“As an athlete, it’s an absolute miracle if I can go to the gym or the baseball field and feel 100%.” Says newly retired pro baseball player Dean Espy. “You play 140 or 160 games, and by game 100 you can barely get out of bed. But if you don’t go train, how are you expected to compete against someone else who’s trying to take your job?”
That’s why Espy loves P4. “I’ve been a P4 user since day one. It’s the only thing I will use. From that first full season, I wanted to see how shredded I could get, and then I realized there was more to it. I was so worried; I didn’t want to test positive for anything that would jeopardize all the work I put in. So I found P4, and from the people to the product, it was second to none. As an athlete, normally you feel about 75%. It’s just how it is. But I know that when I take P4 I have set myself up for giving 100% of what I got. I have the confidence and security to set myself up to have the best performance I can.”
Dean started playing baseball from the time he could walk. As the son of Major League hitting coach Duane Espy, you grow up in clubhouses with a bat in your hand. “I knew that was my path from day one,” says Dean. “It was never forced. It was always what I wanted.” Dean grew up playing travel baseball in Arizona, never really wanting to go to college because, growing up around pro baseball, you get the impression that if you’re good enough you can go straight to the draft. But when his draft dreams didn’t come to fruition quite as he had intended, he turned to UCLA in 2010. “That was one of the more humbling experiences,” says Dean. “I remember seeing the projected starting lineup and I wasn’t even in the reserves. I just didn’t get it. I panicked and thought about leaving, but thank goodness I didn’t. I ended up starting every single game there. It was fun and it was a blast.”
But finding your way to the starting lineup in college or the pros does not come without an enormous amount of hard work. “When I got to pro ball, that’s really when the fitness thing took over for me. Everyone at that level can hit and throw really well in some capacity, so my first season I didn’t know how I was going to separate myself. I thought, ‘I need to get in the gym.’ And from then on I literally sold out that I was going to be the hardest training baseball player out there. It almost became an obsession of mine. The trainers I had at Fischer Sports were monstrous. It became a battle between those guys and me. I’d tell them ‘I don’t think you can push me as far as I can push myself.’ Then after a workout I’d lay there because I literally couldn’t drive home. I’d say ‘Is that really all you had for me today?’ and then they’d try to kill me the next day.’”
And for Dean, that’s where P4 came in, helping to close the gap between feeling 75% and 100%, and bringing everything you have to train the next day. “I always take P4 Pre Game prior to working out and prior to any sporting activity. Golf or anything I’m doing that day. I’m also now taking P4 Recovery and I really feel like that’s helped the soreness the next morning, closing that window to even 90%.”
Dean’s commitment to baseball has evolved over his career, first committing to push himself at the pro level to now helping top-notch high school kids reach their goals of playing pro ball by mentoring them in every aspect of athleticism: from training hard to eating better and being aware of what they put in their bodies – another opportunity for P4 to make an impact.
“What’s important to me is growing the game and growing it in a positive way. There are huge expectations for young athletes, pressure for them to achieve things early, so one of my biggest things is helping parents support their kids instead of putting too much pressure on them. [I want to help] impact [kids and their parents] in a way that’s going to make them love the game and find some happiness in playing sports.”
