Abogados de Inmigracion

ohnson, who is good friends with Yankees director of mental conditioning Chad Bohling, said that the most important step for the Yankees is to ignore what they accomplished last season.

"You have to put that behind you," Johnson said. "That's what the offseason is for. You celebrate, and then you start to focus on the upcoming season."

Though Johnson is not a die-hard baseball fan -- "I usually wait until the playoffs," he quipped -- he does work with athletes of all types at his Michael Johnson Performance Center in McKinney, Texas. And he has known Alex Rodriguez since the mid-1990s, when Rodriguez played for the Mariners.

Johnson said he was impressed by Rodriguez's ability to shed his playoff demons last season, when he posted a stunning .365 average and six home runs in the postseason.

"It's an individual thing," Johnson said. "That's something that a lot of athletes go through, and there's really no textbook formula, honestly, as far as how you address that sort of thing and how you deal with it, because it's different for each athlete. You've got to find the source of it, and then you have to find your own solution."

The key, Rodriguez said, was no longer trying to shoulder the biggest load and instead beginning to lean on his teammates.

"You can never understand the real concept of it until you win," Rodriguez said. "Last year was a perfect example of teamwork from top to bottom."

Though that may diverge from the views of Johnson, who pushed himself in an individual sport, the concepts of complacency and desire ring as true in baseball as they do in track and field. To that end, Yankees manager Joe Girardi has brought in various speakers over the past two years to discuss topics ranging from motivation to communication.