Along those same lines, it actually affords incremental benefit over the traditional cable column, as it provides a greater excursion distance so that you can extend the range of motion, where appropriate.  An example would be the overhead lift, as demonstrated by Kansas City Royals pitcher Tim Collins.

You'll notice that the asymmetrical load provides a rotary/lateral core challenge as Tim works to resist rotation and lateral flexion, but what's tougher for the casual observer to appreciate is that Tim is also working his anterior core as he resists extension at his lumbar spine from the pull of the cord.  This wouldn't be possible with many functional trainers because the cable simply isn't long enough.

The folks at TRX put together the following highlight video that goes into more detail.  For more information, check out the TRX Rip Trainer product page.

A few weeks ago, when we handed a relatively new athlete his second strength and conditioning program from Cressey Performance, he asked:

What different things are we working on this month, compared to the last month?

I was candid with him and emphasized that we'd be working on some of the exact same stuff - but progressing on what we did in Month 1 with new strength exercises and subtle shifts in what was prioritized in light of where he'd improved the most.  In short, the answer was to trust in the program, and allow time for adaptation to occur.

"Assuming" adaptation is one of the biggest mistakes I see coaches and athletes make in strength training programs, as the truth is that everyone responds to a given stimulus differently. 

For instance, I've had professional baseball players come back from long seasons with horrendous rotator cuff strength that takes a good 10-12 weeks to get back to baseline.  On the other hand, I've had guys come back from the same long season with outstanding cuff strength.  It'd be a disservice to these two types of athletes to hand them the same arm care programs, at the same time, with the same progressions.  Unfortunately, it's something that happens all the time in a wide variety of strength and conditioning programs simply because folks may be married to a long-term periodization approach, when more of a short-term "wait and see" methodology may, in fact, be far more effective.

In a linear periodization model (which research has proven inferior to an undulating approach in terms of strength and muscular endurance), one might approach the baseball off-season with the following progression: muscular endurance training (sets of 12-15) in September, hypertrophy training (sets of 6-12) in October-November, strength training (sets of 1-6) in December-January, and then power training (lower-load sets of 1-8) in February-March.

The problem with this model of athletic development, of course, is that you get very proficient in one quality at a time while detraining the others.  And, each athlete may not need a specific phase of this scheme.

For instance, a baseball player who is an insanely reactive athlete might not need any true power training; he could get that from his sport exclusively - and would therefore be better off emphasizing maximal strength.

Conversely, an athlete who is insanely strong, but slow, would need more power training and less work on maximal strength.

Finally, baseball players don't really need much, if any, muscular endurance training.  They build that in a more specific approach later on with the volume and intensity progressions in their throwing and hitting programs.

These are just a few of the many reasons we use a concurrent periodization model for all the strength training programs we write at Cressey Performance.  This broad approach affords us the flexibility we need to make specific changes for each athlete based on the adaptations we observe, not something we assume has taken place.

It's perfectly fine to implement variety to keep training fun, expose an athlete to a rich proprioceptive environment, and ensure that overuse injuries don't occur, but never lose sight of the goals of any good strength and conditioning program: addressing an athlete's most glaring weaknesses.

If an athlete is painfully weak, don't stop all strength work 6-8 weeks out of the season because you're supposed to be working on power and conditioning at that time period.  Just tinker with things; don't overhaul.

If an athlete is strong as a bull, but always deconditioned, you may need to cut back on the maximal strength work and prioritize metabolic conditioning more.

The body will always have a limited recovery capacity, so when it comes to writing strength and conditioning programs, one must always prioritize the most pressing needs, not simply adhere blindly to a long-term plan that doesn't take into account these opportunities for adaptation.

To learn more about sequencing an athlete's yearly training calendar, check out The Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual, now available as an e-book!

Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a four-part video series on how to deadlift!

In 20 years of practice I have only had one trainer offer me a complimentary session to see how he worked. I refer patients to him.

Most of us are looking for the right person to whom we can refer clients, and we are more likely to refer them to someone with whom we feel we can easily share information.

Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:

We aren't just offering you $100 off our best selling product, The Fitness Business Blueprint; we're also giving you the opportunity to test-drive it for a full 30 days for just $1!

Over the years, I've probably become best-known for my writing, consulting, and presenting in the corrective exercise field.  It's become a great niche for me; I get to help people who may be frustrated with injuries, bad posture, or movement limitations that prevent them from doing the things they enjoy.  And, I'm able to have fun in the process and make a good living while doing so.

With that in mind, I wanted to devote today's piece to my top four reasons that you, too, should make a dedicated effort to become knowledgeable in the world of corrective exercise.  The timing is quite fitting, as our Functional Stability Training series (which provides thorough insights into the corrective exercise field for rehabilitation specialists and fitness professionals alike) is on sale for 20% off through tonight (Sunday) at midnight.

Anyway, without further ado, here are my top 4 reasons you ought to get involved in this component of the fitness industry.

1. Health care quality and quantity are changing all over the world.

The push toward universal health care has dramatically increased the need for qualified people to fill the gap between "healthy" and "injured" populations.  When more people have health insurance, but there aren't any more providers, not everyone can get access to what they need - and certainly not nearly as quickly.  Two stories come to mind in this regard:

a. A guy I know in Canada actually waited nine days to have a ruptured patellar tendon repaired.

b. An online consulting client in England who sought me out after a hip surgery reported that he had to wait three months for the hip surgery following the point at which they concluded that physical therapy wasn't going to get the job done.

While the push for universal health care in the United States is still being sorted out (and it's certainly not a topic to be covered in this blog, as I have no interest in taking this down political lines), the truth is that we've seen a "crack-down" on what insurance companies afford folks in terms of physical therapy visits for a given condition.  Very simply, physical therapists rarely have the time to do everything they want to do to get people truly healthy, so folks often have to just settle for "asymptomatic."

In the U.S. and abroad, there is a huge need for qualified personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches to step in and take the baton from physical therapists in the post-rehab setting to help improve patient outcomes.  And, there is certainly a big need for these fitness professionals to step in and help people who may move terribly, but not have symptoms...yet.

2. New expertise enables a fitness professional to tap into a new market and carve out a niche.

Roughly 85% of our clients at Cressey Sports Performance are baseball players; it's a population we've really gone out of our way to understand for years now.  Specific to the current discussion, baseball players have the most extreme collection of upper extremity injuries you'll encounter (on top of lower back, oblique, hip, and knee issues) - so demand is never lacking for our services.

This just one sport, though.  Almost every golfer experiences lower back pain at some point.  Hockey players have load of hip issues.  Swimmers have so much laxity that their shoulders are always banged up.  The opportunities to carve out a niche in a specific sport or population are endless - but you have to know your stuff first.

3. Everybody is injured - whether they know it or not.

I've written quite a bit previously about how absolutely everyone you encounter has some kind of structural abnormality on diagnostic imaging.  This applies to lower backs, shoulders, knees, and every other joint you'll encounter in your professional career.

The importance message to take from this knowledge is that even though everyone is "injured," not everyone is symptomatic.  Rather, the ones who hurt are those who have poor mobility, stability, and tissue quality.  They're in pain because they simply don't move well.

Taking away someone's pain is a tremendous way to win them over for life - and I can assure you that keeping them out of pain when they know they should be in pain isn't far behind on the appreciation scale.

4. Structural abnormalities are becoming a part of normal physical development.

I work with a lot of 10-18 year-old athletes, and I'm constantly amazed at how we are "de-evolving."  Kids' movement quality is worse than every nowadays, as they're sitting too much and playing too little.  And, their yearly athletic calendars lack variety because of early sports specialization.

The end result is that our society has created an epidemic of injuries (e.g., ulnar collateral ligament tears in pitchers, ACL ruptures in soccer/basketball players) and conditions (e.g., femoroacetabular impingement, atrocious ankle mobility) that were much less common in the past.  Getting involved with corrective exercise education is a way to not only help understand why this is happening, but also to manage it and hopefully prevent it from continuing.

I'm speaking very broadly with respect to the need for significant corrective exercise education in order to make a difference in this industry, but the truth is that it is a subject that warrants a ton of detail.  Fortunately, Mike Reinold and I delve into this topic in great detail in our Functional Stability Training resources: Core, Upper Body, Lower Body, and Optimizing Movement. You can learn more - and save 20% through the end of the day today - at www.FunctionStability.com.

Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a four-part video series on how to deadlift!

In Part 1 of this series, I outlined the first three reasons that I'm opposed to baseball pitchers using year-round throwing programs.  Here are the next four:

4. They need to get their shoulder and elbow range of motion back.

As I noted in Part 1, throwing a baseball is the single-fastest motion in sports.  With the crazy arm speeds one encounters, you have to keep in mind not only the muscles trying to accelerate the arm, but also the ones trying to slow it down.  This "braking" challenge is called eccentric stress - and I'll talk more about it in a second.

What you need to know now, though, is that when left unchecked, significant eccentric stress can lead to tissue shortening.  If you need further proof, Reinold et al. reported that immediately after a pitching outing, pitchers lose an average of 9.5° of shoulder internal rotation and 3.2° of elbow extension - and that these losses persisted at 24 hours post-throwing.

Now, imagine these acute range of motion losses being left unchecked for an entire season - or a season that simply never ends because pitchers are always throwing.  That's how elbows wind up looking like this:

(For more information, I'd encourage you to check out my Everything Elbow In-Service Video.)

Fortunately, we can prevent losses in range of motion during the season with appropriate mobility exercises, manual therapy, and breathing exercises - but the truth is that not everyone has access to these initiatives in terms of expertise, finances, or convenience.  So, while we work to educate the masses on arm care, emphasizing time off from throwing programs is also a key component of an overall strategy to reduce injury risk.

One last thing on this topic: it is a nightmare to try to improve shoulder or elbow range of motion in a pitcher during a season, as the very nature of throwing works against everything you're trying to achieve.  The off-season is "where it's at" in terms of optimizing range of motion in throwers.

5. They need to “dissipate” eccentric stress.

Okay, here's where I take #4 and geek out a bit.  I apologize in advance.

Sometimes, you have to get away from the baseball world in order to learn about the baseball world.  To that end, I need to think Mike Reinold for bringing this great 2004 study from Tomiya et al to my attention.

These researchers created eccentric stress in muscle tissue of mice using an electrical stimulation model, and monitored blood markers of muscle damage for a period of time thereafter.  What you'll see in the graph below is that myofiber disruption really peaks at three-days post-exercise, then start to return down to baseline, yet they still aren't even there at seven days post-intervention.

Source: Tomiya A, et al. Myofibers express IL-6 after eccentric exercise. Am J Sports Med. 2004 Mar;32(2):503-8.

Now, let's apply this to the world of pitching.  Every single pitcher who throws more than once every 7-10 days is surely pitching with some degree of muscle damage.  And, I can tell you that the two toughest challenges pitchers have reported to me are:

a) moving from starting to relieving

b) going from a 7-day high school or college rotation to a 5-day professional rotation

I'm firmly believe that pitchers need to throw in-season to stay strong, but I also know that we can't trump physiology.  Sure, we need to have optimal nutrition and regeneration strategies in place, as we can't just baby guys and expect them to get better.  However, make no mistake about it: high-level pitchers simply have to get good at pitching at 90% capacity (at best) if they are going to succeed.

If I already have a guy whose arm is working at a deficit for 8-9 months of throwing, the last thing I want to do is beat him up for the other three months with the same kind of volume and stress.

6. They need to allow any undetected low-grade injuries to heal.

As I discussed in an old blog, Pitching Injuries: It's Not Just What You're Doing; It's What You've Already Done, most injuries (especially ulnar collateral ligament tears) come from the accumulation of chronic, low-level stress.  Maybe you get some calcification on your ulnar collateral ligament or a low-level rotator cuff tendinosis, and it takes a few years and hundreds of innings before something finally "goes."

Old, low-level injuries are less likely to reach threshold if you give them some downtime and work on redistributing training stress.  By strengthening the rest of your body in the off-season, you're dramatically reducing the demands on your rotator cuff with throwing.

You can't teach other joints to share the burden if the burden is never removed temporarily.

7.  They need a chance to prioritize other competing demands.

Throwing is a good 20-30 minute endeavor each time you do it - and possibly even more.  When I think about all the things that pitchers can be doing to get better in the off-season from a strength and conditioning standpoint, I have a really hard time justifying giving away that much time and recovery capability.  There are other things that need to be prioritized at this time - and year-round throwing is an especially tough pill to swallow when you know that throwing is working against many of the very qualities - rotator cuff strength, scapular stability, mobility, and tissue quality - that you're trying to establish.

Closing Thoughts

The lack of downtime from throwing is especially problematic in younger populations, as they are skeletally immature and weaker.  I’d argue that a really weak 15-year-old kid throwing 74-76 mph does far more damage to his body on each throw than a moderately strong professional player throwing 90-92 mph, especially given that the pro pitcher’s mechanics are more optimized to protect the arm.  This underscores the importance of "syncing up" mechanics, throwing programs, and the overall baseball strength and conditioning program.

Last, but certainly not least, remember that two weeks doesn't constitute "time off."  Rather, I firmly believe that pitchers need the ball completely out of their hands for at least two month per year, preferably continuously.  In other words, eight one-week breaks throughout the year is far from ideal, as it doesn't really allow for positive adaptations to occur.

If you're interested in learning more about managing the throwing shoulder, I'd encourage you to check out our DVD set, Functional Stability Training of the Upper Body.

Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive Instant Access to a 47-minute Presentation from Eric Cressey on Individualizing the Management of Overhead Athletes!

When Thanksgiving rolls around, many of our professional baseball players at Cressey Sports Performance will start up their winter throwing programs after a full 10-12 week break from throwing.  They're always a bit rusty in the first week of tossing after the layoff, but every single one of them always "figures it out" in a matter of a few weeks - and still has plenty of time to get in a solid throwing program prior to heading off to spring training.  And, because they've been working hard in the gym on their strength, mobility, and soft tissue quality, they're always better off in the end.

Still, there are those who insist that baseball pitchers don't need time off from throwing.

I couldn't disagree more.

I'm sure this will rub some folks the wrong way, but I can't say that I really care, as most of those individuals can't rationalize their perspectives outside of "guys need to work on stuff."  I, on the other hand, have seven reasons why baseball pitchers need time off from throwing:

1.  They need to lose external rotation to gain anterior stability.

Having external rotation - or "lay back" - when is important for throwing hard, and research has demonstrated that simply throwing will increase shoulder external rotation range-of-motion over the course of a season.  This does not mean, however, that it's a good idea to just have someone stretch your shoulder into external rotation, as I wrote previously: Shoulder Mobility Drills: How to Improve External Rotation (if you even need it).

You see, when you externally rotate the humerus (ball) on the glenoid (socket), the humeral head has a tendency to also translate anteriorly (forward).  In a well-functioning shoulder girdle, the rotator cuff musculature should prevent anterior instability, and it's assisted by adequate function of the scapular stabilizers, which offer the dynamic stability to reposition the scapula in the right place to "accommodate" the humeral head's positioning.  For the athletic trainers and physical therapists out there, this is really what you're testing with an apprehension/relocation test.

The apprehension comes about because of either anterior instability or actual structural pathology (SLAP tear, rotator cuff impingement, or biceps tendinosis).  The relocation component is just the clinician posteriorly directing the humeral head to create the stability that should otherwise be created by the rotator cuff and scapular stabilizers.

The take-home message is that while just going on year-round throwing programs in hopes of increasing external rotation seems like a good idea on paper, it's actually a terrible idea in the context of injury prevention.  Pitchers should actually lose a few degrees of external rotation each off-season intentionally, as it affords them an opportunity to improve their stability.  This leads us to...

2. They need a chance to get their cuff strength and scapular stability up.

Baseball pitching is the single-fastest motion in all of sports, as the humerus internally rotates at velocities in excess of 7,000°/second.  So, it should come as no surprise that at the end of a season, the strength of the rotator cuff and scapular stabilizers is significantly reduced.  Having dealt with many of our players for up to five off-seasons now, I have a unique appreciation for how they each respond differently to not only the stress of the season, but also to arm care programs that we initiate at season's end.

It's important to remember that improving rotator cuff strength is no different in terms of adaptation than improving a bench press or squat.  Adding 10% to a guy's bench press might take three months in an intermediate population, or 12 months in a high-level lifter!  Adaptation of the rotator cuff and scapular stabilizers is comparable.  I need every minutes of those three months without throwing to get guys back to at least baseline, and hopefully a bit above it.

Can you imagine if some clown trying to improve his bench press went out and benched an additional 4-5 times a week on top of his regular strength and conditioning program?

His progress would be minimal, at best, and he'd be at a dramatically increased risk of injury.  Throwing during a dedicated, appropriate structured early off-season arm care program is no different.

3. They need an opportunity to do dedicated manual resistance rotator cuff exercises.

Ask anyone who has worked with throwers for any length of time, and they'll always tell you that manual resistance exercises are the single-best option for improving rotator cuff strength.  This rotator cuff exercise approach allows you to emphasis eccentric strength better than bands, cables, and dumbbells allow.  It also keeps athletes more strict, as the one providing the resistance can ensure that the athlete isn't just powering through the exercise with scapular stabilizers or lower back.

 The only downside to manual resistance rotator cuff exercises, though, is that because they generally prioritize eccentric strength, they will create more soreness.  With that in mind, we use them much more in the off-season than in the in-season, as we don't want a pitcher throwing with added soreness.  They're a great initiative in a comprehensive off-season baseball strength and conditioning program, but guys just don't seem to like them as much in-season, presumably because both throwing and manual resistance rotator cuff exercises can be too much eccentric stress when combined.  As such, we used them a lot during the September-November periods, and then hold back in this area the rest of the year.

Of course, if you throw year-round, then you can forget about getting these benefits, as the last thing you want is to be sore while you're "working on stuff" in the off-season.  That was sarcasm, in case you weren't picking up on it.

In Part 2, I'll be back with four more reasons baseball pitchers shouldn't throw year-round.

In the meantime, to learn more about the management of throwers, I'd encourage you to check out Functional Stability Training of the Upper Body.

Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive Instant Access to a 47-minute Presentation from Eric Cressey on Individualizing the Management of Overhead Athletes!