EC's Note: Today marks the first of what I hope will be many guest blog posts from Matt Blake, an absolutely fantastic pitching coach who works out of the cage at Cressey Performance. Matt is way ahead of the curve with what he's doing, and the results he's gotten with a lot of our athletes - from high school all the way up to the professional ranks - are nothing short of fantastic. I consider myself tremendously lucky to have him as a resource with whom I can interact every day. Today's post from him is a bit of an introduction and preview of what's in store from us in the months to come.
Since Eric mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that he would like me to start contributing some articles to his blog, I have been debating about how to introduce myself to the EricCressey.com crowd and what his audience might want to hear.
All sorts of thoughts had run through my head on whether it should be oriented toward pitching mechanics, maybe talking about what Eric and I are doing together that separates us from other Elite Baseball Development programs, or maybe even a tidy little piece about who I am. Lucky for us, though, we have Eric's business partner Pete around, and he conveniently gave me my first blog topic on Saturday.
As everyone on this blog probably knows, Mike Boyle recently released a new product called Functional Strength Coach 3.0 last week. So, on Friday, Eric loaned me his copy to take home to view. I did my part and watched 6 of the 8 DVDs that night (for those of you counting at home that was about 5-6 hours of material straight to the dome on Friday Night; I promise I'm not that big of a geek normally). Upon return on Saturday morning, and much to Eric's shock, I gave him back the six DVDs that I had already watched and told him I would only need the other two for the afternoon.
Here is where the crew of pro baseball guys from Pete's office chimes in. "Why would you spend six hours of your Friday night watching DVDs that have nothing to do with your field?"
At first, I was kind of tongue tied, like, "Yeah, I guess that was pretty foolish, I teach pitching, so why would I want to know how to train people for functional strength?" And, to be honest, I continued to think about this most of Saturday, trying to justify why I just did that. As I came to my contemplative answer, I realized the very exact same reason I am working with Eric at all, is why I'm watching these DVDs on Friday night.
When it comes down to it, I believe to be the best at anything, you need to understand the inherent depth of complexities for what you're dealing with and this more often than not may involve pursuing multiple fields of knowledge to truly grasp your own discipline. In some sense, I believe the leaders in any field are polymaths of sort and this is something Eric clearly demonstrates in his own regard.
With that said, for me to provide the most knowledge and best service to an individual, a team, or camp of baseball players, I should understand why we are using foam rolling before we static stretch. Why would SMR of this nature would make sense before stretching and then proceeding into a dynamic warm-up?
I should understand what flexibility deficits are and why they are affecting a player's performance. I need to know why mobilizing the hips and thoracic spine while stabilizing the lumbar spine is allowing us to create more torque and whip for a pitcher. All of these things have huge ramifications for both player and coach, and if I want to optimize my players' talent, then I need to be able to convey to them the importance of our drills and Eric's exercises.
There is a reason for all of it, we're not just throwing darts at the wall and hoping it works out for the player. I'm also not going to claim to have all the answers for this, and that is why I am constantly searching for the next piece to add to my arsenal. It could be a psychological book about focus, or even an Eastern Martial arts book about how Tai Chi helps you find your center. Not any one of these books would have all of the answers on how to be a great pitcher, and they may even have none...but, at the end of the day, if I can take one thing away from Mike Boyle and add it to my knowledge of pitching in any way, then I just made myself better as a "Pitching Coach," whatever that may be loosely defined as.
So I guess to answer their question: I was really watching Functional Strength Coach 3.0 because I plan on helping Eric turn out a large number of pitchers in Hudson, MA who are capable of throwing a baseball freakishly hard and stay healthy while doing so.
Obviously, there is a lot more to pitching and what we are working on together than that, but I think that should get the ball rolling. Over the next few months, I will be contributing more substantive articles that will cover a lot of the biomechanical aspects of a pitcher's delivery that Eric and I see daily and how best to activate and optimize awareness for each piece of the puzzle. We'll talk about what a flexibility deficit looks like in a pitcher and what its ramifications are in a player's mechanics. We'll discuss how we attack something of this nature with soft tissue/mobility/strength work and then how we teach the player to incorporate this back into his personal mechanics through progressive drill work.
The end goal is obviously to remove the limitation, and in turn, raising a pitcher's velocity ceiling and keep him healthy. This could include anything from hip mobility, to thoracic spine mobility, to glenohumeral internal rotation deficit (GIRD), to a host of other issues. All of these issues could be holding a player back from optimal performance and maybe even putting a pitcher at a serious risk for injury.
Well, that is more than enough for one blog, and I want apologize for ransacking your daily allowance of blog reading time if you made it this far with me. I tried to get a word count limitation on my post from Eric, but he told me to just let it rip. I guess this was my definition of letting it rip...
Matt Blake can be reached at mablak07@gmail.com.
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Today's a really exciting day for Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, and I - and hopefully for you, too!
You see, after months of planning, filming, and editing, our new product, Assess and Correct, is now available at www.AssessAndCorrect.com. And, for the first week ONLY, we're making the product available for $30 off what will be the normal retail price.
Assess and Correct is the first resource that empowers you with not only a series of self-assessments to identify your own flexibility and stability limitations, but also exercise progressions to correct those inefficiencies. In the process, you'll take your athletic performance to all new levelsandprevent injuries from creeping up on you - whether you're a high-level athlete or someone who sits at a desk too much.
With 27 self-assessments and 78 corresponding exercises, you'll cover virtually everything you need to feel and perform well. And, you'll have plenty of variety to use for many years to come! And, while the DVDs alone are really comprehensive, the bonuses we've added to this really sweeten the deal. Included in this package are:
DVD #1:Your Comprehensive Guide to Self-Assessment
DVD #2:Your Individualized Corrective Exercise Progressions
Bonus #1:The Assess and Correct Assessment E-Manual, which is a guide to which you can refer to in conjunction with DVD #1.
Bonus #2:The Assess and Correct E-Manual, which includes written cues and photos for each recommended drill in DVD #2 so that you'll have a resource you can take to the gym with you.
Bonus #3: "The Great Eight Static Stretches" E-Manual, which shows you eight additional flexibility drills that we use on a regular basis in addition to the drills featured in the DVDs.
Bonus #4:The "Optimal Self Myofascial Release" E-Manual, which shows you the soft tissue methods and techniques we use with our clients and athletes.
Bonus #5: "Warm-ups for Every Body" E-Manual, which is a collection of two sample warm-up templates for 19 different sports/scenarios.
Again, this introductory offer will end next Sunday, November 1 at midnight EST. For now, though, I'd encourage you to head over to www.AssessAndCorrect.com to check out some of the sample videos from the DVDs - including the introduction in which we discuss our rationale for creating the product.
Some reading recommendations for the week:
Why You Don't Need Bottled Water - This blog post from my good friend, Cassandra Forsythe-Pribanic, will definitely make you think twice about the containers in which you keep your drinks.
Max Push-ups and Upper-Body Strength - A perspective on the use of the push-up in females.
Regaining Shoulder Mobility for Back Squatting - This recent newsletter outlines some tips for getting under the bar to back squat, if you've got flexibility deficits at the shoulder.
Q&A: Hip Injuries in Baseball
Q: On Sunday, The New York Times published this article that discusses the dramatic increase in hip injuries in Major League Baseball in recent years. I know you work with a ton of baseball players and was curious about your thoughts on the article. Do you agree with their theories?
A: As always, my answer is "kind of" or "maybe." I think they make some great points in the article, but as is the case with mainstream media articles, they're written by reporters with word count limits, so a lot of the most important points get omitted. For example, with respect to the hips, it isn't as simple as "weak or strong." You can have guys with ridiculously strong adductors that are completely overused, balled up, and short - but terribly weak hip extensors and abductors. So, part of the problem is that journalists don't even qualify as casual observers to exercise physiology, so the public only gets part of the story.
(Sorry, but that digression was totally worth it.)
First, I agree that one of the reasons we are seeing more of these issues is because doctors have become better at diagnosing the problems. The "corollary" to this would be that the issues are perceived as more severe because so few physical therapists, athletic trainers, and strength and conditioning coaches are comfortable treating and preventing the problems. That's not to say that hip issues aren't serious in nature; it simply implies that there is a divide between diagnostic capabilities and treatment/prevention strategies.
Second, I agree wholeheartedly that early specialization at the youth levels can lead to injuries down the road. We're dealing with some significant rotational velocities at the hips. In previous analyses of professional hitters, the hips rotated at a velocity of 714°/second. This same velocity isn't the same with little leaguers, but with skeletally immature children, it doesn't take as much stress to impose the same kind of damage. So, I don't see it as at all remarkable that some pro ballplayers have hip problems after they may have played baseball year-round from age 9 all the way to the time they got drafted. They also have bad shoulders, elbows, knees, and lower backs that have taked years to reach threshold. It just so happens that folks are getting better at diagnosing these problems, so we now have an "epidemic," in some folks' eyes.
What I can tell you, though, is that it's borderline idiocy to think that strength training is responsible for these problems. Injuries don't occur simply because you enhance strength. In fact, muscular strength reduces the time to threshold for tendinopathies, and takes stress off passive restraints such as ligaments, menisci, labrums, and discs. Making this assumption is like saying that strength training drills to bolster scapular stability may be the reason we see more shoulder and elbow injuries nowadays. Um, no. Shoulders and elbows crap out because of faulty mechanics, poor flexibility (e.g., shoulder internal rotation ROM), bad tissue quality, and muscular weakness. Granted, the shoulder (non-weight-bearing) and hips (weight-bearing) have different demands, but nobody ever tried to pin the exorbitant amount of arm problems in pitchers on "the advent of strength training."
That said, injuries occur when you ignore things that need to be addressed: pure and simple.
To that end, I can tell you that a large percentage of the baseball players I see - including position players, pitchers, and catchers - have some signficant hip ROM and tissue quality problems. In terms of range of motion, the most common culprints are hip internal rotation deficit (HIRD) and a lack of hip extension and knee flexion (rectus femoris shortness). Pitchers are often asymmetrical in hip flexion, too, with the front leg having much more ROM. In terms of tissue quality, the hip external rotations, hip flexors, and adductors are usually very restricted.
This is has proven true of guys who lift and guys who don't lift. The latter group just so happens to be skinny and weak, too!
Done appropriately, strength training isn't causing the problem - particularly when we are talking about huge contracts that restrict how aggressive programming can be. Trust me; guys with $20 million/year contracts aren't squatting 500 pounds very often...or ever. The risk-reward is way out of whack, and no pro strength coach is going to put his job on the line with programming like that.
However, strength training may be indirectly contributing to the problem by shifting an athlete's focus away from flexibility training and foam rolling/massage. Pro athletes are like everyone else in this world in that they have a limited time to devote to training, but to take it a step further, they have a lot of competing demands for their attention: hitting, throwing, lifting, sprinting, stretching, and soft tissue work. So, they have to pick the modalities that give them the biggest return on time investment and prioritize accordingly in terms of how much time they devote to these initiatives. Some guys make bad choices in this regard, and hip flexibility and tissue quality get ignored.
Baseball is a sport that doesn't permit ignorance, unfortunately, and this is one of many reasons why it has one of the highest injury rates in all of professional sports. We are talking about an extremely long competitive season with near daily games - a schedule that makes it challenging to maintain/build strength, flexibility, and tissue quality. Throwing a baseball is also the fastest motion in all of sports. Rotational sports have the pelvis and torso rotating in opposite directions at the same time. And, as I noted in Oblique Strains and Rotational Power, most professional ballplayers have a stride length of about 380% of hip width during hitting. It is really just a matter of which joint will break down first: hip, knee, or lower back. Taking immobile hips with poor tissue quality out into a long season with these demands is like doing calf raises in the power rack when someone is around with a video camera: you are just asking for a world of hurt.
So, what to do? Well, first, get cracking on tissue quality with regular foam rolling and massage (the more an athlete can afford, the better). Here is the sequence all Cressey Performance athletes go through before training.
In many of our guys, we also add in extra adductor rolling on the stretching table.
Second, you've got to hammer on flexibility. We spend a ton of time with both static stretching and dynamic flexibility. Here are a few of the static stretching favorites (the first to gain hip internal rotation, and the second to gain hip extension and knee flexion ROM):
Third, as Dr. Eric Cobb has written, you use resistance training to "cement neural patterns." This includes all sorts of lower-body lifting variations - from single-leg movements, to glute-ham raise, to deadlifting and squatting variations - and multi-directional core stability drills. And, often overlooked is the valuable role of medicine ball training in teaching good hip (and scap) loading patterns:
For more information, check out my previous newsletter, Medicine Ball Madness, which describes our off-season medicine ball programs in considerable detail.
All taken together, my take is that the increase in hip injuries at the MLB level has everything to do with early baseball specialization and improved diagnostic capabilities. However, when you examine hip dysfunction under a broader scope, you'll see that this joint breaks down for many of the same reasons that lower backs and knees reach threshold: inattention to tissue quality and targeted flexibility training. Strength training works synergistically with these other components of an effective program just like it would at any other joint.
*A special thanks goes out to Tony "Explosive Calves" Gentilcore for being a good sport in the videos in this newsletter.
Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive a Copy of the Exact Stretches used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
Q: How should I warm up properly before sprinting sessions? Back in the day when I did sports my quads were always prone to injuries. Funny thing is I haven't had any problems when doing squats of any kind. Recently I decided to involve some alactic work in my workout and immediately pulled a quad doing sprints. It's obviously something wrong with my warm-up!
A: Saying "pulled quad" might be a little bit too general. In reality, most of the time, you're looking at a rectus femoris strain. While it is one of the quadriceps, the rectus femoris is also active as a hip flexor. So, as the picture below shows, it crosses two joints.
The rectus femoris is responsible for both hip flexion and knee extension. So, as you can imagine, it is placed on a huge stretch when an athlete goes into a position of hip extension and knee flexion - kind of like this:
You're asking the rectus femoris to go on a huge stretch there - and under very high velocities. With a squat, you're not putting it on full stretch, as the hip and knee are both flexed. So, with that in mind, it's not surprising at all that sprinting would bother your "quad" when squatting doesn't - especially since we know the overwhelming majority of folks out there are tight in the rectus femoris. Why?
Well, first, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that, as a society, we sit far too much. Second, though, is the fact that most people never really get above 90 degrees of hip flexion in anything that they do. Mike Boyle has done a great job of outlining how we can develop imbalanced hip flexion patterns; essentially, we never use our psoas, the only hip flexor active above 90 degrees of hip flexion. The picture below is kind of rudimentary (and somewhat awkward), but it shows what I'm getting at with respect to the advantageous attachment points for psoas with respect to hip flexion above 90 degrees:
How many of the folks at your gym are getting 90+ degrees of hip flexion with their treadmill, stairclimber, and elliptical work? None. So, we underuse psoas, and overuse rectus - and it shortens up over time. Take a short muscle through a maximal stretch at high-velocities, and it's going to hate you. So, what to do?
Well, first, I'd recommend running through some warm-ups from Assess and Correct, and that'll cover a lot of the fundamentals (especially if you go through the assessments to figure out what else is going on). One important thing that'll cover is activation work for psoas; Kevin Neeld demonstrates one option here:
Second, just add in some targeted static stretching for the rectus femoris a few times a day using this stretch (don't start using it until the "pulled quad" has settled down, though).
Third, and most importantly, ease your way into sprinting. Not everyone is prepared to just jump right in full-throttle. I discuss this in further detail in my contribution to the most recent Mythbusters article at T-Nation. Basically, just get out there twice a week and do some 60-yd build-ups at 80% of your best on a grass field.
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In Part 1 of this series, we outlined several crucial prerequisites to understanding the nature of lower back pain.
In this installment, I've got a few more thoughts in this regard, and then we'll get to work on strategies for preventing these problems in the first place, and working around them once they're in place. You don't need me to tell you that back pain - any chink in your armor, for that matter - will prevent you from making progress in the gym.
Continue reading...
Rethinking Interval Training
I love interval training, but one of the problems we commonly run into - particularly if someone isn't prepared physically to sprint, or doesn't have a place to do it because of weather restrictions - is that repetitive, low-amplitude motions are our only options. In other words, it has to just be cycling, elliptical, or stairclimber. While slideboard work, medicine ball medleys, barbell complexes, and sled pushing definitely help to work around these problems, when it comes down to it, many of them still don't give certain folks the variety they need in their exercise programming.
In our Building the Efficient Athlete seminar, Mike Robertson and I spoke about the law of repetitive motion: I = NF/AR
In this equation, injury equals the number of repetitions multiplied by the frequency of those repetitions, divided by the amplitude of each repetition times the rest interval. While you can attack each of these five factors differently (and I will in a future newsletter), the take-home point with respect to today's discussion is that simply increasing the amplitude - or range-of-motion - in one's daily life can reduce (or eliminate) the presence or severity of overuse conditions.
For that reason, I often substitute one or both of two different training modalities for client's interval training.
The first is dynamic flexibility circuits with little to no rest between sets. In this scenario, we program 2-3 different mobility/activation drills for each inefficiency the athlete displays, and then combine them in a series of drills. Ideally, as many of these drills are done in the standing position as possible. Let's say a client has poor thoracic spine mobility, a horrific Thomas test, bad glute function, and poor hip external rotation. Here's what his circuit might look like:
a) 1-leg supine bridge
b) wall hip flexor mobilizations
c) 3-point extension-rotations
d) cradle walks
e) overhead lunge walks
f) walking spiderman with overhead reach
g) yoga push-ups
h) 1-leg SLDL walks
(you can find videos of many of these exercises in the Assess and Correct DVD set, and I'll have more information on the rest down the road)
Is this circuit going to completely "gas" an athlete? Absolutely not. However, it is going to make him/her better in light of the inefficiencies I outlined above - and you don't have to leave the gym exhausted to have improved.
The second option is to simply take a series of resistance training exercises with a corrective emphasis (sometimes integrates with the drills outlined above) and put them in a series of supersets. For these exercises, the load utilized should only be about 30% of 1-rep max. I outlined this option a while back in my article, Cardio Confusion. Here's an example I used with an online consulting client recently:
A1) Overhead broomstick walking Lunges (3x10/side)
A2) Push-ups (3x12)
B1) Face pulls (3x15)
B2) Body weight only reverse lunges (3x10/side)
C1) 1-leg SLDL Walk (2x6/side)
C2) Band external rotations - arm adducted (2x15/side)
D1) Behind-the-neck band pullaparts (2x15)
D2) Bowler Squats (2x10/side)
This series is preceded by foam rolling and a dynamic flexibility warm-up, and can be followed by more "traditional" interval training.
Like I said earlier, I'm still all for both traditional and non-traditional interval training. Initiative like I outlined above, though, can serve as a nice change of pace and work in corrective exercise while keeping the heart rate up. Be as creative as you'd like and you'll see great results; the sky is the limit in terms of the combinations you can use.
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Subscriber-Only Q&AQ: I have a question about your 22 More Random Thoughts article from October of 2008 on T-Nation. In the stretch for the hips found above #10, I can't tell is that athlete bridging or are the hips on the ground. Also, can you please explain exactly what is stretched and how a little bit about how it corrects out-toeing of the feet?
A: Sure, no problem. Here's the lying knee-to-knee stretch, for those readers who missed the original article:
First off, it's a stretch for the hip external rotators, and the athlete is not bridging up. However, it's also useful to do the stretch in a more hips-extended position, as a small percentage of athletes will feel it more in that position. To perform this stretch, we'll do the exact same position, but have the athlete set up atop a stability ball (which keeps the femurs in a more extended position).
Poor hip internal rotation range-of-motion is something you'll see quite frequently in soccer players, hockey players, and powerlifters, as all spend a considerable amount of time in hip external rotation. Likewise, I monitor this closely with all my baseball pitchers, as front leg hip internal rotation deficit is a huge problem for pitchers. When the front hip opens up too soon because of these muscular restrictions, the arm lags behind the body (out of the scapular plane). As such, it isn't uncommon for pitchers with elbow and/or shoulder pain to present with a significant hip internal rotation deficit.
There is also a considerable amount of research to suggest that hip rotation deficits - and particularly, hip internal rotation deficits - are highly correlated with low back pain. There was a great guest blog post at Mike Reinold's blog recently that highlights all this research; you can check it out HERE. My personal experience with hundreds of people who have come my way with back pain overwhelmingly supports this "theory" (if you can even call it that). It's my firm belief that this is one of the primary reasons Mike Robertson and I have gotten so much great feedback on our Magnificent Mobility DVD from folks who have seen a reduction (or altogether elmination) in back pain. Teach folks to move at the hips (particularly in rotation) instead of the lumbar spine, and whatever's going on in their low backs calms down.
Our goal is a minimum of 40 degrees of hip internal rotation. This is measured in the seated position (hips flexed to 90 degrees).
In addition to the classes of athletes I mentioned earlier, we also need to watch out for hip internal rotation deficit (HIRD) in the general population because of what happens further down the kinetic chain. We all know that overpronation at the subtalar join is a big problem for a lot of folks. This can occur because of a collection of factors, from poor footwear (too much heel lift), to muscular weakness (more on this in a second), to mobility deficits (particularly at the ankle), to congenital factors (flat feet). To understand how pronation affects the hip external rotators, you'll need to listen to a brief synopsis of subtalar joint function...
During the gait cycle, the subtalar joint pronates, to aid in deceleration. Basically, the foot flattens out to give us a bigger base of support from which to cushion impact, and from there, we switch back over to supination to get a rigid foot from which to propel. The picture below shows what our foot looks like when we have too much pronation.
Here's where our hip gets involved. Physical therapist John Pallof once called the subtalar joint a "torque converter," and it really stuck with me. What that means is that while the subtalar joint allows motion in three planes for pronation/supination, it converts this motion into transverse plan motion where it interacts with the tibia. And, as you can imagine based on the picture above, when you pronate, you increase tibial internal rotation. This, in turn, increased femoral internal rotation. Taken all together, we realize that increasing pronation means that there is more tibial and femoral internal rotation to decelerate with each step, stride, or jump landing.
The hip external rotators are strong muscles with a big cross sectional area, so they can take on this burden. However, over time, they can get balled up from overuse. As a result, the hip will sit in a more externally rotated position all the time - and the feet simply come along for the ride. That said, as I wrote HERE, it isn't the only cause of this foot position, so be sure to assess thoroughly and individualize your recommendations.
Also, a quick side note, be careful using this stretch with individuals who have previously experienced medial knee injuries, as the valgus stress can be a bit too much for some folks.
New Blog ContentRandom Friday ThoughtsFor High School Pitchers, No Grace PeriodDoga? Seriously?CP Athlete Featured at Precision Nutrition
I encourage you to check out this Precision Nutrition Athlete Profile on Cressey Performance athlete and Oakland A's minor league pitcher Shawn Haviland. Shawn completely changed his body this off-season and had a nice velocity jump from 87-89 to 91-93mph - and he's off to a good start for the Kane County Cougars. A lot of this can be attributed to him making huge strides with improving his nutrition.
Have a great week!
EC
Q: At what point do you think that muscle size affects one's range of motion? Just interested in your thoughts. I'm a golfer and my flexibility is important; there isn't much point for me to be really strong but not able to move properly.
A: Well, it would be joint- and population-specific. On the joint side of things, as an example, the elbow flexors (biceps, to the lay population) and knee flexors (hamstrings) can restrict elbow and knee flexion, respectively, if they get too big. Or, the pecs may inhibit horizontal adduction ROM. This list goes on and on.
I don't feel that simply making a muscle bigger means that you lose range-of-motion in that specific muscle, as the improvements are to cross-sectional area. If this was the case, the elbow flexors would be restricting us in extension, and the pecs would be restricting us in horizontal abduction, but as the examples above show, that's just not happening.
Provided that flexibility training is good, and structural balance is prioritized in programming, there is no reason to believe that you can't be big and flexible.
Now, it's important to consider the sporting population in question. A powerlifter isn't going to need as much mobility as, say, a baseball pitcher. One guy needs to be efficient in a short range of motion, while the other needs to be efficient through a larger range of motion.
In pitchers, external rotation ROM is a good predictive factor for velocity. On top of that, horizontal abduction at stride foot contact is huge, according to the research.
So, in order to have good pitching specific ROM, you need to have adequate length of the muscles that internally rotate and horizontally adduct the shoulders. And, the big muscle that does this is the pectoralis major. Bench until the cows come home, shorten it up, and then you'll lose that ROM.
Now, ask anyone who has ever trained baseball pitchers, and they'll tell you that pitcher gain external rotation over the course of a season simply from throwing. Guys who don't weight-train properly can certainly impede this velocity-aiding adaptation.
This, of course, is an example specific to baseball pitching, and demands would be different for golfers.
