Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance - MA Director of Performance, John O'Neil. I'd like to devote more attention to long-term athletic development here at EricCressey.com, and John will be helping me do so.
This article is geared towards working with a youth athlete who is in a gym for the first time. I have identified steps that I believe to be important with getting the ball rolling toward the athlete’s long-term athletic development, both from a physical and a mental standpoint.
The Physical
1. Establish Point A.
While athletic goals can be diverse, they all fall under the simple structure of getting from point A to point B in an efficient and appropriate manner. We need to be able to address the biggest differences between what an athlete’s current Point A is and what their potential Point B is, and provide them the skills to achieve them. It doesn’t matter what assessment system you use--just that you have the ability to identify where an athlete is the first time they are standing in front of you. For youth athletes, who may not know where their Point B is yet, it’s important that we give them a variety of motor skills that allows them succeed in a number of potential athletic goals years down the road.
It’s our job to determine what lies within the arrow, and understand that if an athlete’s goals change, we have still put him closer to his new Point B than he was at the original Point A.
2. Give the athlete success.
Success is not something you can learn about on paper and enact. It is something you have to experience. While I understand it is not always practical depending on the schedule of your facility, in my opinion, it is important to give the athlete some type of training effect on Day 1. As a beginner athlete in the gym, success is given via the instant gratification of knowing that you got better today--in essence, you are one (small) step past Point A where you started. The sooner we can give an athlete confidence in their ability to execute the necessary motor skills in a gym to build strength, move more efficiently, and perform on the field, the sooner they will take ownership of their program and be able to convert what you are teaching them from their short to long-term memory.
3. Know which motor skills you want a youth athlete new to the gym to have in place.
Dan John’s basic human movement skills are a great place to start. Every advanced athlete, regardless of their sport, should be able to hip hinge, squat, push, pull, carry, and perform single-leg movements. While not all of these are always realistic to truly pattern in on Day 1, give the athlete the knowledge of and the physical basics of what you are trying to get them to do. In a baseball population, some of the most important movements will also include teaching the athlete true external rotation, scapular control, and the ability to safely get overhead. As an example, here’s a basic drill (usually included in the warm-ups) to educate athletes about where they should and should not be feeling exercises in their shoulder as their arm goes into external rotation.
4. Know which practical weight-room skills you want the athlete to have in place.
Identify the basic implements, grips, and stances used in your programming, and select exercises to teach these while also teaching the basic movement skills. A perfect example is an Anterior-Loaded Barbell Reverse Lunge, which teaches the athlete to get strong on one leg with an efficient lunge pattern, and also teaches them a front-squat grip with a barbell. We have to ask: How much of the overlap in the Venn Diagram can we get athletes proficient in, or at least give them a comfort level with, on Day 1?
Another great example is a kettlebell goblet squat, as the athlete learns both the goblet grip and the squat pattern. As Eric has written in the past, barring any contraindication, a majority of Day 1 Cressey Sports Performers learn the trap bar deadlift, but many athletes new to lifting may need more direct work to effectively pattern the hip hinge component of a deadlift. One of my favorite exercises is a tall-kneeling banded hip hinge with a dowel. This teaching tool puts the athlete in a position where they cannot fail without knowing it, thanks to having a physical external cue in both places that are important to the hip hinge--hinging at the hips (the band) and maintaining a neutral spine (the dowel).
The Mental
1. Put the athlete in an environment where they are comfortable and want to be.
For someone who has never been in a gym, it is important to schedule their assessment and first training session at a time when the gym is not busy. In order to really promote athletes taking ownership of their programming and truly wanting to pursue long-term athletic development, the gym needs to feel like a safe haven rather than an overwhelming place of chaos. The athlete could be coming from a difficult situation at home or in their personal life and it is our job to make the gym a place of comfort and enjoyment. If the gym is very slow/quiet, you might even have the athlete choose which music they want to listen to. The places we learn the best are the places we are the most comfortable and the happiest being in.
2. Assess the athlete in a way that tells them that you’ve seen, dealt with, and given success to many, many people just like them.
A majority of your athletes won’t have a clue what you’re looking at, but they’ll know if you come across as confident and sure of what you are seeing. In the baseball population at CSP, this is easy to portray to an athlete because they know the success that professional baseball players have had while training there. During the assessment, you might even be able to figure out whether the athlete is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner, which will be invaluable when you are cueing the bigger movements.
3. Create context with the athlete that allows you and your staff to optimize your relationship with them, both as a person and an athlete.
Athletes are comfortable with coaches they know truly care about them, and, they respond best to cues that are already within their existing schemas. As coaches, we are always working to expand the amount of schemas we can tap into because we need to know what clicks best with the athlete. If talking about video games makes the athlete want to be there and listen to you, relate to them that way. If talking to a 14 year-old about why they don’t use Facebook anymore and how they only use Snapchat and Instagram is the best way to make them think you’re someone who’s cool to be around and worth listening to, then that’s the route you should take. The best time to create said context is when you are showing the athlete how to foam roll. The correctives/warm-ups and the lifts will be more task-oriented, and hopefully by that point you know what to talk about and how to talk to the athlete.
Conclusion
The challenge as a coach is choosing how much information you can give the athlete that they can actually retain. One of my favorite ideas to think about as a coach is Miller’s Law--the idea that a person can only hold approximately seven items in their working memory. At the end of the day, you can’t expect an athlete of any level to retain everything from their first training session, but you can give the athlete a concept of a few basic motor patterns and a few different grips, implements, and stances in the weight room. Most importantly, you can send that athlete home with the knowledge that they are one step closer to their goals.
John O’Neil (@OneilStrength) is Director of Performance at Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, MA. You can contact him by email at joh.oneil@gmail.com and follow him onInstagram.
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I just wanted to give you a heads-up on one-day seminar with me at Cressey Sports Performance in Jupiter, FL on Sunday, March 29, 2015.
We’ll be spending the day geeking out on shoulders, as the event will cover Shoulder Assessment, Corrective Exercise, and Programming. The event will be geared toward personal trainers, rehabilitation specialists, and fitness enthusiasts alike.
Agenda
9:00AM-9:30AM – Inefficiency vs. Pathology (Lecture)
9:30AM-10:15AM – Understanding Common Shoulder Injuries and Conditions (Lecture)
10:15AM-10:30AM – Break
10:30AM-12:30PM – Upper Extremity Assessment (Lab)
12:30PM-1:30PM – Lunch
1:30PM-3:30PM – Upper Extremity Mobility/Activation Drills (Lab)
3:30PM-3:45PM – Break
3:45PM-4:45PM – Upper Extremity Strength and Conditioning Programming: What Really Is Appropriate? (Lecture)
4:45PM-5:00PM – Q&A to Wrap Up
Location
Cressey Sports Performance
880 Jupiter Park Drive
Suite 7
Jupiter, FL 33458
Continuing Education Credits
The event has previously been approved for 0.7 NSCA CEUs when I've presented it elsewhere, and we expect the same to be the case here in FL as soon as the paperwork goes through.
Cost:
Early Bird (before March 2) – $149.99
Regular (after March 2) - $199.99
Note: we'll be capping the number of participants to ensure that there is a lot of presenter/attendee interaction - particularly during the hands-on workshop portion - so be sure to register early, as the previous offering sold out well in advance of the early-bird registration deadline.
A huge majority of sporting outcomes are heavily dependent on speed, agility, and quickness. The fact that these athletic qualities are such "game changers" also makes them a fun topic to cover in lectures and writing. To that end, I thought I'd pay specific attention to speed, agility, and quickness in today's post. It's especially timely, given the great introductory sale on Complete Speed Training that's going on this week.
1. Footwear matters.
To me, all speed, agility, and quickness training discussions need to begin with footwear, as it directly impacts how you produce and reduce force with respect to the ground.
If you're in heavier sneakers, good luck trying to "feel" fast.
If you're in shoes with huge heel lifts, just try recruiting your posterior chain effectively during your movement training.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if you're in sneakers without the right amount of lateral support, have fun trying to change directions. This has been a huge issue with some of the minimalist sneakers on the market; athletes will actually roll out of the shoes during changes of direction in spite of the fact that they have sufficient neuromuscular control to execute the exercise perfectly. It's one reason why I was so glad to contribute to the discussion when New Balance was designing the newest versions of the Minimus.
Before you worry about cutting-edge training programs and meticulous coaching cues, make sure you've got the right stuff on your feet.
2. Don't overlook individual differences.
It's incorrect to assume that all athletes need to be coached the same with respect to movement training drills. Different athletes have different builds, and there will be subtle deviations from "the ideal" positions we envision in our minds. Obviously, limb and torso lengths play into this, but joint structure may impact things as well. As an example, someone who lacks hip internal rotation - whether it's because of a bony block, capsular changes, or hip retroversion - might need to work from a more "open" (toes slightly out) athletic stance.
Understanding what "normal" looks like is important, but don't think "abnormal" is necessarily always inappropriate.
3. It's easier to make a fast guy strong than it is to make a strong guy fast.
I heard this line so long ago that I honestly don't even remember where it originated. Still, I wish I'd really appreciated just how true it really was back then!
Many athletes are blessed with natural reactive ability. They're really proficient at using the stretch-shortening cycle to create awesome athletic movement - even in the absence of what one might consider "good strength." These athletes thrive when you simply get them stronger.
At the other end of the spectrum, you'll find athletes who are very strong but completely unable to display that force quickly. They need to spend more time training speed than they do working on continuing to build (or maintain strength).
If you compare these two scenarios, though, the former (fast guy getting stronger) takes place much quicker than the latter (strong guy getting fast). There are a lot of different reasons this is the case, but at the end of the day, I think the biggest one is that it's difficult to teach an athlete to relax.
Guys who are naturally fast seem to "accidentally" know how to turn off unwanted muscular tension. Guys who are naturally strong usually resort to brute force to try to solve every problem. If you need further proof, just watch me (or any other powerlifter) play golf!
4. Movement quality falls off with a growth spurt - but good training can help attenuate that drop-off.
When kids hit puberty and their adolescent growth spurt, it's not uncommon to see some seriously uncoordinated athletes on the field, ice, or court. Beyond just the range of motion limitations that may have emerged overnight as bone growth has outpaced that of muscles and tendons, we also have to appreciate that the center of mass has moved further up away from the base of support - and that creates a more unstable environment.
This dramatic shift in the 12-15 age range explains why kids who dominated the youth ranks often don't pan out as high-level high school or collegiate ranks. Just being a Little League all-star doesn't really predict being a Major League Baseball all-star very well at all.
The good news is that we can attenuate - or minimize - the drop-off in athleticism that takes place with the adolescent growth spurt by incorporating effective training principles. As always, playing multiple sports and engaging in activities that provide a wide range of movements is essential. Moreover, we can integrate mobility drills and coach athletes on proper movement quality. And, finally, not to be overlooked is the role of strength training. Put 10-15 pounds of muscle mass on a young athlete's lower body, and his center of mass will definitely be much closer to the base of support, creating a more stable environment. Of course, the strength that also emerges from that training will also go a long way in improving movement quality. This is why I think ages 11-12 are some of the best times to get involved in entry-level strength training programs, even if it's just 1-2 times per week.
5. Moving well is as much about "reads" as it is about speed.
If you talk to most up-and-coming baseball players, they're generally concerned with their "60 times." If a player runs below a 6.5, he'd be considered elite caliber speed. Running between 6.6 and 6.7 would be excellent speed, 6.8-6.9 average speed, and 7.0 and below would be sub-par. These numbers are testing pretty regularly at various events in the high school ranks, but not much thereafter.
As a result, we don't really have a true frame of reference for how "fast" guys are in the big leagues. Well, I'm here to tell you that you'd be sorely disappointed if you tested 60s of all MLB players. There would be a lot of 6.8-7.1 speed among position players, and you might only find 2-3 sub-6.7 guys on each roster. Game-changing speed really isn't as common as you might think, and for every Billy Hamilton or Jacoby Ellsbury, there are a lot of guys who have become good baserunners more because they have learned how to run the bases, get good jumps, and understand situational baseball.
Baserunning is very much an art as much as it is an athletic endeavor, so you can do all the speed, agility, and quickness drills you want, but they won't have nearly the effect you desire if guys simply don't understand how to read and react to the game around them. This is surely the case in every other sport you'll encounter short of track and field, too.
6. Good movement training programs need a mix of coaching and competition.
If you want to get faster, I think it's crucial to have both coaching and competition elements in your training. With respect to coaching, you obviously have to cue athletes into higher quality movements; otherwise, you're just further ingraining faulty patterns. This is analogous to driving an out-of-alignment car as fast as you can.
Conversely, I think there is something to be said about shutting up and just letting athletes run fast and compete with each other. Most elite sprinters train as part of groups, not individually. The same can be said of the best NFL combine preparation set-ups; guys push each other to get better. Timing and mirror drills are great ways to cultivate this competitive spirit in the training environment.
Ideally, you get a little bit of both competition and coaching in every movement training session. As I look at our typical week with our pro guys, our heaviest speed, agility, and quickness days are Wednesday and Saturday. Wednesdays tend to be less coaching intensive and more competition as the athletes sprint together. On Saturdays, things are more coaching intensive as we work indoors with everything 30 yards or less in distance. I'll do more video work, and rarely have more than one guy sprinting at a time. As the season approaches, we'll integrate more of the coaching intensive work prior to strength training on Mondays as well.
7. Video has changed the game.
Video - and more specifically, slow-motion video - has changed how we coach movement training dramatically. We spend a lot of time coaching proper angles - whether it's torso lean or shin positioning - and being able to freeze-frame videos and show athletes where they are at various points in time can help an athlete to acquire or hone new skills much quicker than in previous years. If you're not videoing speed, agility, and quickness work, start!
One word of caution, though: don't let video interrupt the "flow" of the session. If you're not careful, you can wind up watching and discussing video for 5-10 minutes between each set. It's important to use the video as a resource, but not rely on it so heavily that it interrupts quality work.
Wrap-up
Speed, agility, and quickness training are incredible broad topics, so I'm really just scratching the surface with these seven observations. If you're looking for a more exhaustive resource from one of the best coaches and teachers in the strength and conditioning field, I highly recommend theCertified Speed and Agility Coach course from Lee Taft. This excellent product is required viewing for all our coaches at CSP.
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Today's guest post comes from speed and agility expert, Lee Taft, who is the creator of the awesome new resource, Complete Speed Training.
One of the benefits of being in a profession for over two decades is that I’ve made all sorts of mistakes and continue to learn from them. I want to share what I see as the top five mistakes coaches make when coaching speed and agility.
Mistake #1: Training Conditioning Instead of Speed!
It still amazes me how often coaches say they are going to work on speed, quickness, and agility, but fail to recognize the importance of recovery and duration. If an athlete is going to increase overall speed and quickness, at some point, they need to train at high speeds. In order to this repeatedly to achieve sufficient volume for a training effect, the energy system demands need to be appreciated. I typically stay in the 3-7 second range so I can get massive speed and quickness while the ATP-CP system can still pump lots of energy. Plus, I know most athletic plays only takes a few seconds to occur before lower intense movement or a stoppage takes over. My goal is to master movement efficiency with as much speed, agility, and quickness as possible.
The other issue of which I have to be cognizant is recovery between bouts. My goal in a typical training session is to not to get 100% recovery, although that would be nice! Unfortunately, full recovery on every single rep or set just isn’t practical in most settings (when it is practical, then I go for it!). My goal is to allow the athletes be in roughly an 8:1 to 12:1 rest to work ratio. I know I am getting enough ATP recovery so my athletes can go hard the next rep or set.
Coaches need to realize that when their athletes are performing the next bout and are still breathing heavy, they are not recovered enough to achieve maximum speeds. This simply becomes a conditioning session and not a speed session.
Mistake #2: Just Doing Drills Instead of Developing Skills!
Far too often, coaches make the mistake of designing their program around various drills. These drills frequently come from a quick search on YouTube for drills for speed and agility. The problem is the drill may have very little to do with what the athlete actually needs. I like to call it “Drill Surfing.” Coaches’ Google drills and when they find cool and exciting ones, they think their athletes might like they implement them.
Coaching is about executing a plan. The plan for coaching a speed and agility session needs to revolve around the skills the athlete needs developed. Once these skills are identified, then the coach can search for drills that will help improve the skills.
Always remember that drills are a conduit to skills and only serve the purpose of fulfilling a need.
Another way coaches like to use drills instead of skills is to use tools like speed ladders, dot drills, agility rings, etc. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these tools, but what often occurs is that the coach gets more concerned with making sure the athlete flies through the drill and misses the opportunity to teach or reinforce proper mechanics of athletic movement.
Mistake #3: Not Getting Strong!
You won’t find many coaches in the world of sports performance who find it more essential to teach multi-directional speed skills to athletes more than me. If athletes are not schooled in proper mechanics, they may never reach their true movement potential. Having said that, I know where the true gold can be found for speed and quickness. It is in the weight room!
Fortunately for me, I was exposed to many forms of strength training as a kid. My dad was big into fitness and taught me how to lift when I was young. I started working out with a guy who was a bodybuilder and power athlete and he taught me the bare-knuckles approach to hard lifting when I was 18 years old. I also learned over the years from studying strength training methods from around the world. I gained strength by training hard and the result was an improvement in my speed.
If you really want to increase speed potential, the weight room is a must. Get your athletes’ horsepower up and you will see the benefits in their speed.
Mistake #4: Not Paying Attention To What The Athletes Are Telling You!
I don’t really mean what the athletes are saying verbally; I mean what they are saying with their bodies when they move. Far to often, we coach based solely on what we were taught by our coach. We never question if it is right or wrong; rather, we just do it. The problem is many of the techniques and coaching strategies we were taught years ago don’t actually match up with pure human reactive movement.
The truest of multi-directional speed and quickness can be seen when athletes play their sport and react to the situation. They don’t think about how to move; they just react and do it. The sympathetic nervous system kicks in its “fight or flight” response, and athletes act based on perceived threats. When this occurs, the athlete tends to quickly position the body in an acceleration posture to escape or chase the opponent. Stored energy is released in the muscles via the stretch-shortening-cycle during the quick force production applied by the push-off leg going into the ground.
None of this is coachable, but it can be cleaned up with proper mechanics. I encourage coaches to realize the body has protective, effective, and efficient innate actions that should not be messed with just because your former coach said something like; “That’s a false step.” Educate yourself on pure human reactive movement and you will be surprised what the athletes are telling you…
Mistake #5: Thinking Short is Better Than Long!
I still remember my high school football coach yelling at us to take short choppy steps when we take off during sprints at the end of practice. I also remember many of my teammates stumbling in the first few steps due to the cleats getting caught in the grass because of these short choppy steps. This still rings true today. I hear youth coaches all the time encouraging the kids to take short steps when accelerating.
Remember in Mistake #4 when I talked about how the body has innate abilities? Well this is one of them. When an athlete goes through acceleration, the ability to push hard into the ground so the body can move forward quickly is vital. Well, when the push-off leg drives down and back hard, the front leg has to match the intensity (this is called “action-reaction”). The front leg will drive forward powerfully to allow the back leg to stay grounded longer; this helps to push the mass of the body forward further.
The other area we need to focus on is the arm action. The arm swing during acceleration is very long, especially in the back swing. This is, again, due to the fact we want longer foot contact so more force can be applied. The arm swing must match the leg action so coordination can exist. The process of accelerating is based on long powerful leg actions that never become over-strides, but more piston-like leg actions. The piston-like action always allows a down-and-back shin angle, so pushing is in order and pulling is not.
Closing Thoughts
We all have to remember that, as coaches, we took a silent oath to help our athletes become the best they can be. In order to do this, we must understand performance qualities like speed, agility, and quickness – and how the body needs to harness those abilities. By understanding these athletic traits better, we can avoid common mistakes that might be slowing your athletes down.
If you’re looking to take your knowledge of speed, agility, and quickness training to the next level, I’d highly recommend Lee’s new product, Complete Speed Training. In addition to being an extremely bright guy, he’s also an excellent teacher and coach. To sweeten the deal, this resource is on sale for $100 off through this Friday, February 13. Check it out HERE.
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Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance pitching coordinator, Matt Blake. Matt is a key part of the Elite Baseball Mentorships team.
It happens every year. Inevitably, I talk to college coaches about players with whom I work, and without fail, the conversation always comes back to the question: "what type of kid is he and how hard does he work?"
These are two loaded questions and they’re becoming incredibly important in the evaluation process for college coaches. Because the recruiting timeline is getting faster paced every year, coaches are dipping into increasingly younger talent pools to get commitments. This process is forcing coaches to become more reliant on their ability to project what a 15 or 16 year old pitcher is going to look like three years down the road and project what that player might become at ages 18-22 in a new environment. If this is the case, then it becomes essential for coaches to be able to balance who the teenage boy is that he is currently watching, with the man he’s inherently going to become in a few years under his watch.
In order to do this, you need to have the ability to look at the individual’s actions and behaviors, as movement patterns that you think indicate potential for continued growth as this player moves forward. This topic could expand into a entire book, but I’m going to simplify this thought and condense the discussion down to one athlete to help demonstrate the point I’m trying to make.
In this instance, I want to highlight an athlete I've coached over the last few years and show what a drastic difference a year can do in the context of mechanical development. I think it will bring to the forefront how important it is to allow a player to grow into himself and not force the process for these athletes. While doing that, I want to flush out some of the character traits that are involved in refining this process on a larger scale.
Here’s a video of the same athlete one year apart (we’ll break it down in detail later in the article):
To give you some context, you have a 5’9 150lb sophomore on the right and a 5’10” 170lb junior on the left. The 150lb sophomore version of this pitcher pitched around 78-82mph with an above-average change-up and above-average command. This allowed him to develop into a consistent high-level performer on the 16U summer circuit playing in national travel tournaments, but yet the phone isn’t ringing off the hook for this type of 16U player unless he shows “projection” in the body or above average velocity now (neither of which apply to him).
I can understand how it would be very easy to write this type of player off as "average," because every high school RHP in America throws 78-82mph. As such, how could you possibly see this player and offer him a scholarship to play in college? Well, if you’re paying attention, and look at this pitcher one year later with an additional 20lbs on his frame and see that the delivery has continued to refine itself, you’re going to begin to gather a positive sense of direction for this athlete and realize that this RHP is going to conservatively throw 84-87mph this year with a very good chance to throw harder.
Now, 84-87mph still may not get a lot of people excited in this day and age, but I would go out on a limb and say that by the time this athlete is physically maturing in college, you’ll be looking at an 88-90mph RHP with three pitches, who knows how to compete in the strike zone at a high level because he wasn’t blessed with velocity from an early age. There’s a spot for that type of pitcher on any college staff; I don’t care who you are.
One could also certainly say that’s a large leap to make in projecting a 5’10” 170lb pitcher, but it all comes back to knowing what type of person they are and how hard they work. That’s why I think intimate knowledge of their overall training activity is crucial, because you can find out if this player is willing to go away from the “fun” part of developing their skills and identify that they’re willing to buy into a much larger process to make themselves a more technically proficient player on the field.
This is important, in my eyes, because there are only so many reps you can expect a thrower to execute, due to the stressful nature of the activity. So, in order to maximize the efficiency of their development, they have to be able to handle concepts that transcend the actual throwing process itself to be able to refine their throwing motion. If they can grasp why learning how to create stability is important, or why learning to manage their tissue quality on a daily basis will increase their training capacity, then you can give them larger and larger windows to create adaptation as an athlete on the field.
Take the athlete in the video, for example. He’s becoming one of the most consistent performers on the field, and it’s no surprise, because he’s learning to become one of the most consistent athletes in the weight room as well. If you are familiar with the pitching delivery, you’ll notice that he has upgraded at least four critical components of the throwing motion:
Postural control of his leg lift/gather phase
Rhythm/timing of his hands and legs working together during his descent into the stride phase
Lead leg stability and postural control from landing to release
Ability to maintain integrity and directional control of his deceleration phase
The interesting piece of these four components is that three of these are reliant on the athlete improving his overall ability to create stability in the delivery. At Cressey Sports Performance, I talk with our athletes all the time about understanding if their adjustments are mobility, stability or awareness issues. In this instance, we probably had both stability and awareness issues to resolve. The thing is, once you’re aware of the issues, it still takes deliberate work to iron out a stability problem in the delivery, which is why the athlete’s training habits are so important. Simply throwing the baseball over and over again may help you with your timing and repeatability, but we need to actively attack the strength training if we expect to impact an athlete’s pattern of stability in the throw.
In order to examine this a bit further, let’s walk through each of these components and identify a couple key things in video form:
Postural Control during Leg Lift/Gather Phase
Rhythm of Descent into Stride Phase
Stability from Landing to Release
Control of Deceleration
Now, don’t get me wrong: there’s obviously a long way to go for this athlete to get to 90mph. However, when you look at the development of this individual in the last 365 days, and you consider that there are over 730 more days before this athlete will even play his first college baseball game as a freshman, it becomes that much more important to know who the athlete is. Will the player you’re recruiting be comfortable with who they are, and become stagnant in their development, or will he use his time efficiently to keep improving both on and off the baseball field?
In the short time that I’ve been doing this, I’ve found that there’s usually a progression for athletes that involves learning how strength training can benefit them. It usually starts with showing up to the weight room from time to time thinking that’s good enough. Once they start plateauing there, they realize they actually need to be consistent in showing up to the weight room to make gains. The problem is, they eventually start plateauing there as well, and if they decide they really want to be good, they proceed to make the all-important psychological jump, and realize it’s not good enough to just show up to the training environment anymore. They realize they need to make positive decisions in their daily routines in order to make the most of every training session, whether it’s on the field or in the weight room. If they’re not willing to do that, there’s always someone else who is, and it doesn’t take long before these athletes are passing them by and they’re left wondering what happened?
When the athlete makes the jump from simply showing up to giving a consistent effort to make positive decisions for themselves inside and outside of the training environment, it becomes real easy to tell a college coach, "This is a guy you want, not only on the field or in the weight room, but in your locker room as well."
If you're interested in learning more about our approaches to long-term baseball development, be sure to check out our Elite Baseball Mentorships; the next course will take place in January.
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I hope everyone's week is going well. It's a bit late, but here is a collection of recommended strength and conditioning reading for the week:
How and Why to Make the Perfect Super Shake - We're big fans of "super shakes" for getting in healthy calories in a convenient way, especially if you're a teenage athlete who hates waking up early for breakfast. Check out this great "how to" infographic on the topic from our friends at Precision Nutrition.
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - This is a book I should have read a long time ago, but for some reason, I never got around to it. I'm now halfway through listening to it, and I regret not doing so sooner. It could have made my education regarding stress and the autonomic nervous system a lot more efficient!
Baseball Injuries: What to Expect in the Next Few Months - Football season is over, so it's time for baseball! Pretty soon, you'll be hearing about how "Player X is on the disabled list with Injury Y." In this article from a while back, I discuss exactly why this is the case.
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Those of you who have followed my work for any length of time surely know that I'm a big fan of including wall slide variations to improve scapular (shoulder blade) control. To get the benefits of these drills, though, it's important to use the right technique. Here's one mistake we commonly see, especially in really "tight" athletes who have a lot of stiffness in their lats to overcome:
Apologies for the contribution from Cressey Sports Performance mascot Tank Cressey at the 1:05 mark! This guy thought it'd be a good idea to bark hello to the UPS guy in the middle of my video.
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Today's guest post comes from yoga expert, Dana Santas, who is "changing the game" when it comes to yoga for athletes. Enjoy! -EC
Ten years ago, I taught yoga to athletes; literally, that’s what I did. I spent my first year in the yoga-for-sports niche teaching athletes how to be “good” at yoga. My goal was to help them be-come more flexible. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. A decade later, after working with hundreds of pro athletes and dozens of teams, I’m extremely averse to the idea of “flexibility” as a priority.
But, like many yoga instructors, I started my career with a well-intentioned emphasis on length-ening muscle tissue that seemed short and tight. Despite that misguided intention, it was my Type-A, drill-sergeant insistence on precise alignment and proper breathing that inadvertently delivered results for my clients. Once I recognized the real reasons I was positively impacting them—which had little to do with stretching—I went from providing temporary relief of tension to creating lasting increases in functional mobility, stability, and mental stamina.
Yoga didn’t benefit my clients because of flexibility gains; rather, it helped them:
1. activate/inhibit muscles
2. use their diaphragm
3. initiate their parasympathetic nervous system
In this article, we’re addressing the first item. However, my next article “5 Compelling Reasons Athletes Should Practice Breathing,” will cover why proper diaphragm use and breathing biomechanics are not only paramount for leveraging the autonomic nervous system but also facilitating integrated core strength, pelvic floor function, shoulder girdle integrity, shoulder mobility, and more. But I digress….
Because many yoga positions require multi-planar movement in a controlled manner or positional hold, demanding perfect alignment in those poses forces athletes out of compensation patterns. Taking them out of these patterns activates muscles that have been dysfunctionally dormant, and inhibits the overactive compensators (effectively turning off the tension). It’s the activation and inhibition initiated in yoga—not stretching—that actually helps athletes become more mobile.
When you simply stretch chronically tight, overactive muscles—without correcting the cause of the overactivity—you can provide temporary relief, but you risk tearing the muscle and increasing potential for injury. You might also reduce strength and power, since the athlete has likely been using that muscle as a primary source of movement in their sport.
Why do I assume that significant tension in athletes is due to compensation? I see it all the time! Consider the most popular, traditional strength and conditioning movements—the ones we love to do (i.e., squats, bench presses, bicep curls, crunches, etc.). What do they all have in common? The sagittal plane. And that’s where too many athletes place their training effort, despite the fact that most sports require multi-planar movement; think about a baseball swing. Consequently, athletes learn to compensate through powerful multi-planar movements in their sport by using the muscles they’ve strengthened in the weight room.
Understanding this phenomenon, we can better identify the contributing factors to areas of chronic tension and leverage yoga to concentrate on specific activation of the muscles that have been inhibited (agonists and synergists) by the tense area’s overactivity/compensation. In this way, you use reciprocal inhibition to not only relieve tension but restore kinetic chain firing and functional range of motion. Stretching, alone, can’t accomplish that.
Still not convinced? Let’s look at a typical area of tension: the low back.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve been asked by teams and athletes to “stretch” tight low backs…almost as many times as I’ve been asked to “stretch out hamstrings.” Of course that’s not a coincidence, since most athletes with “tight” backs also have “tight” hamstrings…because they’re both part of a typical dysfunctional posterior chain firing pattern!
Before I explain my activation-and-inhibition rationale and strategy for approaching low-back tension, let me offer this interesting piece of info:
According to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), in 2010, lower back strains were the most common reported reason for ER visits relating to yoga. I believe this is the case because the sequences of some popular yoga styles, including Bikram's Hot 26, feature poses that feed into compensatory back-extension patterns by promoting hyperextension, and counter them with stretches encouraging extreme low-back flexion. Understandably, that combination of movements can be especially dangerous for anyone with a tight low back!
Athletes with low-back tension usually have excessive anterior pelvic tilts that contribute to in-creased lumbar lordosis. Overactive hip flexors holding the pelvic tilt, inhibit glute firing, which then forces back extensors to compensate as hip extensors.
If we just stretch the low back—which often isn’t even possible because the back extensors can’t release—we’re not fixing the problem because the low back will immediately reengage in response to the hip flexors pulling on the pelvis. And, as the ER-visit data shows, we could strain the low back in the process.
Here’s a sample breakdown* of an introductory activation-and-inhibition yoga strategy for low-back issues:
*Note that these are just a few examples and don’t represent all of the possible yoga-based movements that could be used to initially address low-back tension. Once you’ve had success with simple—yet challenging—postures and movements, like those below, you can move into multi-planar twisting poses variations that emphasize t-spine rotation while maintaining a stable low back, as well as more challenging positions that emphasize hip mobility through a functional range. Often, low-back issues are aggravated by a locked-up thoracic spine and/or hip mobility limitations that force compensatory rotation from the lumbar spine. But you don’t want to jump right into more complicated movements until you’ve reinforced low-back stability and function and ensured that the back extensors can actually shut off appropriately.
Start with movements that promote glute activation and hip flexor inhibition, like Bridge. Maintain pressure in the lateral heels and medial arches to facilitate glute and adductor engagement. Avoid lifting into back extension. Inhale as you lift your pelvis. Exhale to bring your pelvis down. If the knees bow out or you have trouble maintaining medial arch awareness, hold a foam yoga block or ball between your legs to ensure adductor engagement.
Incorporate core and pelvic floor work to inhibit back extensors. This includes practicing poses, like my version of a Modified Boat pose with feet down. Keeping the knees and feet together integrates a focus on adductor engagement for hip and pelvic floor stability. Inhale as you reach arms out to the sides, aligned with shoulders. Exhale as you bring the arms back to the front (as pictured). Supinating the forearms as you take the arms out helps engage lower traps and re-lease upper traps to avoid drawing the shoulders up next to the ears.
Functional Squat encourages the pelvis to move through a posterior tilt and release back ex-tensors. Like the traditional yoga Child’s Pose, functional squat also lengthens the low back; however, it does it actively rather than passively. Keep feet hip-distance apart with weight in the lateral heels and medial arches. Hold for three deep breaths.
After going through the moves above, I recommend finishing with a longer-held, low-back stretch. Yes, I did say “stretch.”
I’m not a yoga trainer who doesn’t stretch my clients. I stretch them all! It’s just not the focus of my programs. But I use dynamic stretching (I call it dynamic “mobility”) in warm-ups, and I close out sessions with targeted, deeper stretches. For example, check out this video clip from a re-cent Tampa Bay Rays development camp. We'd already worked on glute and core activation to inhibit low-back extensors, so then we were doing targeted quadratus lumborum (QL) stretching.
In the interest of brevity, the sample yoga strategy I’ve shared above doesn’t specifically address asymmetry, but it’s important to note that there are typical contributing factors that lead to tension presenting more on one side than the other—particularly the right. These can include: left-to-right pelvic rotation with the center of gravity stuck in the right hip (the foundation of Postural Restoration Institute philosophy) and poor breathing mechanics causing the diaphragm to pull into the right low back, where it has a thicker, longer right lumbar-spine attachment.
Asymmetrical low-back tension is also exacerbated by an athlete’s sport, position and hand dominance. Using baseball as an example, consider how the movements of the following players would add to right low-back pain: a right-handed batter, a left-handed pitcher, and a right-handed a catcher, who stays on his toes due to an inability to posteriorly tilt the pelvis. Consequently, when developing a yoga-based program for an athlete with a low-back issue, the postures you select and the cuing and emphasis need to take into account the asymmetrical nature of the athlete’s tension and corresponding compensation patterns they’ve developed as a result of their sport.
All this said, I’m not claiming that athletes can’t get anything positive out of flexibility-focused yoga. Stretching, in and of itself, can feel great and increase blood supply to muscle tissues. I just think it’s important to understand the risks versus benefits. And, as I explained from my own experience as a novice instructor, there can be “inadvertent” benefits. However, when you’re a pro athlete, whose body’s function determines the trajectory of your career, it’s probably not in your best interest to waste your time with anything that’s “inadvertently” good for you…and could possibly be detrimental. My advice for teams and athletes, who want to add yoga to their training program, is to seek out instructors who understand functional mobility and breathing biomechanics, and don’t over emphasize flexibility.
About the Author
Dana Santas is creator of Radius Yoga Conditioning, a yoga-based mobility and sports-training style designed specifically to help athletes move, breathe and focus in ways that enhance performance and decrease injury. Nicknamed the “Mobility Maker,” she’s the yoga mobility expert for CNN and team yoga trainer for the Toronto Blue Jays, Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies, Tampa Bay Rays, Orlando Magic and Tampa Bay Lightning, as well as sports mobility consultant to more than half a dozen other teams and hundreds of MLB, NHL, NBA, NFL, MLS, LPGA & WTA pros. You can learn more about her at www.RadiusYoga.com.
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With baseball athletes being the largest segment of the Cressey Sports Performance athletic clientele, it seems only fitting to devote a "Best of 2014" feature to the top baseball posts from last year. Check them out:
1. No Specialization = National Championship? - I posted this article right after Vanderbilt won the College World Series, and it was my biggest "baseball hit" of the year. There are some great lessons on long-term athletic development in there.
2. 6 Key Qualities for Long-Term Athletic Development - I wrote this post right after 18 Cressey Sports Performance athletes were selected in the 2014 Major League Baseball Draft. As with our #1 baseball post from the year, long-term athletic development was a hot topic!
3.Are Pitchers Really Getting "Babied?" - Many baseball "traditionalists" insist that pitchers are getting injured because we're babying them in the modern era. I disagree completely, and this article summarizes my thoughts on the subject.
4.Long-Term Success: What You Can Learn from Corey Kluber - Long-time CSP client Corey Kluber won the 2014 American League Cy Young, and a lot of the points I make in this article on his work ethic help to explain why. It was featured on Gabe Kapler's website.
5. Draft Q&A with Eric Cressey: Part 1 and Part 2- This two-part article was actually an interview of me for Baseball America. I think it delves into a lot of important topics for up-and-coming players as well as coaches and parents.
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I really enjoying creating features with multiple installments because it really allows me to dig deep into a topic that interests both me and my readers. It’s like writing a short book, with each post being a different chapter. That said, here were a few of my favorite features from 2014 at EricCressey.com:
1. Random Thoughts on Sports Performance Training - I'm at my best when I'm my most random, and I think these posts are a great example of that. What started as a one-time post wound up becoming a regular series based on reader feedback. Here are links to all eight installments from 2014:
2. Quick and Easy Ways to Feel and Move Better - This series is mostly CSP coach Greg Robins' work, but I jumped in quite a bit in 2014. Installments 53-60 ran this year; here were the most popular ones:
3. Is Thoracic Spine Extension Work Necessary? - My good friend and colleague, physical therapist Eric Schoenberg, put together this in-depth series to demonstrate that not everyone needs extra thoracic extension work, contrary to what many folks think.
