A kid this past week was talking about his friend that washed out of baseball “He liked to pitch, but I don’t think he really liked everything else” You could write that on 99% of failed players gravestones Of course they like playing That’s what they enjoyed about baseball in the first place But what so many lack is having the will to prepare They fail to do what they need to OUTSIDE of games- an effective throwing program, consistent work on their swing, baseball specific d

Running poles, “triangles”, and the other endurance based activities that go on at the low levels of baseball is a complete misunderstanding of the bio-energetic demands of the sport. Baseball is NOT a lactic sport It’s an Alactic-Anaerobic sport It’s pitch, followed by rest Pitch, rest. Pitch, rest. So what baseball players need is not low output lactic based endurance training like running poles that robs the body of critical Type II muscle fiber, but rather, to develop ala

The Tommy John epidemic in baseball has skyrocketed from 1 in 7 pitchers 15 years ago, to now 1 in 3 Many things have been blamed: the overall emphasis on velocity; greater horizontal ball movement (sweeper/splinker popularity); even the pitch clock While some of those may have validity, the research pins two major catalysts: ➡️ Pitching more than 100 innings in a year increases injury risk 3x ➡️ Pitching more than 8 months out of the year increases injury risk 5x The key wor

While new velo touch PR’s are important, a greater indicator of growth is a pitchers average. The MLB average FB velocity this year was 94.0; many low level pitchers have touched that once upon a time, but what seperates the guys who level up vs those who get released is that they throw hard consistently : every pitch, every outing, month after month. In my opinion a pitchers velo consistency is closely tied to strength. Strength not only drives repeatable mechanics, but both

We recently had an athlete join that came in with an all too familiar backstory: injury from his team workouts He had been told that the team workout for the day was “go heavy” and he had loaded up the bar with a weight he guessed to be “heavy” Little to no warmup, the coach busy with other athletes, and a teammate unsure how to properly spot him He squatted down with it, and then dumped the bar over his neck on the way up The back pain was so intense he wasn’t able to practi

It should be noted that training for strength and power, and training for mobility, is not binary. Nearly all athletes would be wise to address both. However, in the ever confused Charmin ultra soft baseball world, mobility often takes precedent at the expense of training for power. Entire programs consist of little more than extremely light non intense loading, rehab movements, and stretching and mobility. Besides these programs providing little to no stimulus to actually im

Everyone wants to know the right swing adjustment, the special drill, the “5 minute mechanics fix” It’s a gimmick oriented culture-ESPECIALLY American baseball which attracts a lot of lazy kids But most of them their issue isn’t a mechanical flaw It’s that they’re weak; lack muscle; are too slow twitch dominant; and lack athleticism The game speeds up drastically as the levels go up, and many guys haven’t made the consistent physical improvements necessary-and THAT’S why t

I still occasionally hear kids say the old fear of “I don’t want to get too big” Usually they’re simply scared of the unknown of how to go about weight training, eating properly, and developing their body physically Which is understandable What they SHOULD be worried about though is what happens if they DON’T get “too big” Because I’ve seen countless kids get stuck not because they lacked skill, but because as they got older and the game got faster, they lacked the necessary

One of the most important aspects of programming correctly is understanding the Law of Accommodation The Law of Accommodation states that response to stimulus decreases over time If the brain is not being challenged, it fails to adapt: which is why a program must be constantly evolving One of the simplest ways to avoid the Law of Accommodation is by utilizing many different bars Different bars provide: varied volumes within the periodization plan stress muscle tissue in vari