If you're looking for a quick and easy way to expand your rowing exercise selection, definitely try the standing 1-arm cable row with offset kettlebell hold.
Holding a kettlebell in the racked position on the non-working arm not only adds a core control element, but also facilitates thoracic (upper back) rotation away from the rowing arm. We know that left thoracic rotation works hand-in-hand with right serratus anterior recruitment (and vice versa), so this is an awesome progression we like to use with our throwing athletes. You could progress this particular version by adding a bit more upper back rotation to the left on the eccentric (lowering) portion of each rep.
Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance - Florida Director of Performance, Tim Geromini. Tim takes the lead with our catchers at CSP-FL, so I'm excited that you'll get a chance to take a glimpse into the expertise he brings to the table each day. Enjoy! -EC
With spring training right around the corner, most of the media attention is on the pitchers coming in to camp, but what about the guys catching them? The demands of catching a full season are unique and with that in mind, here are 5 non-traditional exercises we use with our catchers at Cressey Sports Performance.
1. Catcher Pop-up to Shotput
Although nothing can truly simulate working on technique like being in pads and actually being on the field, you’ll see a number of things in this exercise that look similar to what a catcher might do in a game situation. We start by getting into the catcher’s stance with a runner on base and have them close their eyes. I will then roll or place the ball to a random spot, forcing them to react when I clap my hands and they open their eyes. From there, the goal is to get to the ball as fast as possible and in a position to throw the ball as hard as possible into the wall. The reason we have them close their eyes and find the ball is to work on reaction time and identifying a loose ball. In game situations, a catcher doesn’t always know where the ball is after the initial block. One of the main benefits of the exercises is working on hip mobility and being strong getting from the crouch position to an upright throwing position. We usually program this for 3 sets with 3 reps per side with a 6-8 pound med ball.
2. 1-leg Kettlebell Switches
A lot of focus for catchers is centered around hip mobility, as it should be. However, losing sight of ankle stability is a mistake. Enter the 1-leg Kettleell Switches. In order to execute the exercise properly and get the most out of it, I recommend being in just socks or barefoot. The kettlebell doesn’t have to be heavy at all for this to be effective; most of the time, I start athletes with 10 pounds.
As you can see, the first movement is a hip hinge with a slight knee bend. From there, we cue the client to “grab the ground” with their feet and make sure the toes stay down. Go as wide with your arms as you can while maintaining balance, and switch the kettlebell from side to side. Your goal is to keep your foot from deviating into pronation/supination and your hips to stay level. From the side view, you want to make sure the athlete maintains a neutral spine. You may notice that if your client has a flatter foot, this can be more challenging to stay away from the foot pronating in. Likewise, if your client has a high arch, it can be challenging to maintain the big toe staying down.
We usually program this as part of a warm-up or paired with an explosive lower body exercise. We'll do 3 sets of 8 reps per side.
3. High Tension Ankle Mobilization
A Functional Range Conditioning (FRC) inspired exercise, the high tension ankle mobilization is working on taking your ankle through end-ranges of dorsiflexion with control of that range. It is important to go through this exercise slowly, as rushing through it generally doesn’t lead to as much tension or control of your range.
Start by getting into a good half-kneeling position, making sure not to sit your hips into abduction or adduction. From there, imagine pushing your foot through the floor and slowly take your knee as far over your middle toes as you can without your heel coming off the ground or the ankle pronating in. Then, slowly lift your heel off the ground maintaining your knee staying out in front of your toes as much as possible. Once you go as far as you can then slowly return while driving your foot through the floor. Now that you are back to the original starting position with your knee over your toe pause, the lift your toes towards your shin and start to lift the front of your foot off the ground, still pushing your heel through the ground. Once you can’t go back anymore, slowly return to the starting position.
Because this exercise requires a lot of tension and effort, we usually program this for 2-3 reps. You can put this in a warm-up or pair it with an ankle stability exercise such as the 1-leg kettlebell switch. If you deem the client has sufficient ankle mobility, this exercise isn’t always necessary and the focus can be more on stability.
4. Seated 90-90 Hip Switches w/Hip Extension
Another drill of FRC origin, seated 90/90 hip switches are a great hip mobility exercise, but often are not performed correctly if they are rushed. What do we get out of this exercise? Hip internal rotation, external rotation, flexion, extension, abduction, and adduction...all while maintaining a neutral spine. It doesn’t get any better than that!
Before prescribing this exercise, make sure to check your client’s hip range of motion and medical history first. If your client has femoroacetabular impingement or some other pain in their hip, this may not be the best fit for them.
The key coaching cues are to keep your hips as far separated as possible during the exercise and maintain a neutral spine. If you notice your lumbar or thoracic spine flexes, then use your hands on the ground as support. We usually program this exercise for 3 reps per side.
5. Deep Squat Anti-Rotation Press
There are many variations of the anti-rotation press (better known as the “Pallof Press”), but this version gets as specific to catching as any of them. Make sure the cable or band is set up at sternum height. When you press out, make sure your hips and feet stay neutral (don’t rotate toward one side). From the side view, you want to make sure the spine is neutral. You can hold this for breaths, time, or reps.
Wrap-up
These are just a small piece of the puzzle that is training catchers, but hopefully it gets your mind working to innovate and individualize for these athletes!
About the Author
Tim Geromini is the Director of Performance at Cressey Sports Performance - Florida. Prior to joining the CSP team; Tim spent time with the Lowell Spinners (Class A Affiliate of the Boston Red Sox), Nashua Silver Knights (Futures Collegiate Baseball League), Cotuit Kettleers of (Cape Cod Baseball League), and UMass-Lowell Sports Performance. You can contact him at timgero@gmail.com and on Twitter (@timgeromini24).
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I didn't get around to publishing this weekly feature last week, so I've got a bit of content stockpiled. Here was the best of the bunch:
Ace in the Hole: Corey Kluber at Cressey - New England Baseball Journal just ran this cover feature and article about Corey Kluber's training at Cressey Sports Performance - Massachusetts in their February edition.
7 Ways to Maintain Strength During Baseball Season - With baseball season rapidly approaching, it seemed like a good idea to reincarnate this guest article from CSP-MA Director of Performance, John O'Neil.
Top Tweet of the Week
This yr, for complex training, we are doing more heavy axial loaded single-leg work before unilateral plyos. Here’s anterior-loaded split squats from pins for 3/side, rest 30s, then heidens for 3/side. Do 4-5 rounds of this pairing as 1st exercise on lower body day. @RyanFelt26pic.twitter.com/lh9ZEDl6ln
We're excited to announce our next Elite Baseball Mentorship offering: an upper-extremity course that will take place on June 23-25, 2019 at our Hudson, MA facility.
The Cressey Sports Performance Elite Baseball Mentorships provide an educational opportunity to become a trusted resource to this dramatically underserved athletic population. Through a combination of classroom presentations, practical demonstrations, case studies, video analysis, and observation of training, you’ll learn about our integrated system for performance enhancement and injury prevention and rehabilitation in baseball athletes. Cressey Sports Performance has become a trusted resource for over 100 professional players from all over the country each off-season, and this is your opportunity to experience “why” first-hand at our state-of-the-art facility.
Course Description:
This Cressey Sports Performance Elite Baseball Mentorship has a heavy upper extremity assessment and corrective exercise focus while familiarizing participants with the unique demands of the throwing motion. You’ll be introduced to the most common injuries faced by throwers, learn about the movement impairments and mechanical issues that contribute to these issues, and receive programming strategies, exercise recommendations, and the coaching cues to meet these challenges.
Course Agenda
Sunday
Morning Session: Lecture
8:30-9:00AM – Registration and Introduction (Eric Cressey)
9:00-10:00AM – Understanding the Status Quo: Why the Current System is Broken (Eric Schoenberg)
10:00-11:00AM – Common Injuries and their Mechanisms (Eric Schoenberg)
11:00-11:15AM – Break
11:15AM-12:15PM – Flawed Perceptions on “Specific” Pitching Assessments and Training Modalities (Eric Cressey)
12:15-1:00PM – Lunch (provided)
Afternoon Session: Lecture and Practical
1:00-3:00PM – Physical Assessment of Pitchers: Static and Dynamic (Eric Cressey and Eric Schoenberg)
3:00-3:15PM – Break
3:15-5:15PM – Prehabilitation/Rehabilitation Exercises for the Thrower (Eric Cressey and Eric Schoenberg)
5:15-5:30PM – Case Studies and Q&A
5:30PM Reception (Dinner Provided)
Monday
Morning Session: Lecture and Video Analysis
8:00-9:00AM – Strength Training Considerations for the Throwing Athlete (Eric Cressey)
9:00-10:00AM – Key Positions in the Pitching Delivery: Understanding How Physical Maturity and Athletic Ability Govern Mechanics (Christian Wonders)
10:00-10:15AM – Break
10:15-11:30AM – Video Evaluation of Pitchers: Relationship of Mechanical Dysfunction to Injury Risk and Performance (Christian Wonders)
11:30AM-12:00PM – Lunch (on your own)
Afternoon Session: Observation at Cressey Sports Performance – 12PM-5PM*
Tuesday
Morning Session: Practical
8:00-9:00AM – Preparing for the Throwing Session: Optimal Warm-up Protocols for Different Arms (Eric Cressey and Eric Schoenberg)
9:00-11:00AM – Individualizing Drill Work to the Pitcher and Live Bullpens from CSP Pitchers (Christian Wonders)
11:00-11:30AM – Closing Thoughts and Q&A (Eric Cressey, Eric Schoenberg, and Christian Wonders)
11:30AM-12:00PM – Lunch (on your own)
Afternoon Session: Observation at Cressey Sports Performance – 12PM-5PM*
* The afternoon observation sessions on Monday and Tuesday will allow attendees to see in real-time the day-to-day operation of the comprehensive baseball training programs unique to Cressey Sports Performance. This observation of live training on the CSP floor with our professional, college, and high school baseball players will allow you to experience firsthand our approaches to:
• Programming
• Proper coaching cues for optimal results
• Soft tissue techniques
• Activation and mobility drills
• Strength/power development
• Medicine ball work
• Multi-directional stability
• Metabolic conditioning
• Sprint/agility programs
• Base stealing technique
In addition, you will experience:
• Live throwing sessions
• Biomechanical video analysis
• Movement evaluation
• Live evaluations of attendees with Eric Schoenberg
Location:
Cressey Sports Performance
577 Main St.
Suite 310
Hudson, MA 01749
• No prerequisites required.
• Participants will receive a manual of notes from the event’s presentations.
• Space is extremely limited
• We are keeping the size of this seminar small so that we can make it a far more productive educational experience.
•This event will not be videotaped.
For details about travel, accommodations, and other logistics, please email cspmass@gmail.com.
In light of the busy baseball offseason, I'm long overdue for an update to this series. So, here goes!
1. Have a long-term plan, but not necessarily a long-term program.
The other day, an observational visitor to CSP-FL asked me if I had a big, overarching goal for all our professional baseball players. My response was simple: "Minor league guys need to get through five 4-week programs, and big leaguers need to get through four."
The MLB regular season always ends on a Sunday, so the math is actually easy to do. We know most MLB guys report around February 14, which gives us 19.5 weeks for the offseason. That 3.5 week "buffer" accounts for some time off, some vacation, a few days over the holidays, and travel to Spring Training. We "give" a little bit on guys who played well into the postseason in the previous year.
Over this 16 weeks of training, we transition from active recovery, improving mobility and building work capacity, to building strength and power, to transitioning into more specific skill development. It's all something we've become comfortable handling as long as we can get in those four program blocks. However, while we have a long-term plan, we don't write all the programs up in advance. Why? Very simply, what you put on paper for a January program when you write it three months in advance almost always needs to be modified prior to the time when it's actually being executed. Even the best players on the planet who've established really good offseason routines have to call audibles on the fly as various things come up throughout the offseason.
Have a general framework in place, but don't be so rigidly adherent to it that you can't pivot on the fly over the course of several months. It'll save you time and make your programming more effective if you write the specific components of your offseason progressions when the time is at hand.
2. Good coaching always comes back to relative stiffness.
Give this video of a back-to-wall shoulder flexion a watch:
Now, think about what's happening from a stiffness standpoint. When the arms go overhead, we're asking good stiffness of the anterior core (rectus abdominus, external obliques), glutes, and scapular upward rotators (upper trap, lower trap, and serratus anterior) to overpower bad stiffness of the lumbar extensors, lats, and scapular downward rotators (levator scapulae, pec minor, and rhomboids).
This good vs. bad stiffness interaction is taking place in every single movement we prescribe and coach. If we don't appreciate functional anatomy and understand how to tone down the bad and tone up the good, we simply can't be efficient coaches.
Last week, I hit a personal record (PR) with five reps at 600lbs on my conventional deadlift.
PRs aside, though, it was actually a pretty good example of how off the predicted max charts really are.
After this set, I plugged 600 pounds and 5 reps into four separate predicted max calculators I found on the internet. The projections for my 1RM were anywhere from 675 pounds all the way up to 705 pounds. That 675 might be a possibility, but taking that to a 705 might very well be two years worth of specialized deadlift training.
Predicted max calculators have their place, but don't think for a second that they're perfectly accurate. And, they're even less accurate with a) more experienced lifters and b) lifters with a heavy fast twitch profile.
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I hope you've had a great week. To kick off the weekend, here's a little recommended reading and listening from around the strength and conditioning world.
9 Ways to Survive Off Days - This audio blog from Mike Robertson shares some good strategies for making the most of non-training days.
Cleaning Up Thoracic Rotation - Dean Somerset offers some great insights on optimizing thoracic spine mobility training.
Top Tweet of the Week
A mistake you’ll see in stiff-leg deadlift technique is slamming the knees into hyperextension on the lowering portion. This limits hip hinging and instead put stress on passive restraints of the knee. The kneecap shouldn’t be behind the heel; it’s a stiff (not straight) leg DL. pic.twitter.com/rWnhVxt2tt
Registration is now open for the 2019 Cressey Sports Performance Collegiate Elite Baseball Development Program. This event takes place at our Hudson, MA facility, and runs from 6/3/19 through 8/10/19.
During last year's offering, we had pitchers move to Massachusetts from sixteen different states. This summer, we anticipate another awesome collection of motivated athletes who'll push each other to get better in conjunction with the same training opportunities and expertise we provide to our professional athletes.
This program is a good fit for pitchers who need to prioritize development over just getting innings or exposure. In other words, it's a suitable replacement for those who still need to throw, but also need to gain 20 pounds, learn a new pitch, sort out old aches and pains, or improve their mobility.
Each athlete will begin with a thorough initial movement and pitching assessment that will set the stage for individualized strength and conditioning and throwing programs, respectively. These programs correspond to six days a week of training. Generally, four of the six training days per week are double sessions, with throwing in the morning and strength and conditioning in the afternoons. A typical training week would look like the following:
Monday: AM throwing, PM Strength and Conditioning Tuesday: AM throwing, PM Strength and Conditioning Wednesday: Late AM throwing and movement training (at field)
Thursday: AM throwing, PM Strength and Conditioning Friday: AM throwing, PM Strength and Conditioning Saturday: Optional AM Mobility Work and Recovery Session, AM Throwing and movement training Sunday: Off
In our throwing programs, we integrate weighted ball work, long toss, and bullpens (including video analysis). We'll integrate Rapsodo and high-speed camera work in these bullpens as well.
All the athletes will receive manual therapy with our licensed massage therapist, and nutritional guidance throughout the program. Also to help with recovery, athletes have access to MarcPro, and Normatec.
Last, but not least, we'll incorporate a regular educational components to educate the athletes on the "why" behind their training. Last year, this consisted of not only staff presentations, but also conference calls with Major League players and established coaches from around the country.
The best part is that it'll take place in a motivating environment where athletes can push each other to be the best they can be. By optimizing the situation, you can help change the person.
Interested in learning more? Email cspmass@gmail.com - but don't delay, as spaces are limited; this offering sold out last year, and we'll be capping the group size.
In the coming weeks, we'll be highlighting some case studies from last year's group that should give you a better feel for how the programs work.
Never Lose a Customer Again - This is a great read for anyone who has clients/customers, but I found it particularly interesting because it spoke quite a bit to retention in the fitness industry, with shoutouts to the Starrets (San Francisco Crossfit) and Jon Goodman (the Personal Trainer Development Center).
Top Tweet of the Week
A @jaegersports quote on long toss that’s invaluable: "Impress me on the way in, not on the way out." Here's @max_scherzer at ~210 feet with @trevor_gott yesterday. Get your mind and body right in the warmup, then let it eat on the pulldown throws on the way back in. #cspfamilypic.twitter.com/3o5rWCwMew
We’re excited to announce that on Sunday, April 7, 2019, we’ll be hosting our third CSP Business-Building Mentorship, a day of learning with Pete Dupuis and me. For the first time, we'll offer this event at our Jupiter, FL facility. Pete and I have spent over 11 years crafting the operational systems and strategies that fuel CSP today, and we’re excited to pull back the curtain for fellow gym owners.
It is our intention to foster an environment conducive to learning and the exchanging of ideas, so we will be limiting participation to 30 individuals.
Here’s a look at our agenda for the day:
8:30am: Registration & Coffee
Morning Session – Lead Generation & Conversion
09:00am – 09:30am: Introduction: The Four Pillars of Fitness Business Success
09:30am – 10:30am: Lead Generation: Strategic Relationship Development, Identifying & Connecting with Opinion Leaders, Social Media Strategies
10:30am - 11:00am: Q&A
11:00am - 12:00pm: Lead Conversion: CSP Selling Strategy & Methodology
12:00pm - 01:00pm: Lunch (provided)
Afternoon Session – Business Operations & Long-Term Planning
This event is sold out. Please email ec@ericcressey.com to be added to the waiting list or announcement list for the next offering.
Please keep in mind that both previous offerings of this mentorship have sold out well in advance of the event date. With that in mind, if you're interested in attending, please be sure to register early!
Location:
Cressey Sports Performance - Florida
880 Jupiter Park Drive
Suite 7
Jupiter, FL 3358
If you have additional questions, please direct them to ec@ericcressey.com. Looking forward to seeing you there!
PS - If you're looking for hotel information, we have preferred rates at the Comfort Inn and Suites Jupiter and the Fairfield Inn and Suites-West Palm Beach/Jupiter. If you mention the Cressey Sports Performance Corporate rate, you'll get a discounted rate. The hotels are less than 5 minutes from the facility. The contact information is below.
Comfort Inn and Suites-Jupiter
6752 West Indiantown Rd, Jupiter, FL 33458
(561) 745-7997
Fairfield Inn and Suites-West Palm Beach Jupiter
6748 West Indiantown Rd, Jupiter, FL 33458
(561) 748-5252
The Fairfield Inn on Indiantown Rd. in Jupiter, FL offers our clients a heavily discounted nightly rate. Just mention "Cressey" during the booking process in order to secure the discount. Their booking phone number is
The half-kneeling cable lift w/flexion-rotation hold is a new variation on an old drill, and we've been implementing it quite a bit with guys of late. It's a creation of CSP-FL co-founder and pitching coordinator Brian Kaplan.
Like all cable chops and lifts, we're training anti-rotation core stability. However, in this variation of the cable lift, the athlete drives thoracic (upper back) rotation and flexion, two crucial pieces of getting to an ideal ball release position during throwing, or completing a swing during hitting.
Simultaneously, the athlete should be actively pulling into the front hip (adduction and internal rotation) to simulate the same front hip force acceptance you get during the pitching delivery and hitting motion.
Of course, there are many functional performance benefits that extend far beyond the baseball world. This drill will benefit anyone who competes in extension-rotation sports, not to mention your casual weekend golfer. In short, it trains core stability and thoracic mobility, so it has almost universal application.
We'll usually program this for 6-8 reps per side. On each rep, we have a 2-3 second hold at the lockout position with a full exhale. You should really feel the core turn on - and in some cases, you'll even see athletes get a little cramp in the abs.
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