currently playing, a situation not uncommon during the season.<br><br>Alejo emphasizes the importance of experience if you want to succeed at coaching a pro team. He says first and foremost a coach must have been exposed to various sources of training. In his opinion, the best background to come from is college coaching. Second, he feels you must be proficient in sports medicine.  You don t need to know everything a physical therapist or doctor knows, but you better be fluent in your ability to talk with them, says Alejo.  You need to be privy to enough information that you can deal with these health professionals on a one-on-one basis, because injury prevention and recovery is so important at this level.<br><br> Third, you must be prepared to work with different personalities. At the college level, you can pretty much make your athletes do what you want them to do. At the pro level you can t because what they re doing is going to have a direct result on their paycheck. You have to remember this is their profession, so you have to be flexible. You need to compromise. <br>Compromise, Alejo points out, must be made because it s the best course of action, and this is where experience counts.  Earlier in my career I may not have been quite so apt to question someone s opinion or theory on conditioning, he says.  Now that I m older I ve got no problem telling someone what I know and where I stand compared to what they know. I believe that s a problem with new coaches. Until you have stability in the profession and considerable knowledge gained by experience, it s tough to tell someone, no, that s not right. <br><br>Alejo s influence extends beyond the A s playing field, another indication of his success at this level. Most pro athletes, especially some of the bigger name players on the A s, have a respectable knowledge and interest in conditioning. Slugger Canseco even has his own book on weight training for baseball. Therefore, developing a rapport with his athletes is essential for Alejo in guiding and integrating the training the players do on their own into the overall conditioning levels dictated by the team and the game.<br><br> I know these guys and have been around them long enough that if they want to go off on their own and try something, they know to come to me to have a look at it first, says Alejo, who often encourages players to branch out on their own during the winter with his approval, that is.