I've been off the grid a bit, as I just made the long drive back to Massachusetts from Florida. That said, it did give me time to check out a few good audiobooks to bolster this week's recommended reading!

Thinking in Bets - I've always been fascinated by the decision-making process as it relates from everything from business strategy to how we acquire habits for training and nutrition. Accomplished poker player Annie Duke did a great job exploring the concepts of uncertainty and probability in this new book. Inside the book they talk about how gambling and betting is not only something you do at the casino in Italy, but also when making decisions in your day to day life when it comes to nutrition and exercise.

Chris Chase on the Trainable Exercise Menu - This is an awesome guest post from Atlanta Hawks Strength and Conditioning Coach Chris Chase for Mike Robertson's site. I loved this concept when he initially introduced it on Mike's podcast, and he expands on the concept here.

Top 10 Ways to Build Mental Toughness - T-Nation interviewed several contributors (including me) for this roundtable, and there's some good stuff in there.

Top Tweet of the Week

*If you want to relax the neck, talk or exhale.*

A big mistake athletes make when doing upper body work is aggressively recruiting the muscles surrounding the neck. Have them exhale through the exertion phase, or simply talk during the set. It’ll calm things right down. pic.twitter.com/G2AW1jpTyF

— Eric Cressey (@EricCressey) March 29, 2018

Top Instagram Post of the Week

 

You won’t find a picture that’ll teach you more about how what you do in your strength and conditioning program impacts pitching performance. @srshrek31 has one of the more aggressive down-the-mound deliveries in baseball, which has equated to a perceived velocity that’s been about 1.8mph greater than his actual velocity over the course of his career. 👇 In this position, imagine an aggressive single-leg RDL that drives the front leg back toward the rubber. Effectively, this blocking effect is like riding a bike into the curb. It’s the trigger that tells the arm to go. Here, you see that it’s synced up: as soon as that hip starts to extend, the arm releases the elastic energy that’s built up from lay-back (pre-stretching the lat) into a powerful internal rotation. 💪 You need strength in single-leg stance to accept that force, store elastic energy, and powerfully exert it into the ground to firm up and create the catapult effect. You need hip mobility on the front to do it as you flex, adduct, and internally rotate. And, this doesn’t even take into account the force production and mobility from the back hip that’s set up this position. 😮 Further up, the core has to be stable to transfer force. The upper back has to be mobile to allow for sufficient hip-shoulder separation to occur. The scapula has to be positioned snugly to the rib cage for adequate force transfer. The rotator cuff has to be strong and timed up to center the humeral head (ball) on the glenoid fossa (socket) while competing against the bigger pec and lat musculature. 🔥 Pitching puts you in extreme positions – and it does so over and over again over the course of a career – with very little variation. Prepare accordingly. #cspfamily #Repost @cubs with @get_repost ・・・ Big #OpeningDay performance from the ‘pen! #EverybodyIn

A post shared by Eric Cressey (@ericcressey) on Mar 30, 2018 at 7:50am PDT

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