With baseball athletes being the largest segment of the Cressey Sports Performance athletic clientele, it seems only fitting to devote a "Best of 2015" feature to the top baseball posts from last year. Check them out:
1.Common Arm Care Mistakes - Installment 6 - In this article, I talk about how important it is to select arm care exercises that truly appreciate the functional demands placed on the shoulder and elbow during throwing.
2.Changing Baseball Culture: A Call to Action - Physical therapist Eric Schoenberg makes a call to action to step away from four baseball traditions so that we can more easily prevent baseball injuries.
3. What is a "Big League Body?" - Big leaguers come in all shapes and sizes. Your baseball strength and conditioning programs need to appreciate that.
5. Projecting the Development of High School Pitchers - Cressey Sports Performance Pitching Coordinator Matt Blake shows what a difference a year can make in projecting high school pitchers for college baseball success.
If you're interested in learning more about how we assess, program for, and train baseball players, I'd encourage you to check out one of our Elite Baseball Mentorships. The next course will take place January 17-19, 2016 at our Hudson, MA facility. You can learn more HERE.
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With my last post, I kicked off the "Best of 2015" series with my top articles of the year. Today, we'll highlight the top five videos of the year. These videos only include instructional videos, not quick exercise demonstrations.
1. Avoid this Common Wall Slide Mistake - I'm a huge fan of wall slides for teaching good scapular upward rotation. Check out this video to see if you're making a common mistake on this front:
2. Steer Clear of this "Shoulder Health" Exercise - Continuing with the shoulder theme, here's a drill I don't particularly like. The good news is that I propose a suitable alternative.
3. Serratus Anterior Activation: Reach, Round, and Rotate - This video covers some of our common coaching cues for a different variation of wall slides than featured in video #1.
4. 3 Back to Wall Shoulder Flexion Cues - This drill is both a great training exercise and an assessment. With the right cueing, you can clean the pattern up pretty quickly, in most cases.
5. Exercise of the Week: Split-Stance Anti-Rotation Medicine Ball Scoop Toss - This is one of my favorite medicine ball exercises for early on in training progressions.
I'll be back soon with the top guest posts of 2015!
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It's time for another installment of my series on coaching cues we utilize at Cressey Sports Performance on a daily basis. Today, I'll feature some of my favorite medicine ball coaching cues:
1. "Keep the head behind the belly button a bit longer."
Creating good "separation" is absolutely essential for producing power in rotational sports. This separation occurs when the pelvis rotates toward the target as the torso continues to rotate (or at least stay back) in the opposite direction. In the example of a right-handed pitcher, the pelvis rotates counter-clockwise toward the plate while the torso is still rotating clockwise toward second base. This separation stores elastic energy - but can also predispose athletes to injuries (as I wrote in 2008) if the motion doesn't come from the right places.
In this regard, one of the biggest mistakes we see is the athlete "leaking" forward at the torso. This is a bad habit to get into in terms of power production (loss of separation), injury risk (can make a pitcher's arm "late" and subject the elbow and shoulder to undue stress), and effectiveness (hitters can't stay back to adjust on pitches, pitchers make struggle with "catching up" to find a consistent release point, etc.).
My feeling is that the head goes where the torso tells it to go, so trying to keep the head back a bit longer will force the torso to stay back long enough for the athlete to get sufficient hip rotation to create the ideal stretch.
2. "Make your front leg and back legs work like a slingshot."
Throwing a medicine ball - whether it's an overhead or rotational variation - is all about putting good force into the ground on the back leg and then accepting it on the front leg. In the analogy of a slingshot, if the back leg doesn't create enough eccentric preloading and subsequent force production, it's like not pulling back hard/far enough on the elastic portion of the slingshot. Athletes usually "get" this really quickly.
What they often fail to recognize is that the front foot has to stiffen up to accept force and - particularly in the case of overhead variations - help to create an effective downhill plane. One of the things I watch for on the front foot is whether athletes "spin out" of their shoes; you'll actually see some guys roll right over the sides of the sneakers if they don't stiffen up enough on the front leg to accept all the force that's being delivered. This is just like having a "limp" front arm when using a slingshot.
In over ten years of coaching these drills, CSP athletes and Royals pitcher Tim Collins is probably the absolute best example of effective "slingshot" force transfer on medicine ball work. He's got excellent reactive ability and absolute strength/power to create force, but is equally proficient at knowing how to stiffen up at the right time on his front side. I firmly believer that this proficiency plays a big role in his ability to create a great downhill plane and throw one of the best curveballs in baseball even though he's only 5-7.
3. "Take your hand to the wall."
This is a cue I blatantly stole from my business partner, Brian Kaplan, who is the best coach I've ever seen when it comes to cleaning up medicine ball technique - and also creating context for our pitchers and hitters so that the drills carry over to what they do on the field.
One of the common issues we see with athletes with scoop toss variations is that they use too much wrist and get around the ball. You'll see the spin on the ball, and it won't sound as firm when it hits the wall. Effectively, what's happening is that the athlete is cutting off hip rotation and using the wrist redirecting the ball to the intended target. This causes the athlete to be around the ball instead of through it - so it's analogous to throwing a bad cutter with a baseball. By encouraging the athlete to take the hand to the wall, the ideal direction of force production is preserved, and we train hip and thoracic rotation more than just compensations at the wrist and hand.
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Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance - Massachusetts pitching coordinator, Matt Blake (@Blake_Matt). Matt is an integral part of the Elite Baseball Mentorships team. Enjoy! -EC
At a recent conference, Eric Cressey gave a presentation that tackled the importance of baseball professionals understanding scapular mechanics and the integral role they play in the throwing athlete’s kinetic chain. Eric Schoenberg also recently showed a great drill to incorporate scapular motion into the kinetic chain of activity. Given that I’m the third member of the Elite Baseball Mentorships team with these two, I figured I might as well chime in to highlight its importance from my perspective as well.
This is an important discussion to have because it can help demonstrate the need for all phases of development to work together to keep the high-level thrower operating on all cylinders. If we’re all speaking the same language, we can work to build the athlete’s awareness for their overall movement and integrate the education from the warm-up through the initial phases of the throwing progression.
If we’re all saying different things to the athlete using our own jargon, it’s easy for them to misinterpret the carryover of certain drills, exercises, and concepts across channels. If we all lay down similar verbiage in our conversations with the athlete regarding their prehab work, dynamic warm-up, strength training and throwing motion, it makes it a lot easier for them to appreciate the importance each piece holds in the puzzle.
In order to get started, let’s look at where the scapula is positioned and introduce its fundamental movements so we can begin to appreciate its role in the kinetic chain.
When looking at the scapula’s position and actions, you have to acknowledge the importance of its relationships with the rib cage and the humerus. These relationships are integral in tying the torso and the arm action together in a high-level throw. These interactions between the thoracic region, scapula and humeral head may be the most overlooked or misunderstood components of the delivery – especially for the average coach who has no anatomical background.
The degree of misunderstanding is mainly because the actions are so subtle and can’t be fully appreciated when the athlete throws with their shirt on. This is why its so vital to have a strength/rehab professional in the mix, who can provide a shirtless scapular screen to give us a baseline on where the scapula lies at rest and how it functions in relation to the movement of the arm.
Once you can identify how an athlete presents, you can begin to build a more individualized corrective movement progression. This will serve to help the athlete identify and turn on the appropriate movement patterns to keep the humeral head flush with the scapula through its full range of motion. This is essential in the throw, because of the importance of a “clean” arm action to help alleviate some of the stress involved in the high-level motion. For demonstration sake, here’s an example of a HS pitcher, who throws 88-91, with a relatively efficient arm action for his age.
The ability to create elite levels of hand-speed in a durable manner can be won or lost based on how the humeral head functions in conjunction with the scapula. In my mind, this is the crux of the delivery, where you need to be able to tie the “whip-like” arm action into the sequential actions of the torso.
As the thrower engages his landing position, the kinetic forces of the delivery are beginning to flow up through the chain towards the scapula and arm. It’s crucial at this point for the arm to get set up in a sound position to optimize control of the (glenohumeral) joint in an effort to handle the energy that’s about to drive through that portion of the chain towards release. The “optimal” timing of this set-up will be dictated by how the athlete sequences hip and torso rotation, as well as how much laxity they present with, etc. - but for the sake of discussion, we’ll say landing is a crucial checkpoint.
From here, the key actions that we’re going to break out today are upward rotation and protraction. This isn’t to say that they are more important than the other actions, but throughout the season, throwers tend to lose upward rotation from the stress of the throwing motion. With that in mind, let’s identify what it is and how it works with protraction to aid the durability of the high-level delivery.
This concept is something that EC has written and produced videos about countless times over the years, but it continues to be a point that needs to be reiterated time and again. For those who haven’t seen it, this is a great video to consider in this discussion.
From this video, we’ll take it a step further, so you can visualize how this actually plays out in the throwing motion itself.
As you can see, there is a considerable amount of range of motion and control that needs to be in place if you expect to keep the humeral head “centered” from lay-back through the entirety of the deceleration phase. The challenge here is that we can’t always see how the arm action is working with the shoulder blade. One way to combat this is via communicating with your athletes about where they feel their soreness the day after throwing.
Generally speaking, I like to have guys tell me they’re sore near the medial border of the scapula, in the meat of back, where the scapular retractors are eccentrically controlling the scapula as it moves away from the mid-line. If guys are sore near the back, top, or front portion of the shoulder joint itself, then we’re probably getting too much “joint-play” and the humeral head is gliding and translating away from the center of the socket too much during the throw.
If these other patterns of soreness are presenting somewhere along the line, either the rotator cuff wasn’t doing its job, the scapula wasn’t working in sync with the humeral motion, or the thrower’s motion in general is putting them in positions that aren’t utilizing the correct patterns. In this case, let's assume that we did have a “good” post-throwing stress pattern.
Once we’ve identified that we are using scapular upward rotation and protraction to our benefit to control the socket, now we need to work extremely hard to counteract the eccentric damage associated with these actions. This is where the recovery protocol and the warm-up itself are crucial on a daily basis to make sure we’re getting back both the range of motion that we need, as well as activating it correctly before we begin to throw again.
To learn more about how physical assessment, strength and conditioning principles, video analysis, and drill work for the pitcher fit together, be sure to check out one of our Elite Baseball Mentorships. Our next event will be held January 17-19, 2016 at Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, MA. The early-bird registration is December 17, 2015. For more information, check out www.EliteBaseballMentorships.com.
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I love bottoms-up kettlebell carrying variations for teaching scapular control and getting reflexive rotator cuff recruitment. Sometimes, though, folks won't feel these drills in the right positions. With that said, check out today's video to learn how you can usually quickly and easily shift the stress to the right spots in the shoulder girdle:
If you're looking to learn more about our approaches to assessing and training the shoulder girdle, I'd encourage you to check out out one of our Elite Baseball Mentorships. Our next upper extremity course takes place January 17-19, 2016 at Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, MA, with December 17 serving as the early-bird registration deadline. For more information, check out www.EliteBaseballMentorships.com
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Today's guest post comes from physical therapist Eric Schoenberg. Eric is an integral part of the Elite Baseball Mentorships team.
Every baseball player on the planet has heard their coach say “stay on top of the ball”, “get out in front”, and/or “throw downhill”. It is an easy thing to say, but a little more difficult to teach. A common response that I hear from players that I work with is: “I understand what the coach is saying, but I don’t know how to actually get my body to do it”.
There are many mechanical reasons why a pitcher will struggle to create this downhill plane. (e.g. front leg stability, trunk tilt angle). However, on the movement side of things, one of the main culprits that we see is a lack of scapular upward rotation. If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, you know that EC has hit on this topic for years. I wanted to add some thoughts to this critical concept.
If a pitcher lacks the ability to “get up” (insufficient scapular upward rotation and/or elevation), he will not be able to effectively get his hand out in front to maximize velocity. Pitchers will describe this feeling as “cutting the ball off” or “feeling stuck”. The result is a decrease in velocity and difficulty “getting down” in the zone. It is very common for this to occur later in the season once the off-season training effect has been lost and the predictable loss of range of motion (shoulder flexion, upward rotation, hip and thoracic mobility) kicks in.
The most effective pitchers share three things in common: consistent velocity, consistent location, and health. None of these are possible with faulty scapular movement patterns.
The best time to establish proper scapular upward rotation is in the off-season (NOW!). The challenge comes with educating the athlete on how to not lose this motion during the season.
By now, we are aware of the importance of wall slide variations, back to wall shoulder flexion, and trap raises. However, the message of consistency with these exercises EVERY DAY during the season cannot be overstated. This is akin to brushing your teeth. A habit needs to be established and it then needs to be repeated. Every baseball player that I see in my office for elbow or shoulder pain comes in with faulty scapular movement. This is certainly not the only thing that leads to pain in pitchers, but it is certainly a good place for us to be looking early on.
A great exercise that we have been using to emphasize “getting up and out in front” is the One-Arm Band Rotational Row from a Low Setting.
This drill is much more about the deceleration phase than the actual rowing pattern, however all phases of the movement are important. I prefer to use a band instead of a cable due to the increased velocity of the recoil. This is a great drill to use in a training or warm-up program. With that said, I find the best application is to be used in a pre-throwing program (preferably the last drill before a pitcher picks up the ball to begin throwing).
Set-Up: Wide base to emphasize hip mobility. Front foot should mimic where the land foot is in the delivery. Back foot and hips are rotated fully so the athlete is “squared up” in the sagittal plane. Coaching from the Posterior View will give you a good vantage point to see this.
Instruction: Initiate the rowing motion from the hips first, then the thoracic spine, then the scapula, and finally the humerus. Make sure the athlete’s elbow doesn’t end up behind the line of his body. Back foot should rotate to mimic the position on the rubber with the hip hinged and loaded. Cue the athlete to decelerate the band with his body (core, front hip) and not just with his arm. Coaching from a 90 degree angle to the side will show this the best.
A key component for a pitcher to develop/maintain velocity and location is to make sure that their body is in a stable position to deliver their arm (and the baseball). The One Arm Rotational Row accomplishes this by via the following avenues:
1. Single Leg Strength
a. Land Leg: Proper stability and balance to accept weight, stop forward momentum, and translate force from the ground up the chain.
b. Drive leg: Ability to hinge back into drive hip and not translate forward (toward 3rd base for a RHP) or collapse into valgus. Keeping weight through the whole foot and not just on the toe
2. Stable core throughout delivery – especially as trunk and hips start to separate
Leaking into anterior pelvic tilt or lumbar extension will drive scapular downward rotation and depression (resulting in the hand moving under or around the ball, as opposed to staying behind the ball).
3. Optimal Thoracic Positioning
This drill drives thoracic flexion moment to allow for a congruent platform for the scapula to ride up and create the desired extension at ball release.
Give this drill a try with your athletes (make sure to train both sides) and emphasize consistency with their scapular upward rotation exercises in order to develop a more durable arm with improved velocity and location.
If you are interested in learning more about our approach to managing baseball athletes, we'd love to see you at one of our Elite Baseball Mentorships. The next three-day course is June 23-25, with May 23 serving as the early-bird registration deadline.
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The side-lying external rotation is one of the most popular rotator cuff exercises in rehabilitation and "pre-habilitation" history, but in spite of its apparent simplicity, there are a few common mistakes I see folks make with it. Check out today's video to learn more:
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With holiday travels and product sales, I skipped our recommended reading last week. Here is some good stuff to make up for it!
What awaits in negotiations for Major League Baseball's next labor deal? - Jayson Stark wrote up this great piece about the various items that will be discussed by MLB owners and players in anticipation of the new collective bargaining agreement. If you train baseball players, a number of these issues - from roster size, to potentially shortening the season, to the outrageous travel scheduling - all can have a significant impact on how you prepare players and educate them on taking care of themselves during the season. And, this doesn't even speak to how it might change the draft for amateur athletes with whom you interact. In short, if you want to understand the training of professional baseball players, you better understand the business of baseball!
6 Healthy Habits You're Already Doing (and Don't Even Know It) - The crew at Precision Nutrition wrote up this article on how many people who think they're struggling with their fitness goals actually already have some great habits working on their side.
Poor Business Advice from Training and Business "Gurus" - David Allen wrote up a great article for EliteFTS on the bad business advice that's out there in the strength and conditioning and personal training world. I absolutely loved the quote, "Try not to take too much business advice from people whose only business has been giving business advice."
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I'm a big fan of serratus anterior activation drills for upper extremity health and performance, but one only gets great benefits if exercise technique is on point. Check out these three key coaching cues you'll want to get serratus anterior engaged during your wall slides:
I should note that "exhale" would be a fourth cue, but it doesn't being with a "R" and therefore would've ruined the good blog title. That said, adding an exhale can help to establish better rib position and enable the individual to "feel" the serratus anterior working a bit more.
If you're looking for more upper extremity assessment and training insights - particularly with respect to serratus anterior - be sure to check out Sturdy Shoulder Solutions.
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If you've read EricCressey.com for any length of time, you're surely aware that I'm not a fan of distance running for pitchers. I've published multiple articles (here, here, here, and here) outlining my rationale for the why, but these articles have largely been based on theory, anecdotal experience, and the research of others. Today, I wanted to share with you a bit of data we collected at Cressey Sports Performance - Florida not too long ago.
First, though, I should make a few important notes that "frame" our training recommendations and
1. Athletes absolutely must have a well-developed aerobic system in order to recover both acutely (during the training session or competition/games) and chronically (between training sessions and competitions/games). It's relatively easy to improve if approached correctly, and can yield outstanding benefits on a number of physiological fronts.
2. As long as the intensity is kept low enough during aerobic training initiatives, it won't compromise strength and power development. I wrote about this all the way back in 2003 with Cardio Confusion, but many industry notables like Alex Viada, Joel Jamieson, Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman Eric Oetter, Pat Davidson, and Charlie Weingroff have done a far better job describing the mechanisms of action in the 12 years since that article was published. Speaking generally, most folks put the "safe zone" intensity for aerobic development without strength/power compromise at approximately 60-70% of max heart rate (Zone 2, for the endurance savvy folks out there).
3. It might be a large amplitude movement (great ranges-of-motion achieved), but baseball is a low movement variability sport. Pitchers are the most heavily affected; they do the exact same thing for anywhere from 6-9 months out of the year (or up to 12, if they're making bad decisions by playing 12 months out of the year). Distance running to me does not offer significant enough movement variability to be a useful training option for developing the aerobic system.
4. The absolute best time to develop the aerobic system is early in the off-season. For the professional baseball player, this is Sep-Oct for minor leaguers, and Oct-Nov for major leaguers. This is one more strike against distance running; after a long season of being on their feet in cleats, the last thing players need is a higher-impact aerobic approach.
With these four points in mind, two years ago, I started integrating aerobic work in the form of mobility circuits with our pro guys in the early off-season. The goals were very simple: improve movement quality and build a better aerobic foundation to optimize recovery – but do so without interfering with strength gains, body weight/composition improvements, and the early off-season recharge mode.
The results were awesome to the naked eye – but it wasn’t until this week that I really decided that we ought to quantify it. Lucky for me, one CSP athlete – Chicago White Sox pitching prospect Jake Johansen – was up for the challenge and rocked a heart rate monitor for his entire mobility circuit. A big thanks goes out to Jake for helping me with this. Now, let’s get to the actual numbers and program.
Jake is 24 years old, and his resting heart rate upon rising was 56 beats per minute (bpm). If we use the Karvonen Formula for maximum HR (takes into account age and resting HR) and apply our 60-70% for zone 2, we want him living in the 140-154bpm range for the duration of his session. As you can see from the chart below – which features HR readings at the end of every set during his session – he pretty much hovered in this zone the entire time. The only time he was a bit above it was during an “extended” warm-up where I added in some low-level plyo drills just to avoid completely detraining sprint work (he’d already had a few weeks off from baseball before starting up his off-season).
When all was said and done, Jake averaged 145bpm for the 38 minutes between the end of his warm-up and the completion of the session.
He bumped up a little bit high in a few spots, but that’s easily remedied by adding in a slightly longer break between sets – or even just rearranging the pairings.
To that last point, I should also note that this approach only works if an athlete is cognizant of not taking too long between sets. If he chats with his buddies and heart rate dips too much between "bouts," you're basically doing a lame interval session instead of something truly continuous. Jake did 44 sets of low-intensity work in 38 minutes. You can't get that much work in if you're taking time to tell a training partner about the cute thing your puppy did, or pondering your fantasy football roster.
Think about the implications of this....
What do you think this kind of approach could do for the foundation of movement quality for a typical high school, college, or professional pitching staff?
Don't you think it might make them more athletic, and even more capable of making mechanical changes easier?
Don't you think they'd be less injury-resistant performing an individualized mobility circuit instead of one-size-fits-all distance running?
Do you think that maybe, just maybe, they'd feel better after an 11-hour bus ride?
Don't you think they'd bounce back more quickly between outings?
What is difficult for some coaches, though, is admitting that distance running to "build up your legs" is like changing the tires on a car with no engine, or studying for the wrong test. Just because "that's how it's always been done" doesn't mean that's how it has to stay.
Give some of these a try in the early off-season - and even during the season in place of "flush runs." They'll be a big hit with your athletes both in terms of performance and health.
And, for those of your looking for another Z2 training option, look no further.
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