Home Posts tagged "Max Scherzer"

Pitching Mechanics: Is Lead Leg Blocking Enough?

Much more attention has been paid in recent years to the concept of the front hip pull-back/lead leg blocking in pitchers.

However, what gets overlooked is that there are a lot of athletes who do it well, but still struggle to consistently impart adequate force to the baseball and with the right direction. This can happen because of limitations further up the chain that interfere with transferring force to allow for clean ball release.

Foremost among these issues are adequate thoracic flexion and scapular upward rotation. These two attributes allow you to stay on the baseball longer. Imagine a car that has an extra runway to accelerate. As violent as it appears in still-frame photos, Max Scherzer is one of the best illustrations in the game for this - and it's remarkably well "synced up: 

Notice how the distance between his uniform number and belt increases early in the delivery, then decreases just prior to ball release. It isn’t this extreme for most pitchers, but it speaks to the interaction between the anterior core, thoracic spine, and scapular upward rotation. Is it any surprise that most anterior core exercises - rollouts, fallouts, flutters, inchworms, bear crawls, and stir-the-pot - are also great serratus anterior drills?

You can also challenge it in various ways with the chops aspect of your core stability program.

I also like this adjustment to a half-kneeling cable lift...which actually make it into a chop, but whatever!

It also opens up a great discussion on the role of infrasternal angle for another day (although we did delve in on it a bit with this podcast with Bill Hartman:

Have a great week!

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CSP Elite Baseball Development Podcast Giveaway

I'm really excited to kick off the Elite Baseball Development Podcast later this week. Before I do, though, I thought I'd put together a collection of sweet giveaways to celebrate the occasion. This will also serve as your first chance to get on the announcement list for when new podcasts are released. You'll just need to enter your information below. Only email address is required; you'll be emailed the access link right away (be sure to check your junk mail folder): 

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As for the giveaways, to start, everyone will receive free access to my 35-minute presentation, Hip Shoulder Separation in Rotational Athletes: Making Sense of the Thoracic Spine. I delivered this presentation to a packed house at Pitchapalooza in December of 2018, and it's yours free when you opt in.

To sweeten the deal a bit more, we'll be randomly drawing winners from newsletter subscribers and Retweets to receive:

A "retired" CSP-used med ball with tons of MLB autographs: Max Scherzer, Miles Mikolas, Noah Syndergaard, Steve Cishek, Sam Dyson, Logan Morrison, Lance Lynn, among others!

An autographed Corey Kluber New Balance cleat

An autographed Noah Syndergaard ball

Two customized Lumberlend batmugs

Three Cressey Sports Performance shirts

Two pairs of New Balance Minimus 20v7 (you pick the color)

One Free Access to the Jaeger Sports Complete Competitor Package (includes Year-Round Throwing Manual, Thrive on Throwing Video, Lower Body & Core Workout, Mental Training Book, and a J-Band)

Winners will be selected and notified on Thursday. Sorry, but you must be located in the US to have items shipped to you. Here's that subscription box again:

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We're looking forward to delivering many entertaining and educational podcasts very soon!

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 3/27/19

I hope you're having a great week. Here's a little recommended reading and listening to get you through your Wednesday!

7 Tips for Training Around Lower Back Pain - Mike Robertson outlines some great suggestions for anyone (which is most people) who has struggled with lower back pain at some point or another.

Eccentric Hamstrings Loading for Strength, Hypertrophy, and Injury Prevention - This was a pretty thorough article from Dean Somerset that includes plenty of videos of exercise options to take care of those hammies.

Atomic Habits - I just finished up this audiobook by James Clear. If you've read "The Power of Habit," this is a good follow-up that builds on its concepts. I particularly like the "Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery" equation.

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Most of the Instagram posts you see that celebrate entrepreneurship are of the following: 1️⃣Entrepreneur posing in front of a fancy car that was rented for a photo shoot. 2️⃣Entrepreneur sitting in a coffee shop, dressed in business casual, sipping a latte, while working on a laptop. 3️⃣Entrepreneur taking a selfie in an exotic location, with the caption reminding you that you, too, can have great autonomy and work from anywhere if you just follow the tips he/she outlines. You know what? It's not really like that for 99% of entrepreneurs, 99% of the time. With that in mind, this photo of my wife on Friday should serve as a nice reflection of the "other side" of entrepreneurship: the problem with self-employment is that your boss is an a**hole. 😂 In addition to having her own optometry practice, @annacressey also helps out at @cresseysportsperformance - FL with scheduling and billing. On Friday, we were scheduled for a 12:30pm C-section with our third child, but a few emergency C-sections had to take place before we could have our baby, so we got pushed back about 3.5 hours. Luckily, the hospital had great WiFi, so we got some work done. Here she is - uncomfortably pregnant, IV in, and 17 hours with no food or water - ordering some contacts lenses, doing her month-end financials, and scheduling me evaluations. 🤷🏻‍♂️ So, the next time a 23-year-old lifestyle entrepreneur tells you that he's got all the secrets to help you live the life you want, just remember that there's probably a badass mother of three who can share a whole lot more entrepreneurship reality wisdom with you. . . . #cspfamily #entrepreneur #entrepreneurlife #entrepreneurship

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 1/14/19

Let's kick off the week with some good recommended reading and listening!

Chidi Enyia on Building Explosive Speed, Strength and Power with Potentiation - There's some really good stuff in this podcast with Chidi Enyia and Mike Robertson.

Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? - This was a lengthy feature at Outside Magazine that I found intriguing.

Never Lose a Customer Again - This is a great read for anyone who has clients/customers, but I found it particularly interesting because it spoke quite a bit to retention in the fitness industry, with shoutouts to the Starrets (San Francisco Crossfit) and Jon Goodman (the Personal Trainer Development Center).

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 7/20/18

I hope you had a great week. Just in case you didn't, here's some good recommended reading/listening to kick off your weekend on the right foot.

So You're Considering Putting Your Name on Your Business? - This is awesome stuff from my business partner, Pete Dupuis, who discusses why having the name "Cressey" in "Cressey Sports Performance" has led to some challenges.

Max Scherzer wasn't predestined for greatness but has a hard-earned Hall of Fame Case - Chelsea Janes wrote this outstanding piece on CSP athlete Max Scherzer for the Washington Post. There are loads of great lessons in there for up-and-coming athletes.

Joe Kenn on Coaching in the NFL and Chasing Simplicity - Mike Robertson recorded this outstanding podcast with one of the most experienced guys in the strength and conditioning field today.

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Exercise of the Week: Landmine Lateral Lunges

Here's an exercise we came up with this offseason in the middle of a training session with NL Cy Young Award Winner Max Scherzer of the Nationals - and it quickly became a "keeper" for his programs moving forward.

Max has gotten pretty strong with lateral lunges, and the kettlebell/dumbbell goblet set-up doesn't work all that well once you're past an appreciable amount of weight. Likewise, holding the weight between the legs drives a more kyphotic (rounded shoulders) posture and can limit range-of-motion. Enter the landmine lateral lunge, a great option for getting strong outside the sagittal plane.

A few quick tips:

1. Sit back into the hip without the toes lifting up.

2. Keep the head/neck in neutral.

3. Make sure you're wearing shoes with good lateral support so that you aren't rolling over the sides.

Enjoy!

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The Best of 2017: Baseball Articles

With baseball athletes being the largest segment of the Cressey Sports Performance athletic clientele, it seems only fitting to devote a "Best of 2017" feature to the top baseball posts from last year. Check them out:

1. 6 Key Factors for Developing Pitchers - In this article, I look at some things I've learned from some of our peak performing pitchers at the MLB level - and how they can help up-and-coming players.

2. Are Pitching Mechanics Really That Repeatable? - We hear the phrase "repeat your mechanics" pretty often, but you'll be surprised at how hard (or impossible) that really is to do.

3. Sports Performance: Study the Majority, and Stop Cherrypicking Exceptions to the Rule - The baseball community loves to try to build theories off of small sample sizes when we all should be looking at the majority to see what works.

4. A Letter to This Year's MLB Draft Picks - There are lots of life lessons in here for more than just baseball players.

5. Overlooked Uses for a J-Band: Part 1 and Part 2 - Here are some innovative ways that we use this awesome piece of equipment.

We've got one last "Best of 2017" list running tomorrow, so stay tuned for the closer!

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 11/20/17

I hope you had a great weekend. Before I get to the recommended reading for the week, I wanted to give you a heads-up that with it being Thanksgiving week, we're kicking off our Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales early so that you have an entire week to take advantage of them. From now though Monday, November 27, you can get 25% off on any (or all) of the Functional Stability Training resources from Mike Reinold and me. You can check them out at www.FunctionalStability.com. No coupon code is necessary.

6 Principles to Improve Your Coaching - Speaking of Functional Stability Training, here's an excerpt from the latest offering on this front, FST: Optimizing Movement.

NFL Teams Address Fatigue Factor - We've worked a lot with Fatigue Science to monitor sleep quantity and quality with our athletes, and this article goes into detail on how they're impacted NFL teams as well.

Why We Use End-Range Lift-off - Cressey Sports Performance coach Frank Duffy discusses how to build active control of your passive range of motion.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 9/25/17

I hope you all had a great weekend. My kids are officially old enough that we can actually fill an entire weekend with friends' birthday parties, so that's what we did. Before I get to the recommended reading and listening for the week, I wanted to give you a quick heads-up that we'll be doing a baseball development workshop at our Jupiter, FL facility on October 19. It's only $20 to attend, and all proceeds will benefit charity. You can learn more at the following link:

The Building a Better Baseball Athlete Workshop

Certified Speed and Agility Specialist Course - Lee Taft is a go-to guy when it comes to speed and agility education, and this awesome certification demonstrates why. It was filmed at Cressey Sports Performance and was mandatory viewing for our entire staff. It's on sale for $100 off this week, so I wanted to give you a heads-up.

The Ideal Business Show with Andy McCloy - This Pat Rigsby podcast with Andy McCloy was outstanding. If you're interested in the business side of fitness, definitely give it a listen.

5 Things That Might Surprise You About Our Baseball Strength and Conditioning Programs - With the professional baseball offseason at hand, it seemed like a good time to reincarnate this from the archives.

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Are Pitching Mechanics Really That Repeatable?

The 2011 Major League Baseball Draft class was pretty ridiculous. As I recall, it was ranked as the deepest draft since 1986, and the top 20 picks alone produced established big leaguers like Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer, Dylan Bundy, Anthony Rendon, Archie Bradley, Francisco Lindor, Javy Baez, George Springer, Jose Fernandez, Sonny Gray, Matt Barnes, and Tyler Anderson. Even just looking a few picks later, you see names like Joe Panik, Jackie Bradley, Jr., Michael Fulmer, and Trevor Story – and these are really only the tip of the iceberg. Mookie Betts was a 5th rounder, Blake Treinen was a 7th rounder, Kyle Hendricks was an 8th rounder, Travis Shaw was a 9th rounder, Cody Allen was a 23rd rounder, and Kevin Pillar was a 32nd rounder.

Interestingly, Massachusetts was ranked as the #5 state in country that year, so Cressey Sports Performance was right in the thick of things. As a result, the spring of 2011 was a big lesson for me in managing highly touted prospects – and it set the stage for our draft classes to grow with each passing year thereafter.

Foremost among these prospects was CSP athlete Tyler Beede, who was committed to Vanderbilt and ultimately wound up turning down a large signing bonus from the Toronto Blue Jays as the 21st overall pick. Three years and a Vanderbilt national championship later, he was a first round pick again, and has since made his MLB debut with the San Francisco Giants.

This isn’t an article about that draft class, though; it’s about a lesson I learned during the spring of 2011 that applies to every single pitcher on the planet, regardless of age and ability level – and whether they were even close to being drafted in 2011 (or any year).

Ask any Northeast scout, and they’ll tell you that evaluating any New England prospect is incredibly challenging. Talent is very spread out, so it’s difficult for scouts to even geographically get to all the prospects they want to see. Additionally, it’s hard to consistently see good pitchers match up with good hitters to see how they compete on higher stages. Northeast players are also far more likely to be multi-sport athletes than prospects in other parts of the country, so you’re evaluating athleticism and “projectability” more than just baseball competencies.

Moreover, because of weather restrictions, the season can be very short, so a starting pitcher might only have 7-8 starts prior to the draft. Also on the weather front, pitchers peak later as the temperatures warm up. The first 3-4 games of the season are usually played in 40-something-degree weather, and rain (or snow!) might actually push games back a day or two last-minute, throwing off both the players’ and scouts’ schedules.

Getting back to Tyler, he started his season well, pitching at 91-94mph for the first several starts. Typically, the lines were complete games with 14-18 strikeouts, 0-1 walk, and no earned runs. To give you a frame of reference, between his junior and senior years, Ty went 14-1 with a 0.80 ERA with 189 strikeouts in 96.1 innings – pretty much what you’d “expect” from a eventual first-rounder.

Roughly five weeks into the season, Ty had a Wednesday outing on the road. It was early May and probably about 50 degrees. I was a few minutes late getting to the game, and actually arrived right as he was hitting in the top of the 1st. The parking lot was out past center field, and as I was walking in, Ty drilled a ball to the gap and legged out a triple. A batter or two later, the inning ending and he went right out to the mound.

As I settled in on the left field line, I saw a crew of people get out of the car and all set up not far to my left. Like everyone else at the field that day, I quickly recognized one of them as Theo Epstein, who was still with the Red Sox at the time. He seemed to have so many Red Sox scouts with him that I actually joked to my wife that they must have borrowed the magical car from Coolio’s “Fantastic Voyage” video to get them all to the park. They fit in nicely with the 40 scouts and front office guys who were standing behind the plate.

As I recall, that day, Ty threw six innings, struck out 12, and gave up no runs and no walks, with just two hits. One was a double on a ground ball that hit the first base bag, and the other was an infield single. He pitched at 89-90mph most of the game. I might have seen one 91mph fastball. Ty still absolutely dominated overmatched hitters and showed what many people called the best high school changeup in the country, but it was a pretty “blah” outing by his standards. The team won, and we even joked around post-game with Ty and his teammates.

Within a day or two, I had gotten a few texts from scouts. Paraphrasing, they ran the gamut:

“What’s wrong with Beede?”

“Is Beede hurt?”

“Has Beede lost his fire and gotten too comfortable?”

My response was pretty simple: “He’s fine. He’s also 17 years old.”

That Sunday, Ty was in for an in-season lift at the facility. I can distinctly remember our conversation about how – as unfair as it might seem – he would always be held to a different standard than just about everyone else. Expectations of consistency would always be unreasonable, so it was always important to focus on the process and not the outcome. Even Cy Young award winners don’t have their best stuff every time out, but you can’t deviate from the plan for every little hiccup. The secret was to never get too up, and never get too down.

It was in that moment that I think I truly realized that Ty would someday be a big leaguer. Absolutely nothing I said to him came out of left field; he got it.

The next time out, he was back to his old self. A week or two later, in his last start before the draft, he was 93-96mph. He even walked to lead off the game - and then stole 2nd and 3rd as dozens of scouts gasped in terror that a kid with millions of dollars on the line would risk injury. What they didn't seem to realize is that this was all part of being process-driven (competing hard to help the team win) instead of outcome-driven (impressing scouts and getting drafted). Go figure: he led his team to an undefeated season and league championship.

[bctt tweet="Expecting a teenager to consistently perform at a high level each and every week is unrealistic."]

Every geographic climate is different. Every mound is different. Hitting in a week when you’ve had four exams and are sleep deprived won’t be nearly as easy as it is during vacation week. And having the general manager of your favorite MLB team show up to watch you pitch might even impact your performance a bit.

Teenage athletes are still developing physically, emotionally, neurologically, and socially. It’s why I absolutely abhor mock drafts that shuffle players up and down from week to week based on results and – in many cases – feedback from folks who don’t have the knowledge of physiological and psychological variability to even make valid estimations in this regard. 

And, don’t even get me started on companies that are ranking eighth graders ahead of their peers just because puberty kicked in early and their parents are misinformed enough to shuttle them around to showcases all across the country when they should be preparing their bodies for what’s ahead – and enjoying their childhood. 

This entire experience and the countless erratic performances we see from players of all levels - from high school kids who walk the bases loaded to big leaguers who develop "the yips" - has given me a lot of time to think about just how unrealistic some coaches, parents, and fans are in demanding incredible consistency in performance from throwers. If one of the best high school arms in one of the best draft classes in history had up-and-down performances, you can be sure these struggles are going to extend 100-fold to less prepared pitchers.

To further illustrate this point, I did a little digging last week. As I type this, the three hardest throwers in MLB in 2017 have been Aroldis Chapman, Joe Kelly, and Trevor Rosenthal. Modern technology like Trackman can give us a lot more information than just velocity, though. Pitching release point (extension) is one such piece of information that fits in nicely with this discussion. According to a quick look at Statcast reports on the 50 hardest pitches in baseball this year, here is the variance in extension for those three:

Chapman (20 pitches): 6.5 to 7.2 feet

Kelly (9 pitches): 5.7 to 6.5 feet

Rosenthal (4 pitches); 5.5 to 5.9 feet

With a larger sample size - particularly for Kelly and Rosenthal - we'd likely see even bigger gaps. That said, it's important to recognize that a lot of factors can play into this variability. One MLB front office friend of mine commented to me, "There are a lot of park to park variances, so we have to calibrate raw data." Additionally, pitches may be different from the stretch and wind-up, weather factors may impact extension, and accumulated fatigue plays into it as well. And, extension will be different for different pitches - although that likely doesn't factor in here because we're comparing apples (fastballs) with apples (fastballs). The point isn't that any of this data is absolutely, 100% perfectly accurate. Rather, the message that any way you slice it, the three hardest throwers on the planet - some of the guys who theoretically put themselves in the best possible positions to throw the crap out of a baseball - actually deviate a little bit from their "norm" on a very regular basis. "Repeatable" mechanics aren't perfectly repeatable.

Looking further, check out the 2017 Pitch/Fx fastball velocity ranges for these three guys, as per Fangraphs:

Chapman: 95.4-102.1 mph

Kelly: 96.0-102.0 mph

Rosenthal: 95.5-101.7 mph

(we can bank on these "interpretations" of pitches being accurate, as nobody is ripping off 95-96 mph sliders or changeups)

What do these numbers this tell us? Even in the hardest throwers on the planet, there are actually considerably larger variations in pitch-to-pitch mechanics and performance than most folks realize. Every year, the media becomes convinced that a few dozen pitchers in MLB have "lost it"- and invariably, they all figure it out at some point and it all evens out over the course of a season. Remember a few years ago when everyone told us that Justin Verlander was washed up? Yep, he wasn't.

If we were to extend my aforementioned three-pitcher "study" out even further - particularly to a collection of minor league pitchers who haven't had success on par with these three - I'd be willing to bet that we'd see even more considerable variation. And, it'd be huge if we looked at college pitchers, and massive in high school guys (and younger). 

Anyone who has spent time reviewing data from Motus sleeve measurements can attest to this. Even as the accuracy of the readings has improved dramatically and the sleeves have become an incredibly useful tool, the variability from pitch-to-pitch has remained intriguingly high. You'll see different ranges of motion and joint stresses for two of the same pitch thrown 30 seconds apart. 

Where does all this leave us? Well, above all else, I think we can at least appreciate that even in a very specific closed-loop (predictable) action like pitching, there is still at least subtle variance - and this variance becomes even more dramatic as you go from the professional down to the amateur ranks. Sorry, Dad, but your 11-year-old doesn't have "pristine mechanics;" he is just less inconsistent - and likely more physically prepared - than his peers.

Expanding the discussion to higher levels, a thought process that has recently surged among those "in the know" on social media is that velocity and "stuff" are probably even more important than consistently outstanding command (which would theoretically relate to optimally repeating mechanics). This highlight reel of CSP athlete Max Scherzer during his 20-strikeout game last year shows just how many times he missed his spots.

I'm not saying that command isn't important; professional pitchers definitely miss spots a lot less than amateur ones. I'm just saying that all these factors fluctuate more than we appreciate and it's part of that discussion. Interestingly, command is the one of these three factors most impacted by outside factors: umpire interpretation, catcher's receiving, sweaty palms, pretty girls in the stands, and whether Mom is yelling "super job, kiddo!" from the stands.

Expecting teenagers to consistently repeat their mechanics at a high level - particularly during a period of time when their bodies (and brains) are constantly changing - is absolutely absurd. Far more important is preparing their bodies for all the chaos that sports throws at them. This is done with exposure to a wide variety of athletic endeavors in the youth levels, comprehensive strength and conditioning and arm care, and a broad spectrum of throwing challenges (not just mound work!).

That doesn't mean that it will work to just throw a bunch of poop on the wall to see what sticks. This has become a larger issue of late, as countless kids have assumed "throwing with intent" to be "just try to throw hard."

Very simply, here is the most important message I can deliver to any young pitcher:

[bctt tweet="Every throw is a chance to get better or worse."]

Treat every throw like you're playing catch with a Cy Young award winner and want to leave a favorable impression in terms of your attention to detail. Don't give up any throws. Even as a teenager - and regardless of who his throwing partner was - Tyler Beede tuned out the world every time he picked up a ball. He was always working on improving or refining something. It's almost like he understood that inconsistency could always sneak up on a pitcher in the blink of an eye, and he wanted to stay ahead of it. Ty didn't become a two-time first rounder or #1 organization prospect by accident. 

Really, more importantly, the take-home message is to be patient with young athletes and pitching success. Practice consistently and train to handle all everything the sport might throw at them. Still, though, remember that some of the best in the world struggle to consistently repeat their mechanics, so you can probably cut that 17-year-old some slack when he throws a 97 mph fastball to the backstop in an All-American game. And, your 11-year-olds can still have post-game ice cream even if they walk seven batters in three innings of work. Being consistent with anything in athletics is challenging, but if you focus on processes instead of outcomes, you'll never be disappointed.

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