We’re excited to welcome Atlanta Hawks head strength and conditioning coach Mike Irr to the latest podcast to discuss some lessons he's learned in the NBA realm that have tons of applicability to baseball populations. Mike speaks to the complexities of the load management discussion, the challenges of onboarding new athletes, and key considerations for writing programs for athletes with respect to both sport and individual specificity.

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This episode is brought to you by AG1 by Athletic Greens. AG1 is your daily foundational nutrition; it has 75 whole-food sourced ingredients designed to support your body’s foundational nutrition needs across five critical areas of health: 1) energy, 2) immunity, 3) gut health, 4) hormonal support, and 5) healthy aging. It is the new and future way of getting a multivitamin, and a whole lot more. Head to www.AthleticGreens.com/cressey and claim my special offer today – 10 FREE travel packs – with your first purchase. I use AG1 daily myself and highly recommend it to our athletes as well. I’d encourage you to give it a shot, too – especially with this great offer.

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3. While we're on the topic of big verticals, a lot of our pro guys are wrapping up their off-season training at Cressey Performance before heading out to spring training, so we're doing some post-testing to gauge the progress they've made.  Probably the most impressive of the bunch jumping-wise has been Blue Jays prospect Tim Collins, Baseball America's Low A Reliever of the Year in 2008.  Tim added 10.8 inches to his vertical jump in just four months to get it up to 38.7 inches.

4. Someone asked me yesterday if I felt that it was necessary to be on a caloric surplus on the Maximum Strength program.   My response was, "That'll work, but a big surplus isn't necessarily. You'll actually notice that the resounding them within the book with respect to my own progress over the years is that I've built relative strength, not just absolute strength. So, you could still see excellent results just eating at maintenance - particularly if the volume is lower than your recent programs."

5. If you are near the Philadelphia/ New Jersey area and interested in bodyweight training (and if you are a regular reader of this blog, chances are that you are), consider checking out a great one day seminar given by Beast Skills' Jim Bathurst.  The date is March 1st, and the seminar is actually two parts (one basic and one advanced), so anyone can attend and participate fully.  Jim knows his stuff (check out his impressive YouTube clips on the Beast Skills site) and the seminar will help anyone who wants to develop full body strength and stability.  Check out Jim's site for details.  The seminar is hosted by my good buddy, Shon Grosse, who is a great physical therapist in Colmar, PA.

6. Just a quick happy birthday shoutout to Padres prospect Will Inman.  Will's up in Boston from Virginia to get down with us this off-season before heading out to Phoenix on Monday for spring training.  Everyone give Will some love and check him out at WilliamInman.com.

Have a great weekend!