In a recent presentation in front of a bunch of baseball coaches, I made the following statement - and it turned a lot of heads:
I think most people overtrain the rotator cuff nowadays, and they do so with the wrong exercises, anyway.
To illustrate my point, I'm going to ask a question:
Q: What is the most common complication you see in guys as they rehabilitate following a Tommy John Surgery?
A: Shoulder problems - generally right around the time they get up to 120 feet.
Huh? Shoulder pain is a post-operative complication of an elbow surgery? What gives?
First, I should make a very obvious point: many of these guys deal with shoulder stiffness as they get back to throwing simply because they've been shut down for months. That I completely expect - but remember that it's stiffness, and not pain. They always throw their way out of it.
The more pressing issue is what is taking place in their rehabilitation - and more specifically, what's taking place with the synergy between their rehabilitation and throwing program. Let me explain.
Rehabilitation following a UCL reconstruction is extensive. While different physical therapists certainly have different approaches, it will always be incredibly heavy on rotator cuff strength and timing, as well as adequate function of the scapular stabilizers. Guys always make huge strides on this front during rehab, but why do so many have shoulder pain when they get further out with their long tossing? The answer is very simple:
Most people don't appreciate that throwing a baseball IS rotator cuff training.
Your cuff is working tremendously hard to center the humeral head in the glenoid fossa. It controls excessive external rotation and anterior instability during lay-back.
It's fighting against distraction forces at ball release.
And, it's controlling internal rotation and horizontal adduction during follow-through.
Simultaneously, the scapular stabilizers are working incredibly hard to appropriately position and stabilize the scapula on the rib cage in various positions so that it can provide an ideal anchor point for those rotator cuff muscles to do their job.
A post-op Tommy John thrower - and really every player going through a throwing program - has all the same demands on his arm (even if he isn't on the mound, where stress is highest). And, as I wrote previously in a blog about why pitchers shouldn't throw year-round, every pitcher is always throwing with some degree of muscle damage at all times during the season (or a throwing program).
Keeping this in mind, think about the traditional Tommy John rehabilitation approach. It is intensive work for the cuff and scapular stabilizers three times a week with the physical therapists - plus many of the same exercises in a home program for off-days. They're already training these areas almost every day - and then they add in 3-6 throwing sessions a week. Wouldn't you almost expect shoulder problems? They are overusing it to the max! This is a conversation I recently had with physical therapist Eric Schoenberg, and he made another great point:
Most guys - especially at higher levels - don't have rotator cuff strength issues; they have rotator cuff timing issues.
In throwing - the single-fastest motion in all of sports - you're better off having a cuff that fires at the right time than a cuff that fires strong, but late. Very few rotator cuff exercise programs for healthy pitchers take that into account; rather, it's left to those doing rehabilitation. Likewise, most of the programs I see altogether ignore scapular stability and leave out other ways to train the cuff that are far more functional than just using bands.
Now, apply this example back to the everyday management of pitchers during the season. Pitchers are throwing much more aggressively: game appearances, bullpens, and long toss. They need to do some rotator cuff work, but it certainly doesn't need to be every day like so many people think.
I'll cover how much and what kind in Part 2. In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about the evaluation and management of pitchers, check out Optimal Shoulder Performance.
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As I sat down to write this blog, I recalled a quote I heard some time ago, but only with a quick Google search did I discover that it came from Pete Seeger:
"Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't."
Seeger might be in his 90s and done singing, this quote definitely still resounds - and will continue to do so - in the field of strength and conditioning, even if that wasn't his intention.
I think one of the reasons it gets us thinking so much is that there really isn't a lot of fine print to read; the strength and conditioning field is still in its infancy, especially since there was very little research in this area before the 1980s. And, just when we think we learn something and publish it in the textbook, we discover that it's completely false (the lactic acid debacle was a great example). Moreover, we're dealing with constantly changing demographics; as examples, obesity is rising dramatically, and early youth sports specialization is destroying kids' bodies and fundamentally changing the way that they develop (examples here and here).
So, it's hard to learn how to do things the right way (or at least head in that direction) when the information wasn't available - and the population to which it applies is constantly changing. It's like trying to change the tire on a moving car - and doing so without having instructions on how to use the jack in the first place.
Moreover, even when the information is out there, we appreciate that no two people respond to the same stimulus in the same way - and my experiences with baseball players with elbow pain serves as a great example. I've seen dozens of post Tommy John surgery athletes in my career. Some start throwing before the three-month mark, and others aren't throwing until six months post-op. Everyone heals differently - and even once they get back to throwing, every guy is unique. Some have more shoulder stiffness than elbow stiffness after the long layoff, where it might be vice versa for other guys. Additionally, many post ulnar nerve transposition pitchers have a lot of elbow stiffness when they return to throwing at 6-12 weeks post-op, while others have absolutely zero complications with their return-to-throwing progression.
If the game is changing, and we never really knew what the game was in the first place - and each person is unique, what do we do?
The only thing we can do is draw on personal experience and the lessons that it's provided to us.
To that end, if you're an up-and-comer in the field, you have to look at continuing education as a multi-pronged approach. You've got to read the textbooks and stay on top of the most up-to-date research, but you also have to be "in the trenches" to test-drive concepts and see how they work.
If you're not in the industry - but want to make sure that you're getting the best possible strength and conditioning programs - you need to seek out expert advice from someone who has "been there, done that." Honestly would you want to be on the table for a surgeon's first surgery? I know I wouldn't.
A final option, at the very least, is to educate yourself fully on how to write your own workout routines. That's one reason why I created two free webinars for you: The #1 Reason You Are Not Making Progress and How to Create a Real Strength and Conditioning Program.
You can check them both out HERE at absolutely no charge. I'd just ask that you help spread the word with a Facebook "like" or comment or "Tweet" if you enjoyed what you saw.
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Today marks Part 2 of this mini-series covering just how much you can learn from looking at an elbow before writing up a strength and conditioning program. In Part 1, we talked about what can be learned from our first potential scenario, elbow hyperextension. Today, we'll focus on the lessons to be learned from three more scenarios.
Full Elbow Extension, Muscular End-Feel - This simply means that you have all your extension and no "empty" end feel; it eases to muscular stretch (of the elbow flexors).
This is probably the most common presentation pattern in the general population, and you can generally expect these folks to respond to need equal amounts of mobility and stability training. More thorough assessments will give you more information on where to focus your efforts.
Incomplete Elbow Extension, Bony End-Feel - These are, in many cases, guys who did not get full elbow extension back following a surgical procedure. Or, it may just be someone with bone spurs on the underside of the joint that interferes with elbow extension.
It's a bold assumption to make, but these individuals are almost always (in my experience) athletes who have profound limitations in other regions, as poor glenohumeral mobility, rotator cuff function, scapular stabilization, thoracic spine mobility, and terrible tissue quality can all contribute to these kind of issues presenting at the elbow. So, when I see and feel an elbow this "gross," I usually know that I have my work cut out for me. Generally, these guys wind up needing a hearty dose of mobility training, soft tissue work, breathing drills, and longer duration static stretching.
That said, with respect to the elbow itself, these guys need to be cognizant of maintaining every little bit they have. If you've got a 10° elbow extension deficit because of bony changes, you can probably get by. However, if you allow that 10° to become 30° because you pile soft tissue shortness/stiffness on top of it, you could be waiting for some serious problems to come around. To that end, I always encourage these guys to get routine soft tissue work and plenty of static stretching in to maintain whatever elbow extension they still have.
Incomplete Elbow Extension, Muscular End-Feel - These guys look very much like our previous category, but the end-feel has much more "give" to it; it's not a "concrete-on-concrete" end-feel. This is a very good thing, as you know you can work to get it back. This athlete, for instance, got 15° of elbow extension back in a matter of a few minutes following a Graston treatment with our manual therapist and some follow-up stretching.
I wouldn't expect him to maintain 100% of those improvements from treatment to treatment, but over the course of 3-4 bouts, he should get to where he needs to be.
Expect to see some of the same things with the rest of the body, as elbow extension deficits rarely occur in isolation. In throwers, they're usually accompanied by poor glenohumeral internal rotation on the throwing side, poor hip internal rotation on the front leg, and a host of other stiffness/shortness issues. In the general population, you see them in people who are locked up all over - especially in people who sit at computers all day long.
That wraps up our look at four elbow presentation patterns and what they may mean for your strength and conditioning programs and corrective exercise approaches. For more information, check out the Everything Elbow In-Service, an affordably priced 32-minute in-service where half of all proceeds go to charity.
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We can do all the strength training, mobility work, and soft tissue treatments in the world and it won’t matter if they’re overused – because I’m just not smart enough to have figured out how to go back in time and change history. Worried about whether they’re throwing curveballs, or if their mechanics are perfect? It won’t matter if they’ve already accumulated too many innings.
While athletes might be playing with fire each time they throw, the pain presentation pattern is different. You burn your hand, and you know instantly. Pitching injuries take time to come about. Maybe you do microscopic damage to your ulnar collateral ligament each time you throw – and then come back and pitch again before it’s had time to fully regenerate. Or, maybe you ignore the shoulder internal rotation deficit and scapular dyskinesis you’ve got and it gets worse and worse for years – until you’re finally on the surgeon’s table for a labral and/or rotator cuff repair. These issues might be managed conservatively if painful during the teenage years (or go undetected if no pain is present) – but once a kid hits age 18 or 19, it seems to automatically become “socially acceptable” to do an elbow or shoulder surgery.
Sure enough, just yesterday, reader Paul Vajdic sent me this article from the Shreveport Times. The author interviews world-renowned orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews about the crazy increase in the number of Tommy John surgeries he'd performed over the past decade.
A comment he made really jumped out at me, in light of my point from above:
""I had a kid come in, a 15-year-old from Boca Raton, (Fla.), who tore his ligament completely in two,' Andrews said. 'The interesting thing is when I X-rayed his elbow with good magnification, he has a little calcification right where the ligament attaches to the bone. We're seeing more of that now. He actually got hurt with a minor pull of the ligament when he was 10, 11, 12 years of age. That little calcification gets bigger and, initially, it won't look like anything but a sore elbow. As that matures, it becomes more prominent. It turns into an English pea-size bone piece and pulls part of the ligament off when they're young.'"
In other words, it takes repeated bouts of microtrauma over the course of many years to bring an athlete to threshold - even if they have little to no symptoms along the way. Injury prevention starts at the youngest ages; otherwise, you're just playing from behind the 8-ball when you start training high school and college players.
In addition to walking away with the perspective that young kids need to be strictly managed with their pitch counts, I hope this makes you appreciate the value of strength and conditioning programs at young ages, too. For more information, check out my post, The Truth About Strength Training for Kids.
We can't prevent them all, but I do think that initiatives like the IYCA High School Strength Coach Certification in conjunction with pitch count implementation and coaching education are a step in the right direction.
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A New Paradigm for Performance Testing - This two-part feature was actually an interview with Bioletic founder, Dr. Rick Cohen. In it, we discuss the importance of testing athletes for deficiencies and strategically correcting them. We've begun to use Bioletics more and more with our athletes, and I highly recommend their thorough and forward thinking services.
A New Paradigm for Performance Testing: Part 1A New Paradigm for Performance Testing: Part 2
I already have a few series planned for 2011, so keep an eye out for them! In the meantime, we have two more "Best of 2010" features in store before Friday at midnight.
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Since a lot of folks reading this blog know me as "the baseball guy," I got quite a few email questions about the elbow injury Washington Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg experienced the other day. Likewise, it was the talk of Cressey Performance last Friday - and got tremendous attention in the media. Everyone wants to know: how could this have been prevented?
On Thursday's edition of Baseball Tonight, my buddy Curt Schilling made some excellent points about Strasburg's delivery that likely contributed to the injury over time. Chris O'Leary has also written some great stuff about the Inverted W, which is pretty easily visualized in his delivery.
The point I want to make, though, is that an injury like this can never, ever, ever, ever be pinned on one factor. We have seen guys with "terrible mechanics" (I put that in quotes because I don't think there is such a thing as "perfect mechanics") pitch pain-free for their entire careers. Likewise, we've seen guys with perfect mechanics break down. We've seen guys with great bodies bite the big one while some guys with terrible bodies thrive.
The point is that while we are always going to strive to clean things up - physically, mechanically, psychologically, and in terms of managing stress throughout the competitive year - there is always going to be some happenstance in sports at a high level. As former Blue Jays general manager JP Ricciardi told me last week when we chatted at length, "you've only got so many bullets in your arm."
Strasburg used up a lot of those bullets before he ever got drafted, so it's hard to fault the Nationals at all on this front. In fact, from this ESPN article that was published when the team thought it was a strain of the common flexor tendon and not an ulnar collateral ligament injury (requiring Tommy John surgery), "Strasburg has told the team he had a similar problem in college at San Diego State and pitched through it." It's safe to assume that the Nationals rule out a partial UCL tear in their pre-draft MRIs, but you have to consider what a common flexor tendon injury really means.
As I wrote in in my "Understanding Elbow Pain" series (of interest: Anatomy, Pathology, Throwing Injuries, and Protecting Pitchers) the muscles that combine to form the common flexor tendon are the primary restraints - in addition to the ulnar collateral ligament - to valgus stress. If they are weak, overused, injured, dense, fibrotic, or whatever else, more of that stress is going on that UCL - particularly if an athlete is throwing with mechanics that may increase that valgus stress (the Inverted W I noted above) - the party is going to end eventually. Is it any surprise that this acute injury occurred just a few weeks after Strasburg dealt with a shoulder issue that put him on the disabled list for two weeks? The body is a tremendously intricate system of checks and balances, and it bit him in the butt.
There are other factors, though. As a great study from Olsen et al. showed, young pitchers who require surgery "significantly more months per year, games per year, innings per game, pitches per game, pitches per year, and warm-up pitches before a game. These pitchers were more frequently starting pitchers, pitched in more showcases, pitched with higher velocity, and pitched more often with arm pain and fatigue. They also used anti-inflammatory drugs and ice more frequently to prevent an injury." And, they were also taller and heavier.
Go back through the last 12-15 years of Stephen Strasburg's life and consider just how many times he's ramped up for spring ball, summer ball, fall ball, and showcases - only so that he can shut down for a week, just to ramp right back up again to try to impress someone else. Think of how many radar guns he's had to pitch in front of constantly for the past 5-7 years - because velocity is all that matters, right?
Stephen Strasburg's injury wasn't caused by a single factor; it was a product of many. And, it can't be pinned on Strasburg himself, any of his coaches or trainers, or any of the scouts that watched him. Blame it in the system that is baseball in America today.
We already knew that this system was a disaster, though. Yet, people still keep letting their kids go to showcases in December. Heck, arguably the biggest underclassmen prospect event of the year - the World Wood Bat Tournament in Jupiter, FL - takes places at the end of October. When they should be resting, playing another sport, or preparing their bodies in the weight room, the absolute best prospects in the country are pitching with dead, unprepared arms just because it's a convenient time for scouts and coaches to recruit - because the season is over.
They're wasting their bullets.
Now, I'm not saying that Strasburg's injury could have been avoided in a different system - but I'd be very willing to bet that it could have been pushed much further back - potentially long enough to allow him to get through a career. An argument to my point would be that if it wasn't for all these exposures, he wouldn't have developed - but my contention to that fact was that it is well documented that Strasburg "blew up" from a good to an extraordinary pitcher with increased throwing velocity when he made a dedicated effort to getting fit when he arrived at college.
My hope is that young pitchers will learn from this example and appreciate that taking care of one's body is just as important as showing off one's talent.
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Here's an interesting study on the incidence of ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) injuries in professional football quarterbacks. With only ten reported cases between 1994 and 2008, it's obviously (and not surprisingly) much lower than the rates we see in professional baseball players. This is right in line with what I discussed in Weighted Baseballs: Safe and Effective or Stupid and Dangerous?
However, what is very interesting to me is that 9/10 cases were treated non-operatively; in other words, Tommy John surgery is much less prescribed in football quarterbacks than baseball pitchers - meaning that the quarterbacks respond better to conservative treatment.
What's up with that? They are the same injuries - and presumably the same rehabilitation programs.
In my eyes, it's due to the sheer nature of the stress we see in a baseball pitch in comparison to a football throw. As a quarterback, you can probably "get by" with a slightly insufficient UCL if you have adequate muscular strength, flexibility, and tissue quality. While this is still the case in some baseball pitchers, the stresses on the passive structure (UCL) are still markedly higher on each throw, meaning that your chances of getting by conservatively are probably slightly poorer.
I'm sure that the nature of the sporting year plays into this as well. Football quarterbacks never attempt to throw year-round, so there isn't a rush to return to throwing. There are, however, a lot of stupid baseball pitchers who think that they can pitch year-round, so kids often "jump the gun" on their throwing programs and make things worse before they can heal completely.
That said, we've still worked with a lot of pitchers who have been able to come back and throw completely pain-free after being diagnosed with a partial UCL tear and undergoing conservative treatment (physical therapy). It's an individual thing.
Related PostsUnderstanding Elbow Pain - Part 3: Throwing InjuriesUnderstanding Elbow Pain - Part 4: Protecting Pitchers
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Though a somewhat "normal" day at the gym, yesterday marked Cressey Performance's three-year anniversary.
While my business partner's blog post yesterday did an excellent job of doling out "thank yous" to a lot of the important people who have been so involved in our success - from clients to parents, coaches, interns, and significant others - I wanted to add my own two cents on the matter today. More than anything, I really wanted to highlight a sentence that illustrates what makes me the most proud about where CP has been, where it is, and where it's going.
We've done this for the right reasons, and we've done it the right way.
I read a business development blog post by Chris McCombs the other day where he wrote something that really hit home for me. When he was talking about how he decides to accept or reject a new project/opportunity, here is one of his guidelines:
"Only Take on Projects That Are In Line With My Current Values and Fulfill Me Beyond Just The Money - A project must fulfill me in some way BESIDE just money...too many people spend their life JUST chasing a buck; to me, that's no way to live. For me, the money must be there, but it should fulfill me personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line with my current brand and brand equity."
Back in 2007, I had a tough decision to make. My online consulting business had really taken off, and the Maximum Strength book deal was in the works. My other products - Magnificent Mobility, The Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual, and Building the Efficient Athlete - were selling well and getting great reviews, and I'd just had a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. This website was growing exponentially in popularity, and I had just wrapped up my first year on the Perform Better tour - so lots of doors were opening for me on the seminar front to present all over the world - and I could have stayed home and just written all day, every day.
I was getting really crunched for time, as I was already training clients 8-13 hours per day, seven days per week, as my in-person clientele had rapidly grown. My phone rang off the hook for about three weeks after Lincoln-Sudbury won a baseball state championship after I'd trained several of their guys, and one of my athletes was named state player of the year. And, after being featured on the front page of the Boston Globe with a nipple so hard I could cut diamonds, I was in demand as a t-shirt model (okay, not really - but it made for an awesome blog post, The School of Hard Nipples).
I was exhausted and stressed - but absolutely, positively, "living the dream" that I'd always wanted.
To make matters a bit more interesting, I had just started dating a great girl (now my fiancee) who I really had a good feeling was "the one" after about three months. The work days, however, were insanely long and I was worried that I'd screw up a good thing by not spending enough time with her.
Every business development coach out there would have seen a "simple" answer to all my problems: stop training people in person. Just write, consult, make DVDs, and give seminars. It would have cut my hours by 80% and still allowed me to earn a pretty good living - and enjoy plenty of free time. There was a huge problem with that, though; as Chris wrote, it wouldn't "fulfill me personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line with my current brand and brand equity." I like doing evaluations, writing programs, coaching, sweating, training with my guys, cranking up the music, helping people get to where they want to be, collaborating with and learning from other professionals, and watching my athletes compete - whether it's at some high school field or at Fenway Park. Giving that up wasn't an option; I guess I'd have just been a crappy business coaching client, as I would have been stubborn as an ass on giving that up.
Fortunately for me, Pete Dupuis, my roommate from my freshman year of college, had just finished his MBA and was in the midst of a job search. And, during that MBA, he'd started to train with me and packed on a ton of strength and muscle mass - making him realize and truly appreciate the value in what I was doing (especially since he was and is a goalie in a very competitive soccer league). Pete had also met and become friends with a ton of my clients - and taken a genuine interest in my baseball focus, as a lifelong Red Sox fan. Almost daily, Pete would encourage me to do my own thing and let him handle all the business stuff for me.
Simultaneously, Tony Gentilcore was ready for a change of scenery on the work front. Having been Tony's roommate and training partner for almost two years at that point, I knew he was a genuinely great guy, that he'd read everything on my bookshelf, and that he could coach his butt off and "walk the walk." He, too, had met a lot of my clients - so there was continuity from the get-go.
So, on July 13, 2007, Cressey Performance was born. Here is what we started with.
Boatloads of renovations and equipment additions later, it wound up looking like this.
Of course, we outgrew and demolished this space after about nine months and moved three miles east to a facility twice the size. And, we've continued to grow right up to this day; June was our busiest month ever, and July should be busier. We've got regular weekly clients who come from four states (MA, NH, CT, RI), and in the baseball off-season, I have college and pro guys who come from the likes of OH, AZ, CA, SC, NC, GA, FL, and VA. And, we had 33 applicants for this summer's internships.
To be very candid, though, I don't consider myself a very good "businessman." No offense to Pete or Tony, either, but I don't think they even come close to the textbook definition of the word, either. We just try to be good dudes. "We've done this for the right reasons, and we've done it the right way."
We don't allocate a certain percentage of our monthly revenues to advertising. In fact, we haven't spent a single penny on advertising - unless you count charitable donations to causes that are of significance to us.
We don't search high and low for new revenue streams to push on our clients. In fact, if I get one more MonaVie sales pitch, I'm going to suplex whoever delivered it right off our loading dock. Rather, we bust our butts to set clients up for success in any way possible - and trust that those efforts will lead to referrals and "allegiance" to Cressey Performance. We ask what they want from us and modify our plans accordingly. It's what led to us bringing in manual therapy, a pitching cage, and, of course, pitching coach/court jester Matt Blake's timeless antics.
Along those same lines, we don't measure our success based on revenue numbers; we measure it based on client results. In three years of seeing LOADS of baseball players non-stop, we've only had three arm surgeries: one shoulder and two elbow. All three were athletes who came to us with existing injuries, and in each case, we kept them afloat as long as we could and trained them through their entire rehabilitation. I don't want to toot our own horn, but this is a remarkable statistic in a population where over 57% of pitchers suffer some form of shoulder injury during each competitive season - and that doesn't even include elbows! And, our statistics don't even count literally dozens of players who have come to us after a doctor has told them they needed surgery, but we've helped them avoid these procedures. The college scholarships, draft picks, state titles, individual honors, and personal bests in the gym are all fantastic, but I'm most proud of saying that we've dedicated ourselves to keeping athletes healthy so that they can enjoy the sports they love.
The same goes for our non-competitive athlete clients. The fat loss and strength gains they experience are awesome and quantifiable, but beyond that (and more qualitatively), I love knowing that they're training pain-free and are going to be able to enjoy exercise and reap the benefits of training for a long time.
We don't penny-pinch during our slowest times of the month (late March through mid-May - the high school baseball season). We see it as an opportunity to do more staff continuing education, renovate the facilities, and get out to watch a lot of baseball and support our athletes. And, we adjust our hours to open up on Sundays and stay later on weeknights during the baseball season to make it easier for athletes to get in-season training in whenever they can. If a pitcher wants to come in and get his arm stretched out before or after an outing, he stops by and we do it for him - but don't charge him a penny for it. It's about setting people up for success.
We don't try to just "factory line" as many clients through our facility as possible with everyone on the same program. You might walk into CP and see 20 different clients on 20 different programs - because a 16-year old pitcher with crazy congenital laxity is going to have a markedly different set of needs than a 16-year-old linebacker with shoulder mobility so bad that he needs help putting a jacket on. One program on one dry erase board for hundreds of athletes isn't training; it's babysitting.
Taking this a step further, we don't boot clients out after a certain amount of time. Clients take as long as needed to complete the day's program. And, when they're done (or before they even begin), loads of our clients spend time hanging out in the office just shooting the breeze and enjoying the environment. As an example, Toronto Blue Jays Organizational Pitcher of the Year Tim Collins spends a minimum of five hours a day at CP all off-season.
Tim has sold girl scout cookies for the daughter of one of our clients, and he's been our back-up front desk guy when Pete is out of town. Yesterday, he was back to visit on his all-star break - and he said hello to every client he saw - and remembered them by name. If you're a 15-year-old up-and-coming baseball pitcher, how cool is it to get that kind of greeting when you walk into the office? Well, at CP, kids get that greeting from 10-15 pro guys all the time. And, if they're lucky, they might even get to throw on a bobsled helmet and join these pro guys in a rave to Miley Cyrus, apparently.
At least once a week, I get an email from an up-and-coming coach asking for advice about starting a facility. When I get these emails, I now think about how Rachel Cosgrove recently mentioned that more than 80% of fitness coaches leave the industry within the first year. In most cases, this happens because these people never should have entered the fitness industry in the first place - because their intentions (money) were all wrong. They usually leave under the assumption that they could never make a living training people, but in reality, these folks are going to have a hard time making a living in any occupation that requires genuinely caring about what you do and the people with whom you work, and being willing to hang your hat on the results you produce.
As such, the first advice, in a general sense, is obvious: do it for the right reasons, and do it the right way. Sure, making a living is essential, but only open a facility because it would fulfill you "personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line" with who you are and what your values are - which together constitute your "brand." Making the move to start up this business was one of the most daunting decisions I have ever had to make, and all the efforts toward actually getting the business started were equally challenging. However, in the end, it has been more rewarding both personally and professionally than I could have ever possibly imagined.
Thank you very much to all of you - clients/customers, parents, EricCressey.com readers, seminar attendees, and professional colleagues - for all your support over the past three years. We couldn't have done it without you - and look forward to many more years of doing things for the right reasons and in the right way.
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Q: I recently opened up my own place to train athletes, and wanted to thank you for all of the knowledge you have passed along, as it has been a big factor in designing my own training philosophy. The majority of my athletes are baseball and football players in the high school and collegiate level, and I had question for you regarding my baseball players specifically.Nearly every player I work with (and for the most part every pitcher I have worked with), has tight shoulders due to over-use, being imbalanced, and weak. I have them performing a ton of upper back work in comparison to pressing movements, rotator cuff work, sleeper stretches, and myofascial release. It helps greatly, but they still seem to never get back to a full range of motion or an actual natural throwing motion. Because of this, I was wondering what you thought about adding in shoulder dislocations using a dowel rod or broomstick to help with shoulder mobility.Because the players I work with are either in college because of their ability to play baseball, or have a chance at being drafted or getting a good college scholarship from their arms, I want to make sure that everything I do makes them better instead of hurting them in the long run for what looks like a quick fix when they are with me.I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have on helping increase shoulder mobility and the shoulder dislocation exercise, in particular.
A: First off, thank you very much for your kind words and continued support.
Unfortunately, to be blunt, I think it would be a terrible idea and you would undoubtedly make a lot of shoulders (and potentially elbows) worse.
Most pitchers will have increased external rotation (ER) on their dominant side, and as such, increased anterior instability. If you just crank them into external rotation and/or horizontal abduction, you will exacerbate that anterior instability. Think about what happens in the apprehension-relocation test at the shoulder; the relocation posteriorly pushes the humerus to relieve symptoms by taking away anterior instability.
We are extremely careful with who we select for exercises to increase external rotation, and it is in the small minority. Most pitchers gain ~5 degrees of external rotation over the course of the competitive season, as it is. If we are going to have them do mobilizations to increase ER, it's only after we've measured their total motion (IR+ER) as asymmetrical and determined that they need ER (a sign is ER that is less on the dominant shoulder). And, any exercises we provide on this front are done in conjunction with concurrent scapular stabilization and thoracic spine extension/rotation - as you'd see in a side-lying extension-rotation drill.
Here, you've got supination of the forearm, external rotation of the shoulder, scapular retraction/posterior tilt, and thoracic spine extension/rotation occurring simultaneously on the "lay back" component. And, the opposite occurs as the athlete returns to the starting position. Again, to reiterate, this is NOT a drill that is appropriate for a large chunk of throwing shoulders who already have crazy external rotation; it's just one we use with specific cases of guys we discover need to gain it.
With the broomstick dislocation, you're going to be throwing a lot of valgus stress on the elbow - and as I noted in my recent six-part series on elbow pain, pitchers already get enough of that. To read a bit more, check out Part 3: Throwing Injuries.
While we're on the topic, be careful about universally recommending sleeper stretches. There is going to be a decent chunk of your baseball players that don't need it at all. In particular, if you have a congenitally lax (ultra hypermobile) athlete (high score on Beighton laxity test), a sleeper stretch will really irritate the anterior shoulder capsule and/or biceps tendon.
These players don't really need to be stretched into IR; they just need loads of stability training. You'll find that these guys become more and more common at higher levels, as congenital laxity serves as a sort of "natural selection" to succeed for some people. So, universally prescribing the sleeper stretch becomes more and more of a problem as you deal with more and more advanced players and could be jacking up multi-million dollar arms. You'll even find guys who can gain 10-20 degrees of internal rotation in a matter of 30 seconds - without any shoulder mobilizations - just with the appropriate breathing patterns. It just doesn't work for everyone. Honestly, the only way to know is to assess; each pitcher is unique.
The obvious question then becomes "why are you seeing shoulder "tightness.?" Is it postural? Is it an actual range of motion you've assessed? Is it guarding/apprehension in certain positions? And, what is a "natural throwing motion?" They said Mark Prior had "perfect mechanics" and he has been injured his entire career.
What is "natural" is not what is "effective" in many cases, so you have to appreciate that throwing is an unnatural motion that may be necessary for generating velocity, creating deception, and optimizing movement on a certain pitch.
It might seem like shameless self-promotion, but I would highly recommend that you pick up the DVD set Mike Reinold and I recently released: Optimal Shoulder Performance.
It covers all of this information in great detail, plus a ton more. Baseball players - and particularly pitchers - are a unique population as a whole, and within that population, each one is unique.
I'd also strongly encourage you to check out Mike Reinold's webinar, "Assessing Asymmetry in Overhead Athletes: Does Asymmetry Mean Pathology?" It's available through the Advanced CEU online store.
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
A while back, I had the privilege to experience Thomas Myers in seminar for the first time. For those who aren't familiar with Myers, he is the author of Anatomy Trains and a pioneer in the world of bodywork and fascial research.
There were a wide variety of attendees present, and Myers made dozens of interesting points - so the take-away message could easily have been different for everyone in attendance as they attempted to fit his perspective into their existing schemeta.
While I enjoyed all 150 minutes of his presentations, the portion of Myers' talk that jumped out at me the most was his list of the eight means of improving "fascial fitness:"
1. Use whole body movements
2. Use long chain movements
3. Use movements including a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation
4. Incorporate vector variation
5. Use movements that incorporate elastic rebound - this consists of cylic motions of a certain speed (for instance, cycling wouldn't count)
6. Create a rich proprioceptive environment
7. Incorporate pauses/rest to optimize hydration status
8. Be persistent, but gentle (prominent changes can take 18-24 months)
A big overriding them of Myers' lecture was that the role of the fascia - the entire extracellular matrix of the body - is remarkably overlooked when it comes to both posture and the development of pathology. He remarked that he doesn't feel like we have 600+ muscles in the body; he feels like we have one muscle in 600+ fascial pockets because they are so interdependent. And, in this fascia, we have nine times as many sensory receptors as we've got in muscles.
Think about what that means when someone has rotator cuff problems - and treatment only consists of ice, stim, NSAIDs, and some foo-foo rotator cuff exercises. Or, worse yet, they just have a surgical intervention. It overlooks a big piece of the puzzle - or, I should say, the entire puzzle.
For me, though, these eight factors got me to thinking again about just how atrocious distance running is for pitchers. I have already ripped on it in the past with my article A New Model for Training Between Starts, but this presentation really turned on a light bulb over my head to rekindle the fire. Let's examine these eight factors one-by-one:
1. Use whole body movements - Distance running may involve require contribution from the entire body, but there is not a single joint in the body that goes through an appreciable range of motion.
2. Use long chain movements - Pitching is a long chain movement. Jumping is a long chain movement. The only things that are "long" about distance running are the race distances and the length of the hip replacement rehabilitation process.
3. Use movements including a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation - This simply means that the muscles of the trunk and hips predominate in initiating the movement. While the hips are certainly important in running, the fundamental issue is that there isn't a dynamic pre-stretch. This would be a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation:
4. Incorporate vector variation - A vector is anything that has both force and direction. Manual therapists vary the force they apply to tissues and the directions in which they apply them. There are obviously vectors present in exercise as well. Here are 30,000 or so people, and pretty much just one vector for hours: forward (to really simplify things):
Incorporating vector variation into programs is easy; it just takes more time and effort than just telling someone to "run poles." Take 8-10 exercises from our Assess and Correct DVD set and you've got a perfect circuit ready to roll.
5. Use movements that incorporate elastic rebound - Sorry, folks, but even though the stretch-shortening cycle is involved with jogging, its contribution diminishes markedly as duration of exercise increases. And, frankly, I have a hard time justifying bored pitchers running laps as "elasticity."
6. Create a rich proprioceptive environment - There is nothing proprioceptively rich about doing the same thing over and over again. They call it pattern overload for a reason. Pitchers get enough of that!
7. Incorporate pauses/rest to optimize hydration status - Myers didn't seem to have specific recommendations to make regarding work: rest ratios that are optimal for improving fascial fitness, but I have to think that something more "sporadic" in nature - whether we are talking sprinting, agility work, weight training, or dynamic flexibility circuits - would be more appropriate than a continuous modality like jogging. This is true not just because of duration, but because of the increased vector variation potential I outlined earlier.
8. Be persistent, but gentle - This one really hit home for me. Significant fascial changes take 18-24 months to really set in. I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of injuries I see in mature pitchers are largely the result of mismanagement - whether it's overuse, poor physical conditioning, or improper mechanics - at the youth levels. Poor management takes time to reach the threshold needed to cause symptoms. In other words, coaches who mismanage their players over the course of the few months or years they coach them may never actually appreciate the physical changes - positively or negatively - that are being set into action.
Distance running might seem fine in the short-term. Overweight kids might drop some body fat, and it might make the practice plan easier to just have 'em run. Kids might not lose velocity, as they can compensate and throw harder with the upper extremity as their lower bodies get less and less powerful and flexible.
However, it's my firm belief that having pitchers run distances not only impedes long-term development, but also directly increases injury risk. Folks just don't see it because they aren't looking far enough ahead.
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However, what is very interesting to me is that 9/10 cases were treated non-operatively; in other words, Tommy John surgery is much less prescribed in football quarterbacks than baseball pitchers - meaning that the quarterbacks respond better to conservative treatment.
What's up with that? They are the same injuries - and presumably the same rehabilitation programs.
In my eyes, it's due to the sheer nature of the stress we see in a baseball pitch in comparison to a football throw. As a quarterback, you can probably "get by" with a slightly insufficient UCL if you have adequate muscular strength, flexibility, and tissue quality. While this is still the case in some baseball pitchers, the stresses on the passive structure (UCL) are still markedly higher on each throw, meaning that your chances of getting by conservatively are probably slightly poorer.
