Happy New Year, everyone!
I thought I'd use this first post of 2010 as a way of looking forward to what's on tap at EricCressey.com for the year. In true "Random Thoughts" fashion, here we go:
1. Nate Green just interviewed me for what I think will be a great feature at T-Muscle in the next week or two. It will be similar in structure to this piece Nate did with Dave Tate, which definitely turned out to be an entertaining read. Keep an eye out for it!
2. Speaking of interviews, I'll be doing one with Brian Grasso for the IYCA on Tuesday. Brian's a very forward-thinking guy and I'm excited to catch up with him.
3. Speaking of T-Muscle, I'm finishing up my "What I Learned in 2009" article this weekend. It follows the articles I wrote for 2006, 2007, and 2008.
4. Also coming up in the next month or so will be the release of the DVDs of Mike Reinold and my seminar from November: Testing, Treating, and Training the Shoulder: From Rehabilitation to High Performance. It's being edited as I type this.
5. This January 24, Cressey Performance will be hosting Neil Rampe of the Arizona Diamondbacks for his seminar, . You can register HERE, or for more information on Neil's background, click HERE. If you'd like to see a seminar agenda, please just email me at ec@ericcressey.com.
6. I'll be presenting in Tampa, FL (Jan); Winchester, MA (Jan); Las Vegas, NV (March); and Vancouver, BC (March); and Boston, MA (May) in this first part of 2010. Check out my schedule page for more information on these events.
7. I'm very anxious to hear more of the feedback on Assess and Correct, which has already sold in more than two dozen countries. This is a product I truly believe will help a lot of people, and the short-term feedback we've received since its release in October has been tremendous.
8. At Cressey Performance, our staff has started up what (for lack of a more masculine term) we're calling the Staff Book Club. Each staff member will present on what he learns in a different book each week. I think it'll be a great way to cover more material and keep us all accountable to each other on getting our continuing education done.
9.I'm pumped for more content from Matt Blake in 2010. He's been a fantastic resource for all our athletes and I'm excited to share with you all how Matt and I collaborate to make our pitchers better. I think it'll make for some great content.
10. I'd really like to continue to grow both the newsletter and blog. You can sign up for notifications on both fronts to the right of the screen, if you haven't already.
11. I'm really pumped for all our guys who have found great college choices; it's an exciting time for both the 2010 and 2011 guys. Most recently, CP athlete Adam Ravenelle committed to Vanderbilt on a baseball scholarship. Adam's been with us since before his freshman year, and we're all really proud of him. He actually joins another CP pitcher, Tyler Beede, who committed to Vanderbilt just a few weeks ago. Both guys are in the class of 2011, and join Barrett O'Neill (University of Virginia) and Joe Napolitano (Boston College) as our early committees from that class.
There should be plenty more guys with exciting news along these lines in the months to come as well.
12. I'm really excited to watch Cressey Performance grow in the months ahead. While I was certainly thrilled at the growth we saw (15%) in 2009 and I hope it continues, I am most thrilled at how many clients we've seen change their bodies and their lives since they started up, and how many friendships we've seen cultivated inside CP. If you'd have told me a few years ago that we'd have over 25 people in on Thanksgiving morning, for instance, I would have told you that you were crazy!
In addition to our clients' accomplishments, I'm so proud of our staff. I could never do what I do without such great guys working alongside me, and the best part is that they are insatiable in their desire to get better. We're constantly getting better and it makes every new day fun. The best part is that I feel like it's something that's carried over to our interns, too; there are some really talented people with bright futures coming through here.
13. I'm very excited for the new CP website, which should be done in a matter of a few days. Along those same lines, there is a pretty sweet training and testimonial montage being pulled together about our Elite Baseball Development program. I was actually getting pretty fired up just watching some of the footage that had been gathered thus far.
14. I can't wait to attack all the books and journal articles that are in my stack of "Things to Read" right now. There's too much material to cover, but never enough time!
15. Last, but certainly not least, it'll also be a very busy (but exciting) year for me personally in 2010, as my fiancee Anna and I will be getting married this October. And, even before we get to that, we're planning to buy our first home in the next 4-6 months. Obviously, we're already doing a lot of planning!
Needless to say, I'm looking forward to all of this - and probably a few surprises along the way. Best wishes for 2010, and stay tuned!
Neil Rampe is a good friend of mine who works for the Arizona Diamondbacks, and just so happens to be one of the smartest (and most humble and approachable) dudes I know. I spent three days with him out in Arizona in November, and he opened my eyes to so much great stuff that I couldn't wait to bring him out to Boston for a seminar at Cressey Performance. He's got a crazy busy schedule, so we just now firmed up a date that he could do such an event here in Massachusetts: Sunday, January 24.
To that end, before we make it official, I want to quickly gauge who would be interested. The price would be $149 for a full day's seminar (food and handouts included), and we'd keep the headcount down to ensure that all the hands-on stuff includes plenty of direct interaction with Neil. The overall theme of the event would be Movement Integration and how there are different schools of thought (Mezieres, Myers, Janda, and Hruska, to name a few) and modalities that can be applied along with some solid fundamental critical thinking skills to address the specific needs of athletes and clients.
Before we make this official and make more details known, I want to know that we have a good enough headcount to pursue this. So, I thought I'd throw it out there to you. If you are interested, please email me at ec@ericcressey.com right away to express your interest.
Below, you'll see Neil's bio; it should give you a quick glimpse into just how great a perspective he's got:
Neil Rampe is currently in his third year as the Manual Therapist for Major League Baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks. Neil's education includes an Associates degree in Personal Training as well as Bachelors degrees in Athletic Training and Physical Education with an emphasis in Strength & Conditioining from the University of Findlay in 2000. He went on to receive his M.Ed. in Applied Kinesiology with a Sport and Exercise Science emphasis in 2002 from the University of Minnesota, where he served as a strength & conditioning coach in the golden gopher athletic department before moving on to serve as a certified athletic trainer at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine in Boulder, CO. Neil then spent five years at The University of Arizona, where he served as the Associate Dierctor, Performance Enhancement.
Neil is a Certified Athletic Trainer through the NATABOC, a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist through the NSCA, a Licensed Massage Therapist through the AMTA and NCBTMB upon graduating from the Providence Institute of Massage Therapy and has received his Performance Enhancement Specialist and Corrective Exercise Specialist advanced specializations through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Over the past nine years, Neil has had the opportunity to work with a number of elite athletes at the high school collegiate, Olympic and professional ranks in the areas of rehabilitation, therapy and performance enhancement.
The year 2009 was a tremendous one for this website, and I owe all of you readers a huge thanks for your contribution.
Right now, this site is ranked in the top 135,000 on the web, according to Alexa.com, one measure of a website's popularity. Each month, unique visitors (~25,000/month right now) and total hits (~100,000/month right now) exceed the previous month.
The one product I released this year - Assess and Correct - has already sold in dozens of countries since October. Meanwhile, some older products are still very popular. Maximum Strength, for instance, has a 5-star rating at Amazon.com and is holding steady just outside the top 5,000 books on the site.
This site has become a channel through which Cressey Performance has grown as well. Not a week passes that a new client doesn't come through our doors thanks to something they've read from me on the internet.
I say this not to blow sunshine up my own rear end, but rather to frame my sincere thank you to all of you for your continued support in making EricCressey.com the success it is today. Writing has never been (and hopefully never will be) a "job" for me because I genuinely enjoy getting to look at things in detail, interact with some bright, enthusiastic readers, and (hopefully) add to the body of knowledge in the process. So, thanks for making my "job" (if you can call it that) fun.
That said, since you, the readers, are the ones that are ultimately responsible for making this site bigger and better, I want to put the ball in your court today. What do YOU want to read in 2010?
Would you like to see me address certain issues? Would you rather have more guest interviews (like this)? Product reviews (like this)? Debunking of fitness myths (like this)? Geeky science stuff (like this)?
How about content formatting? Do you like the video (like this) or written features - or a combination of the two?
I respect and value your opinions and suggestions, so feel free to voice them in the comments section below. Again, thanks for a great 2009!
I'm working my way back into the swing of things after the holiday and will have some new content to you later on today, but in the interim, I thought some of you might like to check out this feature on Cressey Performance athlete Tyler Beede, who just committed to Vanderbilt on a baseball scholarship. Tyler has put in a ton of hard work over the past 14 months at CP, and in the process, has increased his strength and throwing velocity substantially on top of packing 30 pounds on his frame.
Beede Makes Early Decision: Vandy
I hope everyone had a great holiday. I am out of town visiting family, but in my absence, I thought you might be interested in checking out this article about Tim Collins and his training at Cressey Performance. Tim was recently named Toronto Blue Jays organizational Pitcher of the Year on MLB.com.
Tiny Tim No More
We had 29 people in all, 23 of whom were CP clients/athletes. Five major league organizations were represented, as well as several universities, some meathead powerlifters, a dog, a physical therapist, a professional poker player, some badass chicks lifting heavy stuff (including a GP girlfriend and CP fiancee).
Some additional flavor from Tony Gentilcore's camera (the jackass who flexed at the 25 second mark):
A while back, I wrote an article that went into quite a bit of detail on appropriately allocating CNS-intensive stress. Check it out HERE. Likewise, a bit later, Mike Boyle introduced a fantastic DVD of a presentation on CNS-intensive training.
In hindsight, a lot of the concepts in both my original article and Mike's DVD are probably best appreciated by taking a look at some sample programs. Some stuff we are doing right now with one of my pro pitchers is a perfect example, so I thought I'd turn it into a feature for today's blog.
First off, we're talking about one of the most gifted natural athletes I've ever seen. He has some incredible reactive ability, and just as significant to this discussion, he doesn't hold back...ever. We are talking an incredible motivation to train and a complete willingness to do everything put in his program to a "T." He is every coach's dream, but it can certainly pose more of a challenge with respect to program design. Here's what his October training schedule looked like:
Monday: Medicine Ball Work (88 total throws), Low-Volume, Less Intense Plyos (24 total landings), Lower Body Lift
Tuesday: Upper Body Lift
Wednesday: Medicine Ball Work (80 total throws), Plyos and Movement Training
Thursday: Full-Body Lift
Friday: Easy Flexibility Circuits (recovery-oriented)
Saturday: Medicine Ball Work (88 total throws), Low Volume Sprint Work, Full-Body Lift
Sunday: Off
Looking at this schedule, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday are really the CNS-intensive days - and a schedule like this had worked well for him in two previous off-seasons when he wasn't quite as highly trained. Each year, he dropped body fat, gained a ton of strength, increased his power numbers, and directly transferred those gains to increased velocity on the mound and zero injury issues.
Last month, though, our guy was feeling a little banged up two Thursdays in a row. The challenging sprint work on Wednesday was taking too much out of him prior to Thursday's lift. So, we simply decided to consolidate things a bit more, and drop our sprinting volume a bit. Here's what this month's schedule looks like:
Monday: Movement Training, Lower Body Lift
Tuesday: Medicine Ball (68 total throws), Upper Body Lift
Wednesday: Easy Flexibility Circuits (recovery-oriented)
Thursday: Movement Training, Full-Body Lift
Friday: Rotational Medicine Ball Work (66 total throws), Easy Flexibility Circuits (recovery-oriented)
Saturday: Overhead Medicine Ball Work (12 total throws), Less Intense Plyos (24 total landings), Full-Body Lift
Sunday: Off
In this set-up, our CNS-intensive days are Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. In other words, he's got one less training session per week that's really challenging - and he's seeing great progress without any of the little issues that he noticed last month.
This off-season, we will have over 30 professional baseball players. Some are big leaguers, some are on the cusp of making the big show, and others have a few years of work ahead of them to reach that dream. No two of them are identical. Every evaluation is unique. There are different health histories, different positions on the field, different ages, and different training experience levels. Every program needs to reflect these differences.
This is a great opportunity to talk about the interaction of programming for athletes and training athletes. Early on in an athlete's career, it's all about training them: teaching techniques, educating them on when to push and when to hold back, and how to progress. As they get more advanced, they know a lot about this stuff - so the programming gets more challenging as they get more individualized.
This is the main tenet upon which we have built our Elite Baseball Development Program at Cressey Performance. While many facilities will just put a program on the board and train a group of individuals off of it, we firmly believe that the real work to make athletes successful goes on behind the scenes when we're reviewing their evaluations, watching videos of them throwing/hitting/sprinting, and compiling a program that's right for them.
It's also an observation that led Bill Hartman, Mike Robertson, and I to create Assess and Correct: Breaking Barriers to Unlock Performance. If you aren't assessing, you're just assuming - and that's a recipe for mediocrity at best.
A Semi-Related Note
While we're on the topic of baseball, I wanted to send out a quick congratulations to my buddy Dana Cavalea, the strength coach for the NY Yankees, on his first world championship. Admittedly, I'm not a Yankees fan, but Dana's a great dude who does an excellent job, so you have to give him some love for an outstanding season.
That said, Dana and some colleagues are putting on the 2nd Annual Major League Strength Coaches Clinic at St. John's University in New York on November 21, 2009. I won't be able to present with my schedule, unfortunately, but I did present last year and can assure you that it's a top-notch event. I'd strongly recommend you check it out HERE.
Note from EC: Today marks our second guest blog post from pitching expert Matt Blake. I couldn't agree more with everything he says!
[Cue the annoying, overly excited infomercial salesman voice]
This is the throwing program that you have all been waiting for, it's the super-duper secret that people haven't been telling you about 95 mph throwers, and lucky for you, it is now available for F-R-E-E !!(For the first 5 days and then one incredibly low payment of $449 if you do not return the product within those 5 days).....All you have to do is order the product, follow it for a week and 95mph is a snap of the fingers away, it is just that easy...
Alright, well I can honestly say I just made myself throw up in my mouth a little bit writing that out, and the sad part is that this type of advertising and promotion letters both the baseball and fitness industry. There are two main points that I want to touch on surrounding this type of promotion.
1) Yes, there are some good products out there, I'm not denying that, but I can promise you, anything that is worth having is not free, and does not pretend to be free to lure you in.
2) There is no single product on the market that is the be-all, end-all in either industry. Eric and I have had this talk many times. Yes, he likes the kettlebell. No, it is not the end of the world. We can keep our squat racks; they still have use. And you know what? Product A may even work better when complemented by Product B. Whoa, whoa whoa....are you trying to tell me that the kettlebell can be used in a program with dumbbells and barbells? That's not how this thing was sold to me. Yes, scary thought I know, but let's think about this for a second. And, I'm going to bring this back to the baseball side of things to avoid really stepping on my tongue.
People ask Eric and me all the time whether or not we like long toss, medicine balls, weighted balls, aggressive velocity drills, lead-up drills, mound work, flat-ground bullpens, etc...and the answer I almost always give is "Yes." "Wait, what? I just asked you if you like seven different types of training for pitchers and you gave me one 'yes.'"
That's correct, and to take it a step further and really complicate the matters, we even like kettlebells and different squat variations for pitchers among other things. And we use a ton of different weights of both baseballs and medicine balls.
My perspective on this is that all of these modes of training have an application in building a pitcher capable of throwing the ball 95mph. Obviously, there are some genetic limitations and other factors involved in getting there, but to really optimize the training, I think all of these need to be applied in the right proportions. These proportions would be determined based upon the individual's current makeup (age, weight, relative strength, mechanical understanding, etc...) and their developmental goals, which should be discussed between player and coach to make sure everyone is on the same page and being realistic.
A great example of this is the throwing program Eric used last winter for Shawn Haviland, a pitcher in the Oakland A's system that was drafted in the 33rd round in 2008. For Shawn's particular case, he was a player who pitched in the mid-to-high 80's with a good feel for pitching. As Eric wrote previously, as good as this is, late round draft picks do not get a lot of leeway to prove themselves and can be released in the blink of an eye. To give Shawn the best chance to succeed, Eric thought it might make sense to be a little more aggressive with his throwing program in an attempt to boost his velocity.
So, aside from the strength training and mobility/flexibility work, throw in some med ball variations, aggressive long toss, a weighted ball program, and some extensive decelerator work and one might think we're playing with fire here. Well, this season Shawn took his velocity from 87-88 to 90-94.
So, which piece of the puzzle gave Shawn this huge velocity gain? Was it the med ball throws or was it the weighted ball program? Was it the aggressive long toss or the increased strength? I'd like to believe that it was the individual's commitment to the program in its entirety. Each piece served to complement the next. This was a program designed for Shawn Haviland to execute in the winter of 2008-2009; that's it. This same program may not make sense in the winter of 2009/2010. I'm sure some similar pieces will be involved, but in a different context with different proportions depending on where Shawn is in his developmental path. This same program certainly wouldn't be prescribed to a 15-year-old just learning about pitching mechanics and strength development, and probably would not be prescribed to a 1st round draft pick with a 92-95mph fastball and a million dollar signing bonus hanging over his head. That's the reality of the situation.
Each case needs to be looked at in its own regard and after deciding on a strategic vision of where the player wants to be, then a comprehensive program would be built with the appropriate drills and exercises to help the player take his game to the desired level. The X factor in all of this is how much time and effort a player is willing to commit to becoming a better player, because this ultimately determines where the player will end up.
In the end, this all relates back to the first thought in this blog: there is no one single be-all, end-all answer for pitching development. There are modes of training that should be considered and blended to come up with the right recipe for the particular individual. Yes, there will be crossovers for players at similar points in their development because we have a finite number of training applications, but they would be applied based on reason.
So, before you jump at the next best gadget that is going to give you the 95mph arm you have been looking to buy, make yourself an informed consumer and do some active research to get multiple viewpoints. Believe me, the same product/program that claims to have given someone 95mph, probably has someone claiming that it ruined their arm. I would go as far as to say that neither of these claims are right in their entirety and that there are a lot of external factors involved, but it is your job to do the homework and decide for yourself.
Matt Blake can be reached at mablak07@gmail.com.
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