Recently, I was on the "Let's Talk Baseball" show with Ron and Jill Wolforth, where we talked baseball development in the context of assessing pitchers and correcting their inefficiencies. Check it out:
Let's Talk Baseball
We discuss the Assess & Correct DVD set quite a bit - and you can pick up a copy HERE.
I'm thrilled to announce that Mike Reinold and my new project, Optimal Shoulder Performance: From Rehabilitation to High Performance, is now available. This four DVD set blends the world of rehabilitation and strength and conditioning like no other product on the market. For more information on the product and to order, check out www.ShoulderPerformance.com.
The introductory price will not last long, so don't delay!
Q: I read your blog here the other day about your "ideal competitive year" for a baseball player. What's your take on showcases and college camps? They always occur during the "down periods" you mentioned: fall ball and the early winter. How do these fit in to a baseball player's development?
A: To be blunt, while there are some exceptions to the rule, they rarely fit into development. In reality, they usually feed into destruction - at least in the context of pitchers. I openly discourage all our young athletes and parents from attending them almost without exception.
I know of very few showcase directors and college baseball coaches who legitimately understand anatomy, physiology, the etiology of baseball injuries, the nature of adolescent development, or motor skill acquisition.
Showcase directors specialize in promoting and running showcases. College coaches specialize in recruiting players, developing talent, planning game and practice strategy, and winning games. To my knowledge, understanding scapulohumeral rhythm and the contributions of a glenohumeral internal rotation deficit (GIRD) to SLAP lesions via the peel-back mechanism isn't all in a day's work for these folks.
The fundamental issue with these events is their timing. As you noted, they almost always occur in the fall and winter months. Why?
1. It's the easiest time to recruit participants, as they aren't in-season with their baseball teams.
2. It's not during the college baseball season - so fields and schedules are open and scouting and coaching man-power is free.
You'll notice that neither #1 or #2 said "It's the time of year when a pitcher is the most prepared to perform at a high level safely." It is just profitable and convenient for other people - and that occurs at the expense of many young pitchers' arms.
In 2006, Olsen et al. published a fantastic review that examined all the different factors associated with elbow and shoulder surgeries in pitchers by comparing injured pitchers (those who warranted surgery) with their non-injured counterparts. Some of the findings of the study:
-Pitchers who eventually required surgery threw almost EXACTLY twice as many pitches as the control group (healthy pitchers) over the course of the year...from a combination of pitches per outing, total outings, and months pitched per year. For those of you who think your kid needs to play on multiple teams simultaneously, be very careul; add a team and you instantly double things - at least acutely.
-The injured pitchers attended an average of FOUR times more showcases than non-injured kids.
-Interesting aside: injured pitchers were asked what their coaches' most important concern was: game, season, or athlete's career. In the healthy group, they said the coach cared about the game most in only 11.4% of cases. In the injured group, it was 24.2%! These crazy little league coaches are often also the ones running the showcases...
The big problem is that these issues usually don't present until years later. Kids may not become symptomatic for quite some time, or pop NSAIDs to cover up the issues. They might even go to physical therapy for a year before realizing they need surgery. It's why you see loads of surgeries in the 16-18 year-old population, but not very often in 15 and under age groups.
So why are appearances like these in the fall and winter months so problematic? Well, perhaps the best way I can illustrate my point is to refer back to a conversation I had with Curt Schilling last year.
Curt told me that throughout his career, he had always viewed building up his arm each year as a process with several levels.
Step 1: Playing easy catch
Step 2: Playing easy catch on a line
Step 3: Building up one's long toss (Curt never got onto a mound until he'd "comfortably" long-tossed 200 ft.)
Step 4: Throwing submaximally off a mound
Step 5: Throwing with maximum effort off a mound
Step 6: Throwing with maximum effort off a mound with a batter
Step 7: Throwing with maximum effort off a mound with a batter in a live game situation
Step 8: Opening day at Fenway Park in front of 40,000+ people
Being at a showcase in front of college coaches and scouts with radar guns is Step 8 for every 14-16 year old kid in America. And, it comes at the time of year when they may not have even been throwing because of fall/winter sports and the weather. Just to be clear, I'll answer this stupid question before anyone asks it: playing year-round and trying to be ready all the time is NOT the solution.
I can honestly say that in all my years of training baseball players, I've only seen one kid who was "discovered" at a showcase. And, frankly, it occurred in December of his junior year, so those scouts surely would have found him during high school and summer ball; it wasn't a desperate attempt to catch someone's eye.
I'll be honest: I have a lot of very close friends who work as collegiate baseball coaches. They're highly-qualified guys who do a fantastic job with their athletes - but also make money off of fall baseball camps. I can be their friend without agreeing with everything they do; there is a difference between "disagree" and "dislike."
Fortunately, the best coaches are the ones who go out of their way to make these events as safe as possible, emphasizing skill, technique, and strategy improvements over "impressing" whoever is watching. So, it's possible to have a safe, beneficial experience at one of these camps. I'd encourage you to find out more about what goes on at the events in advance, and avoid throwing bullpens if unprepared for them.
As far as showcases are concerned, I'd encourage you to save your money and go on a family vacation instead.
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
Q: I run into a TON of Fathers who want their son to gain throwing velocity. What are your keys to gaining velocity?
A: To be blunt, Step 1 is getting away from your crazy overbearing father and realizing that if you're going to throw the baseball harder, it's because YOU want to do it, and are willing to put in the hard work. There are millions of American fathers who want their sons to throw 95+mph, but only about eight guys in the big leagues who consistently throw that hard.
Taking it a step further, the average fastball velocity is actually higher in A-ball than it is in professional baseball, so while throwing hard is important, it's just one piece of the puzzle. I'd love to hear more fathers talking about learning to command the fastball and master a change-up. And, most importantly, I'd like to see more fathers who are interested first and foremost in keeping their kids healthy so that they can have the continuity necessary to realize their potential.
Next, you have to consider what kind of velocity we're actually discussing. Is it what the radar gun reads: actual velocity? That's really just one of three kinds of velocity.
You also have perceived velocity - which is higher in a pitcher who gets down the mound further than his counterparts and therefore gives the hitter less time to react. Chris Young (at 6-11) gets the benefit of perceived velocity in spite of the fact that his average fastball velocity doesn't even approach 90mph.
Perceived velocity also explains the success of many pitchers with deceptive deliveries where the ball seems to just jump up on hitters. Often, these pitchers stay closed and throw across their bodies. While it may not be healthy, correcting it could take away their effectiveness.
Lastly, back in 2008, Perry Husband introduced me to the concept of effective velocity, which is a bit more complex. The effective velocity a hitter appreciates is actually impacted by:
1. pitch location (high and inside are faster, and low and away are slower)
2. previous pitch location, type, and velocity (coming up and in with a fastball makes it seem harder if it follows a low and away change-up)
3. the count (when behind in the count, the hitter must cover a larger strikezone, and therefore a larger effective velocity range)
If you need any proof of the value of effective velocity, just watch Jamie Moyer or Tom Glavine. They nibble away over and over again, and then they come back inside on a guy and he looks blown away by the velocity even though it may only be low-80s.
That said, getting down to the nuts and bolts of throwing the ball hard (actual velocity) mandates that you understand that there are tons of factors that contribute to velocity, but they aren't the same for everyone. Very simply, there isn't just one mechanical model that allows one to throw harder than others.
Some guys have congenital laxity that allows them to contort their bodies all over the place. Others "muscle up" and shotput the ball to the plate. Most pitchers are somewhere in the middle and rely on a balance of elastic energy and mobility to make things happy. With that in mind, having mechanical efficiency and thousands of perfect throwing reps in this efficient model is what every pitcher should strive to achieve - just as a golfer would practice his swing or an Olympic lifter would practice the clean and jerk or snatch.
Second, it's imperative to prepare young pitchers' bodies for the rigors of throwing a baseball. I've written extensively about the overwhelming extremes the throwing arm faces, and while it's important to improve arm strength, flexibility, and soft tissue quality, the rest of the body cannot be ignored. Improving function of the scapular stabilizers, core musculature, and lower half is essential for taking stress of the throwing arm. We encourage kids to get started with foam rolling, targeted flexibility work, and resistance training as soon as their attention span allows. As I have written previously, the "stunting growth" argument doesn't hold water.
Third (and this piggybacks on my last point about resistance training), it's important to understand how to manage a young pitcher throughout the year. Contrary to popular belief, playing year-round is not a good idea. In fact, it isn't even good enough to qualify as a "bad" idea; it is an atrocious idea.
If you want my ideal competitive season for a youth baseball player, it's to pick up a ball and start tossing around Thanksgiving, progressing to bullpen wok in early January after long-tossing distance has been progressed. Then, the athlete throws up through his competitive high school season (late March- early June) and summer ball (through early August). That's about 8-8.5 months of throwing throughout the course of the year - and it's plenty.
You'll see that this competitive year fits quite nicely with participation in a fall sport - whether it's football, soccer, or something else. And, athletes can still "get away" with playing winter sports as long as they're willing to commit to a throwing program, even if they have to start playing a bit late. If I had to give my ideal scenario, I'd say play football or soccer, and then play pick-up/intramural basketball in the winter alongside a throwing and lifting program.
Within this year, you have several crucial blocks during which to increase resistance training volume. One, there is the entire winter break, obviously. Two, there is generally a decent break between spring and summer baseball (late May-early June), and another during the month of August. Three, kids can (and should) still train in-season, regardless of the sport.
This, of course, speaks to the high school athletes who have practice/games just about every day. Managing a 10-year-old is a lot easier. His sport practice may only be 2-3 days per week - meaning that he can participate in different activities throughout the week. However, he can't do that if Dad thinks that playing on four different AAU teams at once is the secret to getting him to the big leagues. He has to play multiple sports at a young age.
So, if I had to give the synopsis of my thoughts on how to get a kid to throw hard, it would go something like this:
1. Appreciate that throwing hard is just one piece of the "being a successful pitcher" puzzle - and that there are different types of velocity (actual, perceived, and effective).
2. Clearly outline his competitive season and stick to that outline. Don't add showcases, camps, and additional teams.
3. Let him play for two teams: one spring (school) and one summer (AAU, Legion, etc.).
4. Find a skilled pitching instructor to work with him to optimize mechanical efficiency. Before you start working with this instructor, have him explain his approach to managing your son both during a typical lesson and throughout the competitive season. Then, go and observe him as he works with other pitchers. Do they just "show and go," or do they warm-up before even picking up a ball? Does he ask kids how they feel prior to each session, and does he pace them throughout the session? Or, does he just grunt and spit dip juice all over the place.
5. Get him involved in a comprehensive strength and conditioning program that incorporates resistance training, medicine ball work, flexibility training, and movement training that all take into account the unique demands of baseball. The strength and conditioning coach should provide a thorough evaluation that screens for all the mobility deficits and stability issues we commonly see in throwers.
6. Make sure that the pitching coach and strength and conditioning specialist communicate and collaborate. The CP staff is fortunate to have this kind of productive collaboration with Matt Blake all the time:
Kidding aside, very rarely will a pitching coach know about strength and conditioning, and very rarely will a strength and conditioning coach know about pitching. It's unfortunate, but true.
7. Have him play multiple sports. The younger the pitcher, the more sports he should play. Specialization shouldn't come until age 17 at the earliest.
8. Make sure he continues to take care of his resistance training and mobility work in-season.
I could go on and on about all the subtle details of what we do with pitchers on a daily basis, but the truth is that I envision this blog as something that will be most popular with the Dads in the crowd who really just want to help their kids realize their potential and remain injury-free. So, I'm keeping it more general - and referring you to the Baseball Content page for the more "geeky" stuff.
I do have one more closing thought, though. We deal with a lot of very talented young pitchers who throw the ball very hard. One anecdotal observation has been that their fathers are the ones who "get it." These are the guys who are concerned about the important things: staying healthy, enjoying baseball, finding the right college, etc. They don't boast about how many guys their sons struck out in little league. They are genuinely humble and respect the game - and this carries over to their kids, who work hard and carry themselves the right way.
Conversely, the kids who are always told that they're the best and get raved about by their fathers are the ones who invariably struggle to succeed long-term. It may be because they're overworked, over-pressured, or just overrated in the first place. It may be because coaches get frustrated with having to deal with an overbearing father, and the kid gets punished for it. It may be that the kid doesn't think he needs to work as hard because he's already the best - because Dad told him so. Or, maybe he misses out on crucial development because he spends all his time playing in baseball games when he should be practicing, training, or participating in other sports - or just having fun and being a normal kid. Worst of all, a kid may just flat-out start to dislike the game because all the fun has been taken out of it because of Dad's hype and excessive pressure.
Is velocity important? Sure. Can it sometimes be the trees that prevent us from seeing the forest? Absolutely.
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
Today marks another great blog Q&A from Matt Blake.Q: I was quite shocked to learn that only three pitchers have ever made it to the Big Leagues from the Little League World Series (LLWS). It makes perfect sense, as the mature kid at 12 generates more velocity than little Billy. Most parents assume that since he is more mature he can handle more stress when in actuality it just means his muscles are stretched out farther and are more susceptible to injury. More specifically, Tom House claimed that the stretched out muscles could be counteracted by dropping your center of gravity. Any input would be great!
A: I think this speaks to a lot of problems with how the players got to Williamsport and the developmental path that carries into their teenage years. The main concerns with the 11-12 year olds that are competing in the LLWS is how skilled they are for such a young age. Typically, this means that they have had a tremendous amount of repetition at a young age, and have competed in a very large number of games over the course of the spring and summer to make it to Williamsport.
Three issues that might speak to why only three pitchers have gone on to play professional ball include:
Issue #1 - These players are not skeletally mature to handle the amount of stress placed on their bodies, so they will probably turn up with more overuse injuries in their teen years that have been accumulating due to the high demand from 9-12.
Issue #2 - This could be a simple timing of maturation. A lot of the dominant players are taller, weigh more, throw harder and have probably entered certain stages of maturation quicker than their peers. This doesn't necessarily mean they'll be ahead of their peers at 13-15 or even 16-18; it just means that at the age (11-12) we happen to televise, they were more developed. There are at least six more years before this player can even think about playing professionally, so a lot of things can happen to level out the playing field.
Issue #3 - There's a good chance the amount of repetition that these players have put in at an early age could lead to "burnout" down the road or a feeling of satisfaction and less of a demand to work hard, because everything came to the player so easily at a young age. This game will eat you up if you don't continue to get quality repetition over the long haul.
At some point, an abundance of talent will be matched, whether it's in high school, college, or the minor leagues. This is where the intangible qualities separate players and hard work is required to keep your competitive edge. Needless to say, I'm still shocked that only three pitchers have made it from the LLWS. For me, this signifies a serious red flag in the way we are developing talent in the baseball industry if our best players at age 12 don't translate well to the upper levels.
Have a question for Matt? Drop him an email at mablak07@gmail.com.Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive a Copy of the Exact Stretches
used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
The college coach of one of our current pro baseball players was asking me about the rotator cuff program he's doing with us now, and I figured I'd turn it into today's topic. We take a bit of a different approach with it than you'll see with a lot of guys in the industry, and it's basically dictated by three assertions/assumptions:
1. The true function of the rotator cuff is to stabilize the humeral head on the glenoid (shoulder socket). While external rotation is important for deceleration of the crazy internal rotation velocity seen with throwing, it's stabilization that we're really after. As you can see, the humeral head is too large to allow for great surface area contact with the glenoid.
My feeling is that the bigger muscles - particularly scapular stabilizers, the core, and the lower half - will decelerate the crazy velocities we see as long as mechanics are effective and the deceleration arc is long enough.
2. The shoulder internally rotates at over 7,000°/s during acceleration; that's the fastest motion in all of sports. There's no way that the rotator cuff muscles alone with their small cross-sectional area can decelerate it. And, to take it a step further, there isn't much that some rubber tubing is going to do to help the cause (aside from just promoting blood flow - although I'd rather get that in a more global sense with full-body flexibility circuits, as I discussed HERE).
More important than blood flow is getting range of motion (ROM) back (particularly elbow extension and shoulder internal rotation) after a pitching outing. In my experience, losses in ROM get guys injured faster than weakness, in my experience. I've seen quite a few people come to me who have healthy shoulders, but test poorly on classic rotator cuff strength measures. Why? Perhaps they are very strong in their scapular stabilizers, core, and lower half and have become efficient enough to handle more of the deceleration demands in areas other than the rotator cuff. Or, they may just be lucky; rotator cuff strength is still important!
3. We've mocked on the conventional bodybuilding community for training muscles and not movements: chest day, quads day - you get the picture. Meanwhile, the baseball community is devoting five days a week to training muscles with cross-sectional areas smaller than any of these!
I've had multiple discussions with Mike Reinold that reaffirm this indirectly; he emphasizes that one should never train the rotator cuff to failure, as that's not how it works in the real world. Our job is to enhance not just its strength, but also its proprioception and rate of force development. If we chronically abuse it with training on top of the crazy demands of throwing, we never really know how strong the rotator cuff actually is. It makes you wonder how many guys in the baseball world actually have exhausted and chronically overtrained rotator cuff muscles as opposed to weak rotator cuff muscles!
With these three assertions in mind, most of our guys in the off-season will have four days of rotator cuff work spread out over two "types" of training. Days 1 and 3 (say, Monday and Thursday) would be more rhythmic stabilization drills similar to this (although the options are really only limited by your imagination):
The other two days are more classic rotator cuff work that prioritizes external rotation and horizontal abduction (we never do empty cans). I do a lot of work with cables here, plus a lot in the side-lying position (EMG activity for the cuff is highest here).
We'll also do a lot of manual resistance external rotation stuff, as it kind of "blends" conventional cuff work with rhythmic stabilizations due to the unstable load. Here's one option:
Later in the off-season, we'll throw in some one-arm medicine ball deceleration catches and external rotation tosses to the wall to get the thoracic spine and hips ready for the full-body demands of throwing.
Keep in mind that - as I noted - rotator cuff exercises are just one piece of the puzzle. These are one component of a larger overall plan that addresses not only scapular stability, but also total body strength and mobility, soft tissue quality, medicine ball work, movement training, and the actual throwing program.
Today, we've got the first in a series of Q&A contributions from Matt Blake.Q: What do you think of Ron Johnson's presentation at the ABCA convention where he stated that curveballs are okay for youths to throw and that they do not cause any structural damage beyond what a fastball does? Rather, it was the frequency the curveball was thrown that was the indicator.
A: I was at Ron Johnson's presentation and have had the chance to read much of the research that has been presented on this topic. I do generally agree that curveballs are not inherently more dangerous than fastballs, but I think the idea of curveballs sends a conflicting message at the youth levels.
Fundamentally, I'd like to believe that this game is centered around the pitcher being able to locate a fastball to the center of the plate 100 out of 100 times. Obviously, this is an idealistic perspective, but above average fastball command should be the trademark of an advanced youth player, not the fact that he can spin a baseball with his hand in a supinated position so that he can fool unsuspecting 11 year olds. We don't teach hitters to focus on curveballs at this age, so why should we teach pitchers to throw them?
Squaring up the fastball over the middle of the plate is step one for both hitters and pitchers. In order to put a player in the best chance to succeed down the road, I think a pitcher should be able to repeat his fastball mechanics and create a certain amount of hand-speed, before he is taught to craft his pitching skills. This is generally considered to be a throwing mechanics versus pitching skills debate and would prioritize mechanical knowledge and the sequencing of the body's rotations.
If a player has demonstrated above average command of his fastball to the center of the plate, then obviously, the next progression would begin to zone the plate off for him. Once he can dissect the lanes of the plate with a straight fastball, then maybe teach him a different grip on the fastball or even a changeup. Start by working the changeup down the middle, etc....This game is built on efficient pitching, so to skip steps at these early developmental levels or to place too great an emphasis on winning at this age would compromise the player's development. Obviously, all of this is just simply my opinion.
When would I teach a breaking ball? I guess it would be when a player looks skeletally mature to repeat his delivery and can demonstrate effective use of his fastball/changeup combination. If these pieces are set as the foundation, introducing spin tilt and depth might follow. If a player at the age of 11 or 12 is capable of doing this because he has put the necessary repetition in, then I suppose you can't hold him back, but for some reason, I think people might be skipping steps 2 and 3 to get to 4, because 4 gets outs easier at age 12.
Have a question for Matt? Drop him an email at mablak07@gmail.com.
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
Today, we've got another great guest post from Matt Blake."If I embark on a voyage of exploration, and I set as my goals the willingness to follow any lead, pursue any interesting observation, overcome any difficulties, and I end up in some exotic locale that might be very different from my predictions before setting out, have I changed my destination in any way? I would say not; the sine qua non of science is not the conclusions we reach but the process we use to arrive at them, and that is the polestar by which we navigate."-PZ Myers, Biologist, University of Minnesota
One might ask why the heck a pitching coach is leading off his article on a fitness expert's blog with a quote from a biologist, and how it would have any relevance to the topic at hand. Where could this possibly be going?
Well, I recently attended the American Baseball Coaches Association "Hot Stove" Pitching Discussion in Dallas, Texas on January 10th with about 200-300 coaches from all over the country. And, I would say that this notion was the overriding theme to take away from the event.
This "Hot Stove" pitching discussion was part of the bigger national convention that takes place every year. This event provided an outstanding forum for people to hear some leading thinkers in baseball discuss pitching in an informal public setting. Some of the notable attendees of this event were Tom House, Alan Jaeger, Brent Strom, and Derek Johnson. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these names, I'll give you a brief description of each.
Tom House is a former major leaguer, former major league pitching coach, and is regarded as one of the great modern day pitching gurus and currently coaches at the University of Southern California.
Alan Jaeger runs Jaegersports.com and has an outstanding understanding of long toss, arm care and how it should be applied to your player's development.
Brent Strom is a former major leaguer, is an instructor in the St. Louis Cardinals system, and teams up with Ron Wolforth to run the Ultimate Pitching Coaches Bootcamp every year. They also run some outstanding Elite Pitcher Bootcamps during the summer. These two presented early in the weekend and are proponents of the "Blending" and "Chunking" theories and advocate for training pitchers through the use of athletic and aggressive throwing drills.
Derek Johnson is currently the Pitching Coach at Vanderbilt University and is regarded as one of the premier pitching coaches in the country. Producing ten drafted pitchers (including three first-rounders) over the last three years will usually do that.
Honestly, this is just a handful of people in a room that included dozens of D1/D2/D3 pitching coaches, as well as numerous outstanding high school coaches, but these guys really stand out with their contributions to the pitching community's knowledge base.
Tom House did his part by speaking to the crowd about the importance of being able to accept new ideas that run counter to your current train of thought. He brought up an interesting point regarding the need to be strong enough to change your positions and adapt your training methods as the information presented to you deems necessary. This is not too far from what you see happening on the strength and conditioning front every day. If I remember correctly, it wasn't too long ago that Mike Boyle questioned the value of the almighty squat. Who would have thunk it? This is a great example of a man following a process of logical thought to create his own philosophy even if it runs counter to much of the traditional thought. You don't need to agree with him on this, as we still use a lot of squatting variations at Cressey Performance, but based on his interpretation of the research, this is what he thought gave him the best value in the risk/reward category for his athletes.
On the baseball side, this idea was none more evident than when Tom House was challenged about the effectiveness of the towel drill and admitted he was wrong about this drill in its original form. This drill has been a staple in many pitching coaches' dry work for years. In coming to understand where the towel drill was lacking, Tom has recently changed the weight of the implement in the drill from 2 oz to 5/6/7oz depending on the training intentions. This essentially changed the deceleration demands to be more similar to a baseball and worked to counter the argument at hand, by letting everyone know, that as science has progressed he has needed to adapt his training methods.
One of the other important topics that House brought up was the need to understand the science behind the overhead throw. If we expect to train players at the highest level, we need to know what is actually happening in the body. By incorporating information relating to a player's "Kinematic Sequence," one is more apt to see where players are either efficient or inefficient in creating energy and delivering force to the ball. Understanding the sequencing of the body's rotations is essential to getting the timing of the delivery right and avoiding stressful mechanic flaws.
The way he phrased it may or may not have gone over a lot of coaches' heads and split the camp into science-based vs. common sense/feel coaches. But, I obviously believe Tom is right on this point or I wouldn't spend my waking life in Eric's facility. On the flip side, I can also understand where coaches who do not naturally gravitate to the analytical style would find other ways to communicate this information than the technical jargon House used. At the end of the day, your players either understand what you're saying or they don't. If they don't, you need to come back to their level of thought before they tune you out.
Along these lines, one of the points I strongly agree with Tom on is the need to look at the golf industry and how advanced their level of instruction is in the private sector. Greg Rose and the people of the Titleist Performance Institute are doing some great things on the technology front, as far as analyzing swings and doing physical assessments to improve golf technique. Obviously, this is a different beast with the way their market dynamics have been established, but there is enough money within the baseball industry to start dedicating some of our resources to making sure we have the best information available to the general public. The rate at which players are getting injured because people are simply uninformed is not okay in this supposed "Information Age."
One of the refreshing things to see is that people are at least beginning to recognize that we can't be so rigid in our approach to training pitchers. We are just now leaving an era where we thought we had all the answers and we could box up our pitchers to 90 degree angles and call it a day. Funny that injuries are up at nearly every level of the game from little league to the Pros, so obviously something isn't working. With that said, I'll leave you with one last short story that Tom House provided us at the convention. It has do with a time when he was coaching Nolan Ryan on the Texas Rangers. Nolan credits a lot of his success later on in his career due to the physical shape Coach House got him in. Obviously, this is a second-hand retelling of a story, so I'll leave it up to Tom to come over to Ericcressey.com and correct me in the comments section, but I think you'll get the gist.
As many of you know, Coach House is famous for really being a pioneer on the biomechanical analysis front. One day, House was attempting to talk to Nolan Ryan about his famously high leg kick, by letting him know that it might make more sense to bring his leg kick down a bit and get himself a little more under control. In Nolan Ryan's Texan drawl, he calmly responded, "Tom, with all due respect sir... I understand you know a lot about the game, but if there's one thing I know.... It's that the higher I lift my leg here, the harder I'm gonna throw this baseball. So you can go ahead and stick that in your computer of yours." And if that doesn't bring this discussion full circle, I'm not quite sure what will.
In the end, I think as important as it is to follow the research, it is just as important to let the common sense/feel aspects drive the questions being researched. Obviously, science is continuously digging deeper, but if we don't listen to our athletes, we may be digging in the wrong places. Like I've said before, the athlete throws the baseball, so giving them the necessary information and letting them find their own signature style with it is essential to their development.
Matt Blake can be reached at mablak07@gmail.com.Related PostsA New Model for Training Between Starts: Part 1Philosophizing from Goliath's ShouldersA Baseball Training Interview with Eric CresseySign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive a Copy of the Exact Stretches
used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
Another great guest post from Matt Blake today. A quick thanks go out to Chad Rodgers, Shawn Haviland, and Tim Collins for their help in demonstrating the drill for this blog.
I hope you all have been able to get through the holiday madness and kick off your 2010 with all sorts of new resolutions that will be forgotten by the third week in January (kidding, but not really). Seriously, though, there's no time better than the present to start making yourself a better human and if tying it to 1/14/10 helps the cause, then I'm all for it. With that being said, here's my attempt at contributing to a healthier 2010 for the amateur pitching community.
Here is one drill in particular that I like to use in our lead-up drill progression. It is called the "Figure 8" and it is based off the staple of everyone's flat-ground work, the stride drill. Typically, I place this as the 2nd or 3rd drill in a progression depending on how many pieces we want to isolate before incorporating some rhythm into what is normally a static drill.
As you can see, this drill is looking to iron out multiple pieces of a player's delivery, while we still have them in a rather stationary position. When this drill is introduced to the player, I like to channel their focus toward the importance of having a consistent rhythm and tempo while developing hand speed during their throw. There should be coordination between the upper and lower body as they make horizontal figure 8's with their hands, and this should coincide with them shifting their weight from the front leg to the back leg. Typically, I have them make three figure 8s before they throw, and eventually manipulate the amount of time spent developing rhythm as deemed fit over the course of their progression.
As they finish their third figure 8 with their lower half weight shift going to the back leg, they should begin to break their hands and load up to throw. Typically, at this point in the lead-up drill progression, they are finishing their throw and allowing their back leg to come through, whereas we might cue them to focus on the timing and completion of their back hip rotation by keeping their feet on the ground in preceding drills.
Some players can be a little rigid through this drill the first few times. I think this is mostly because they can't believe I'm actually asking them to make silly figure 8s with their hands and display their lack of rhythm in front of their friends. Once they get over this anxiety, they tend to gravitate towards using variations of this drill on their own, because it provides a lot of feedback for them while getting loose.
In the early going, I think it's important to avoid too much cueing of the player into certain positions and more about allowing the pitcher to find a rhythm that he is comfortable with. I also typically allow the player to interpret how the actual figure 8 is made with the hands, because the drill is really more about understanding how the upper and lower body work in coordination than it is about us arguing over the shape of an hourglass. This is apparent in the videos themselves, where you can plainly see that each player interprets the drill slightly different and uses his signature style in creating the 8s.
As a coach, this allows me to get a better feel for a player's ability to shift his weight, his sense of posture and balance, and his understanding of extension at release, among other things. Several of these features will usually be covered up front by the stride drill, which I skipped over discussing today, but I could certainly address at a later time if people are interested.
By adding in the extra movement to the otherwise static stride drill, we are able to flush out a player's natural movement patterns a lot better and I can begin to see which pieces of their overall delivery may be easier to address. This information will continue to build into the next drill, which we call "balance and break," and is really a blend of the traditional balance drills with a little more movement and repetition tied in with the timing of the hand break and arm action.
For the most part, all of the lead-up drills I choose to put in before I get a player on the mound are designed to incorporate certain principles of throwing that have been demonstrated in the research of elite level throwers over the years. This may include anything from hip/shoulder separation, degrees of external/internal shoulder rotation, degrees of trunk extension, etc. With that being said, I don't necessarily have one mechanical model in my head, but more of a host of models that fit each particular body type and level of coordination. This is especially true concerning their current mobility and flexibility limitations.
This idea that each player has a mechanical model that is unique to them is the key component, and in order to flush this model out, the player has to be able to breathe while working through his drills. If you suffocate a player with too much technical talk, it takes away from what they want to do naturally and forces them into something that you think they should do, rather than what is right for the player.
The other challenge in all of this is that you may have the ultimate mechanical model in your head of how every pitcher should pitch, but until that player understands what mechanical model best fits his genetic traits, your model is irrelevant. The only way to get a player to understand this information is for him to feel it for himself.
Yes, we have a lot of science out now that describes what positions elite throwers are in at certain points in their delivery. The problem rests with the fact that there is a lot of gray area for how these players are getting to each of these positions in coordination with the end result of throwing to a target. I've seen some of the ASMI motion analysis reports of players, which are very comprehensive in nature, but even so, these leave room for interpretation. As has been seen over the years (and is currently being demonstrated, and will continue to be displayed down the road), there is more than one way to throw a ball 90+ mph hour. If I were to tell a 5'7" 165lb pitcher and 6'4" 245 lb pitcher to throw the baseball the same way, I wouldn't be doing either of them justice.
We obviously advise players away from certain motor patterns that have demonstrated more stress than others, but ultimately this is the challenge in training baseball players. There is so much going on inside the body of a baseball player - not just creating velocity, but also command and deception (and with multiple pitches) - that I'm going to trust the player when he tells me what feels right and what doesn't. To create unnecessary tension in a player because my eyes think they interpret a better position would be absurd. Don't get me wrong, we address a lot of mechanical issues with the use of slow-motion video analysis, but I always listen to the player over what a playback device tells me.
At the end of the day, we know there are inherent risks with throwing a baseball 95 mph. Do we say you can't throw that hard anymore because it is not a healthy behavior for your body? Do we limit a player to one particular model that someone thinks is the be-all end-all cure for arm injuries? Well, some do - but Eric and I disagree with that pigeonholing wholeheartedly. Why would we narrow our pitching thoughts down to one exact voice that indicates there is only one way to pitch to stay healthy? This just doesn't seem logical to me. I am not going to dismiss their voice, but I want to see proof that what they're talking about works. I want to see positive results on a big stage. If there are no results that suggest it has the most consistent performance tied to it, then I can't say I'm done looking for more information.
I think you have to acknowledge the notion that effective pitching may not be healthy at all, and by doing so, embrace this idea in the way you prepare a player's arm to handle the stress. This ultimately starts with giving the player room to breathe so they can foster a rhythm and tempo that allows them the best chance to create and disperse energy in the coordinated act of throwing a baseball.
Matt Blake can be reached at mablak07@gmail.com.
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Q: I was wondering the other day about why guys often come back from Tommy John surgery pitching better and harder than they did before. My first thought was they can't do any upper-body strength training for months while they recover from the surgery, so they're forced to work on lower body, core, and mobility - and, in turn, come back as better conditioned athletes with more control and velocity. Or, do you think their improved velocity and command is just an illusion made possible because we're comparing them to the way they pitched while they were hurt, but not yet "disabled?" Or, is there another factor I'm missing altogether? I figure there's a sample-size issue -- we're just looking at the guys who make it all the way back, and ignoring the ones who don't.
A: It's an excellent question - and one I actually get quite a bit. I'd say that it's a combination of all three.
In my eyes, an ulnar collateral ligament tear is usually an injury that speaks to YEARS of dysfunction and accumulated stress. Guys usually have a history of elbow pain/soreness in their teenage years, some calcification on the UCL, and then it finally goes in their college/pro years. They may have been managed conservatively (physical therapy) for a long time just because doctors don't like doing surgeries on 16-year-olds. However, when they're 20, it becomes "acceptable" to do a Tommy John surgery.
In the meantime, many of these injured pitchers will modify their deliveries to avoid the pain and end up with some crazy mechanics that leave the ball all over the place at erratic radar gun readings. So, that can usually cover the velocity drop and control issues. This is in stark contrast to what you'll see with serious injuries to the labrum (SLAP2 lesions), which generally give you the quick velocity drop, and eventually, loss of control - even in the absence of pain. Elbow stuff doesn't usually directly influence velocity as quickly; a lot of guys can throw through it for years.
So, yes, we are comparing them to their pre-injury numbers. However, there is - at least in my eyes - a better reason.
They are often lazy and inconsistent with their training and arm care before they get hurt. Quite often, you'll see an ACL reconstruction leg coming back and being stronger than the uninjured side long-term. The same thing can happen with a Tommy John. The rehab is crazy long, so guys have time to learn arm care as religion and - as you noted - focus on athletic qualities that are often partially or entirely "squeezed out" by competing demands.
I remember talking with Curt Schilling along these lines - although it was with respect to his shoulder. He had a shoulder surgery in 1995, and it made him "religious" about arm care. His best years came years after that even though he'd gotten older.
So, usually, the guys who wind up throwing harder are just the ones who were lazy in the first place and were finally forced into actually taking care of their bodies. The guys who DO take good care of their arms and wind up tearing UCLs rarely come back throwing harder, and to be frank, probably have a lower chance of returning to their former selves than their lazy counterparts.
Of course, this obviously excludes issues with the graft type (autograft or allograft), graft site (Palmaris longus, hamstrings, or another site), surgeon's abilities, physical therapy, athlete motivation, strength and conditioning, and return-to-throwing progression.
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