Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 7/21/20

Written on July 21, 2020 at 7:56 am, by Eric Cressey

Here’s some recommended reading from around the ‘Net:

What Really Constitutes Functional Balance Training? -This is an old blog of mine that I’m “re-upping” here because of a conversation about specificity of balance training that I had with an athlete the other day.

How to Have Impossible Conversations – I just finished this as an audiobook, and it was outstanding – especially in light of recent events in the world. There are definitely lessons for every strength and conditioning/fitness and sports medicine professional.

Sport specialization is associated with upper-extremity overuse injury in high school baseball players – Here’s (yet another) study demonstrating a drastic increase in injury rates in those who specialize in one sport. In this particular study, highly specialized high school baseball players from California, Alabama, and Michigan were 3.77 times more likely to have had an upper extremity injury in the previous year than their non-specialized counterparts.

Top Tweet of the Week

It’s amazing that with all the remarkable metrics we have to track pitching and hitting characteristics, there are still coaches and players who overlook the fact that the most important number for baseball success – body weight – is the cheapest and easiest to monitor.

— Eric Cressey (@EricCressey) July 16, 2020

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Ulnar nerve hypermobility: another thing you really only pay attention to if you train baseball players. It’s likely present to some degree in about 1/3 of the population, but not everyone does this repeated elbow flexion-extension 100 times in two hours at high velocity with a 5oz ball in the hand. You have to train the person AND the sport, and more importantly, the interaction between the two.👊#cspfamily

A post shared by Eric Cressey (@ericcressey) on Jul 13, 2020 at 12:34pm PDT