I hope you're safe and sound in spite of the crazy times in the world today - and I hope some recommended reading and listening helps pass the time!
Upstream - For me, anything from Chip and Dan Heath is must-read material, and this solo project from Dan proved to be no exception. He looks closely at proactive concepts to reduce the need for reactive measures, and there are definitely applicable lessons for the strength and conditioning and rehabilitation communities.
Certified Speed and Agility Coach course - Lee Taft's outstanding certification is on sale through this Sunday at midnight. It's absolutely outstanding - and serves as mandatory viewing for all Cressey Sports Performance staff members.
Young athletes: want an at-home strategy to guarantee long-term training results during and after this hiatus from competition? Ask your parents to teach you how to cook. Learn it now, and use it for a lifetime.
We’re excited to welcome speed training expert Lee Taft to this week’s podcast for an awesome discussion of baseball movement competencies and how to coach them. Lee is highly qualified to work across all sports, but I've found his work to be particularly impactful in the baseball world. CSP-MA Director of Performance John O'Neil takes the lead as a guest host as well.
This is a timely podcast, as Lee's popular Certified Speed and Agility Specialist course is on sale for $200 off this week. I'm a huge fan of Lee and this resource - so much, in fact, that it was filmed at Cressey Sports Performance - Massachusetts. It's now required viewing for all our staff members. You can check it out and take advantage of the great discount HERE.
Show Outline
How Lee developed into the coach he is today
How Lee approaches youth athletic development
What the 7 movement patterns of speed are and how these principles translate into sport specific results
What is a lateral run step is, how Lee teaches it, and how it’s different from a traditional crossover step
How can base stealers optimize their setup to maximize acceleration
Why an initial step back with the lead leg is not a bad move first move for a base runner and why observing an athlete’s center of mass is more meaningful when addressing acceleration
What the upper body’s role is in creating efficient running patterns and how the arms specifically work for baserunners when stealing
How can infielders can improve their setup and defensive start position
Why the traditional defensive mindset of get your glove on the ground and be as low as you can is the wrong strategy for optimizing a player’s athleticism
How initial hand position and the movement of the arms work to propel the body out of the start position to fielding the ball
How outfielders can refine their defensive setup
How the incorporation of a split step into a defensive player’s approach can create a quicker initial move to the ball and help to expand a fielder’s range
What minute but key movement competencies Lee incorporates into athletes’ training, including the dissociation of their upper and lower half and learning to run an opposite direction your eyes are looking
How Lee incorporates curvilinear speed work into his athletes’ training
How deceleration isn’t emphasized enough when discussing qualities of position players
What the common compensations Lee sees in baseball players’ running mechanics are
What mistakes coaches are commonly making when teaching and training speed in the game of baseball
What principles Lee prioritizes when incorporating conditioning into athletes’ training
How Lee would implement conditioning into a baseball program’s training calendar and how he would apply his conditioning principles to specific scenarios like managing a pitchers’ workload between starts
What the priority training qualities are when working to train power in hitters
What med ball fake throws are and why are these specifically useful when training hitters
You can follow Lee on Twitter at @LeeTaft and Instagram at @LeeTaft.
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Thank you for your continued support!
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Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance - Florida coach Derek Kambour. It's timely, as Lee Taft's Certified Speed and Agility Coach course is on sale for $150, and it's mandatory viewing for each of the coaches on the CSP staff. Lee's had a profound effect on our movement training progressions, as you'll see below. Enjoy! - EC
With the current global pandemic, you’re seeing more and more people training outside. I don’t think I’ve seen this many people going for walks, going out for long distance runs, and even sprinting since I was in elementary or middle school (before the internet became popular). Many of the athletes that we’ve been training at Cressey Sports Performance have had to adjust their training due to not having access to our facility. The majority of them will not have access to equipment and will have to address other elements of their training to maintain a training effect. One of those areas is their sprint work. Since many athletes will be shifting their focus away from heavy strength training and more towards sprints and movement based work, I thought this would be a good time to go over some key principles for athletes and coaches to think about when it comes to getting the most out of their sprint work.
1. Posture/Position
This is usually the first thing we look at when developing an athlete’s speed capabilities. This is an athlete’s foundation when it comes to speed. Simply put, if an individual can’t demonstrate appropriate posture and maintain good proximal position, then nothing else is really going to matter. There are a bunch of ways that you can go about addressing an individual’s posture. At CSP, we really like to use a variety of wall march drills. These drills are basic, but they’re great for allowing athletes to get a feel for ideal postures and positions. We will use certain variations depending on what the athlete needs to work on. For all these variations, we’re looking to see around a 45-degree angle where the head and neck is in a straight line all the way down to the foot/heel that is on the ground. The four primary variations that we will use include:
a. Glute Wall March ISO Holds – this is first variation that we will use with athletes as an introduction to acceleration posture and projection angles. This gives them a feel for proper position and provides context for further progressions that we may use. We’ll often prescribe 3-5 reps/leg with each rep being a 5 second hold.
b. Glute Wall March ISO Holds w/Mini-Band – This is a great variation to further challenge the postures and angles that we addressed with the first variation. The addition of the mini band will challenge the athlete’s ability to maintain position and gives the athlete immediate feedback on their ability to achieve hip separation.
c. Glute Wall March 1-2’s – Eventually, we want to make this drill a little more dynamic. Again, we’re looking to reinforce posture with the added challenge of maintain position while going through a rapid limb exchange.
d. Wall Load & Explode – I really like using this variation for emphasizing the horizontal projection angles required for linear acceleration.
Usually, it won’t take long for athletes to master these wall drills. Eventually, we want them to progress to more dynamic movements such as marches and skips where maintaining good posture becomes a bit more challenging. If an athlete demonstrates the ability to maintain positional integrity during basic marches and skips, we’ll progress to an arms overhead variation for both. For our purposes, we’ll have most of our athletes perform arms overhead marches and skips for the added benefit of getting shoulder flexion and upward rotation for our throwing athletes.
2. Arm Action
Along with posture, arm action tends to be one of the lowest hanging fruits when it comes to improving acceleration mechanics. I’m not a huge fan of spending a ton of time on arm action drills. Usually, effective verbal cues will do the trick when it comes to improving arm mechanics. With acceleration, we’re looking for much longer arm action where the backside arm is close to or at full extension, and the front side arm is closer to the chin or possibly the eyes, depending on the athlete. This longer separation is required in order to help propel the mass forward, and it goes along with the longer ground contact times you see with acceleration. Again, I usually rely on verbalizing this to athletes through simple cues, but I do like this Arm Action Series that I stole from Lee Taft (you can see it HERE). I’ll use this series with athletes during their warm-up or in between sets of their actual sprint work if I feel as though they need a better “feel” for their arms in a more specific body position.
Arm action is usually a pretty quick fix. If it is a major point of emphasis and something that the individual has clearly been struggling with, then be sure to be a stickler about it when it comes to dynamic warm-up activities such as your marches, skips, etc.
3. Direction of Force Application
With acceleration, we are looking for maximal horizontal force application where the projection angle is roughly 45-degrees, like the angles that are explored during the wall drills that I mentioned earlier. This projection angle is largely going to depend on where the athlete applies force or where their foot strikes into the ground after completing the first step. If we are talking about starting from a staggered 2-point or 3-point stance, when the athlete takes off, we are looking for a piston-like leg action where the back-leg comes through and punches forward and then quickly punches down and back into the ground. What I’ve found is that an athlete’s speed, whether they are running a 10, 20, or 40-yard sprint, is going to be dictated by the first two steps. An athlete that can nail the first two steps of acceleration, is going to set himself up for a pretty successful sprint. This isn’t always easy to do, especially for younger athletes.
Reinforcing good leg action during marches and skips is a good place to start. You will often see athletes get too cyclical with their leg action where their heel comes too close to their butt. These are typically the individuals who will strike the ground out in front of their hips, leading to them "popping up" on initial acceleration. My go-to for athletes who have a hard time striking down and back is incorporating band resistance. I’m a big believer that in order to go fast, you sometimes need to slow things down and give athletes the time to get a feel for good position and what their body is doing. This is what band resistance essentially does. I’ll use this tool on marches, skips, and, one of my favorites, A-runs. I love using A-runs to teach the piston-like leg action and to help athletes with striking the ground under their center of mass.
There are times when athletes will execute proper leg action during these lower level activities, but then they can’t figure out how to transfer it to their sprint work. In this case, I’ll either a) have them perform these activities in between sets of their actual sprint work instead of just having them done in the beginning of their warm-up, or b) have them perform whatever sprint variation they are doing with band resistance and then immediately come back to that sprint variation without band resistance.
When I’m first introducing sprint mechanics to an athlete, I’ll usually play around with what starting position works best for them and where they feel most comfortable. Some athletes may prefer a lower position (3-point start) whereas other athletes (especially taller athletes) may prefer a variation where they initiate the sprint from a slightly higher projection angle (falling start).
4. Elasticity
Elasticity or elastic strength is arguably the most important trait or physical quality when it comes to sprint performance. Elastic strength refers to the ability to produce large amounts of force in a short period of time. There have been numerous studies that show how elite sprinters can put tremendous amounts of forces into the ground at a much faster rate compared to non-elite sprinters. How do we train the ability to put force intro the ground at a high rate? Sprinting is the most obvious answer, but this can also be accomplished through fast stretch shortening cycle plyometric activities as well. The nice thing about developing elastic strength is that it doesn’t require any equipment.
When preparing an athlete to sprint, we want to prepare specific tissues through plyometrics in a progressive manner going from least intensive to most intensive. Along with many of the dynamic warm-up activities mentioned (marches, skips, A-Runs), we like to use 1-leg Medial-Lateral Line Hops as a low-level activity to prepare the tissues of the lower leg. The middle ground can be used for activities like Pogo Jumps, Hurdle Jumps variations, and Depth Jump variations. Prior to sprint work, I like to transition to plyometric drills that address specific technical elements that translate a little more to sprinting, my favorite being bounding. With bounding, you’re developing an athlete’s stiffness, elasticity, coordination, and timing.
Hopefully, this will give some ideas as to how you can improve your sprint training as we continue to make it through this difficult time. Be safe, everyone!
Note from EC: If you're looking to learn more about Lee's approach to programming and coaching speed and agility work, I highly recommend his Certified Speed and Agility Coach course. The information is top notch, and it's on sale for $150 off through Sunday. You can learn more HERE.
About the Author
Derek Kambour serves as a Strength and Conditioning Coach. Prior to joining the staff, Derek completed an internship at CSP-FL in the fall of 2018. Prior to joining the CSP-FL team, Derek coached a variety of athletes and clientele at performance facilities in New Jersey. He graduated from Montclair St. University with a degree in Exercise Science and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the NSCA. Derek is also a competitive powerlifter. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
We’re excited to welcome Auburn University head coach Butch Thompson to this week’s podcast for a multi-faceted discussion that covers rising through the college coaching ranks; transitioning from a pitching to head coach; managing submarine/sidearm pitchers; analyzing fear; building a winning culture; assisting families through the recruiting process; and reflecting on the unprecedented times in the current baseball world.
This week, in lieu of a sponsor, I just wanted to pass along a friendly reminder that Cressey Sports Performance is now offering online consultations for baseball players who can't make it to our facilities. For more information, click here.
Show Outline
How Butch transitioned from player to coach and begin his coaching career
How the idea of range – being a generalist before a specialist – applies to becoming a baseball coach
What Butch’s biggest mistake was in his early years of coaching
How Butch managed the transition from pitching coach to head coach
What non-negotiable characteristics make a great pitcher great
How spin has always been a noticeable quality in a pitcher’s arsenal, but how advances in science and technology have allowed numerical values to help guide player development
How Butch defines a coach’s role
What Butch has done to have success with submarine and sidearm pitchers and how coaches can recruit a different look to add an edge to their team
How the business of college baseball has changed since Butch first started as a college coach
What differentiates Butch’s baseball program, Auburn, from other college programs
What the challenges facing college recruiting coordinators are today
Where parents and athletes are falling short in their pursuit to get recruited by SEC-caliber schools
What Butch’s ideal prospect email includes
How Butch creates unity and manages attitudes in an SEC locker room and why he instills the idea of responsibility over pride
Why Butch’s work as a head coach now involves more managing than skill development
Why Butch has been intrigued by fear and what five principles he recommends for minimizing and managing it
How players can find comfort with the current uncertainty in college baseball currently
How individuals can look past their fear and find opportunities to advance in tough times
If you like what you hear, we'd be thrilled if you'd consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving us an iTunes review. You can do so HERE.
And, we welcome your suggestions for future guests and questions. Just email elitebaseballpodcast@gmail.com.
Thank you for your continued support!
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!
Today's guest post/video comes from Cressey Sports Performance - Florida co-founder, Shane Rye.
There is a lot to love about the Split-Stance High-to-Low Cable Chop, so it's been a staple in our programming for years! Often, we see folks who struggle to handle frontal plane forces correctly.
Athletes who primarily train the sagittal plane tend to have difficulty centering their mass when doing single leg work or frontal plane exercises, though, so it's not uncommon to see a lot of mistakes on this. Some of the common compensations you will see are:
1. Over pronating or over supinating
2. Shifting the hips forward to access extension based postural patterns
3. Collapsing at the midsection
4. Lateral flexion (side-bending) or hip shifting
5. Valgus collapse of the knee
6. Excessive rounding of the upper back
7. Hips bailing way too far out or away (losing their center of mass)
8. Knee shifting to far over their toes etc.
As you can see, there are a lot of places where this exercise can go off the rails, so in some cases, it's a better strategy to modify the exercise than provide 500 cues to address each issue. Enter the High-to-Low Cable Chop Split Squat, one of our favorite ways to teach athletes how to handle frontal plane forces. I originally encountered this variation from Pat Davidson a few years ago, and it's stood the test of time. Thanks to Colts quarterback Jacoby Brissett for the great demonstration:
There is also a great added bonus of hammering your oblique sling system. This might help a football player learn how to properly cut, or a pitcher to effectively accept force on the front hip.
1. Your adductor and glute med should engage on the front leg. Think of this as a dynamic hip shift or dynamic adductor pullback. You should feel your adductors working hard to help stabilize your pelvis. You might even feel a stretch in your posterior hip capsule.
2. Don't allow your knee to collapse in.
3. Ensure that the front foot is stable and not overly collapsed or overly rolled out.
4. Control your breathing as you descend and ascend.
5. Don't over stride with the back leg.
6. Don't Rush!
We'll typically program this for 6-8 reps at a slow tempo (three seconds lowering, one second pause at the bottom, and three seconds up) at first, and when athletes get more proficient with it, they can speed it up.
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It's been several weeks since I published one of these recommended reading/listening lists; luckily (?), having both facilities closed has freed up some time to pull one together. Check these out:
Niched Podcast - My business partner, Pete Dupuis, just launched his own entrepreneurship podcast. The guests don't all come from the fitness industry, but given Pete's presence, he does an outstanding job of bringing the lessons back to relate to owning a gym or managing a clientele.
Chasing the Sun - I just finished up this book on the benefits of sunlight by Linda Geddes. It ties in nicely with Why We Sleep, by Dr. Matthew Walker, if you've already checked that out.
Top Tweet of the Week
I’ve gotten several inquiries along the lines of, “How do I train if the gym is closed?” Here are some quick thoughts to hopefully help put things in a bit of perspective. Regardless, stay safe, everyone! pic.twitter.com/Rb2tx0pnju
Since we opened Cressey Sports Performance in 2007, we’ve offered distance-based, online training. However, we were sticklers for quality control, so we only made it available to those who’d first visited one of our facilities for an in-person evaluation and some technique coaching. In short, we didn’t want to water down a product of which we were extremely proud.
Over the years, we’ve created systems that have allowed us to work from afar with folks all over the world. These clients range from Cy Young Award Winners, to Olympians, to triathletes, to weekend warriors. Of course, the majority are baseball players, our most well-known area of expertise.
Recently, we’ve toyed with the idea of expanding our online offering, but were waiting for the right time to offer it. That the time is now.
You see, with all the cancellations and postponements in the baseball world over the past few months, we’ve been fielding hundreds of inquiries from players, parents, and coaches who are seeking direction as they prepare for uncertain baseball futures. And, in many cases, they do so with very limited equipment availability. We’re here to help.
With that said, you can now work directly with Cressey Sports Performance coaches via online consulting. To learn more and see if it’s the right fit for you, please reach out to us at csp.trainonline@gmail.com and tell us about yourself. We’re very confident that we can meet you where you are – and help you get to where you want to be.
We’re excited to welcome physical therapist Stan Conte to this week’s podcast for a detailed discussion of expectations surrounding Tommy John surgery. Stan is not only an experienced clinician, but also a prolific researcher in the baseball sports medicine world. With the prevalence of ulnar collateral ligament injuries in today's game, this podcast is a must-listen.
How Stan’s career in professional baseball has evolved from the clinical setting into more research based work
How Stan was a part of the group that began the Health and Injury Tracking System (HITS), the first injury surveillance system in Major League Baseball
How the disabled list had long been utilized as more of a roster management tool than an injury prevention system
Why DL data is still nonetheless relied upon when analyzing medical history in pro baseball
What studies Stan has been a part of regarding Tommy John surgery, and how this research is shaping the way players are managed
How the increase in pitching velocity throughout the game of baseball has redefined the pressure put on prospects and led to throwing injuries in younger arms
Why no one really knows how long it takes a UCL graft to mature and what conclusions Stan has drawn from research and working alongside rehabilitating athletes
When the best time to begin throwing after Tommy John surgery is
Why having pain when throwing during Tommy John rehab is not normal and what protocols players can look to when setbacks arise
When flat grounds, bullpens, and simulated games should fit into a return from TJ throwing program
When Stan recommends the reincorporation of off speed pitchers in return to throwing programs
What the true success rate of UCL reconstruction surgery is
What common Tommy John perceptions are actually myths
Why the number of Tommy John revisions is rising and how long post-op are the majority of these revision surgeries occurring
What the difference is between UCL repair and UCL reconstruction, and when each is an option for patients
Despite the high success rate for pitchers with TJ surgery, why catchers see the lowest success rate from Tommy John
Where Stan would like to see more research done in the baseball performance industry
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Podcast Feedback
If you like what you hear, we'd be thrilled if you'd consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving us an iTunes review. You can do so HERE.
And, we welcome your suggestions for future guests and questions. Just email elitebaseballpodcast@gmail.com.
Thank you for your continued support!
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!
Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance - Massachusetts Director of Performance, John O'Neil.
Today, I'm gong to be covering a few ways to progress the glute-ham raise (GHR). We use GHR variations for hypertrophy and injury prevention, as they are a good supplementary exercise to a lifting and/or sprinting program. These variations are a nice replacement for people who struggle to do a GHR well, or, people looking for variety in a program. These variations are heavily impacted from our good friends at Resilient PT, so be sure to check them out on Instagram at @resilientPPT!
1. Glute Ham Raise ISO Hold
-Muscle Action: Isometric Hamstrings, Glutes
-Purpose: Create context for other exercises that require a the ability to create posterior pelvic tilt using your feet (i.e., deadlifts, RDLs, etc..)
-Degree of Difficulty: Beginner
-Common Rep Scheme: 3-5 reps x 5-10seconds, or, minimal reps for long duration breaths
-Common Error: Don’t set up too far away, and don’t expect to cover too much ground
2. GHR Hip Extension
-Muscle Action: Isometric Hamstrings, Eccentric to Concentric Glutes
-Purpose: Create context for hip hinging by driving your feet into the pad as you descend and ascend. Additionally, work on syncing upper and lower half tension needed on a deadlift variation.
-Degree of Difficulty: Beginner -> Intermediate
-Common Rep Scheme: 6-10 Reps
-Common Error: Don’t go for speed. The goal is to feel tension throughout the movement. Additionally, make sure to achieve full hip extension at the top of the movement.
3. GHR Razor Curl
-Muscle Action: Eccentric -> Concentric Hamstrings, Isometric (mid-range) glutes
-Purpose: Hamstring hypertrophy. By avoiding full hip extension, the stress of the activity is placed purely on the hamstrings.
-Degree of Difficulty: Advanced
-Common Rep Scheme: I’ll typically program this as an RPE. For example, if I write 9 RPE, it’s assumed that you go 1 rep shy of technical failure. Other ways to write this include (Max – 1) or 1 Rep in Reserve (RIR). Take this close to failure to make it a hypertrophy focused exercise. I’ve seen an athlete go from 3 reps in week 1 to 17 in week 3, so, don’t assume one rep scheme for a 4-week block.
-Common Error: Don’t go for speed on the eccentric, and really reach your body out into full knee extension to assure that you hit the distal fibers of the hamstrings. Also, don’t cheat it by coming up into hip extension at the top and keep the tension.
4. GHR Waterfall
-Muscle Action: Eccentric -> Concentric Hamstrings and Glutes
-Purpose: Hamstring and glute hypertrophy.
-Degree of Difficulty: Intermediate -> Advanced. Slightly easier than the razor curl for two reasons – one, the eccentric is with gravity, and two, achieving full hip extension at the top gives you a moment of releasing tension from the hamstrings.
-Common Rep Scheme: Same as the razor curl. Typically better formatted as an RPE or RIR.
-Common Error: Don’t rely on momentum to bounce out of the bottom. You want to feel your feet leading the movement from the bottom of the motion.
If you want to make any GHR variation easier, decline the machine (elevate the front). To make it harder, incline the machine (elevate the back). Depending on the machine, you might be able to fit a band behind the back and either hold it or wrap it around your body to unload the bottom of the motion and provide more of an elastic component upon the return to the top.
To make the motion harder, adding a banded reach or adding load (holding a weight or using a weighted vest) will add to the eccentric stress and make the concentric motion more difficult.
John O'Neil (@ONeilStrength) serves as Director of Performance at Cressey Sports Performance-MA. You can contact him by email at joh.oneil@gmail.com and follow him on Instagram.
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Imagine a slideboard bodysaw push-up married a yoga push-up with opposite leg reach - and then they had an absolute savage of a child. They’d name him. If you’re looking for a next level body weight exercise to use during these crazy times, look no further than the slideboard bodysaw push-up with opposite leg reach, which is our exercise of the week!
Important coaching cues:
1. Don't let the lower back arch or the head to shoot into forward head posture.
2. Keep the upper arm at roughly a 30-45 degree angle to the side. It shouldn't be tucked in tight to the side.
3. This movement is best executed smoothly. In other words, don't segment the yoga push-up from the reach (which would make it "hitchy"). Be athletic!
4. I'll usually program it for 5-8 reps per side on each set.
5. I love this for times of year when I'm trying to get athletes in and out of the gym with shorter training sessions, as you effectively get an anterior core and upper body pressing exercise in one.
6. This is a more advanced push-up progression. If you don't have the strength and core control to do at least ten clean body weight push-ups, it shouldn't be in your program.
7. If you're at home and don't have access to a slideboard or Valslide, you can try a furniture slider or sock over your hand on a tile/wood floor.
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