Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:
Elite Training Mentorship - The most recent update includes quite a bit of content from me, including two exercise demonstrations, an article, as well as two staff in-services: "Scapular Positioning During Table Arm Care Exercises" and "Understanding and Coaching the Anterior Core." If you haven't checked out Elite Training Mentorship yet, I'd strongly encourage you to give it a shot.
By the Coach for the Coach: 10 Things I Learned During the 2011-2012 School Year - I loved this post from my buddy Todd Hamer. Todd, the head strength and conditioning coach at Robert Morris University, is one of the best college strength and conditioning coaches I know. He's a tremendous motivator and has loads of experience in the trenches, even if he doesn't have a big internet name. Up-and-coming coaches need to read stuff like this as often as possible!
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Here's this week's list of random tips to make you more awesome, in collaboration with Cressey Performance coach Greg Robins.
1. Optimize your strength training program's warm-up sets.
Too often, I see people make the mistake of moving a ton of weight before they reach their top sets for that day. Many strength training programs are based on hitting a certain “top set” or sets in a given lift for that day. While this number may be a good distance from the first weight a person touches that day, it is important that you work to this set in a fashion that has you prepared to attack the weight, but not exhausted to a point that you cannot give that weight a true effort.
I often get asked how should one work up to these top sets. The answer is really dependent on the person asking; over time, a person will learn what works best for them. Here are a few things you should keep in mind:
“Treat the light weights heavy and the heavy weights light.” Move everything fast, be methodical in your approach, take advantage of every set as repetitions in good form. By doing so, you will set up for successful top sets, prime your CNS to deliver more powerful, coordinated efforts, and be more confident under heavy loads.
Keep your weight jumps consistent. How many pounds each jump should be will depend on how dictate how many warm-up sets you’ll take on the way from A to B. Just make sure to keep the jumps consistent, 10, 20, 30lbs, etc.
Just because the top sets call for multiple reps doesn’t mean the sets leading up to them need to be the same. I often take singles and doubles at the heavy weights that land near my top sets, and recommend you do the same. I advocate any additional volume (work done) you need to add be done via drop down sets, or via supplemental lifts.
Here are two examples of how to work up to the top sets in a program:
Deadlift 3 x 3 (Assuming my top sets will be between 475 and 505lbs)
135 x 3, 225 x 3, 315 x 1, 405 x 1, 455 x 1, 475 x 3, 495 x 3, 505 x 3
A1. Squat 3 x 5 (Assuming my top sets will be between 365 and 405lbs)
135 x 5, 185 x 3, 225 x 2, 275 x 1, 315 x 1, 365 x 5, 385 x 5, 405 x 5
You'll notice that the sets that "count" toward my working total follow the 90% rule that Eric outlined HERE.
2. Understand How to Modify Total Work as a Fat Loss Diet Progresses
You will be more successful with your fat loss dieting when you understand a simple concept: the harder you train, the hungrier you get.
The most important thing in losing fat is, has been, and will continue to be your nutrition. Your strength training program should be the priority in training when dieting. You want to maintain as much lean mass as possible, and what made the muscle (resistance training) is what’s going to keep it on you. However, you can’t just continue to strength train, add more conditioning, and eat less. It just doesn’t add up. Either you’re going to fail on the diet or get super weak. Neither of those sounds good to me.
So what’s the solution? Lower the volume as you lower the calories. Whether that comes in the way of shorter strength training workouts (focus on the top sets of big lifts and keep the accessory work limited), or you do less conditioning, you have to do less somewhere.
People are really into metabolic resistance training protocols nowadays, but in reality, all training is metabolic; your diet needs to come first, and these programs are just basic better management of total work done. Base your training around your diet, and as you eat less, do less. Pretty simple.
3. Make Kale Taste Better.
Kale by itself does not taste good. Fortunately, I have a simple recipe to make a delicious dressing to spice it up. I must admit that I am not the originator of this, so thank you to the person who showed me the recipe!
In a bowl, mix the following to “dress” four cups of uncooked kale:
4. Make all Reps Quality Ones When You’re a Beginner.
When teaching a new athlete or client an exercise, trainers and coaches must understand the importance of using lighter loads. From a safety and development standpoint, it just makes sense. Moreover, a novice lifter can make gains from loads far below their estimated one-rep maximum.
In order to achieve technical proficiency with the exercise, make sure that you are also keeping the rep ranges low - even when the weights are light. While the person in question may very well be able to move the given load for 12 reps (as an example), you are better off splitting that into 3 sets of 4 reps. Even if that means they are doing 12 sets of 4 instead of 4 sets of 12 overall. Keep the rest a bit shorter, get quality reps, and don’t set them up to fail.
5. Make Sure Your Arm Care Program Includes Upward Rotation Training (from Eric)
I speak a lot to our staff about the importance of training scapular upward rotation to prevent and correct upper extremity problems (especially shoulders) in our clients, and one of my most prominent points is to consider not just "front to back" shoulder balance, but also "top to bottom." This point was verified yet again by research from the Musculoskeletal Research Center at LaTrobe University in Australia. Investigators found that "The major difference between groups was that the shoulder pain group displayed a significant downward rotation of the scapula in almost all shoulder positions. There were no differences between the two groups for training factors, range of motion, or in clinical test results."
Below are a few exercises we regularly include in our warm-ups to address these issues. Forearm wall slides at 135 degrees stops short of full upward rotation and gives us a chance to train the lower trapezius in its line of pull.
Wall slides with overhead shrug and lift-off gets us to near full upward rotation of the scapula and recruits the upper trapezius more. Remember, while upper trapezius recruitment has gotten a bad rap, the upper traps are actually tremendously important, as they elevate the scapula and directly oppose the depressive pull of the latissimus dorsi, which is heavily overrecruited in most folks. As a heads-up, I generally teach this with the hands a bit closer together throughout the movement.
The upper and lower traps work with serratus anterior to get the scapula upwardly rotated (serratus recruitment is already optimized because we are slightly protracted and above 90 degrees of humeral elevation).
Summarily, remember the importance of scapular upward rotation when you see arm care programs where all the exercises are done with the arms at the sides. Assuming folks can get there pain-free, get the arms up and start training upward rotation functionally.
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This week's strength exercise is one I learned from Dave Schmitz of ResistanceBandTraining.com. Dave's the "go-to" guy out there when it comes to training with resistance bands, and he has a knack for coming up with innovative exercises with minimal equipment. This is one such example that we've been utilizing more and more in the strength and conditioning programs we write.
The beauty of the weight shift is that it adds an extensive decelerative component to the exercise and allows us to integrate scapular control in whole body movement the way it occurs in athletics. It also allows us to get a better training effect with less resistance.
I like utilizing this with our pitchers because it educates them on how to "get long" out front (improve trunk tilt at ball release) and stiffen up on the front leg at the right time. The eccentric overload created by the band serves as a good reminder to not get lazy and go to mush on the front side.
This can also be utilized in group training settings when you want a compound exercise that folks of many different strength levels can utilize. Simply stepping closer to the band attachment point can reduce the resistance and make it appropriate for a weaker participant without having to change the load.
The exercise can be done with a cable as well, but I just don't think that the weight shift component works quite as smoothly in the cable scenario.
In terms of progressions, we typically teach the standing 1-arm cable row first to all our clients and athletes, as it educates them on proper interaction of the scapula and humerus during rowing. This is an exercise we'd consider adding into strength and conditioning programs after the first 4-8 weeks of working with a client. It's usually done either first in the training session as a power exercise, or later in the session for higher reps.
Give it a shot!
Also, if you're interested in checking out more of Dave's innovative exercises, be sure to visit EliteTrainingMentorship.com, as he's one of my co-contributors to the site and adds great content each month.
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Compliments of Cressey Performance coach Greg Robins, here are some random tips to help you lose fat, gain muscle, get strong, be healthy, and move well.
1. If you're tested in fitness, train the test.
If you are a powerlifter, Olympic lifter, or training for a standardized physical fitness test (such as those administered by the military/police/fire), I recommend that you keep your training specific to what you will be tested on. If you are a powerlifter, you compete in the squat, bench press, and deadlift. Therefore, I believe the majority of your training should be done using the back squat, bench press, and your deadlift stance (sumo, conventional). Variations of those three lifts may be done as a supplement to the main exercise, but should not replace it. The same goes for Olympic lifters with their specific lifts (snatch and clean and jerk).
Furthermore, not much will prepare you better for standardized tests than actually taking the test. If you have to do two minutes of push-ups, do push ups. If you have to run two miles, focus on running two miles faster, not being able to run longer distances. As far as sit-ups go, I think daily high repetition sit-ups will do a number on your body. In my experience, if you want to excel at them, you have to do them. Stick to 1-2x/week of sit-ups at most – again, only if you have to be tested on them. Attack the area with other exercises as well to supplement this specificity.
2. Cure your low-bar back squat woes.
With the back squat: there are three things I see people do that hold them back from moving appreciable weight, staying safe, and being an overall squat ninja. Oddly enough they all depend on each other, like a happy squatting family.
First, they support the bar in their hands. The wrists are mostly likely bent back, and the majority of the weight is actively supported by the arms. This is a nightmare for your squat, wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Correct this by keeping the bar lower in the hand, actively working to straighten the wrist (think: knuckles forward, or don't crease a piece of tape on the back of your hand/wrist), and literally pulling the bar down over your upper back like you are trying to break it.
Second, people try to stay too upright. The upright torso position is not what we are after. Similar to the deadlift, what we want instead is to maintain a neutral spine while the angle of the torso increases, keeping the weight over the mid-line of the body. When the bar is positioned lower on the back this equates to a more predominate forward lean; let it happen. In order to do this you need to hold the bar correctly (see point 1), brace the stomach well (draw air into the stomach, not the chest), and have a strong upper back and anterior core that can hold its stiffness.
Thirdly, many folks simply don’t “get” how to use their hips when squatting. In Starting Strength (as an aside, it's appalling how many young "coaches" haven't read this), Mark Rippetoe draws the picture of attaching a piece of string to the tailbone and pulling it straight up out of the hole. I often explain to people the feeling of using the hips out of the hole actually feels like you are pushing the hips back, not up. Imagine someone standing behind you, digging their fist into your tailbone. As you come out of the hole push back on their fist. Check out this video of me squatting 405 for 5. It's a 5RM and a good example of how the hips are going straight up out of the hole (mostly) for reps 1 - 4, but as I fatigue you can see the slight breakdown on rep 5 (of coming forward in the hole) that is common with most people.
3. Jump, jump, jump on it – and only off it, sometimes.
Jumps are a fantastic way to build explosive and reactive strength qualities. While they are not for everybody, those who are able to safely perform jumps need to consider adding them to part of their routine. In a strength and conditioning setting, they should be a staple. Jumps can be divided into a few categories. You can (in general):
• Jump Up: Box Jumps
• Jump Down: Depth Drop
• Jump Up and Down: Box Jump to Depth Drop
• Jump Down and Up: Depth Drop to Box Jump
• Jump Out: Broad Jump
• Jump Laterally: Heiden, Half Kneeling Jump
So what are the differences, and why does it matter? Jumps are more taxing on your body than one might expect. After all, in a similar fashion to lifting weights or sprinting, you are putting a ton of force into the ground as quickly as possible. Additionally, the impact of landing, and the absorption of force, is highly demanding on the body. This is why the box jump has become such a popular tool.
Now, ask yourself if I program 15 jumps for my athlete today, and he decides to jump off the box from 36" every time, what have I really programmed? Is it in line with my general approach now? Probably not. Make sure that you, and your athletes, follow a progression in jumps. Instruct them as to how to perform and dismount the jump, and use more demanding variations such as the depth jump sparingly.
4. Consider a nutritional supplement pyramid.
While perusing the latest research, I came across this case study: The Development of Nutritional Supplement Fact Sheets for Irish Athletes. While the abstract doesn't tell us much about the study in general, I was intrigued by the initiative. In particular, I was interested in how something like this might be useful for the United States. In recent years, nutritional supplementation has become quite pronounced in our country. I'm sure the overwhelming majority of folks reading this article are taking at least one supplement. This is largely in part to the poor quality of our food, the poor quality of our diets, and the mass marketing of these supplements (none of which is changing for the better). What is also apparent is the lack of quality control and general information about what supplements should be prioritized for different populations.
I know we all have our beef, pun intended, with the nutritional pyramid, but have we considered creating one for supplementation?
My thoughts are that it would be a useful way to educate the general population on what is worth taking, what is beneficial but less important, and what should be used sparingly or with caution. As the industry continues to boom, the food quality continues to plunder, and the consumption of such products becomes the norm I think a standardized table seems appropriate.
Does something more in depth already exist? Is it in the works? What do you think?
5. Wall - Sled - Run.
Here is a video on a three step progression you can put to work right away to teach positive shin angle and proper acceleration mechanics with your athletes. Give it a try!
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As a continuation of this week’s series on things you didn’t learn from a textbook, today I’ll be talking about how we’ve misunderstood muscle actions. As we go through anatomy and kinesiology in the typical exercise science degree, we memorize muscle actions.
The quadriceps extend the knee. The biceps flex the elbow. The teres minor and infraspinatus externally rotate the humerus. You get the point.
The point that many folks don’t get is that this is simply a practice of memorizing concentric muscle actions, and the truth is that this is really only one-third of the picture when it comes to how we move. You see, these muscles are also acting isometrically and eccentrically; sometimes the primary goal is not to shorten, but preserve muscle length, or prevent uncontrolled lengthening. This is a crucial understanding for one to acquire, as poor isometric and eccentric control are the culprits in an overwhelming majority of non-contact athletic injuries.
Our shoulder barks at us because our scapular stabilizers and rotator cuff don’t function correctly to prevent, slow, or limit inappropriate movement. An ACL goes because glutes and hamstrings couldn’t control unrestrained knee hyperextension and hip adduction and internal rotation.
To that end, while you might memorize a muscle’s concentric action first, it’s important to infer from that understanding that it has more implications above and below the joint it crosses. At the subtalar joint, pronation kicks off tibial and femoral internal rotation each time we land from taking a step. The gluteus maximus – as a hip external rotator, abductor, and extensor – plays a crucial role in decelerating this internal rotation and the accompanying hip flexion. In other words, your butt is an anti-pronator! Just watch what happens on the way down in a bowler squat and you’ll appreciate pick up what I’m putting down:
When you start looking at all movement like this, it will have a powerful influence on your ability to help people move more efficiently. With that in mind, I’d encourage you to look over the last strength and conditioning program you wrote and try to consider how the exercises you programmed help to prevent or control unrestrained movement, rather than creating movement. My prediction is that you’ll notice several exercises in there that you might not have included if you’d thought about this beforehand.
Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:
Training the Baseball Catcher - This one was lost to archives at EricCressey.com, but it's valuable information for anyone who deals with baseball players.
Rotating Your Lifts - I liked this article from Jesse Irizarry because I think it's a valuable reminder that sometimes, the indirect route is the fastest way to get to your goal. I see too many people who think that they can only get better with specificity in their strength training programs, but the truth is that there is a ton of value to taking a step back and being more general with your training.
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As a follow-up to yesterday's "series premier," I wanted to use today's post to discuss another topic that rarely gets sufficient attention in the typical exercise science textbook: synergists and antagonists.
The typical explanation of the relationship of the two is that they're on opposite sides of the joint and perform opposite actions. As an example, the hamstrings flex the knee, and quadriceps extend the knee. Simple enough, right? Not so much.
Muscles can be synergists and antagonists at the same time.
Let's just look at the hip extensors to explain this point. Your primary hip extensors are the hamstrings, gluteus maximus, and adductor magnus (there are more, but we're keeping this discussion simple). They all work together to extend the hip each time you squat, lunge, deadlift, sprint, push the sled, or bust a move on the dance floor. That said, the hip can do a lot of things as it extends.
If we use more gluteus maximus and biceps femoris, it externally rotates and abducts a bit as we extend. If we use more adductor magnus, semitendinosis, and semimembranosus, it internally rotates and adducts.
Taking it a step further, as the hamstrings extend the hip, they have little control over the femoral head, so it tends to glide anteriorly in the acetabulum (hip socket) in a hamstrings-dominant hip extension pattern. The glutes have more direct control over the femoral head and can posteriorly pull the head of the femur to avoid anterior hip irritation (usually the capsule). Shirley Sahrmann did a great job of outlining femoral anterior glide syndrome in her landmark book, Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes.
Herein exists the issue: typical discussions of synergists and antagonists focus on things things:
1. Single planes of motion (sagittal, frontal, transverse), but not the interaction of multiple planes
2. Osteokinematics (gross movement of bones at joints: flexion/extension, abduction/adduction, internal/external rotation), rather than arthrokinematics (smaller movements at joint surfaces: rolling, gliding, spinning)
3. Active restraints (muscles, tendons), but not passive restraints (ligaments, bones, labra, intervertebral discs) that may be synergists to them in creating stability
As another example, think about stabilization at the glenohumeral (shoulder's ball and socket) joint. There are a wide range of movements taking place, yet these movements must be controlled arthrokinematically in a very precise range via a complex system of checks and balances at the joint. If the active restraints (primarily the rotator cuff) don't do their job, one could wind up with stretched/torn ligaments, a torn labrum, or bony defects. In other words, it isn't a stretch (no pun intended) to say that muscles can be synergists to ligaments. Put that in your osteokinematic pipe and smoke it!
This is really a topic that deserves far more than a 500-word post; it could be an entire college curriculum in itself! And, the more you can understand it, the better you'll be able to help your clients and athletes. A great resource to get the ball rolling in this regard is Building the Efficient Athlete, a two-day seminar Mike Robertson and I filmed with functional anatomy heavily in mind.
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It's not uncommon at all to hear recent college graduates in the strength and conditioning field talk about how they encounter a number of things in the "real world" that were never even considered in an exercise science curriculum. And, while I've previously shared my thoughts on this topic in Is an Exercise Science Degree Worth It? - Part 1 and Part 2, the focus of today's post won't be debating the merits of this degree. Instead, it'll be outlining some of the holes in a typical exercise science curriculum and learning accordingly. With that in mind, here is my first point that rarely gets consideration in strength and conditioning textbooks:
Fascia actually exists.
Amazingly, I went through an entire undergraduate education of anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, and biomechanics without the word "fascia" being mentioned a single time. In fact, we didn't even discuss it when I had gross anatomy; the med students cut it away so that we could look at what was deemed "important" stuff: muscles, tendons, bones, ligaments, and organs. And, when I got to graduate school, fascia really wasn't discussed much in my endocrine-heavy kinesiology curriculum or the graduate level physical therapy courses I took for my electives.
Now, think about why so many personal trainers have never used a foam roller with their clients, or why a physical therapist or doctor might not appreciate how manual therapy could help with everything from anterior knee pain, to hamstrings strains, to ulnar collateral ligament tears. It's a school of thought on which they may have never been schooled.
Needless to say, "fascial fitness" is extremely important, and you need to understand why as well as how you can achieve it as you identify movement inefficiencies in your clients or athletes. To that end, here are some recommended reads on this front:
Anatomy Trains - This is Myers' famous book on the topic.
Muscle Imbalances Revealed - Lower Body - Dean Somerset's presentation on fascia alone was worth the entire price of the product, but you also get the benefit of a bunch of other contributors' information.
I'll be back soon with more lessons the college textbooks never taught you, but in the meantime, get to reading on this topic and you'll quickly separate yourself in the strength and conditioning field - and make a lot of clients and athletes happy with their results in the meantime.
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In collaboration with Cressey Performance coach Greg Robins, here are some tips to get just a little more awesome this weekend.
1. Hard start, easy finish.
This phrase applies to almost everything in training and in life. In short, putting in the work up front is going to benefit you ten-fold throughout the rest of your...
Exercise Set: Put the time in to set up a lift correctly (bar placement, spotters, foot position, etc) and you will make the entire set go off smoothly.
Training Session: Don't skimp on your warm-ups. Make sure you spend the 15 minutes to hit self massage, mobility, and activation work.
Training Block: Make the time to make a plan. If you do not have the time (really?!), or the knowledge (fair enough), then seek out someone to make a plan for you.
Training Career: If you're new to the game, take the proper amount of time to learn correct movement patterns, build general work capacity, and understand technique. If you're not, and these sound like foreign concepts, have you considered pressing rewind?
2. Meet the bar.
3. Address lagging body parts with frequency.
If you have a body part that isn't making the grade, the answer could very well be to adjust the frequency in which you train it. Training variables such as volume and intensity are household names, even if their application is often butchered. Frequency is a less-considered variable in your training program. The frequency at which you train a muscle group can have a profound effect on its growth. Additionally, high frequency protocols can produce major surges in strength when programmed correctly. Using high frequencies to make gains in strength is definitely more complex. The more demanding the exercise selections (think deadlifts, squats, cleans, etc), the more tinkering you'll need to do in the overall management of volume and intensities. Luckily for you, using higher frequencies to illicit gains in "size" isn't as involved.
Here is a good place to start: choose an area (i.e. arms) and add a specialization day to your strength training program. Make this days short, but challenging. This is a good time to utilize drop sets, forced reps, pre-exhaustion etc. Stick with the same area for three weeks, back off a week, and either choose a new area for three weeks or continue with the previous selection. Maybe you'll do calves like Tony does?
4. Appreciate that various characteristics relate to throwing velocity.
A study conducted in 2009 by The Open Sports Medicine Journal looked at the relationship between six anthropometric (body height, body mass, body mass index (BMI), arm span, hand spread and length) and four physical fitness (aerobic capacity, explosive power of the lower limbs, flexibility and running speed) characteristics and their relationship to throwing velocity in female handball players. The study found that "throwing performance is significantly correlated with all variables calculated in this study except of the body mass index. This suggests that high performance requires advanced motor abilities and anthropometric features."
This isn't revolutionary, and the study does not go into details (that have been found important to velocity) such as joint mobility, stiffness and laxity. However, it is interesting to note that the researchers ranked each characteristic in order of importance in terms of the effect on velocity:
1. Hand Spread
2. Playing Experience
3. Arm Span
4. Body Height
5. Standing Long Jump
6. 30m Sprint
7. Sit and Reach
8. Body Mass.
9. VO2max
10. Body Mass Index
As you’ll see, the recipe for success will always be a combination of genetic pre determents, mechanical skill (sport practice), and physical performance traits (explosiveness, strength, etc). Two out of three of those you have control over, and if you are willing to put the work in, you can make up for quite a bit that Mommy and Daddy didn't pass on to you.
EC’s notes: three interesting asides to this…
First, it’s interesting that body mass index wasn’t more highly ranked, as body weight has been shown to have a significantly positive association with throwing velocity in baseball pitchers. The primary difference between these two populations, of course, is that the handball players aren’t throwing downhill on a mound, so perhaps having a greater body mass benefits pitchers because they’re more “gravity-aided?”
Second, this is friendly reminder that your silly long distance running won’t do anything for throwing velocity.
Third, the researchers only tested straight-ahead (sagittal) plane measures of power development. If they’d tested power development in the frontal and transverse planes, I’d expect to see a greater value for these measures.
5. Don't limit yourself.
Have you heard this before?
If I do everything you say, and work as hard as possible, do I have a shot at: making it, losing 10lbs, benching 315?
The answer is always YES; why would it be NO? We are all capable of impressing - and even surprising - ourselves with what we are capable of doing. Not everyone (even with an insane work ethic) is going to look like Captain American or play on ESPN. It doesn't matter.
What matters is that you never shot for something less than that. You gave everything you had, and you ran that course until it was over. Wherever that point may be, you arrived there knowing that you didn't leave anything in the tank. This is the absolute most you could do, given the tools you had, and you can be happy and fulfilled knowing that. If you attack everything with that mentality, you will be successful and happy with the result, even if that result isn't exactly what you thought it was when you got started.
This is an important lesson to remind young athletes and adult clients alike. Teach them to respect the process, and find value in the journey. Remind them that many variables are not within their control, but their effort is.
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Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:
Increasing Dorsiflexion: Cuboid Mobilization - With yesterday's post on ankle mobility, I thought I'd highlight another great "complementary" perspective on the topic from Bill Hartman.
Managing Structural and Functional Asymmetries in Ice Hockey: Part 1 and Part 2 - I've talked a lot about how much becoming familiar with the Postural Restoration Institute philosophy has helped me in the way I manage baseball players. In these two blog posts, Kevin Neeld talks about how they've helped him with hockey - from assessment to corrective exercise.
The Age of the Pitcher and How We Got Here - This might be the single-best article I've ever read at ESPN.com. Jayson Stark did an awesome job of reviewing all the factors that may have contributed to why pitchers are thriving and hitters are struggling compared to previous years - and it's a trend that has lasted 12 years. I'll definitely echo the sentiment about pitchers being better than ever, particularly with respect to the number of power arms coming out of the high school ranks. Years ago, throwing 92mph out of high school made you an extremely noteworthy prospect; now, it just makes you another guy that *might* get drafted - even as a lefty!
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