Gianni DiRienzo didn't discover Prototype on his own. His parents, Mark and Christina, have been part of this community since 2014 — over a decade. Gianni grew up around this gym. So when he joined our LTAD youth development program in October 2024, it felt like a natural next step. He was 14 at the time, about 98 pounds, and he was showing up consistently — four days a week in the 4pm group, putting in the work alongside other young athletes. That foundation mattered more than I think he realized at the time.

Mark and Gianni in our youth training video from about a year ago. Watch for them starting at 0:18 — what they both say in this video is essentially the setup for everything that followed.

Mark said that about a year before everything I'm about to describe. At the time, I don't think any of us knew just how much Gianni would need both sides of that equation.

By the spring of 2025, Gianni had made the freshman baseball team at Algonquin. He was eager and competitive — the kind of kid who wanted to prove himself every time he stepped on the field. But like a lot of young athletes, he was putting a ton of pressure on himself. A bad at-bat would carry into the next one. A game on the bench would eat at him longer than it should have. That's when we started working together one-on-one, transitioning him from LTAD group training into personal training sessions where I could dig deeper into both the physical and mental sides of his game.

When I asked him early on to tell me about something hard he'd been through — something that tested him — he brought up earning his black belt. Nine years of work. Started when he was four. Got it in seventh grade. But he brushed past it quickly, like it wasn't a big deal. That told me something important: Gianni had already proven he could commit to hard things over a long period of time. He just hadn't connected that to what he was trying to do now.

That became the starting point. Gianni didn't just need more reps or someone to fix his swing. He needed to build the kind of foundation — physical and mental — that would let him trust himself when it mattered.

That became the work.

A few months into our work together, Gianni broke his neck on a diving play at practice. Four weeks completely shut down. For any athlete, that's tough — but for a kid in his first high school season who was fighting for playing time, the timing couldn't have been worse.

But here's what I saw when he came back: he was hungry in a different way. Not desperate. Hungry. We rebuilt his training from the ground up that summer with a clear plan — put on muscle, get stronger, get faster. He started tracking his protein intake. He showed up to every session. And we added something new alongside the physical work: a structured mental game.

I introduced him to a structured reflection practice alongside the physical training — a way to process what was happening on the field, in practice, and in competition. At first, his reflections were surface-level. Mostly about how his body felt. But over time, he started going deeper — recognizing patterns in his own game, being honest about what was and wasn't working, and building the kind of self-awareness that most athletes twice his age don't have. He learned to hold frustration and confidence at the same time without letting either one take over.

That reflection came from a session where I introduced a drill that had nothing to do with baseball — juggling. The idea was to get him into a learning mindset instead of a performance mindset. Something new, something with no pressure attached. It worked. He locked in, figured it out, and the next day at his game he brought that same energy — led his teammates through a loose warm-up drill before the first pitch, then went out and played free. That connection — between training your mind to stay loose and actually competing that way — was a turning point.

While the mental work was happening, the physical transformation was undeniable. After the summer rebuild, we transitioned Gianni into our Individual Program Design track — a fully customized training program that I wrote specifically for his goals, his sport, and his body. This was the next evolution from where he'd started in LTAD group training, through our one-on-one personal training sessions, and now into a program he could own and execute with structure and accountability. He logged every session through TrueCoach, tracked his nutrition, and wrote reflections after every workout. We moved through two distinct training phases over the fall and winter.

Phase 1 was hypertrophy — higher volume, heavier loads, building raw muscle and structural durability. Gianni went from struggling with bodyweight Bulgarian split squats to loading them with dumbbells. His trap bar deadlift climbed to 225 pounds. He was doing hang power cleans, landmine presses, and cable rows with controlled tempos that would challenge adults twice his size.

Phase 2 shifted to power — translating that new strength into explosiveness. Speed over load. We used 40-60% of his max on deadlifts and paired them with broad jumps. He learned to move weight violently fast instead of just moving heavy weight. His hang power clean went from a failed attempt at 115 pounds in January to a clean, explosive 115 by March — with better form than when he'd tried it at lighter loads months earlier. He hit a 30-inch seated box jump. His dumbbell floor press went from 25s to 35s per hand.

The point of all of it: prepare his body to swing a bat and sprint, not just lift heavy objects.

His InBody scans tell the story in black and white. When Gianni first tested in June 2024, he was 97.9 pounds with 49.2 pounds of skeletal muscle mass. By January 2026, he was 110.7 pounds with 57.3 pounds of muscle. By March 2026 — right before baseball tryouts — he was 113.9 pounds with 58.4 pounds of muscle and only 7% body fat. He'd added over 9 pounds of pure muscle while staying lean. For a kid his age, that kind of quality weight gain is the difference between getting pushed around on the field and holding your ground.

Early on, Gianni was like a lot of competitive young athletes — hard on himself, focused on things outside his control, and letting bad days carry too much weight. A rough practice or a coach's decision could stick with him longer than it needed to.

Over the course of a year, he built a completely different approach.

The kid who used to let a bad game define his week learned to reset and compete the next day. The kid who was hard on himself started channeling that competitiveness into his preparation instead of his self-criticism. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because he put in the reps — not just in the gym, but in the harder work of building a mental game that matched his physical one.

Gianni made the JV baseball team this spring with a real look at varsity. He's 113 pounds of functional, explosive muscle on a 5'6" frame. His exit velocity is up 12 mph from where it was in August. He earned a spot on a junior legions team with sophomores and juniors as a freshman. He made the golf team for the first time last fall and has dropped his handicap to a 14.2.

But the numbers aren't the story. The story is the shift underneath them.

When Gianni started, he was putting a lot of energy into trying to impress — coaches, teammates, himself. Now he's competing on his own terms. He has a pre-game routine that keeps him loose. He prepares with intention. He's learned to move past a bad day and show up ready for the next one.

One of my favorite coaching principles is that the separator isn't talent — it's resilience to adversity. Every practice on a trash field is a test. Every day you get benched is a test. Every time your body breaks down and you have to come back is a test. The goal isn't to avoid those tests. The goal is to be ready for them.

Gianni is ready.

About a year ago, in that youth training video up top, Gianni looked into the camera and said he'd recommend this program to any athlete who wants to get to the next level — because it doesn't just help you physically, it helps you mentally too. He was 14 when he said that. I don't think he fully understood yet what that would mean for him. Now he does.