Super trainer Nick Soto turns stars into legends

Super trainer Nick Soto turns stars into legends

There are people who simply know how to make people better. They turn good into great. Stars in legends. When it comes to athletic excellence, one of the masters of the craft is South Florida-based performance coach Nick Soto.

“I'm just trying to help other people get where I couldn't,” Soto shared while describing what he does. He explained that he came into coaching as a self-proclaimed “failed athlete.” Soto played college football and qualified for the Olympics in Tae Kwon Do, but was unable to compete due to a knee injury. He has had numerous injuries, ten knee surgeries, four of which were to correct a chronic ACL problem. He had a knee and shoulder replacement last year just because of his playing days. He attributes his injuries to his relentless pursuit of greatness.

“I'm not afraid to kind of push myself and push my body a little bit to get an advantage that maybe I didn't have,” Soto said. Although his injuries limited his potential as a player, he feels they have now benefited him in his career.

Soto's strategies have proven successful because he invests time and energy in research and reading studies before putting anything into practice. Its most famous athlete serves as a testimonial. What may surprise you is that this athlete is not a soccer player or a boxer. It's a baseball player - Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres. Machado and fellow Major League Baseball player Yonder Alonso approached Soto eight years ago and wanted him to put his method into practice for them. The results were undeniable.

Alonso's power improved significantly within a year of working with Soto. Before the 2017 season, he had never hit more than nine home runs in a season. He hit 28 in the 2017 season between his time with the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics.

“I was introduced to plyometric training at a very early age,” explains Soto. "I came into contact with coaching very early, also because I was pushed into training in many Tae Kwon Do sessions. That was in the early 1990s."

Soto worked under the guidance of his taekwondo coaches in high school, and they used strategies from other sports such as track and field and figure skating. As a result, Soto was in better shape overall. Helping other athletes train also helped lay the foundation for a coaching career.

A few years later, Soto opened his own training facility in Miami, Florida. While the focus was on regular people (also known as Gen Pop, for the general population), Soto wanted to stand out in his field.

Dan Solomon, President of Muscle & Fitness and Mr. Olympia, added, "It is always our privilege to shine a spotlight on those who are raising the bar in the world of athletic performance. Nick is a gifted trainer and his clients understand how valuable he is."

“We wanted to train people the way we trained our athletes,” Soto shared. They would also train competitive athletes in the same facility, with a strong emphasis on soccer players, track and field athletes and boxers. When asked how he likes to train or coach players, he had a clear mission statement.

“The thought process has always been to make athletes as explosive as possible, to make them as resilient as possible and to make them as powerful as possible from a movement perspective.”

Soto enjoys training his athletes in sprinting, regardless of what sport they play, because it can benefit them in other aspects of performance.

“It also makes them safer, they suffer fewer groin injuries and they don’t have to strain because they are running efficiently.”

What Soto doesn't do is interfere with the work of the athletes' coaches in their specific sports. His goal is to make the athlete better overall without compromising their abilities.

"They should be able to be successful in their sport if they have the skills required. I don't want to take on the responsibility of teaching the athletic part of it. I don't tell wide receivers what route to run or how to brace. I leave that to their skill coaches. I just help give them the tools they need from a tissue and neurological standpoint."

“At the time, I had baseball experience with a few high school teams and a few locals,” Soto recalls. Nonetheless, he saw the opportunity and seized it by analyzing what they needed from him and finding the best way to serve them.

“It went back to the same thing I did – making them resilient and robust, agile and capable when they move, and then making them explosive and powerful.”

As for Machado, Soto believes he would have become a superstar no matter what he did. However, he feels he has helped Machado's resilience - as shown in the 2022 season. Machado suffered an ankle injury after landing awkwardly at first base in a game against the Colorado Rockies. The initial thought was that he would be on the injured list for six to eight weeks. Amazingly, 11 days later, he was back on the diamond, ready to resume his role as one of the game's best.

“He texted me, ‘Thank God we did all the damn knuckle things we did.’” Soto said with a laugh. “He used to complain about it when we did it, then he’d come back and say, ‘Thank God we did that.”

Those were the only games Machado missed in the 2022 season. He hit .298 with 32 home runs and 102 RBIs and nearly won an MVP award. A few months later, Machado signed an 11-year contract extension for a reported $350 million, securing Machado's status as one of the top earners in baseball history. Regardless of how Soto's tactics are described, they will be used regularly throughout the duration of this historic treaty.

The Director of Performance at Lox Performance in Doral, Florida, Soto is great at what he does, and he is successful because he is in the business for the right reasons - helping athletes get better, improving quality of performance and quality of life. His newest program, Gorilla Baseball, is designed to help smaller players increase their strength, which he says is critical to their well-being and longevity.

“We do Olympic lifts like crazy, snatches and split jerks, power cleans and squat cleans,” he explained. "We've had nothing but great results. Our guys go a lot harder, they're a lot more resilient and they're stronger when they do those moves. It's only going to benefit them."

For more information about Gorilla Baseball or Lox Performance, visit www.thelox.com. Follow Nick on Instagram @nicksoto_performance.