Latest / The Layback Podcast / 2025 Wake Forest Player Development Seminar Review w/ Josh Hejka P2 (Ep. 96)

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2025 Wake Forest Player Development Seminar Review w/ Josh Hejka P2 (Ep. 96) · The Layback Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lay Back podcast.
• 0:02
  Joining us today is Josh Hedka for Part 2.
• 0:06
  And what does this make now maybe his fifth, fourth.
• 0:10
  Yeah, 4th, I guess, technical appearance.
• 0:13
  Although we can maybe some may argue that are competing for the
• 0:17
  title of most episodes, that this is just an extension of the
• 0:20
  previous. You're you're way ahead at this
• 0:23
  point. You're doing dances in the end
• 0:25
  zone. I mean, it's, it's not, it's not
• 0:27
  our fault that we had three hours worth of content to get
• 0:31
  through. I mean, you just happen to be
• 0:33
  the one for the job. This is like the Brooklyn
• 0:36
  Cyclones appearance record all over again.
• 0:37
  You know, just like Deja Vu taking the record and just
• 0:41
  extending it. You got to.
• 0:42
  Yeah, you got to run away with it.
• 0:44
  I, I don't know, maybe nerd reference for everyone, but it's
• 0:47
  how I spent most of my holiday season was playing Settlers of
• 0:50
  Catan. And when you have the longest
• 0:52
  Rd. you just got to keep the longest Rd.
• 0:54
  You can't let anyone take it. I don't know if you're nerdy
• 0:57
  enough for that, but that's that's up my alley.
• 0:59
  I'm going to pretend like I knew what you just said, but I've
• 1:02
  played. I just, I don't have as as
• 1:05
  frequent of a of a opportunity to play as as I would like.
• 1:08
  But yeah, I'm just going to. Agree.
• 1:10
  Thank you. Yeah, we'll, we'll go with that.
• 1:12
  It definitely shows my dweebiness of what I get into
• 1:15
  when I'm not trying to keep all those healthy and talk in the
• 1:19
  podcast. But yeah, let's pick it up where
• 1:21
  we left off. That being said, right where we
• 1:23
  left off was with Chase Aldridge.
• 1:25
  Who? Was.
• 1:26
  Labeled as player development with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
• 1:30
  But I think his role is a lot more unique than that, but
• 1:33
  especially given what he presented on which I labeled as
• 1:37
  socio cultural impact on performance.
• 1:40
  So kind of looking at things beyond what we normally see on a
• 1:45
  spreadsheet and how those impact performance in typical fashion
• 1:49
  of how we've run this. I guess the previous episode,
• 1:52
  not this one, but the previous one.
• 1:54
  I'll hand it off to you to get started with Chase.
• 1:56
  Yeah, I was really impressed with Chase's presentation and I
• 1:58
  believe his exact title is the director of methodology with the
• 2:02
  Dodgers, which is like a really interesting title.
• 2:04
  And I think it, I think it's pretty insightful, like the way
• 2:07
  the Dodgers just run things where it's like, we're not only
• 2:09
  going to like run things the best, we're going to like
• 2:11
  metagame it more than anybody else and say, like, how do we
• 2:15
  run things better than other people run things in terms of
• 2:18
  like, it's like another layer abstracted.
• 2:21
  And so his talk was very insightful.
• 2:22
  He talked a lot about, I believe you mentioned the term like
• 2:25
  cultural context. And I think he, he mentioned one
• 2:28
  example he gave us those soccer players, like the playing style
• 2:31
  of a Brazilian is very different than the playing style of
• 2:33
  someone from like a Nordic country, for example.
• 2:35
  And so if you're coaching one of these athletes, knowing this
• 2:38
  cultural context of where they come from, like what's
• 2:40
  considered good, bad, disrespectful, like, like that's
• 2:44
  going to help you coach them, meet them where they are and get
• 2:46
  the most out of them. He also gave this example of
• 2:48
  Pavel Datsuk. Research done by Mark O'Sullivan
• 2:51
  was the the researcher he mentioned and Pavel Datsuk.
• 2:53
  I'm a Detroit guy. Detroit Red Wing legend Pavel
• 2:56
  Datsuk. Who?
• 2:57
  Developed his own very distinctive play style because
• 3:01
  he grew up poor in Russia and he only had one hockey stick and he
• 3:04
  knew that if he broke his stick, it would have been months until
• 3:07
  he got another one. And he didn't want to miss out
• 3:09
  on that opportunity to, to play hockey.
• 3:11
  So his distinctive play style is due to this, this constraint
• 3:14
  that was placed upon him when he was growing up where he didn't
• 3:17
  want to break his stick. So he is a slightly different
• 3:19
  play style than somebody else. I don't know enough about hockey
• 3:22
  to know whether that's true or not, but I do think it's a very,
• 3:26
  it's a cool thought experiment into like the types of
• 3:28
  constraints we grow up with. Not like not just the
• 3:31
  constraints in the training environment or the game
• 3:32
  environment, but the constraints that we grow up with as well and
• 3:34
  how those impact who we become as players.
• 3:37
  There's also like a little bit of discussion into the official
• 3:39
  term is non linear pedagogy, but essentially it's it's viewing
• 3:43
  athletic development is just more like complex dynamical
• 3:46
  system rather than just like you do this and you like repeat it a
• 3:49
  bunch of times and now suddenly you have the skill.
• 3:51
  It's a more complex and nuanced way of learning that includes
• 3:55
  like the constraints that approach, which is like the task
• 3:58
  environment and individual constraints, perception, action,
• 4:00
  coupling and being able to coordinate all those together to
• 4:03
  complete the test you're trying to complete.
• 4:05
  There's also some discussion of the, the zone of proximal
• 4:07
  development. Sorry, I took a lot of notes on
• 4:08
  this one, so I was really interested.
• 4:10
  The zone of proximal development is this idea that there's
• 4:13
  essentially as a coach with a, with a learner, there's three
• 4:16
  different areas. There's there's the area where
• 4:18
  the athlete or the student in a, in a classroom setting can do it
• 4:22
  all by themselves with no help. Then there's also a zone further
• 4:25
  way further removed where the athlete or student can't do
• 4:29
  anything even with assistance. Where we actually want to live
• 4:31
  as coaches or teachers is in this middle zone where the
• 4:35
  athlete can't do it by themselves, but with assistance
• 4:38
  and with good coaching or good or good teaching, they can learn
• 4:42
  and become better at the task. And so that's kind of where we
• 4:44
  want to live because that's how we continue to make athletes
• 4:47
  better rather than, OK, you know, you just, you just keep
• 4:49
  doing the things you're already good at.
• 4:50
  Well, like, no, that doesn't help anybody.
• 4:52
  Or try this thing that you can't even come close to doing and
• 4:55
  even I can't help you do it. Well, OK, what's the point of
• 4:57
  that? So this middle ground of of kind
• 4:58
  of of learning and finally the thing that stuck with me
• 5:01
  probably the most and I've noticed nonstop in my
• 5:04
  environments ever since is this idea of the Norman doors.
• 5:06
  And so Chase played this video from from Vox, I believe it was
• 5:10
  that interviewed Don Norman, author of Design of Everyday
• 5:13
  Things, and his explained his concept of the Norman door,
• 5:16
  which is these poorly designed doors that may look like it's a
• 5:19
  pull, but it's actually a push or may look like it's a push,
• 5:21
  but it's actually a pull. And the kind of main concept of
• 5:24
  this is that well designed things have two main components,
• 5:27
  discoverability, like it's easy to tell what it the purpose is.
• 5:30
  And then feedback, like it's really easy to tell whether you
• 5:33
  did something correctly or not correctly.
• 5:34
  I think there's a lot to take away here in terms of designing
• 5:36
  training environments, in terms of designing apps like flex
• 5:39
  program, right, like being able to to use this information to
• 5:42
  like make it more designed, well designed athlete experience in
• 5:45
  your app. It's just a really insightful
• 5:46
  video. It's one of those things like
• 5:47
  once you notice the Norman door, you can't stop noticing it.
• 5:49
  So I really like this talk and I know I just spewed a bunch of
• 5:53
  stuff, so hit me Adam. I'm going to run things back,
• 5:56
  going way back to the beginning of what you broke down,
• 5:59
  specifically talking about how environments influence athletes
• 6:04
  or really influence anyone. But giving our contacts to
• 6:08
  athletes and baseball players even more specifically is that
• 6:12
  not only does the environment influence who you ultimately
• 6:17
  become going into the nature verse nurture discussion, it
• 6:21
  also means that if you did not experience that environment
• 6:24
  growing up or it was not a part of your development, it's going
• 6:28
  to be very, very difficult for you to ever tap into those sorts
• 6:34
  of motivations, modalities, what have you.
• 6:37
  I guess I could keep throwing words at it as Chase discussed
• 6:41
  the Pavel Datsuk example. Then Academy start trying to say
• 6:45
  come train with us and you'll learn the Pavel Datsuk training
• 6:48
  method. Well, quite simply, you won't.
• 6:51
  Because if you have the money to go train at this Academy, you
• 6:54
  probably can afford more than one hockey stick, and you are
• 6:57
  never going to understand what it means to miss out on your
• 7:01
  dream of skating on the ice. And then there there was stuff
• 7:05
  that went beyond it of saying that he couldn't afford hockey
• 7:09
  skates, so we learned to skate in multiple layers of socks or
• 7:12
  things like that. It was just.
• 7:14
  Stuff that you could never comprehend if you didn't grow up
• 7:18
  in that environment. And then moving on in a baseball
• 7:21
  context, where Chase referenced stories of athletes coming up
• 7:25
  from the Latin American countries, specifically in the
• 7:28
  Dominican, where home runs are valued so tremendously that on
• 7:33
  their Independence Day celebration, the Dominican
• 7:35
  Republic, they're just gatherings at parks for home run
• 7:38
  derbies. Yeah, we we call baseball
• 7:41
  America's pastime, and we think the Home Run Derby is the
• 7:44
  coolest thing in the world. I love it.
• 7:45
  You probably don't as a pitcher. You probably think it's like a
• 7:48
  personal hell that you get. All the home runs out of the
• 7:50
  way. But the fact that it is so
• 7:55
  deeply ingrained in the culture that it's a part of a nation's
• 8:00
  holiday celebration means that in a coaching context, you have.
• 8:05
  To. Take that into regard or into
• 8:09
  consideration if you were working with one of those
• 8:11
  athletes, an athlete from the Dominican Republic or a Latin
• 8:14
  American country. And it's not that you want to de
• 8:17
  emphasize a home run, Obviously that's a tremendous result.
• 8:20
  But if we are swinging for the fences, quite literally, there
• 8:24
  are some negative results that can come with it.
• 8:26
  Increase swinging miss bad, bad contact or non optimal ball
• 8:31
  flight. If we're really trying to hit
• 8:33
  the ball in the air as far as possible, literally on every
• 8:36
  single swing. So then how do you take the
• 8:38
  context of a home run and then re anchor the discussion for
• 8:41
  something that's ultimately positive?
• 8:43
  And I think that kind of goes back to trying to find that
• 8:46
  middle ground that you were discussing.
• 8:47
  Yeah, home runs. Incredible.
• 8:49
  If you could optimize and hit a home run on every single swing.
• 8:54
  We're not going to stop you as a hitter.
• 8:55
  I mean, you might try to stop them in your role, but I'm not
• 8:58
  going to stop them as a hitter. But what we have a little bit
• 9:01
  more control for, not complete control, but a little bit more
• 9:04
  control over is how hard we swing, where we're making
• 9:08
  contact, certain things like that.
• 9:10
  So we can maybe create our coaching lens around what can
• 9:15
  ultimately result in more home runs, kind of tying back to JP's
• 9:20
  discussion earlier with what can we control for, what can we
• 9:24
  coach with and then how do we use that to guide the ultimate
• 9:27
  result that we want in the end? So.
• 9:30
  I definitely just wanted to call back on that piece and before I
• 9:33
  hand it back over to you, I am going to jump ahead now to the
• 9:36
  Norman doors and the design of everyday things because that has
• 9:41
  been the single greatest driving force of my life since Syrian
• 9:45
  Chase Talk on what was that, December 13th, I think it was
• 9:49
  Saturday, December 13th. Now we are at the time of this
• 9:53
  recording, 16 days removed from that specific date and I don't
• 9:57
  know how many times the word discoverability has popped
• 10:02
  through my head in the concept. Of how do I?
• 10:06
  Take Discoverability and apply it directly to what we're doing
• 10:09
  with Flexpro. Grip.
• 10:10
  Of course it goes. Well, beyond Flexpro Grip, you
• 10:12
  talked about it in the coaching and training lens, which is what
• 10:16
  you live in every single day. But for me?
• 10:19
  It's trying to take a device and take an app and try to make it
• 10:22
  as intuitive as possible to benefit as many athletes who are
• 10:27
  searching for the best arm care possible.
• 10:30
  And to call on a specific topic of this discoverability and of
• 10:36
  the Norman doors concept. That's a little bit different
• 10:39
  than the two things you mentioned is if enough people
• 10:43
  don't understand something, the people aren't wrong, the design
• 10:47
  is wrong. And that's the thing that's
• 10:50
  really stuck with me and probably something that I would
• 10:54
  want to challenge the industry. As a whole.
• 10:58
  To approach or to take a new look at, especially when it
• 11:01
  comes to practice design. Now, yes, I have my own take for
• 11:05
  what I need to do for Flexpro and how we can ultimately make
• 11:08
  what we do better. But if you're designing a drill.
• 11:12
  As a coach. Or if you're trying to teach a
• 11:15
  specific action and the athlete keeps getting something wrong,
• 11:20
  then you go past that and multiple athletes keep getting
• 11:23
  the same thing wrong. At a certain.
• 11:26
  Point, the language that you are using is incorrect or the drill
• 11:29
  design is incorrect, Whatever it is that you are trying to get
• 11:33
  the athlete to achieve, there's something inherently wrong with
• 11:36
  that. If there is a continuous screw
• 11:39
  up more than like a predicted outcome would show.
• 11:43
  Of course baseball is an imperfect game.
• 11:46
  If it was perfect, we would all be in the Hall of Fame and I
• 11:49
  would be in the show right now and you and I would not be doing
• 11:51
  this podcast. But given that baseball is so
• 11:54
  hard and there is going to be some level of failure, if you
• 11:57
  were failing at a greater rate than expected, then the design
• 12:00
  of whatever you're doing is probably incorrect.
• 12:03
  So I definitely want to encourage coaches or anyone
• 12:06
  listening to this that works with players to take that to
• 12:09
  heart and figure out is the actual design or the
• 12:13
  communication of what you are doing correct to enable a player
• 12:17
  to reach the outcome that you so desire for them?
• 12:20
  Yeah, that's, that's great stuff there.
• 12:21
  This reminds me of a, there's a recent Apple commercial with the
• 12:24
  tagline design is what it does. And it's a play on this old, I
• 12:27
  don't know exactly what the source is, but this old quote
• 12:29
  that's like the purpose of a system is what it does.
• 12:32
  And basically like there's no point in claiming that the
• 12:36
  purpose of a system is something else than what it's actually
• 12:39
  resulting in. So you can be like, this app is
• 12:41
  designed to do this, but if it's not actually leading to that
• 12:44
  behavior in the in its users, then that's not actually what
• 12:47
  the design of the app does. And so the purpose of it is
• 12:50
  actually with the outcomes that it drives, which I think is a
• 12:53
  really powerful idea. And I think everything you said
• 12:55
  is, is 100% correct. And I think as a coach that your
• 12:57
  job is to, it's not to be like, oh, this drill worked for me
• 13:01
  when I was a player and this drill worked for three other
• 13:03
  athletes. So like it's going to work for
• 13:05
  this other guy. Like you have to be able to be
• 13:07
  adaptable to to the guy himself. And kind of going back to the
• 13:10
  things you mentioned about the Latin players coming up or like
• 13:13
  whatever they this cultural context that they bring with
• 13:15
  them. It's almost like this other
• 13:17
  individual constraint. When we think of individual
• 13:19
  constraints, we tend to think of like limb length, force
• 13:22
  production capability, like muscle mass, all these things
• 13:26
  like height. And so it's like all these
• 13:28
  things that are normally considered individual
• 13:29
  constraints. The cultural perception that
• 13:31
  you're coming up with is also this individual constraint.
• 13:34
  And we're talking about the zone of proximal development, like
• 13:36
  not wanting a guy to only do things he's good at and or only
• 13:39
  do things that he's going to fail at.
• 13:41
  In practice, if you have a guy who's a very specific cultural
• 13:44
  constraint and you ask him to do something that's so far removed
• 13:47
  from like this, this like deep seated belief inside of him,
• 13:51
  he's not going to be able to do it effectively.
• 13:52
  And so you have to find this kind of middle ground of like,
• 13:54
  how do we maybe encourage some behavior we want going a
• 13:57
  different way without saying like, let's completely remove
• 13:59
  you from your identity and who you are.
• 14:01
  It's just you're not going to succeed in that case.
• 14:03
  Yeah, I really think this was a powerful presentation for me.
• 14:06
  It had the greatest amount of personal takeaways.
• 14:10
  I'm not trying to say that it was better than any other, worse
• 14:14
  than any other, but for me it was without a doubt the most
• 14:17
  powerful in what it can actually provide in my current state of
• 14:22
  life, which as I mentioned, is trying to create the greatest
• 14:26
  arm care possible. And with that comes the app
• 14:29
  comes all these things that I need significant amounts of
• 14:33
  discoverability with. Therefore, I don't need to be a
• 14:36
  helping hand or put a label on every single thing so things
• 14:39
  truly become intuitive. Yep I agree, I also had a lot of
• 14:43
  takeaways from this one and it's it's stuck with me ever since.
• 14:45
  Now like I said, this is this has been my wake up in the
• 14:49
  middle of the night thought I did for the holidays.
• 14:53
  Ask for the design of everyday things, unfortunately.
• 14:57
  I might have asked for it a little too late.
• 14:59
  So you better believe it's in my Amazon cart right now.
• 15:01
  Just I actually waiting to make the it's.
• 15:04
  Waiting outside for me right now.
• 15:05
  I just bought it recently. I haven't, I haven't started it
• 15:07
  yet, but it's we can do, we can do book club.
• 15:10
  That's right. And then you can continue to lap
• 15:13
  the competition. Maybe we'll just have you back.
• 15:15
  On for a book. Review.
• 15:16
  Yeah, that'd be great. Anything else on Chase's
• 15:21
  presentation or you think you're ready to move on?
• 15:23
  I think we covered it. I think there's a lot of great
• 15:25
  stuff there and I think we we did a good job talking about it.
• 15:28
  I know this is one of those topics that we could probably
• 15:31
  create an entire podcast on in itself, which is why maybe we
• 15:36
  should save it for the book club when we actually get into the
• 15:38
  design of everyday things. But this will then lead us on to
• 15:43
  Next Base, the Japanese player development approach in
• 15:47
  biomechanical analysis. The Next Base was or is a player
• 15:53
  development group in Japan who markets themselves as one of the
• 15:58
  most forward thinking groups when it comes to player
• 16:02
  development. Certainly very tech and
• 16:04
  data-driven From what we were able to see and what they were
• 16:07
  able to communicate, they were gracious enough to come through
• 16:11
  the States and give us a wonderful look in what player
• 16:15
  development looks like for them. Before I kick it off to you, one
• 16:18
  fun note that they made is the book The MVP Machine labeled
• 16:23
  Next Base, The Driveline of Japan.
• 16:25
  So maybe it was like a long lost brotherhood for you, but.
• 16:29
  With with that. Go ahead, take it away with the
• 16:32
  initial thoughts. And I'll chime in later.
• 16:34
  Yeah, they had a very fascinating presentation and I
• 16:36
  really appreciate it. I think the first speaker, I
• 16:38
  forgot his exact name, but English wasn't his first
• 16:41
  language and he did an amazing job presenting in AI.
• 16:44
  Can't even imagine what it'd be like presenting very technical
• 16:46
  things in a language that is not my primary language or my fluent
• 16:49
  language. So I thought that was that was
• 16:51
  awesome. And I think both presenters did
• 16:53
  a very excellent job. They mostly talked about bio
• 16:57
  mechanics for both a pitching and a hitting lens.
• 16:59
  I had a few takeaways and I can let you kind of get into your
• 17:01
  notes. The thing that stuck out to me
• 17:03
  the most is that they use this 1000 Hertz marker motion capture
• 17:07
  setup. So 1000 Hertz means that it's
• 17:09
  taking pictures. When you think about a video, a
• 17:12
  video is just a series of pictures.
• 17:14
  And so they're basically taking 1000 photos every single second,
• 17:18
  which for the reference driveline, we use I believe two
• 17:21
  42140 Hertz. I'll get into this in a second,
• 17:24
  but we talked about cranking ours up and just to just test
• 17:28
  out one of their their findings or hypotheses.
• 17:30
  And I believe we can get ours up to like 6650 or 700 or like
• 17:33
  that, something like that. But they have 1000 Hertz set up.
• 17:38
  The other thing that I thought was really, really interesting
• 17:40
  is that so normally a marker motion capture set up the, the
• 17:44
  point of the markers is to give the cameras an idea of where the
• 17:49
  joint centers are. So joint centers, meaning where
• 17:52
  my elbow is, where my shoulder is in space, where my knee is,
• 17:55
  knee is in space, my hips. And so the markers are set up
• 17:59
  strategically to kind of isolate those joint centers.
• 18:02
  However, most of the time we those markers are set up for
• 18:04
  like the big parts of the body, like the big joints.
• 18:07
  They actually used 3 markers on each of the fingers as well.
• 18:11
  So the the index in the middle finger of the throwing hand,
• 18:14
  they used markers to isolate the finger joints individually,
• 18:17
  which is also very fascinating. It was a setup I've never seen
• 18:20
  before and they claimed to kind of give them some insights on
• 18:22
  some some interesting findings that the biggest finding that
• 18:24
  they claimed on the pitching side was this idea that there's
• 18:28
  a second valgus peak of valgus torque peak.
• 18:31
  So traditionally valgus torque is thought to peak and has been
• 18:33
  found to peak at maximum external rotation of the
• 18:36
  shoulder. So basically Max lay back right
• 18:38
  before the ball starts propulsing forward into the
• 18:41
  actual throw itself and they claim that they found a second
• 18:45
  valgus peak. This is really interesting.
• 18:46
  It doesn't for me, it doesn't make sense intuitively.
• 18:49
  They claim that the only reason they could see it is because
• 18:52
  it's an extremely short duration peak.
• 18:54
  So it's very High Peak, sometimes matching or even
• 18:58
  exceeding the maximum external rotation peak, but it's
• 19:00
  extremely short duration and they can only notice it because
• 19:03
  of these thousand Hertz cameras. For me, once again, this doesn't
• 19:06
  come intuitively. And speaking to some guys at
• 19:09
  Driveline, for Adam Bluebaum, for example, who I talked to, he
• 19:14
  has a, he has a hypothesis for what's actually happening here.
• 19:17
  And it's not that there's an actual second valgus peak.
• 19:19
  It's due to the fact that markered motion capture, as I've
• 19:22
  mentioned, the markers themselves are used to estimate
• 19:24
  joint centers. So all we know about where the
• 19:27
  joint is in space is based on the marker, the location of the
• 19:30
  markers. But the markers aren't actually
• 19:32
  on the joint themselves. They're on the skin.
• 19:34
  And so I don't know if you've ever seen a very slow motion
• 19:36
  video, but the skin is moving around like crazy.
• 19:38
  And we have a hypothesis and we're going to potentially try
• 19:42
  to test it out a driveline, Jack up our our cameras up to as high
• 19:46
  as they can go and see if we can isolate these these variables.
• 19:49
  We have a hypothesis that it's actually the skin moving, but
• 19:53
  not an actual new force that is previously unknown.
• 19:57
  But I thought that was a very interesting presentation and
• 19:59
  they brought us some very thought provoking.
• 20:01
  Ideas and graphs. They also had this idea that
• 20:04
  these these lower moment of inertia balls.
• 20:07
  So so if you think about a baseball, the moment of inertia
• 20:10
  is how much force it takes to get it to spin in a certain
• 20:13
  basically how much force it takes to get it to spin a
• 20:14
  certain amount. A lower moment of inertia would
• 20:16
  mean it the same amount of force would make it spin more.
• 20:19
  A higher moment of inertia would mean the same amount of spin
• 20:21
  would make the same amount of force would make it spin less.
• 20:23
  So they have these balls that are lower moment of inertia,
• 20:26
  which they claim help train some of the finger stiffness at the
• 20:29
  end of the throw, which they claim might help mitigate some
• 20:32
  of the effects of the second values torque.
• 20:34
  This, this, this values torque peaks overall is a very
• 20:37
  fascinating presentation. They had a hitting side as well,
• 20:40
  which I didn't take as many notes on, but I thought it was
• 20:43
  very like, it was just very well done all around as very visually
• 20:46
  appealing presentation. And I thought they, they overall
• 20:48
  did a very good job at, at making me think about what
• 20:51
  they're they're presenting and, and giving some, some
• 20:53
  interesting takeaways for the audience.
• 20:55
  I think you stated it well. They very much could have had
• 20:58
  two separate presentations with pitching and hitting, and that's
• 21:02
  really even how I treated it as a listener with my notes.
• 21:05
  I do find it absolutely fascinating.
• 21:09
  You know it first hand, whereas I just kind of see it from the
• 21:12
  outside as an observer. The 1000 frame per second motion
• 21:17
  capture is insane. I haven't worked specifically
• 21:20
  with motion capture myself, but knowing that most people are
• 21:23
  operating or most systems are operating somewhere in that 200
• 21:28
  to 350 range from what I recall. I could even be wrong on that,
• 21:33
  but it's not like you guys have a bad system at driveline.
• 21:37
  If anything you guys are going to be top of the line.
• 21:39
  And to think that they are quadrupling the frames per
• 21:43
  second that you have, that's going to be extremely exciting
• 21:47
  to see. And the fact that you guys can
• 21:49
  crank yours up to 600, who knows if you're going to see more, but
• 21:53
  I'd have to imagine it's at least going to be a fun data
• 21:56
  pool to dive into and a potential research project for
• 22:01
  you guys to even see if there's anything that's different and
• 22:04
  maybe open up new avenues for discovery along the way.
• 22:08
  I am very glad that you mentioned the second Valgus Peak
• 22:13
  or Ghost Torque as I believe they referred to it as.
• 22:17
  There's a kind of an opinion that I'll share on this one.
• 22:22
  Don't worry everyone, it's founded in some fact.
• 22:25
  But for those of you that are deep in the elbow injury world
• 22:30
  in kind of the podcast media consumption around it, Doctor
• 22:34
  Keith Meister has appeared on a couple of things, whether it's
• 22:39
  news outlets or podcast interviews.
• 22:42
  I think it was one with Eric Cressy where he mentioned that
• 22:45
  he believes the modern UCL injury is actually occurring at
• 22:50
  the moment of release as opposed to at Max Layback.
• 22:54
  Now, I am not going to stand here and say how he's discovered
• 23:00
  this or where he's generating this take from, but it is
• 23:04
  something that he has said, and I apologize if I've misstated
• 23:07
  this at all because these aren't my words and I'm sorry that I
• 23:11
  don't have it directly in front of me.
• 23:13
  I think I gave the right source on that with the Eric Cressy
• 23:16
  podcast. But if Nextbase has actually
• 23:19
  found something here, and I'm not saying they haven't, but if
• 23:22
  they have found something here that there is a second valgus
• 23:26
  torque that occurs or near after the moment of release, they have
• 23:32
  proven Doctor Keith Meister correct on this take that I
• 23:37
  don't even know if he knows where the information is from.
• 23:41
  So if that is correct, then everything that we have known to
• 23:45
  date as an industry, I'm not going to say is wrong, but it
• 23:49
  just means that we have missed this massive amount of knowledge
• 23:55
  and exploration. It's like there is a trap door
• 23:58
  with a whole room behind it. None of us knew anything.
• 24:01
  But then again, that's kind of how the industry gets pushed
• 24:04
  forward. So I, I don't know, I kind of go
• 24:06
  back and forth of whether or not I want Nextbase to be correct on
• 24:10
  this personally. Like I said, it just it would
• 24:13
  change a lot of the way we look at things as an industry and
• 24:17
  possibly even how we train if we need to prep for this torque
• 24:21
  after release. I haven't thought much of that
• 24:24
  yet to date. I've more been focused on how
• 24:27
  new and strange of a concept this is to me because
• 24:31
  physiologically, quite frankly, it doesn't make sense to me.
• 24:34
  I'm going to do everything in my power to make it make sense if
• 24:37
  I'm able to discover if there is validity to this theory.
• 24:42
  But my personal opinion is very similar to the one that you
• 24:46
  shared that you guys discussed internally with how much the
• 24:50
  skin moves during a mocap. That they're very well could be
• 24:55
  just kind of this error or spike to the system because the the
• 25:00
  skin just flutters so much specifically as the arm is
• 25:04
  working through ball release and moving aggressively into
• 25:07
  pronation. Yeah, So the, I actually don't
• 25:10
  think I mentioned this, but they're they're so I didn't, I
• 25:12
  didn't understand the underlying mechanism mechanism at all.
• 25:15
  I I just didn't understand how this could possibly lead to
• 25:17
  valgus torque, the moment of post release.
• 25:20
  But what they claim is that it's actually because of the after
• 25:23
  the balls released, the wrist flexes very, very rapidly, which
• 25:28
  they claim causes a, you know, force to go through the elbow
• 25:31
  with a very, very High Peak, very, very low total torque
• 25:35
  impulse. And that's why it happened so
• 25:36
  quickly. And yeah, I think that's the
• 25:38
  beauty of science is right. Like we have this finding and
• 25:40
  we're, we're basically saying, OK, let's steel man this.
• 25:44
  Let's like, let's basically like try to prove it wrong.
• 25:47
  If all our attempts to prove it wrong fails, then we know it's
• 25:50
  probably true. And we're basically treating as
• 25:52
  the null hypothesis. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're
• 25:54
  gonna the null hypothesis being that this does not exist.
• 25:57
  And if all our attempts to prove that are shown to be incorrect,
• 26:01
  then we know that it does exist. And so we have a market list set
• 26:04
  up. So our market list set up isn't
• 26:06
  going to be, it's not going to have the same issues with like
• 26:10
  the skin moving and stuff like that.
• 26:11
  So we might be able to find something that validates this or
• 26:13
  invalidates this. We will see.
• 26:15
  I will say the thing with very, very, very high frequency setups
• 26:20
  is that most of the time with motion capture, not most of the
• 26:24
  time all the time, there's an extremely high amount of noise.
• 26:27
  And so you have to filter the data.
• 26:29
  You have to basically like smooth out the data because what
• 26:32
  we don't care about the actual like individual specific data
• 26:37
  points. We want to understand the
• 26:38
  underlying signal underlying underlying those data points.
• 26:42
  And so we have to remove the noise.
• 26:44
  And oftentimes like there is this noise, whether that is
• 26:47
  because the skins moving around during the throw, like even on a
• 26:49
  normal throw, the skins moving around or sorry, not on a normal
• 26:52
  throw, even on a with lower frequency cameras, the skin is
• 26:55
  still moving around substantially.
• 26:56
  So we have to smooth out these effects.
• 26:57
  So I will say that there is a lot of noise that is introduced,
• 27:00
  especially at very high frequency levels that we have to
• 27:02
  account for. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully
• 27:05
  like we find something one way or the other.
• 27:07
  And I think it's definitely, it's very intriguing.
• 27:09
  And this idea that that that you're talking about that like
• 27:13
  that it's going to change how our understanding of injuries
• 27:15
  happen. I think it's completely correct.
• 27:17
  And it would probably change in some ways of the approach to
• 27:20
  training the arm to be resilient.
• 27:22
  There's there'd probably be some other avenues that we'd have to
• 27:25
  explore beyond the traditional ones that we've we've done in
• 27:28
  the past. And then like using flex
• 27:29
  program, there's probably an additional layer on top of that
• 27:31
  that we'd probably have to explore.
• 27:33
  So it's very fascinating and and we'll see.
• 27:36
  Another couple things that I will mention here.
• 27:39
  So beyond the 1000 frames per second that they are using, they
• 27:43
  also utilize 48 markers, which you can correct me if I'm wrong,
• 27:48
  but it sounds like standard is about 16 marker system.
• 27:52
  Yeah, I don't remember what driveline's fully markerless
• 27:55
  now, so I don't remember how many they used.
• 27:56
  I think it was more than 16, but it's maybe. 24 or something like
• 28:00
  that It's. Definitely more than yeah, part
• 28:02
  A Part of that is because of all the markers on the fingers, I'm
• 28:04
  sure. Yes, yeah.
• 28:06
  And it sounded like they were damn near double what most
• 28:09
  people do. And one thing I guess getting
• 28:12
  into the training method methods, so you and I thus far
• 28:15
  is focused so much on the bio mechanics approach to this,
• 28:19
  which is certainly what caught my attention.
• 28:23
  I'm not saying that we shouldn't have given that much attention
• 28:27
  to this specific point, but they talked about their training
• 28:30
  approaches as well, like how they how they actually developed
• 28:33
  their athletes. Maybe this is just semantics,
• 28:36
  Maybe everyone would say this, but they stressed constantly a
• 28:42
  focus on efficiency and what they called micro movements.
• 28:47
  And kind of what I found interesting about the efficiency
• 28:50
  and micro movements where I guess we talk a lot in, maybe
• 28:55
  I'm generalizing here, but we talk a lot in baseball
• 28:57
  development in the United States about the low hanging fruit.
• 29:02
  And let's get people strong. Let's get them to produce a lot
• 29:05
  of force. And if we do those things, a lot
• 29:08
  of times we can account for the error that might occur in a
• 29:12
  quote UN quote flaw, a flawed mechanic, a whether it's for the
• 29:17
  swing or the throw, a flawed movement, improper loading of
• 29:22
  something. We can keep getting the weeds of
• 29:24
  how people teach the movements associated with pitching and
• 29:28
  hitting, but they because of their commitment to the bio
• 29:34
  mechanics approach or their their own biomechanical
• 29:37
  approach, they focus extremely heavily on this biomechanical
• 29:43
  efficiency concept. Now question for you and I guess
• 29:47
  for the audience, please, please, please take this
• 29:50
  question with a grain of salt because I don't want this to
• 29:52
  sound like I'm insulting the concept or insulting the way
• 29:56
  that Next Base goes about their own development.
• 30:00
  But this is just for the context of discussion with Hedska.
• 30:05
  So Josh, do you think if you were, if you were analyzing the
• 30:11
  way that Next Base is going about their discovery, would you
• 30:16
  fear that they take possibly too much of A bias towards this
• 30:22
  efficiency approach because of their investment in the bio
• 30:27
  mechanics? Or do you think that there is
• 30:29
  something that we are possibly missing or that they have such a
• 30:33
  competitive advantage on that they truly are getting the right
• 30:38
  juice for their squeeze? Yeah.
• 30:40
  I mean, to be completely honest, I don't know.
• 30:42
  It's one of those things that it's like a lot of the stuff
• 30:44
  they talked about was so new to me in a lot of ways that I don't
• 30:47
  fully like understand it to the point where I want to have a
• 30:51
  strong opinion on it. Either way.
• 30:52
  I think it's very interesting and I do know like there's
• 30:55
  there's, you know, I think with the Bolognese presentation that
• 30:57
  we mentioned, right, there's this idea of like the the
• 30:59
  Japanese like training schedule that they utilize with a lot of
• 31:01
  their that some Japanese organizations utilize in in
• 31:04
  general. There are the there are
• 31:06
  distinctive Japanese starring mechanics, right?
• 31:08
  Like there's these different things that Japan does well and
• 31:12
  they have the second best league in the world and they have
• 31:14
  incredible talent that comes over to the United States every
• 31:16
  year and and does extremely well.
• 31:19
  And so I think it'd be a little ignorant for me to say like,
• 31:24
  yeah, they're clearly doing it all wrong.
• 31:26
  And not that all the Japanese players that came over here, you
• 31:29
  know, trained at next base or anything like that.
• 31:30
  So but I do, I do think it's important to kind of approach
• 31:34
  some of these new ideas with maybe a slight grain of salt,
• 31:36
  like, oh, it's different than than I I'm used to.
• 31:39
  But what is it about what they do that works for them?
• 31:43
  And is there anything I can take away and learn and apply to
• 31:45
  myself through my own cultural constraints, as we talked about
• 31:48
  with Chase Aldridge, right? Like I have my own cultural kind
• 31:50
  of based on growing up in the United States and the coaches
• 31:53
  that I had and like the systems that I've worked through.
• 31:56
  Like I have a specific thought process of how things are are
• 32:00
  done. But that doesn't mean that every
• 32:02
  other system or every other idea is wrong.
• 32:05
  I just have to kind of parse that for myself.
• 32:07
  So Long story short is I don't know.
• 32:09
  And I think that's OK that I don't know.
• 32:11
  And I'm going to, you know, keep thinking about some of the stuff
• 32:13
  that they talked about and hopefully take some some stuff
• 32:16
  away from it. But it's it is a really well
• 32:18
  done presentation. Although it may not have been
• 32:21
  the most discussed or focused on piece of their entire
• 32:25
  presentation, there is a little paraphrased quote I have here.
• 32:32
  I guess that's kind of redundant to call to an oxymoron to call
• 32:36
  to paraphrase quote. But there's a little a little
• 32:39
  note I have that I that I wrote down from this presentation that
• 32:44
  I actually think might be at the crux of everything they
• 32:47
  discussed. Although it was far from the
• 32:50
  focus when they were talking about spin rates and ghost
• 32:53
  torques and all these things that get us really excited.
• 32:56
  But they stated that the faster you give feedback, the better
• 33:00
  the player can feel and interpret that info.
• 33:03
  And I think at the core of what they do and why they care so
• 33:08
  much or why they're able to root so much of their focus in
• 33:12
  mechanical efficiency and these micro movements as they labeled
• 33:16
  them and rely very heavily on their biomechanical analysis is
• 33:22
  because they are trying to get as much data and information in
• 33:26
  the player's hand as possible. So then they can decrease the
• 33:30
  amount of unnecessary work that needs to be done to then move
• 33:34
  the player along in their player development journey.
• 33:38
  Yeah, we talked about this last podcast a little bit too, this
• 33:40
  idea of like knowledge of results, like getting instant
• 33:43
  feedback, especially for more advanced athletes, it's going to
• 33:45
  allow them to like make progress a lot quicker.
• 33:47
  So I, I agree, I think it's a really, it's a good philosophy.
• 33:50
  And generally speaking, I think, and I think some of the some of
• 33:54
  the things they talked about are, are definitely have been on
• 33:56
  my mind and I'm, I'm kind of have been pondering them ever
• 33:59
  since. It's it was a really thought for
• 34:00
  broken conversation. And with that, do you think
• 34:05
  we're ready to move on to NBA trends?
• 34:08
  I think we're ready and I, I, yeah, we maybe you'll see some
• 34:11
  research coming out soon from from us about this, this ghost
• 34:14
  torque. So we'll see.
• 34:15
  Great. OK, well, we I say great that I
• 34:19
  feel like that's a terrible acknowledgement of what you just
• 34:22
  said. I'm super excited to see what's
• 34:26
  I'm not offended. Don't worry on the on the ghost
• 34:28
  torque. I was just already eyes already
• 34:30
  on the the next section here. Go go ahead and take it.
• 34:33
  You can lead us off on this one then.
• 34:35
  OK. So we we looked at, I guess
• 34:38
  workload management with the New York Knicks as far as far as NBA
• 34:42
  trends go, That's just what I labeled it in my notes as NBA
• 34:45
  trends. I apologize because I missed the
• 34:48
  opening slide, so I don't have the official title of the
• 34:51
  presentation. I was talking to someone out in
• 34:53
  the hallway and I got back in just in time for slide 2.
• 34:56
  So kind of the table of contents, but I'll hit a basic
• 35:00
  outline and then we can go into the things that I think apply
• 35:03
  most to the baseball world. So we looked at how play style
• 35:08
  influences the demands of training.
• 35:10
  That sounds extremely familiar to basically everything that we
• 35:14
  have talked about and know about in the modern industry of
• 35:17
  baseball. Beyond that, one of the things
• 35:20
  that they're looking at now in the NBA is how we assess those
• 35:23
  demands. That might sound really obvious,
• 35:25
  but when you're playing every single night, it is difficult
• 35:29
  just to have some sort of a test or readiness assessment.
• 35:33
  Yeah, you can do force plate jumps in those things that we
• 35:36
  talked about in the baseball world, flex, pro grip, other
• 35:39
  dynamometry, things like that. But in basketball they are
• 35:43
  playing a high effort sport nightly.
• 35:45
  So then they have to look at other things such as GPS data,
• 35:49
  amount of change, direction, acceleration.
• 35:52
  So to me, it sounds like catapult or something of that
• 35:55
  nature becomes a very powerful tool to assess player distance
• 36:01
  acceleration. As we move on down the list
• 36:03
  here, one of the things that I made note of is labeling players
• 36:08
  as low capacity or high capacity specifically in their ceiling to
• 36:13
  work. And what that basically meant
• 36:15
  was applying these acute to chronic workload ratios to the
• 36:19
  basketball world. How often are players working?
• 36:22
  What work are they actually prepared for and when are we at
• 36:26
  danger? When are we in danger of
• 36:29
  stretching a player longer than what they've been prepped for?
• 36:33
  Now along these lines, the presentation really only got
• 36:37
  into injury rates or potential injury risk associated with
• 36:43
  spiking workloads or putting players in situations that
• 36:46
  they're not necessarily prepared for.
• 36:48
  I think kind of the low hanging fruit to continue the baseball
• 36:53
  vernacular here is to do this for performance.
• 36:56
  I thought this was an interesting approach as a whole
• 36:59
  to understanding how workload principles get applied in other
• 37:03
  sports, But also this was only for injury.
• 37:07
  And to me that's great. But now I sound like probably
• 37:10
  every person that I'm trying to get flex pro grip on the hands
• 37:15
  of is like sweet, but how does it get me better now that I'm a
• 37:19
  consumer of the game of basketball?
• 37:21
  Like great. You you want to keep these guys
• 37:23
  healthy. I think that's awesome.
• 37:25
  How does them being better prepared or more fresh, whatever
• 37:28
  word you want to put on it, actually affect their ability to
• 37:31
  make shots? Yeah, I think that's really
• 37:33
  interesting. There isn't this kind of like
• 37:35
  underlying idea that fatigue is kind of the root of all evil.
• 37:38
  And so fatigue like not only increases injury risks, like
• 37:41
  it's been shown time and time again to show increase injury
• 37:44
  risk, but it also does hurt performance, right?
• 37:47
  So like avoiding these fatigue states is kind of killing two
• 37:50
  birds with one stone, like increasing your capacity.
• 37:52
  But I think it's it also kind of goes back to this idea from the
• 37:55
  Cubs presentation, Jason Kansler.
• 37:58
  And so something he mentioned was like, you don't want to
• 38:01
  build capacity just enough to handle the game.
• 38:04
  You want to be able to handle the demands of the practice and
• 38:07
  training you need to get better. And so like, I think kind of
• 38:10
  what you're saying is like, OK, like, if we build this guy's
• 38:12
  capacity, like, OK, yeah, maybe he can limp through the game and
• 38:14
  just barely make it. And like, fine, he's his
• 38:17
  performance will be fine. But over the course of the
• 38:19
  season is probably not sustainable.
• 38:20
  And you're never going to be able to work on things in
• 38:22
  practice, for example. So being able to say like, OK,
• 38:25
  let's really build this guy's fitness.
• 38:28
  So knowing like, OK, not only is his performance in the game
• 38:31
  expected to be this because he's going to be fresh, but we can
• 38:33
  actually project out his performance to be even better as
• 38:35
  maybe the season goes on. Because he's going to have so
• 38:37
  much time to work on things as the season goes on, which which
• 38:40
  obviously is very difficult to do.
• 38:41
  But I think that's like maybe a way of kind of bridging that gap
• 38:44
  that you're talking about. Yeah, I think it's, but it is
• 38:46
  kind of two birds with one stone in some ways with like fatigue
• 38:48
  being being the root of of injuries and if performance
• 38:51
  decline. Something else I'll note that I
• 38:53
  would probably like a little bit more of access to which
• 38:58
  unfortunately we were not afforded, which was how are they
• 39:02
  actually measuring the rate of soft tissue decline?
• 39:05
  I believe they said that was internal and they couldn't share
• 39:09
  it. For me, I don't want to say that
• 39:11
  made the presentation null and void, but at the end of it all I
• 39:14
  was like, OK, so like, what do I even do with all of this?
• 39:18
  I do feel bad. I feel bad saying that, but I
• 39:20
  mean that that is my opinion, especially when I'm working in
• 39:23
  the world of trying to keep PeopleSoft tissue as strong and
• 39:26
  resilient as possible. I thought I was going to get
• 39:29
  some cool insight or maybe 8 different research articles that
• 39:33
  I could look into coming off of this and I was just told that's
• 39:36
  proprietary and we can't share it.
• 39:38
  Yeah, that's, that is something that's like I've even thought
• 39:40
  about for throwing and pitching, right.
• 39:42
  Like how do we kind of quantify these things?
• 39:43
  And yeah, it was interesting. I do believe you mentioned this.
• 39:46
  They kind of model what the expected soft tissue fatigue is,
• 39:49
  if I'm not mistaken. And they use like the actual
• 39:51
  soft tissue fatigue to kind of like play like to calibrate the
• 39:54
  model, if I'm not mistaken. But I do, I do really like
• 39:57
  something he said, but I'm going to be paraphrasing this, but
• 39:59
  it's something along the lines of that, like a lot of this,
• 40:00
  like soft tissue work and manual therapy that guys asked for is
• 40:03
  kind of a Band-Aid on bad preparation to begin with, which
• 40:06
  is an extremely impactful idea. Like you have guys that are,
• 40:09
  I've seen it all the time. Guys are like, I can't, you
• 40:11
  know, I won't feel good tomorrow if I don't get my cupping in or
• 40:13
  I won't feel good tomorrow if I don't get my, you know, my red
• 40:15
  light therapy or whatever. Like all these recovery
• 40:17
  modalities are probably they're fine.
• 40:19
  They're tertiary beneficial, right?
• 40:21
  Like they're not as good as getting a good night's rest or.
• 40:23
  Eating well or being hydrated, but they'll probably have a
• 40:26
  very, very small impact. But if the fact is you're always
• 40:30
  feeling so crappy that you feel like you need it, that's
• 40:34
  probably a sign that you're not sufficiently for prepared for
• 40:36
  what you're actually doing out there.
• 40:37
  So I thought that was a really cool point.
• 40:39
  And the other point that he said was like, I think I forgot who
• 40:42
  asked this question. I don't know if it was you or
• 40:43
  not. It was somebody who kind of
• 40:44
  brought this idea of like when we think about NBA workload
• 40:48
  management, we think about like players sitting out games like,
• 40:50
  oh, Kawhi Leonard's, you know, only playing every other game or
• 40:52
  whatever, right. Daniel mentioned that kind of
• 40:55
  their point in this is not to keep guys out of games and say,
• 40:58
  like, OK, we're we're going to keep you off the court.
• 41:00
  But instead we're going to say, like, how do we better prepare
• 41:02
  you so that we can keep you on the court?
• 41:04
  Which I think is the right way of looking at it.
• 41:06
  It's, it's the thing I wish, I wish.
• 41:09
  That's how we view things in baseball as well, rather than
• 41:12
  this kind of like, OK, how do we avoid putting so much valgus
• 41:14
  torque on a guy's arm? How do we avoid having them
• 41:16
  throw a 5 oz ball as hard as they can?
• 41:18
  Was like, okay, why don't we just work the other way and say,
• 41:21
  how do we prepare them over, prepare them to do these things
• 41:24
  so we can actually keep them on the field rather than feel like
• 41:27
  we have to restrict them in some way?
• 41:29
  You're 100% right. I was not the one who asked that
• 41:31
  question, but I think that's kind of been an ongoing topic in
• 41:36
  our little workload corner of the universe, whether it's
• 41:39
  discussions with Casey Mulholland or Dylan Newcomer,
• 41:44
  those who have spent a lot of time looking at return to
• 41:47
  throws. And I hate to just say return to
• 41:50
  throw because workload management is so much more than
• 41:52
  returns and rehabs. It is true performance, right?
• 41:56
  It enables guys to be at their best most often.
• 42:00
  And if that's the context we care about, then that's the way
• 42:04
  we should be framing these discussions.
• 42:06
  We, we should be focused on what does this enable us to do, not
• 42:10
  what does it prevent us from being able to do.
• 42:13
  And I think this presentation is probably just another reminder
• 42:18
  that it all comes down to how you frame these problems and
• 42:22
  what what are you trying to get out of the data?
• 42:26
  What are you trying to get out of the collection?
• 42:28
  And it sounds like from what I could gather, one of the biggest
• 42:32
  areas of impact is managing their role players.
• 42:35
  Workload management for NBA teams doesn't matter much for
• 42:40
  your two to three top guys because let's face it, you want
• 42:44
  those guys on the court as much as humanly possible.
• 42:46
  And every time they say they're good to go, you're going to put
• 42:49
  them out there. And if they say they're not
• 42:51
  good, you're going to take them out.
• 42:52
  It does not matter what some algorithm says, however, if you
• 42:57
  can get more minutes and more productive minutes out of your
• 43:02
  guys 4 through 8, you are in a significantly better position,
• 43:07
  especially as you near the playoffs.
• 43:09
  Now the NBA I guess side of things that we can't account for
• 43:14
  quite as much in the baseball world, I'm sure there are ways
• 43:18
  that we could do it. Maybe choosing it as like a long
• 43:21
  relief type guy. You always need those
• 43:24
  individuals prepared for more than what they will likely
• 43:28
  experience because you never know when they'll need a spot
• 43:31
  start or you never know when the 8th.
• 43:33
  Man, in the NBA stations, this is Nick Martinez.
• 43:36
  Yeah, exactly. Long reliever but occasional
• 43:38
  starter like, but has the workload to manage both.
• 43:41
  Exactly that's in that's the goal.
• 43:43
  I know that's what Casey would preach.
• 43:45
  We we need to see that more. I mean, that's kind of two guys
• 43:48
  I can think of that I've seen do this routinely.
• 43:50
  Miller Hogan, who was previously drafted by the Rays, he pitched
• 43:54
  in Mexico this past year and I think he's as smart as they come
• 43:58
  in the baseball world. You and him might be long lost
• 44:01
  brothers for all all I know Josh, the way you guys think
• 44:04
  about the game, but he he's currently throwing in lead Dom
• 44:08
  right now. Hopefully he's carving up in
• 44:10
  winter league. That stuff is hard to follow.
• 44:12
  All you get is the baseball reference here and there.
• 44:14
  There's always more than what's on the baseball reference page.
• 44:17
  But Miller Hogan, he's thrown in every role known to man.
• 44:20
  I know there was one time in the Rays organization that all in
• 44:22
  one week of AA ball. He started a game, closed the
• 44:26
  game and threw innings through three through 7 all in one week.
• 44:31
  That's insane stuff. Then another guy, your Co
• 44:36
  panelist Dawson Nets through as a reliever and starter through
• 44:41
  64 innings with the Cubs this past year.
• 44:43
  I mean the Cubs are very forward thinking.
• 44:45
  They do a great job with Catapult and managing guys
• 44:47
  workloads. So I know they wouldn't have put
• 44:49
  him in a situation that he was not prepared for.
• 44:52
  But that is a guy that, to me, he fits this mold in.
• 44:56
  Going back to the NBA example, you need your 8th man on the
• 45:00
  roster to be prepared to play 25 minutes, although he might only
• 45:05
  get 5 minutes of burn. And that might be an absolute
• 45:08
  grind in practice every single day to ensure that he can endure
• 45:13
  what the top three guys go through.
• 45:17
  But who knows? He's going to get that once
• 45:21
  every 12 games. It almost reminds me of a relief
• 45:24
  pitcher because relief pitcher has to kind of balance this idea
• 45:26
  of like, I don't know when I'm going to throw in the game.
• 45:29
  And so balancing like, OK, I need to not throw Max effer
• 45:34
  bullpens every day because I might need to go in the game,
• 45:37
  but I also can't just through recovery days every day because
• 45:39
  like then I'm not going to like if I go a week without pitching,
• 45:42
  like, OK, suddenly I haven't been off a mile in a week.
• 45:43
  And so like this delicate balance of like making sure
• 45:47
  you're training just enough to kind of maintain everything
• 45:49
  you've built and and potentially get a little bit better through
• 45:52
  through some skill work and but like not so much that you're too
• 45:56
  fatigued to actually handle the game when it comes.
• 45:58
  It's like this. Interesting.
• 45:59
  Interesting dynamic. Maybe there's this parallel
• 46:01
  between role players in the NBA and released pitchers in
• 46:03
  baseball. Could be a fun blog in the.
• 46:06
  Future for you. That's an interesting one.
• 46:08
  Yeah, while you wear the Pistons hat, maybe it's something to
• 46:10
  think about, but the Easter. Easter runs through Detroit this
• 46:13
  year. That's all I'm going to say.
• 46:14
  That's sure what it looks like as of now.
• 46:16
  Who would have thought the Detroit Pistons would be the
• 46:18
  best sports team in Detroit this year?
• 46:20
  I think most people would have had their money on the Lions,
• 46:23
  and that's an unfortunate sight to see.
• 46:25
  Yeah, I'm sorry, man. But I do think there are
• 46:28
  significant amount of parallels that can be drawn from Kircher's
• 46:32
  presentation and Cancers presentation with the Cubs.
• 46:35
  I, I would have actually really liked to see those two
• 46:38
  back-to-back just so I could have had my notes directly.
• 46:43
  And I feel like more locked in to those kind of principles.
• 46:46
  Yeah, there's a lot of overlap, and not just not just the K and
• 46:49
  the Z in the last name. Yeah, not just their name
• 46:52
  sounding similar and making me stutter over them, but all
• 46:55
  right, I I think we can move on now to the MLB panel.
• 46:59
  I'm prepared to kick this off and.
• 47:02
  I got it. I.
• 47:03
  Might need you to help me a little bit with the teams each
• 47:08
  of these guys are affiliated with.
• 47:10
  So we had Drew French, Graham Johnson, Josh Miller and Chris
• 47:14
  Holt. Chris Holt, Red Sox, Josh
• 47:16
  Miller, Astros, Drew French, Orioles.
• 47:20
  Who is Graham Johnson with? I forget.
• 47:22
  Johnson, I believe, with the Blue Jays.
• 47:24
  Blue Jays. Wow, I feel terrible.
• 47:26
  Yes, he was the Blue Jays bullpen coach this past year,
• 47:28
  correct? I think they all used to work
• 47:29
  together with Houston. If I'm not.
• 47:31
  All of these guys are Houston. My biggest take away from this
• 47:34
  one is that Chris Holtz, the most entertaining man on the
• 47:36
  planet. 80 grade bullpen coach right there.
• 47:41
  Yeah, I'm gonna need him and Scott Emerson from the Athletics
• 47:45
  in the same room because I I would have told you prior to
• 47:48
  listening to Chris Holt, Scott Emerson is the most entertaining
• 47:51
  man on the planet. And now that I've heard Chris
• 47:53
  Holt, I, I need some sort of debate battle.
• 47:56
  Yeah. It was a very good panel, very
• 47:58
  insightful. Yeah, I think it was, you say
• 48:02
  very insightful. I'll, I'll take the harder the
• 48:05
  harder stance here of saying I think it was a really good look
• 48:09
  into what the existence of these guys really is.
• 48:13
  And what I find interesting is how much, how much of A grind we
• 48:20
  all label baseball to be to get to the highest level, to then
• 48:25
  get to the highest level and be there to be a personality
• 48:29
  manager. And I don't mean that in a bad
• 48:32
  way at all. I mean this as when you get to
• 48:36
  that level, every one of the players is there for a reason.
• 48:40
  They are all good enough to throw in the major leagues.
• 48:42
  They're on a Major League Rosser for a reason.
• 48:45
  They all have their own systems. They all have their own things
• 48:48
  that work for them. So it becomes your job to
• 48:51
  understand the language that that player operates with and
• 48:55
  the culture, the community that they want in order to feel
• 48:59
  supported. Which is why to me, a guy like
• 49:02
  Chris Holt becomes so valuable. You said he's the most
• 49:05
  entertaining man in baseball, but probably why he becomes such
• 49:09
  a valuable bullpen coach is if you need to get in the weeds he
• 49:13
  can. But that is so far from what he
• 49:17
  is going to approach you with on a daily basis that you don't
• 49:22
  need to be concerned about how your slider is breaking or what
• 49:26
  IVB you have on your 4 seam that day.
• 49:29
  It's more about how do you feel, what can we do?
• 49:32
  By the way, here's the scouting report.
• 49:34
  When you come in, in the 8th inning, you have to face this
• 49:38
  pinch hitter off the bench. But that's don't worry about
• 49:41
  that. Like I'll, I'll handle that.
• 49:43
  You don't need to worry about that.
• 49:44
  You just prep, you feel good, you laugh and joke with the boys
• 49:47
  and I'm going to keep you light. I don't know if you have a
• 49:50
  different thought on that, but I, I don't, I, I just have
• 49:56
  always found that interesting how much you have to know to get
• 49:59
  into baseball and how much you have to be able to apply.
• 50:04
  And then as you get to the highest level, it's almost like
• 50:08
  none of that matters anymore. You just needed to have gone
• 50:12
  through it and now you just need to be.
• 50:14
  Able to have relationships. I think a lot of it's also being
• 50:17
  a filter for like only giving guys the important information,
• 50:20
  right? Like rather than date.
• 50:21
  So like it takes someone who really, really understands the
• 50:24
  deep weeds to know which very, very selective bits of
• 50:29
  information a guide needs to hear in a certain moment, which
• 50:32
  I think is really, really cool. There's also this thing Kyle
• 50:34
  Bodie introduced me to it on this idea that like as coaches.
• 50:38
  So if you imagine a big league pitcher and you say, OK, take
• 50:41
  this guy and imagine his and even myself, for example, not a
• 50:44
  big league pitcher, but let's say like think about my career
• 50:47
  and like all the possible outcomes of my all the potential
• 50:51
  possible outcomes in my baseball career when I was a high school
• 50:53
  baseball player, like 100th percentile is the being the best
• 50:56
  baseball player I ever could have been.
• 50:57
  Zeroth percentile is like worst baseball player I ever could
• 50:59
  have been. A guy like me and probably
• 51:02
  anybody who's in professional baseball, everyone is probably
• 51:04
  very, very close to the 100th percentile.
• 51:07
  I'm probably like 98 percentile best baseball player I ever
• 51:10
  possibly could have been, right? You know, I wasn't.
• 51:13
  You never prospect even the guys who were prospects like they're
• 51:15
  way they're everyone's probably much closer to the best version
• 51:18
  of themselves and the worst version of themselves if you're
• 51:20
  selecting for professional athletes who are in the big
• 51:23
  leagues. And so there's much, much, much
• 51:25
  more room to go down than there is to go up.
• 51:28
  And so as a coach, it's extremely important to be very
• 51:30
  selective about what you're giving guys.
• 51:32
  And it takes someone who knows all this, all the stuff to be
• 51:35
  able to do that efficiently and effectively.
• 51:37
  But it's like, what is the 1 ticket of information that I can
• 51:39
  give this guy right now? He's going to the game to like,
• 51:42
  make sure he's at his best. It's not going to be 17
• 51:44
  different things and doming him up and then making a way worse
• 51:47
  version of himself because that guy's already so close to the
• 51:50
  best baseball player he could ever have possibly been.
• 51:52
  So I think coaching at that level is extremely interesting
• 51:55
  because of the selective nature of the other coaching experience
• 51:57
  at that level. I'm left pausing because they, I
• 52:01
  think that's very powerful, what Bodhi told you.
• 52:04
  And I guess sadly, now I'm trying to figure out what
• 52:07
  percentile I might have finished in and trying to figure out how
• 52:11
  much, how much closer I could have gone to whatever the upper
• 52:15
  90th percentiles. So, yeah, now, now I'm just in
• 52:20
  this existential crisis. Yeah, I am in existential
• 52:24
  crisis. And I'm trying to figure out if
• 52:26
  I need to schedule therapy again just to work through this.
• 52:28
  So I, I don't know. Pardon me, but that is a, it is
• 52:32
  a unique concept. And I think you stated that
• 52:35
  beautifully or you recited what Bodie stated beautifully.
• 52:38
  So maybe we can get that on a quote card.
• 52:40
  Because I do think more people could stand to hear that and
• 52:45
  really take the time to take themselves through their own
• 52:47
  existential crisis and figure out how close they are to the
• 52:51
  best version of themselves. And then as you work in the
• 52:53
  coaching world, how do you generate that filter?
• 52:57
  And I, I guess almost what you're saying there and kind of
• 53:00
  how I felt about this whole presentation is when you work
• 53:04
  with some sort of a tradesman. And this is near and dear to my
• 53:07
  heart as I just had someone over at my house to fix a fan that
• 53:11
  was falling from my ceiling. If anyone's looking to buy my
• 53:14
  house, you didn't just hear that.
• 53:16
  Unless you need to know that the fan is now 100% fixed and better
• 53:20
  than it has ever been. So you're welcome.
• 53:22
  And it actually increased my property value.
• 53:25
  But the reason I say being a big league coach is almost like a
• 53:30
  tradesman is you're not paying that person for the work that
• 53:34
  they just did. You're paying them for the
• 53:38
  knowledge that they have to be able to express what that answer
• 53:43
  is or be like the knowledge that they perceive throughout their
• 53:48
  entire career to know what the right answer was.
• 53:53
  And I I think that's very, that's very powerful.
• 53:57
  It's not. Taste, they have good taste, but
• 53:59
  it's like not in the way we think about taste of like like
• 54:01
  liking good things or good music or whatever, right?
• 54:03
  It's like it's they have good taste with regards to baseball,
• 54:05
  it's good taste. Yeah, yeah, Like, I don't know,
• 54:08
  I think of the example all the time of you pay a plumber to
• 54:12
  come to your house and he snakes a toilet or something like that.
• 54:15
  Could you have done that yourself maybe.
• 54:18
  Like I'm sure if someone told you, yes, the problem is you
• 54:21
  need to snake your toilet, great, you could do that.
• 54:26
  But what the plumber has is the knowledge to do it with the
• 54:30
  right snake at the right length, the right time, with the right
• 54:35
  tools. So it's the years that built up
• 54:38
  to that decision that they made in that specific moment.
• 54:42
  So maybe the work that they just did was not the $200 you paid
• 54:47
  them for a house call, but the $200 paid for that education
• 54:52
  that they had all the way through that gave them the
• 54:55
  knowledge in that specific moment.
• 54:56
  I'm glad I finally was able to get that out succinctly after
• 55:00
  butchering it 2 times before. But that's why we get I.
• 55:04
  Really like that analogy. I might steal that.
• 55:06
  Go ahead. Because I know last time or I
• 55:09
  guess 3 appearances go go on the podcast, I used the airplane
• 55:13
  versus helicopter analogy. And then you appeared on a
• 55:15
  driveline podcast and you broke that one out.
• 55:17
  So I, I felt pretty good about that.
• 55:19
  That was, that was a big self victory there.
• 55:22
  Now there are another couple points.
• 55:25
  I don't think they mean a lot necessarily for our audience,
• 55:28
  but someone on the panel mentioned that they think there
• 55:33
  is been a decline in the level of performance at AAA over the
• 55:39
  past few years. Do you have any comment on that?
• 55:42
  Is there? Is there just really?
• 55:43
  Quickly, it's really quickly. My guess is because of of
• 55:46
  contraction in the minor leagues.
• 55:48
  So there's a much smaller domestic reserve list now.
• 55:50
  It used to be over 200, Now I think it's 165.
• 55:54
  It was 180 for a while, now it's 165.
• 55:56
  And so with few and fewer spots, there's less spots for some of
• 55:59
  these old veteran types in AAA. And I believe they, they were
• 56:02
  talking about like the AAA guy. The AAA used to be like all guys
• 56:05
  who were like big league approach, maybe like starting to
• 56:09
  lose some of the big league kind of like juice in a way, right?
• 56:12
  But like, they still the big league approach as a, you know,
• 56:14
  hitters and the pitchers, like working out stuff.
• 56:16
  Yeah. But they were going to like, be
• 56:17
  so crafty and like very pitchable.
• 56:20
  But now some of those guys are getting pushed out.
• 56:21
  And like a lot of those guys are playing in Mexico now or, or, or
• 56:25
  overseas because teams have to keep a lot of their younger guys
• 56:28
  on their domestic reserve list in order to not miss out on, you
• 56:31
  know, young prospects that might come up to change.
• 56:33
  So I could believe it. I I I personally haven't
• 56:36
  experienced it enough before and after to to truly know, but I
• 56:39
  could I could see that being the case.
• 56:41
  Yeah. How many total AAA appearances
• 56:43
  do you have? Are you 3?
• 56:45
  Probably it's more than that, but let's let's not talk about
• 56:48
  my AAA appearances and definitely not talk about my ERA
• 56:50
  and AAA. It's probably 6 to 8, maybe 10,
• 56:54
  and the era is about the same as.
• 56:57
  That's what I was about to say. Well, you have more AAA
• 56:59
  appearances than me so I can't comment on any of you've.
• 57:03
  Given up less home runs in AAA than I have though, SO or even.
• 57:06
  On less pitches. Way more efficient.
• 57:08
  That's fair. Okay, so another a possible
• 57:14
  question for you that I I thought was a good point was how
• 57:18
  can we make a strength more available with these guys being
• 57:21
  bullpen managers mostly it seemed like that was a lot of
• 57:25
  the roles that was discussed here was so often we we talked
• 57:30
  about I guess in the performance training setting is how do we
• 57:34
  mitigate A weakness or how do we improve upon someone weakness.
• 57:38
  But as these guys are managing pitchers in game, it's about how
• 57:43
  how do we keep them as good as possible, as long as possible,
• 57:47
  as often as possible. Yeah, I think a lot of that
• 57:50
  comes down to preparation before the season.
• 57:52
  Even the thing the thing Bode mentioned, you know, like
• 57:55
  knowing that there's a lot more room to go down then go up,
• 57:57
  especially in season really simplifying guys routines.
• 58:01
  We don't have to solve the world's problems every single
• 58:02
  day before the game. Like the goal is to be ready for
• 58:05
  the game. And so obviously that's going to
• 58:07
  take a little bit of structure and that's going to take a
• 58:09
  little bit of planning out and intentionality.
• 58:12
  But like, I do think that's at the end of the day, the name of
• 58:14
  the game is like simplify your routines.
• 58:16
  Know what you need to know, Know the one thing you need to do to
• 58:19
  like be your best and go out there and be your best.
• 58:22
  The offseason is the time that you can really make improvements
• 58:24
  or changes. If you feel like I was a French
• 58:25
  big leaguer and I wasn't quite good enough and like, I don't
• 58:28
  really need to like, I really need to to make some of these
• 58:30
  changes or like a high level minor league guy that like has
• 58:32
  never broken through same thing. But like in season, especially
• 58:35
  if your guy who has a job and you're doing all right at your
• 58:37
  job, like keep things simple, go out there and execute.
• 58:40
  And I think that's, I think that's the the best way in my
• 58:42
  opinion. Along those same lines, in a
• 58:45
  sense, I have another item that I wrote down which was do not
• 58:50
  ask an athlete to do something at the highest level that they
• 58:55
  haven't done in their preparation, which is huge.
• 58:58
  I think that I think this context of this was asking God
• 59:00
  to go back-to-back, if I'm not mistaken, and we see that right
• 59:04
  a lot. I've, I've seen organizations
• 59:07
  that I may or may not have been a part of, you know, call guys
• 59:10
  up to the big leagues and that guy's maybe gone back-to-back
• 59:13
  once in AAA before getting called up because that's OK.
• 59:16
  Let's go. Let's have him go back-to-back
• 59:17
  and we'll call him off. He does well and then
• 59:19
  immediately goes three games out of four when he's up there or
• 59:21
  like 4 games out of five or, you know, five games out of seven.
• 59:25
  And it's like, this is not anything close to what his
• 59:28
  workload was in the minors. There's a there's an old article
• 59:30
  by JJ Cooper in some some some publication, I don't remember
• 59:33
  which one, but he talked about how college relievers don't
• 59:37
  always pan out. And his hypothesis was that
• 59:41
  because college relievers are used in a very big league way,
• 59:45
  right? Like there's a lot of times they
• 59:46
  go back-to-back. They go all they go three games
• 59:48
  in a row on a weekend. They have these really, really
• 59:50
  high frequency appearances. They're going, they're going
• 59:52
  very often low, low breaks, short breaks in between.
• 59:56
  And then they go to the professional baseball and
• 59:58
  they're thrown once a week, maybe twice a week, right.
• 1:00:00
  But like they're never going back-to-back.
• 1:00:02
  And you're basically. You're you're, you're decreasing
• 1:00:05
  the guy's fitness because he's no longer built up to the same
• 1:00:07
  level of frequency demand as he was previously.
• 1:00:09
  And then they go back to the big leagues and now suddenly you
• 1:00:12
  have them built back up to this crazy frequency demand.
• 1:00:14
  And so I would like to see teams be a little bit more thoughtful
• 1:00:17
  and intentional about how they how they progress those things.
• 1:00:19
  The Nationals did this this year with Kyle Finnegan, where he
• 1:00:21
  didn't go back-to-back once in spring training.
• 1:00:24
  And then he went I think three games in a row, like the first
• 1:00:27
  week of the season. And on his third appearance, he
• 1:00:30
  went like 2 innings, which he never did all spring.
• 1:00:32
  So not only were they increasing his frequency demand, they were
• 1:00:35
  also increasing his his Max volume on a single day demand
• 1:00:38
  without anything in between, which I think was a little bit
• 1:00:41
  short sighted personally. He obviously ended up being OK.
• 1:00:44
  He got traded to the Tigers. I think he just resigned with
• 1:00:46
  the Tigers. So he's, he luckily was, was was
• 1:00:49
  fine. But I just don't think that's
• 1:00:51
  even outside of an injury risk perspective.
• 1:00:53
  I don't think that's the way you maximize a guy's performance
• 1:00:55
  because there's this mental component of it too, especially
• 1:00:57
  guy who's just getting called up to the majors.
• 1:00:58
  Right, which is a good segue to another.
• 1:01:03
  I think this is an actual quote, this time from Drew French.
• 1:01:08
  Use workload as a guide, not as gospel.
• 1:01:10
  I thought that was phrased beautifully.
• 1:01:12
  Yes, in the development setting, utilizing workload, maybe not
• 1:01:18
  exactly to AT, but as your guiding light can be extremely
• 1:01:24
  helpful and extremely beneficial because it does let you know
• 1:01:28
  what you're actually prepared for, how much you can push on a
• 1:01:30
  given day. But then when it comes time to
• 1:01:33
  win a game, you have to trust what you did on the development
• 1:01:36
  side in that you did enough to prepare yourself for the
• 1:01:40
  competition at hand. 100% and maybe in season in the dog days
• 1:01:45
  of summer. Taking the risk of pushing a guy
• 1:01:48
  back-to-back is not worth it versus if you're trying to win a
• 1:01:53
  Pennant, you're trying to gain a wild card spot in late
• 1:01:56
  September, maybe it's worth it to go back-to-back to back
• 1:01:59
  because if you're the best talent available for your team,
• 1:02:03
  you should be out there. Like at the end of the day, we
• 1:02:06
  are playing baseball to play baseball, not to have the most
• 1:02:10
  beneficial, beneficial ACWI. Completely agree from the
• 1:02:14
  player's perspective. Right?
• 1:02:15
  There's this Like I'm never, if I'm on the mount and I had a 1.2
• 1:02:19
  work acwr before the game, I don't give a shit.
• 1:02:21
  I'm going out there and I'm going to like execute as much as
• 1:02:23
  I can and ask to stay in the game as long as I possibly can,
• 1:02:26
  right? It's especially from a player's
• 1:02:28
  mentality perspective. I think that's irrelevant
• 1:02:31
  strictly speaking, from a team perspective, I think teams would
• 1:02:33
  be better off basically, you know, if they know that they're
• 1:02:37
  going to need to use a guy three times in a row in the postseason
• 1:02:40
  and he hasn't done it all season, Well, I'm assuming you
• 1:02:42
  want him to be good in the postseason when he does it three
• 1:02:44
  times in a row. There's this like fascinating
• 1:02:47
  concept of like that I've been thinking a lot about, which is
• 1:02:49
  like sacrificing some short term value to optimize for a long
• 1:02:54
  term value. Think of it like, yeah, maybe my
• 1:02:56
  cutter is not my best pitch, but throwing my cutter sets up my
• 1:02:59
  sweeper. So I'm going to throw my cutter
• 1:03:01
  and it's not my best pitch, so I'm not going to have the best
• 1:03:05
  result on that pitch always, but it makes my my next pitch so
• 1:03:08
  much better. And so I think teams could view
• 1:03:10
  workload building up reliever similarly, where it's like, I
• 1:03:12
  know I'm going to have to use this guy three times in the
• 1:03:14
  postseason. Let's give him a three games in
• 1:03:16
  a row appearance in the regular season.
• 1:03:18
  We can, you know, give him two days off after make sure he
• 1:03:20
  recovers. Guys aren't going to be able to
• 1:03:22
  perform their best when it's their first time ever
• 1:03:23
  experiencing that in the postseason sense.
• 1:03:24
  And I completely agree. That's what you should be
• 1:03:26
  optimizing for is how do we what, what are guys going to
• 1:03:29
  need to do for our team when the games matter the most, which is
• 1:03:32
  playoffs and World Series? This is probably a great time to
• 1:03:34
  plug your first appearance on The Layback Podcast as you
• 1:03:39
  introduce that topic to the masses of making sure your
• 1:03:43
  athletes are prepared for their potential demands.
• 1:03:46
  And if you expect a guy to go back-to-back to back in the
• 1:03:50
  playoffs, there should probably be a time during the season that
• 1:03:53
  you do that. And if you do that, then maybe
• 1:03:56
  that afterwards, you give him four days to recover or you give
• 1:04:01
  him an extended recovery on the back end.
• 1:04:03
  You don't need to immediately simulate postseason environments
• 1:04:06
  where you go back-to-back to back, take one day off and then
• 1:04:09
  pitch again. You can extend the recovery on
• 1:04:12
  the backside. You can let a guy know two weeks
• 1:04:15
  ahead of time, a month ahead of time.
• 1:04:18
  Hey, on July 11th, you are going to go back-to-back for the first
• 1:04:21
  time and then 12th. Then we're going to take
• 1:04:24
  whatever, a month in between. And then in August we're going
• 1:04:28
  to go back-to-back to back for the first time.
• 1:04:31
  And then maybe we're going to do it again in two weeks.
• 1:04:34
  And then at that time when the playoffs roll around, you're
• 1:04:36
  prepared. You've done it before.
• 1:04:38
  You know how your body's going to respond to it.
• 1:04:40
  So the earlier you start guys like earlier in spring training,
• 1:04:43
  the easier you have, the easier you easier this transition is,
• 1:04:46
  right? Like if you have a guy go
• 1:04:47
  back-to-back for the first time in spring training when the
• 1:04:49
  games don't matter and they can take 4 games off after like, OK,
• 1:04:52
  now you go, now you're doing the regular season.
• 1:04:53
  It's kind of just part of the routine at that point, yeah.
• 1:04:55
  Going back to a concept you talked on Part 1 of the review
• 1:04:59
  is at the end of the day stress is stress.
• 1:05:01
  So if yes, the the physical stress of doing a back-to-back
• 1:05:07
  might be increased, but the mental stress of doing it during
• 1:05:10
  spring training has significantly decreased.
• 1:05:14
  So it doesn't matter. Maybe if your body is a little
• 1:05:18
  less prepared to do it in mid March, you might respond better
• 1:05:23
  because at the end of the day, your result doesn't matter.
• 1:05:26
  The team just wants to see that you went out there and you threw
• 1:05:29
  one inning on back-to-back days. Yeah, no, I agree.
• 1:05:32
  I think it's, I think it's, I think it's important concept and
• 1:05:35
  I know some of the guys on the panel talked about trying to get
• 1:05:37
  guys to do that in spring training as well to kind of ease
• 1:05:40
  out this curve. To round out this discussion, I
• 1:05:44
  want to say an additional thank you to the four guys on the
• 1:05:49
  panel for taking a question that I asked in the Q&A segment,
• 1:05:53
  which was what did they feel was something that they royally
• 1:05:57
  messed up at some point in their career and what did they
• 1:06:01
  ultimately learn from it? And Miller mentioned being
• 1:06:04
  prepared for meetings, French mentioned trying to be
• 1:06:08
  supercoach, Graham mentioned withholding information and
• 1:06:13
  potentially altering a players career, and Holt mentioned the
• 1:06:17
  hammer to nail concept. I thought all of these takeaways
• 1:06:22
  were very valuable because every one of us who coaches in any
• 1:06:26
  capacity has definitely found ourselves in these situations.
• 1:06:30
  Either thinking we know more than we really do and thinking
• 1:06:33
  we can wing it. And then all of a sudden we
• 1:06:35
  present as less professional than we really are, thinking
• 1:06:38
  that we can do everything with no help.
• 1:06:40
  And then on the other side of that, probably thinking that we
• 1:06:44
  know nothing. I know Denton McNamee talks
• 1:06:46
  about that a lot is kind of, and I do think it's easy to do when
• 1:06:50
  you're not at a bigwig school, to think that you don't know as
• 1:06:54
  much as the people around you and all of a sudden you start to
• 1:06:57
  doubt the amount of knowledge that you really have and maybe
• 1:07:01
  you overly rely on others. At that point, I thought
• 1:07:05
  Graham's message really hit home.
• 1:07:07
  Like it hurt a little bit, like it tugged on my heartstrings as
• 1:07:11
  he wrestled with how was he going to share information with
• 1:07:15
  a player that was potentially on the verge of release.
• 1:07:18
  And you could tell it even still eats at him today.
• 1:07:21
  As the player ended up being released as they tried to decide
• 1:07:25
  what route are they going to go in that players rehab and his
• 1:07:28
  development and then basically trying to fix every single guy
• 1:07:34
  with the same cue where every single person is their own
• 1:07:37
  individual at the end of the day.
• 1:07:39
  Yeah, no, great summary. And I, I, I really enjoyed
• 1:07:41
  hearing those guys talk, especially guys you know, do it
• 1:07:43
  at the highest level and it was really cool.
• 1:07:45
  And with that, we ran into The Afters that night.
• 1:07:49
  I think that that was a late night on my end.
• 1:07:52
  I think Daryl and I might have been out until midnight.
• 1:07:55
  I was talking with Rhodes and Eric Suplee of USF going over
• 1:08:00
  the greatest concert venues we've ever been to and best
• 1:08:05
  musical acts, so it was some very baseball heavy
• 1:08:09
  conversation. Yeah, that was great.
• 1:08:11
  It was I really felt good. Do you have a very, very quick?
• 1:08:16
  Top top top concert venue, top music like you ever saw.
• 1:08:19
  We were going with most unique possible.
• 1:08:21
  So the the most unique one that I ever saw was actually T Pain
• 1:08:26
  at Eckerd College. He some yeah, he somehow agreed
• 1:08:31
  to perform at Eckerd when I was there.
• 1:08:33
  And the reason it was so unique to me is he brought out his beat
• 1:08:37
  pad and he made like he made his own beats on stage as part of
• 1:08:44
  the concert so and then rapped over it or sang over it.
• 1:08:49
  So just seeing that live was not something I ever expected,
• 1:08:53
  especially at my small little liberal arts school in Saint
• 1:08:56
  Pete, Florida. That's a great answer.
• 1:08:58
  Thank you. And then Rhodes and Supley both
• 1:09:01
  said like 5 Finger Death Punch or 9 Inch Nails or did some
• 1:09:06
  scary rock music that I have not really dabbled into.
• 1:09:10
  But with that, we can move on to Casey Mulholland in Winning with
• 1:09:14
  Workload. I think Part 2 for him as he did
• 1:09:18
  Part 1 of Winning with Workload the year prior.
• 1:09:20
  And as acute to chronic workload ratio is near and dear to both
• 1:09:24
  of our hearts. Josh, I will hand this one back
• 1:09:26
  to you to get things started. Yeah, there's a lot we can go
• 1:09:29
  into here. I'll probably keep it pretty
• 1:09:30
  high level, at least at first. There are basically 2 main
• 1:09:33
  components to this for like a lot of workload management
• 1:09:35
  thoughts and then a few gaze tracking thoughts as well.
• 1:09:39
  From the workload management perspective, some of my biggest
• 1:09:42
  takeaways were kind of surrounded this idea of of on
• 1:09:45
  ramps. And I think on ramps have
• 1:09:48
  traditionally been kind of cookie cutter depending on where
• 1:09:51
  you go, right? It's like, OK, you know, you
• 1:09:53
  start with a couple recovery days and you build up to your
• 1:09:56
  hybrid V days and you build up to your hybrid A days and you
• 1:09:58
  build up to your to your VLA days.
• 1:09:59
  And I think something Casey mentioned, which makes sense is
• 1:10:04
  that a high schooler and Geraldus Chapman have probably
• 1:10:07
  very different places where they can start their on ramp safely.
• 1:10:10
  And so kind of this idea of like when you think about an on ramp,
• 1:10:13
  the entire purpose of an on ramp is getting you to season fitness
• 1:10:16
  or like a high enough level of fitness that you can throw
• 1:10:19
  bullpens and, and get high level training in.
• 1:10:21
  And so if we can speed that process up safely, that'd be
• 1:10:24
  fantastic. Something he talked about was
• 1:10:26
  basically building a ton of volume early in the in the on
• 1:10:30
  ramp because the intensity is low and especially for higher
• 1:10:34
  level guys, that high level of volume is going to give them a,
• 1:10:38
  a training stimulus for the last thing we want is to like waste
• 1:10:41
  two weeks of the on ramp basically doing what a guy is
• 1:10:44
  already technically like built up to do.
• 1:10:47
  His throwing fitness is already at a certain level even after a
• 1:10:49
  certain amount of time off. And so like we're basically like
• 1:10:52
  wasting our time like he's not even getting any training
• 1:10:55
  adaptation or training stimulus. So by increasing volume, we can
• 1:10:58
  essentially lead to a training stimulus for this guy, even
• 1:11:02
  though he's taking some time off.
• 1:11:04
  And you can monitor that like with Casey has his own way of
• 1:11:07
  monitoring fatigue. Like we can do it that way.
• 1:11:09
  But basically like building up this this volume early, which I
• 1:11:12
  think is a pretty interesting idea, which would allow for a
• 1:11:14
  faster on ramp and like building higher chronic workloads much,
• 1:11:17
  much quicker and then kind of using.
• 1:11:20
  Well, this isn't something he talked about his presentation,
• 1:11:22
  but him and I have talked about previously is, is one way you
• 1:11:25
  can do this is through like 2A days early in the offseason,
• 1:11:27
  which I did earlier this offseason.
• 1:11:28
  So basically kind of going back to the Bolognese idea, shorter,
• 1:11:32
  shorter sessions with a higher level of focus, doing 2 throwing
• 1:11:35
  sessions earlier in an offseason to build a lot of volume without
• 1:11:37
  building a lot of intensity or fatigue.
• 1:11:39
  This other idea you talk about is like this idea of like
• 1:11:40
  padding the chronic workload. And so the first week of a, of
• 1:11:44
  an on ramp, we can basically the reason we're doing that is the
• 1:11:46
  first week is because we're assuming that that is within
• 1:11:49
  that guy's fitness capabilities. You can assume that the
• 1:11:51
  workloads of that first week are his chronic workload.
• 1:11:54
  We can, we can, you know, maybe push the envelope a little bit
• 1:11:56
  more with volume. We can kind of build the guys up
• 1:11:59
  a little bit quicker. There's a lot of ideas here that
• 1:12:01
  I've written down deloading into a Velo phase, which was an
• 1:12:04
  interesting one, which is basically getting a lot of
• 1:12:06
  volume up for guys early. And then in a Velo phase,
• 1:12:10
  because they're spiking intensity newly, we can
• 1:12:13
  basically decrease the volume because we know that a guy has
• 1:12:16
  built up so much capacity through these really high volume
• 1:12:19
  sessions. So this is kind of in contrast
• 1:12:20
  to some way Velo days have been done historically, which is
• 1:12:23
  like, okay, I have an on ramp which is some level of intensity
• 1:12:26
  and volume. Then my next phase is a little
• 1:12:29
  bit higher volume and intensity and then my vital phase is even
• 1:12:31
  higher volume and intensity. So we're basically progressing
• 1:12:33
  multiple variables at once, which is not ideal for both
• 1:12:35
  performance and for fatigue purposes.
• 1:12:37
  Like I said, a lot of interesting stuff here talked
• 1:12:39
  about ACWR is more meaningful during on ramps rather than
• 1:12:43
  rather than like fully built up athletes where maybe fatigue
• 1:12:45
  monitoring might be a little bit a little bit better.
• 1:12:47
  He also talked a little bit with me about how to quantify throw
• 1:12:51
  density to prepare guys for the pitch clock, which I thought was
• 1:12:53
  interesting. And then if a guy needs, you
• 1:12:58
  know, build up much quicker than the schedule allows, he's like,
• 1:13:01
  let's, let's, let's spike those those workloads very early on
• 1:13:05
  when volume and intensity are the lowest so we can get a guy
• 1:13:07
  built up. So it was a lot of interesting
• 1:13:09
  kind of tidbits. He also talked about gauge
• 1:13:12
  tracking and something I I think some of us panelists are also
• 1:13:16
  talking about some of these ideas.
• 1:13:17
  But I think Casey talked about it in terms of how indoor
• 1:13:20
  training environments might potentially lead to like these
• 1:13:22
  non game like vision patterns and thus less transfer of
• 1:13:25
  training. And he was able to to mitigate
• 1:13:27
  this somewhat by having different targets and gamifying
• 1:13:30
  practice in a way where guys had to maintain focus on the task at
• 1:13:34
  hand. And he thinks that might lead
• 1:13:36
  to, you know, potentially higher transfer of training and yeah,
• 1:13:39
  just just just better focus and attentionality during their
• 1:13:42
  training sessions. And then finally, a kind of
• 1:13:44
  these ideas of like where my mind went on some of this gauge
• 1:13:47
  tracking stuff is quantifying, almost quantifying this idea of
• 1:13:51
  like you, you hear this a lot nowadays like that external cues
• 1:13:54
  are better than internal cues. And I think what we would find
• 1:13:56
  is probably that when you externally cue a guy, his gaze
• 1:13:59
  patterns, they they look more similar to their in game
• 1:14:02
  patterns rather than these internal cues where guys are
• 1:14:04
  probably like looking all over the place because they're
• 1:14:07
  thinking internally rather than actually accomplishing the task
• 1:14:09
  at hand. So I know that's a lot, but
• 1:14:11
  overall it's just a very well done presentation and a lot of
• 1:14:13
  thought provoking stuff for me is someone who cares a lot about
• 1:14:15
  workload as ways that, you know, potentially find an edge in in
• 1:14:19
  on ramps or or progressing throughout the season.
• 1:14:22
  So that was good stuff. As we continue to build out our
• 1:14:24
  own throwing programs associated with Flexpro Grip, specifically
• 1:14:29
  on the rehab side, one of the things that I was taking into
• 1:14:32
  consideration and really mulling.
• 1:14:34
  Over was the I don't. Want to say the opposing side to
• 1:14:39
  adding significant volume early on as you had mentioned and it's
• 1:14:44
  even why I was starting to shoot my hand up right there because I
• 1:14:47
  wanted to try to get it with the timing as you were going over
• 1:14:51
  it. So I'm going to try to reset the
• 1:14:52
  stage of where about that. Nah, don't worry about it.
• 1:14:55
  You were. Clearly my gaze patterns were
• 1:14:57
  all over the place because I did not see you're indoors, so
• 1:15:00
  you're indoor. So all right, we need, we need
• 1:15:02
  to gamify this podcast a little. Bit we do, I'll work on that in
• 1:15:05
  the future. I'll try to get some more flash
• 1:15:07
  and also I have my background blurred so if I didn't put my
• 1:15:10
  hand up in the right place it'd probably look.
• 1:15:12
  Good. I'm gonna, I'm gonna blame you
• 1:15:13
  on this one. It could never be my fault.
• 1:15:16
  It shouldn't be. That's 100% my fault.
• 1:15:19
  I'm the host. So ultimately it falls on me at
• 1:15:21
  the end of the day. But as we reset the stage in
• 1:15:25
  this early parts of the throwing program where we know a higher
• 1:15:30
  level athlete can ultimately get away with more, Not only can
• 1:15:34
  they get away with more volume. I also look at this on the other
• 1:15:38
  side of the coin, which is they can get away with a little bit
• 1:15:41
  more Velo at the start. And generally they have a higher
• 1:15:45
  level of preparedness, not just for work capacity as we can kind
• 1:15:50
  of call this, but also force output or force expression.
• 1:15:56
  And if we know the athlete can naturally express more force,
• 1:16:00
  that basically means they can throw harder with less risk
• 1:16:04
  associated. And if that's the case, I think
• 1:16:08
  it also begs the discussion for how much are we waiting an
• 1:16:11
  individual throw and throw waiting.
• 1:16:15
  Yes, we can get in the weeds on this.
• 1:16:17
  But that really boils down to I, I guess acute to chronic
• 1:16:21
  workload ratio boils down to how do we wait throws and how much
• 1:16:26
  value do we put on a throw at a certain velocity.
• 1:16:30
  And Josh, as you know, the way that we approach this today is
• 1:16:35
  that most things that are trying to gauge acute to chronic
• 1:16:41
  workload or assessing the value of a throw, we think they are
• 1:16:45
  over weighting, especially sub Max throws.
• 1:16:49
  As you get closer to Max Velo, everything kind of converges on
• 1:16:54
  the same thing and one throw truly does equal 1 throw.
• 1:16:57
  At least that's maybe maybe we could get even more nuanced of
• 1:17:02
  if you reach a new peak Velo, maybe that's more than one
• 1:17:06
  throw. And now my mind is starting to
• 1:17:08
  turn of something that we could talk about in the new
• 1:17:11
  exploration of baseball and throw waiting and then
• 1:17:15
  eventually return to throw programs.
• 1:17:17
  But I, I just wanted to address that of saying, yes, not only
• 1:17:21
  can Aroldis Chapman probably throw more frequently than your
• 1:17:24
  local little Leaguer, but he can also start by throwing
• 1:17:27
  significantly harder. And I don't just mean at the
• 1:17:31
  same percentage of his Max Velo. Like, not only can the little
• 1:17:35
  Leaguer who maxes out at 75 mph have to start his throwing
• 1:17:40
  program at 42, and if that is 55%, then Chapman also has to
• 1:17:45
  start his throwing program at 55 mph because he can throw 100 mph
• 1:17:52
  plus. Let's face it, Chapman could
• 1:17:54
  pick up a ball today in the middle of the offseason if he
• 1:17:58
  hasn't picked up a ball yet, throw it 90 mph and be
• 1:18:01
  completely fine. Is that fully recommended?
• 1:18:03
  Probably not. Could he get away with it and be
• 1:18:06
  100% healthy? Yeah, no doubt in my mind he
• 1:18:09
  would be fine with that. So I, I do think that is worth
• 1:18:12
  taking into consideration early on in these programs that it is
• 1:18:17
  very important to recognize what you said.
• 1:18:19
  You probably don't want to be adjusting both dials at the same
• 1:18:22
  time, volume and intensity, but I wouldn't be as scared to peak
• 1:18:29
  velocity or I guess put a little bit more emphasis on velocity
• 1:18:33
  early on. Or on the other hand, I wouldn't
• 1:18:36
  be concerned to push volume a little bit early on.
• 1:18:40
  I would just be careful about doing both at the same time.
• 1:18:43
  There's a lot here that's really, really, I feel like I
• 1:18:45
  could dive into a million different things here.
• 1:18:47
  So let's start with one, which is that based on what we know
• 1:18:49
  about the way the UCL works during the throw, right?
• 1:18:52
  Like the dynamic stabilizers of the of the forearm or the
• 1:18:55
  primary supporters during the primary contributors of varus
• 1:18:58
  torque during the throw to help counteract the valgus torque
• 1:19:00
  experience during the throat, which is entirely the reason
• 1:19:02
  flex program exists, right? Like these dynamic stabilizers
• 1:19:04
  need to be strong. And so when we talk about and so
• 1:19:07
  I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physical therapist.
• 1:19:09
  So I don't know the exact perfect way to do this here.
• 1:19:12
  But. Especially with a new ligament,
• 1:19:15
  what we care about probably is keeping the load on that
• 1:19:17
  ligament either as low or as like or nonexistent as possible.
• 1:19:22
  And so I think that should almost be the limiting factor of
• 1:19:24
  an early return to throw. And we don't really know what
• 1:19:27
  that level is, right. Like, is it possible that after
• 1:19:31
  not throwing for six months that I'm no longer my brain is no
• 1:19:34
  longer as coordinated as it once was and so now a 50% throw
• 1:19:38
  actually offloads more torque onto the UCL than it previously
• 1:19:41
  see one of? Because I like haven't thrown a
• 1:19:44
  50% throw so long. That's completely possible.
• 1:19:46
  But I think it's like in theory, what we want to find a proxy for
• 1:19:49
  is like UCL load, not valgus torque.
• 1:19:53
  So valgus torque. Like if you're throwing with 50
• 1:19:56
  valgus torque versus 25 valgus torque, but the dynamic
• 1:19:59
  stabilizers are strong enough to handle all of that.
• 1:20:01
  Well, like the UCL, even a brand new UCL is still not
• 1:20:05
  experiencing any of that torque. And it probably doesn't really
• 1:20:07
  make a difference like which of those throws you make, but we
• 1:20:10
  actually care about what we actually care about, which is
• 1:20:12
  impossible to actually know for sure.
• 1:20:14
  Is how much of that torque is being offloaded onto the actual
• 1:20:17
  brand new ligament in return to throw.
• 1:20:19
  And I completely agree with you. So one of the big problems with
• 1:20:22
  ACWR is that what you define as a workload unit is extremely
• 1:20:26
  important. So some people, there's been a
• 1:20:28
  lot of research that that looks at like ACWR, but it's like year
• 1:20:32
  over year. And it's like, how many innings
• 1:20:34
  did this guy throw versus last year?
• 1:20:36
  Oh, we threw 20% more innings than last year.
• 1:20:39
  Well, any could be different lengths, right?
• 1:20:41
  Like it doesn't consider midweek bullpens.
• 1:20:43
  It doesn't consider all the other throwing guy does.
• 1:20:44
  So but then even if you're considering every single throw a
• 1:20:47
  guy makes, including his recovery days, including his
• 1:20:50
  pregame throwing, including his bullpens, there's still this
• 1:20:53
  question of, OK, what is a workload unit?
• 1:20:56
  And so if you just say, let's scale it primarily based on
• 1:20:59
  torque value or whatever. So 100 Newton meter torque throw
• 1:21:03
  equals a 50 = 250 Newton meter Newton meter torque throws.
• 1:21:07
  Well, is that true that two half effort throws are as stressful
• 1:21:11
  as a single Max effort throw? I think anybody who has like
• 1:21:15
  thrown BP, right, like knows that's not true.
• 1:21:18
  Like you can throw all day, maybe not all day, but it's like
• 1:21:20
  you can throw substantially more of those then you can, you know,
• 1:21:23
  a full Max effort bullpen as hard as you can.
• 1:21:26
  And so it's extremely important to kind of dial this in and it's
• 1:21:28
  really, really hard. And the way pulse does it is it
• 1:21:33
  uses an exponent. So torque gets raised to the
• 1:21:35
  1.3. And so a single Max effort throw
• 1:21:38
  equals about 3 half effort throws.
• 1:21:40
  I still think that exponent is way too low.
• 1:21:43
  And so I'm doing some research right now to kind of dial this
• 1:21:45
  in using flex pro grip to kind of quantify fatigue.
• 1:21:48
  My hypothesis is that super sub Max throws are actually like
• 1:21:53
  they actually have a active recovery benefit.
• 1:21:55
  We're actually you're going to be less fatigued after you do
• 1:21:57
  half effort throws or like very, very some actual throws.
• 1:21:59
  That's my hypothesis. Who knows.
• 1:22:01
  But my other hypothesis is that the the curve is going to look
• 1:22:04
  more like a one Rep Max chart for lifting.
• 1:22:08
  And so I'm pulling, I pulled it up right now based on this study
• 1:22:11
  for A1 Rep Max across all exercises, the athlete could
• 1:22:14
  have done 5 reps at 90%, twelve reps at 75% and 26 reps at 50%.
• 1:22:23
  And it keeps getting higher, right 60 reps at 25%.
• 1:22:27
  And so I think that's probably it's, it's going to be
• 1:22:30
  different, right, throwing some ballistic movement.
• 1:22:32
  It's not a it's not as muscular driven, but I think that is
• 1:22:35
  probably more in line with what we would see with throwing where
• 1:22:38
  you could probably do 25 throws at half effort and get the same
• 1:22:41
  level of fatigue as a single Max ever throw.
• 1:22:43
  So hopefully that's something we can dial in as an industry.
• 1:22:46
  That's something that would help make ACWR a little bit more
• 1:22:47
  accurate, a little bit more useful.
• 1:22:49
  But yeah, I think all these points are, are are great.
• 1:22:51
  And there's a really thought provoking presentation by Casey.
• 1:22:54
  You do bring up a tremendous point when you begin to discuss
• 1:22:59
  the strength world here, because we definitely took that into
• 1:23:02
  account as we were building out the Baseball Rehab Network
• 1:23:05
  guidelines and how we value a throw.
• 1:23:09
  But one of the things that we got hung up on that is going to
• 1:23:14
  sound really obvious when I say it, but I don't think is
• 1:23:17
  discussed enough in the baseball world.
• 1:23:19
  Is that what we? Call.
• 1:23:22
  A Max effort throw does not closely resemble Max effort in
• 1:23:28
  the majority of things that we do in the outside world.
• 1:23:32
  So in the weight room, A1 Rep Max bench press or one Rep Max
• 1:23:36
  squat is a true one Rep Max in the sense that if you are really
• 1:23:41
  maxing out, there is largely well over non zero chance that
• 1:23:47
  you're just done for the day and you can't do anything.
• 1:23:52
  I remember the first time in my life I did a true Max out bench
• 1:23:56
  press in four hours later. I could not do a push up.
• 1:24:00
  Like I could not do a single push up.
• 1:24:02
  It was the first time I benched 250 lbs in my life.
• 1:24:04
  I could not do a push up later that day.
• 1:24:06
  And when we think of this in a throwing context, you could
• 1:24:10
  throw the hardest bullet that you have ever thrown in your
• 1:24:13
  entire life in 15 seconds later you could do it again.
• 1:24:17
  Like are you going to PR again? Maybe not.
• 1:24:20
  But if the hardest bullet you've ever thrown in your life is 92
• 1:24:22
  mph, 15 seconds later, there is a really good chance you're
• 1:24:27
  throwing that next pitch at least 90 mph, and you're going
• 1:24:30
  to throw the next pitch the exact same and the same after
• 1:24:34
  that. And then maybe 4 pitches later
• 1:24:36
  UPR again. Like it's so weird to think.
• 1:24:40
  It's very different. Yeah, it's so different.
• 1:24:42
  And you, you mentioned it as ballistically driven.
• 1:24:45
  I, I, I just think that needs to be taken into context and
• 1:24:49
  research more and discussed more.
• 1:24:51
  I'm not saying this is like, whoa, everyone listen to me, I'm
• 1:24:54
  now the expert. But to call pitching a true Max
• 1:24:59
  effort thing, it really isn't because it's repeated bats.
• 1:25:04
  Pitching will always be repeated bouts.
• 1:25:06
  And if that's the case, that that explains why in my opinion
• 1:25:13
  that the value of a throw we're calling anything that's sub Max
• 1:25:19
  effort can't be anywhere close to a equivalent, equivalent to
• 1:25:24
  A1 Rep Max. Knowing that you could probably
• 1:25:27
  throw, you use the bullpen example versus throwing BP, you
• 1:25:31
  could throw a Max effort Velo pen tomorrow.
• 1:25:35
  And if you were, if you were truly throwing a Max effort Velo
• 1:25:39
  pen tomorrow, Josh, how many pitches would that be?
• 1:25:42
  15 to 20. Sure.
• 1:25:44
  Truly, like just at this time in the offseason, I don't know
• 1:25:47
  where you're at in your development schedule.
• 1:25:49
  Yeah, yeah, I could. Yeah, 2025.
• 1:25:52
  All right, So if that's the case, you can make your Max
• 1:25:57
  effort 20 to 25 times on December 29th and you don't need
• 1:26:02
  to throw a competitive pitch. I know you're ramping up for a
• 1:26:04
  pro day. Maybe maybe that's going to be
• 1:26:07
  30 total pitches in your pro day.
• 1:26:10
  I don't know like you don't need to.
• 1:26:12
  There's got to be parallels to like sprinting or jumping.
• 1:26:14
  Yes, I think things are much more similar.
• 1:26:17
  It's it's certainly jumping in my opinion and probably more
• 1:26:20
  broad jumping because there is a little bit of a fatigue
• 1:26:23
  component or more of a fatigue component in my opinion to broad
• 1:26:26
  jumping than there is to vertical.
• 1:26:28
  Jumping, but how do you quantify a 50% effort broad jump?
• 1:26:31
  I guess it's like it's yes, it's still these difficult aspects
• 1:26:34
  of. But like also along those same
• 1:26:37
  lines, I don't think the I don't think a 50% effort throw.
• 1:26:42
  I don't know if that's 26 to 1 like it is in the lifting
• 1:26:47
  example. Yeah, they, I that's why we went
• 1:26:50
  with 15 to one in the baseball rehab network system as of now.
• 1:26:55
  That could change. It very well could.
• 1:26:57
  But at this point I really almost feel that we're better
• 1:27:01
  off in this realm, getting subjective feedback from people
• 1:27:05
  who live it every single day, then trying to go off of some
• 1:27:12
  like bone density study to predict where people are going
• 1:27:16
  to fatigue. Yeah, bad.
• 1:27:18
  Bad data is worse than no data, right?
• 1:27:20
  Like it's Yeah, you got to. If your models are based on
• 1:27:23
  these faulty assumptions, they might just not be as useful as.
• 1:27:26
  In this realm, I would rather talk to 100 people in your shoes
• 1:27:31
  that throw a ball for a living every single day of their life
• 1:27:34
  and try to understand where those athletes feel like they
• 1:27:39
  break down. And that would probably give us
• 1:27:41
  a better look into fatigue rates and throwing values for the
• 1:27:47
  people that we care about. Let's face it, we care about
• 1:27:49
  this most for pitchers, so why wouldn't we want to better
• 1:27:53
  understand how pitchers are experiencing this instead of
• 1:27:57
  looking at research from NASA or research from the world of
• 1:28:01
  rugby? Yeah, I agree somewhat.
• 1:28:04
  I think there's my whole thing is trying to find a way to
• 1:28:06
  quantify some of these subjective feelings, right?
• 1:28:08
  Like how do you quantify the level of fatigue?
• 1:28:10
  And I think flex programs the way we can do that.
• 1:28:12
  And so it's interesting there's no easy answers and there's a
• 1:28:14
  reason injuries haven't been solved yet.
• 1:28:16
  So re anchoring this now back to Caseys discussion after we went
• 1:28:20
  on that long tangent. Casey, thank you for opening up
• 1:28:23
  the door for Hedgeka and I to go off on that little tangent
• 1:28:26
  there. But that goes to what he
• 1:28:28
  discussed of variable regulation.
• 1:28:30
  And I know you mentioned this Josh, in your review, as you
• 1:28:34
  said, once we get to a point where we are built up fatigue
• 1:28:37
  management or readiness testing is probably more valuable than
• 1:28:42
  the actual ACWR then an athlete might be working off of.
• 1:28:47
  And I apologize if I phrase that slightly wrong, but where Casey
• 1:28:52
  was working towards was variable regulation as I mentioned, which
• 1:28:56
  to him is a CW plus some sort of strength testing.
• 1:29:01
  So how do we actually assess the level of preparedness of the
• 1:29:05
  soft tissue? So incorporating things like
• 1:29:07
  shoulder dynamometry, flex pro grip assessments, assessing what
• 1:29:11
  musculature can do for you, specifically in the musculature
• 1:29:16
  that is best positioned and prepared to protect you during
• 1:29:21
  the thrill. Yep, I agree.
• 1:29:23
  Yeah, shoulder and elbow I think and obviously flex program, I
• 1:29:26
  think it's the best way to actually do with the elbow
• 1:29:27
  because that's the the most relevant muscles.
• 1:29:30
  I another piece I would add here, and maybe this is
• 1:29:33
  something more for you, Josh, to put in your notes.
• 1:29:36
  I do think it would be interesting to look at some sort
• 1:29:40
  of isorotational pull and assess that for pitchers to see where
• 1:29:45
  that fatigues. Granted, I know it's trunk, you
• 1:29:48
  can get a lot more power through the trunk.
• 1:29:51
  There's more musculature involved in that and it's more
• 1:29:54
  of a compound movement knowing that you're linking the lower
• 1:29:58
  body and upper body. So I would think fatigue rates
• 1:30:01
  would probably be a bit slower than what would see in the
• 1:30:04
  forearm. But if we're really going to map
• 1:30:06
  out a full strength testing gamut for this variable
• 1:30:11
  regulation, I would probably want that included.
• 1:30:14
  I wonder. If if that would probably
• 1:30:16
  correlate pretty highly with just like a jump readiness
• 1:30:18
  honestly because it's it's probably more CNS fatigue rather
• 1:30:20
  than muscular fatigue at that point.
• 1:30:23
  Potentially, like I said, you would know better than me.
• 1:30:25
  I don't I don't fully know but that's just my my hunch there.
• 1:30:28
  But I I could be wrong on that. So we'll add it to future
• 1:30:32
  research to be done. There we go.
• 1:30:33
  Which then leads us to, I guess, a little bit of research that
• 1:30:37
  has been done up at Vilo U with Nick Serio in the precision
• 1:30:41
  model is what he called it. So I can do a quick intro here
• 1:30:45
  before dishing it off to you. But Nick Serio, the founder,
• 1:30:49
  president and I guess lead coach, maybe Doctor Nick, and I
• 1:30:54
  apologize if I added a faulty title to your description, but
• 1:31:00
  I'm sure lead coach works just fine.
• 1:31:02
  Nick Syria was AD Three pitcher himself.
• 1:31:05
  He was a sidearm, stubby guy. Josh, I don't know if you knew
• 1:31:08
  that, but all over the place. Yeah, he said.
• 1:31:10
  He had to be, otherwise his career was going to end pretty
• 1:31:13
  quickly. Yeah, it's yeah.
• 1:31:15
  I feel him on that. But Nick's been running below
• 1:31:18
  you for a while. And one of the things that they
• 1:31:20
  have been looking at and what he presented on was kind of their
• 1:31:25
  take on what's kind of been popularized in our training
• 1:31:30
  world of developing a formula to better predict where an
• 1:31:33
  athlete's at, where they stand today, and how can we get them
• 1:31:38
  where we want them to go. I'll throw a couple data points
• 1:31:41
  at you just because Nick mentioned them.
• 1:31:44
  He said that their model at a .916 correlation to velocity and
• 1:31:48
  it explained 85% of total variance, meaning that the their
• 1:31:53
  system was relatively foolproof. Now I I will toss in there that
• 1:32:01
  a lot of this was probably addressed by the kneeling third.
• 1:32:05
  Was it kneeling? Throw that.
• 1:32:07
  Which as he, as he mentioned as well, he said that was the high
• 1:32:09
  school by far. By far, yes.
• 1:32:11
  And yeah, I wasn't trying to say this as like me poking holes of
• 1:32:14
  like, well, Nick could just boil it down to the kneeling throw.
• 1:32:18
  Nick is smart enough to recognize that the kneeling
• 1:32:22
  throw is without a doubt going to be the greatest predictor of
• 1:32:24
  velocity. But they know there's more to
• 1:32:26
  velocity and I guess longevity of a player than just throwing
• 1:32:31
  velocity, especially during a kneeling throw.
• 1:32:34
  There's also going to be different Med ball movements to,
• 1:32:37
  to assess rotational capabilities of the force plate
• 1:32:41
  jumps to assess how you produce force, in what manner you do it,
• 1:32:46
  not just how much, but in what manner.
• 1:32:48
  So then they, they started bucketing guys from there.
• 1:32:50
  So I, I did find this approach to problem solving very
• 1:32:55
  interesting. I think everybody is always
• 1:32:57
  looking for somewhat of a hack to the system.
• 1:33:01
  And it's not like I'm trying to disparage this presentation or
• 1:33:04
  what Nick is doing by saying that they created a hack to the
• 1:33:08
  system. I think they did what we all
• 1:33:10
  chase in the science of athlete performance.
• 1:33:14
  What can we minimally do to assess an athlete, address the
• 1:33:19
  dials to turn them a certain direction, to create the
• 1:33:23
  greatest potential for output possible, and then see what this
• 1:33:27
  leads to and Nick's presentation modeled perfectly how they do
• 1:33:32
  this at below. Yes, I'll go through the main
• 1:33:35
  categories he goes through. So there's 4 main categories.
• 1:33:37
  Energy potential is what they call the first one.
• 1:33:39
  And so it's based on an athlete's height and weight and
• 1:33:43
  their height to weight ratio, energy production.
• 1:33:45
  What's the second one, which is based on the Max vertical force
• 1:33:48
  from an IMTP pole? IMTP pole?
• 1:33:50
  It's like pin number or ATM machine.
• 1:33:52
  Sorry about that. That's a crime against acronyms
• 1:33:55
  right there. IMTP Max peak power from the CMG
• 1:33:59
  and then both as related to the body weight.
• 1:34:01
  And then in this category, they kind of profiled athletes as
• 1:34:03
  either force reliant or power reliant, depending on what
• 1:34:06
  percent of their their total came from the IMTP versus the
• 1:34:08
  CMJ. There's also what they called
• 1:34:10
  energy transfer. So this is kind of the scale
• 1:34:11
  component, which is a 1 LB Med ball throw, a 2 LB Med ball
• 1:34:14
  throw, and then a one leg kneeling throw, which obviously
• 1:34:16
  you said the kneeling throw is the highest correlate to
• 1:34:18
  velocity on its own, which makes sense.
• 1:34:20
  You know, obviously being able to throw hard is correlated with
• 1:34:22
  being able to throw hard, but it's, this is their, their
• 1:34:24
  attempt at quantifying the skill component of the throw.
• 1:34:27
  And then energy interference, which is arm, arm care, shoulder
• 1:34:30
  strength, and then the strength relatives of the body weight,
• 1:34:32
  which is kind of like a, a robustness rating or some kind
• 1:34:36
  of like, how much are you actually prepared to handle
• 1:34:37
  this? And so overall, I think it's
• 1:34:39
  like, I think it's a well like, it's a very well thought out
• 1:34:43
  like approach to kind of understanding where a guy's
• 1:34:46
  lowest hanging fruits are. And so like a guy like, is he
• 1:34:48
  able to produce a lot of force? But he can't throw really hard
• 1:34:52
  on the kneeling throw or like he weighs 140 lbs, right?
• 1:34:55
  Like all these things, it kind of gives you an idea of where to
• 1:34:58
  like where the guys lowest hanging fruit art, which is a
• 1:35:00
  good, which is I think a good process.
• 1:35:02
  What I would like to see is like a little bit better, I don't
• 1:35:07
  know if better is right by saying it, but a little bit more
• 1:35:08
  involved quantification of the skill component of the throw.
• 1:35:11
  And so obviously, I think Nick is coming from a strength and
• 1:35:13
  conditioning background. So it makes sense that a lot of
• 1:35:16
  the models based on kind of the strength and conditioning,
• 1:35:17
  different approaches to things. But so walking through kind of
• 1:35:20
  how we do it at driveline, we have a very similar thing to the
• 1:35:22
  energy potential, but we do it a little bit differently.
• 1:35:24
  Our model approach. So we basically given an
• 1:35:26
  athlete's height and weight and age, we basically make a
• 1:35:29
  baseline assumption of what their reveal should be.
• 1:35:31
  It's obviously not going to be very good, right?
• 1:35:32
  Like just knowing athlete tight wage and eight, we don't know
• 1:35:34
  exactly how good their reveal is going to be given their strength
• 1:35:37
  assessment, we can then update this guess, right?
• 1:35:39
  So we say like, OK, guys really are really strong and he like
• 1:35:42
  jumps really high. So we expect his Viola to be,
• 1:35:44
  you know, maybe 3 miles an hour harder than our initial guess.
• 1:35:47
  And then given our our mocap assessment, we can go even a
• 1:35:49
  step further and say, OK, based on your, how strong you are and
• 1:35:54
  like your height and weight, your age, like we guess that you
• 1:35:56
  can throw 87 miles an hour and you go in the mocap lab and you
• 1:35:58
  throw 92 miles an hour. It's like, OK, we know your
• 1:36:01
  mechanics specifically are contributing these extra 5 miles
• 1:36:05
  an hour. And then we can break it down
• 1:36:07
  into different components of the mechanics, say like, OK, your
• 1:36:09
  arm action versus your leg block versus your rotation ability.
• 1:36:12
  And so we kind of a we have a deeper understanding of exactly
• 1:36:15
  where in the skill component to look, right?
• 1:36:18
  Because now the more interesting thing is like, what if a guy's
• 1:36:19
  predicted Vela was 90, but he's only thrown 84?
• 1:36:23
  Well, OK, like, yeah, get improve the the kneeling throw,
• 1:36:26
  improve the 1 LB Med ball, improve the 2 LB Med ball.
• 1:36:28
  But how do you actually know where to begin doing those
• 1:36:31
  things? And so obviously I don't, if
• 1:36:33
  they don't have a motion capture lab, it's not as as possible
• 1:36:35
  kind of their what they, I think if claimed was that the kneeling
• 1:36:39
  throw was kind of a way of isolating the upper half and
• 1:36:41
  then the Med balls are way of isolating the lower half and
• 1:36:43
  like rotation abilities. And so that actually does give a
• 1:36:46
  little bit of a, of a of a guiding light of like, OK, if a
• 1:36:49
  guy's not throwing as hard as his as he theoretically is
• 1:36:52
  capable of throwing, where do we start working with this guy?
• 1:36:55
  I think that's extremely important.
• 1:36:56
  And I also think this idea of the energy interference is
• 1:36:57
  really interesting. And I think that's something
• 1:36:59
  we've talked about as well at Driveline using the flex program
• 1:37:02
  numbers, arm care numbers, and then something along the lines
• 1:37:04
  of like a pulse chronic workload or an AC and then the acute to
• 1:37:07
  chronic workload ratio, basically say like, OK, how?
• 1:37:09
  And basing it on their torque values from our motion capture
• 1:37:12
  lab. If a guy is throwing with 100
• 1:37:14
  Newton meters of torque on a throw every, every, every pitch,
• 1:37:16
  there's another guy who's thrown 60 Newton meters of torque.
• 1:37:19
  Well, the guy, if both of those guys have the exact same flex
• 1:37:22
  program numbers and the exact same arm care numbers and the
• 1:37:24
  exact same pulse ACWR, well, one guy might be a little bit higher
• 1:37:28
  of risk because he's putting more stress on his arm every
• 1:37:30
  single throw and is equally as prepared as a guy who's putting
• 1:37:33
  less stress on his arm. So in terms of relative risk
• 1:37:36
  now, in terms of absolute risk, that's something we'll never
• 1:37:38
  ever be able to quantify probably right.
• 1:37:40
  But it's like it, it could give a guy a good idea of like, hey,
• 1:37:43
  I really need to actually dedicate a lot of training
• 1:37:45
  economy on flex program, for example, because I'm so under
• 1:37:49
  prepared for what I'm actually experiencing during the throw.
• 1:37:52
  And so all these things it there.
• 1:37:55
  It is very important to just have this like guiding light of
• 1:37:57
  like what's actually important and what's going to get you the
• 1:38:00
  most gains For some guys that are very good at the skill, like
• 1:38:04
  like, yeah, you're just gonna need to get better at the skill.
• 1:38:05
  But for guys who are good at the skill, but like maybe I really
• 1:38:08
  underdeveloped in the weight room and stuff like that.
• 1:38:09
  Like it kind of gives you an idea of where to dedicate a lot
• 1:38:12
  of your time. So overall I thought it was that
• 1:38:14
  was very interesting approach. It's cool kind of seeing people
• 1:38:16
  out there like using using models to kind of inform the the
• 1:38:19
  player development process. So that's that's what I got.
• 1:38:21
  I will add one more piece here and it is actually a call back
• 1:38:25
  to Chase Aldridge's presentation, which Chases point
• 1:38:30
  was a player's history drives their outcomes.
• 1:38:33
  There was a lot of what we talked about of the nature
• 1:38:36
  versus nurture, what they've been through and the way they
• 1:38:39
  think will ultimately guide them to where they are today.
• 1:38:45
  I know that was kind of choppy in the way that I, I stated it.
• 1:38:47
  I was trying to connect dots in my, in my speech.
• 1:38:50
  But what, what they have done before will influence what they
• 1:38:54
  can do today. And why I bring that up with
• 1:38:58
  Nick's presentation is he cited a couple examples where an
• 1:39:03
  athlete's training history grossly biased or influenced in
• 1:39:08
  individual's methodologies for force production.
• 1:39:12
  The example that they gave was a guy that should have tested and
• 1:39:16
  presented in their movement screen as if he is a very force
• 1:39:23
  bias or force a reliant athlete. But all the training that
• 1:39:28
  athlete had ever done was very much on the power reliant side.
• 1:39:34
  It was very ballistic in nature, lots of bouncing, lots of
• 1:39:37
  bounding, lots of jumping. But the athlete was more or
• 1:39:42
  should have been more reliant on his force production.
• 1:39:46
  Kind of think of that of your traditional weight room
• 1:39:49
  movements being more strength based.
• 1:39:52
  And because this athlete had so much of A history on the power
• 1:39:56
  development side, he was not as efficient at utilizing his own
• 1:40:01
  strengths, which should be his strength.
• 1:40:04
  Thus, all of their training or. The majority of their training
• 1:40:09
  was then focused on how do we create more force and harness
• 1:40:13
  more force to then apply that to the actual throw.
• 1:40:18
  So I just thought that was a cool cross presentation
• 1:40:21
  connection that we can make of athlete history influencing the
• 1:40:26
  way their program needs to be developed to actually help them
• 1:40:31
  get better. Yeah, I agree.
• 1:40:33
  And overall, like I said, it's like using these models as like
• 1:40:35
  as a road map of kind of like where to approach, where to
• 1:40:38
  approach your, your player development process.
• 1:40:40
  Is is is really cool because it's also allowed.
• 1:40:42
  It also lends itself to the test retest cycle of like we'll we'll
• 1:40:46
  we'll see where you're at. We'll like try training program.
• 1:40:49
  We'll see if that improves or, or makes you worse.
• 1:40:53
  But at least we're like, we're getting these checkpoints in
• 1:40:55
  time and we're knowing like we're actually quantifying
• 1:40:57
  whether our training is working or not, which is much, much more
• 1:41:00
  than a lot of places do They It's like, Oh yeah, just come
• 1:41:02
  work out with us for an offseason.
• 1:41:03
  Like we'll get you better and like, OK, prove it.
• 1:41:06
  Like how do you actually get you better?
• 1:41:08
  So yeah, I do appreciate seeing seeing people take this approach
• 1:41:12
  to to play development. And with that, Are you ready to
• 1:41:15
  move on to performance neurology with IHTI?
• 1:41:19
  Am you can you can take this one.
• 1:41:21
  All right, I'll kick this off. Was certainly the most unique
• 1:41:25
  presentation of the day from a content perspective.
• 1:41:29
  There's no question about that in my mind with the concept of
• 1:41:34
  performance neurology. Now this is not a concept I know
• 1:41:37
  a lot about. For those of you who are avid
• 1:41:41
  lay back podcast listeners, I suggest maybe going back to the
• 1:41:45
  Carter Hahn episode to hear a little bit more about square one
• 1:41:48
  systems in neural resets. That was a point of emphasis
• 1:41:54
  during the IHT presentation. But I'm going to try to anchor
• 1:41:58
  this for everyone in something that they can actually take
• 1:42:03
  away. And I guess that would that
• 1:42:05
  would start from your body's not going to let you do anything
• 1:42:10
  that it doesn't believe is safe. If you have had an injury and
• 1:42:16
  that injury was while throwing a standard leather rawhide
• 1:42:22
  baseball, you are probably going to experience some sort of
• 1:42:27
  negative response when you try to throw that baseball again.
• 1:42:31
  If you have not been desensitized to that action,
• 1:42:35
  whether it is conscious thought or subconscious thought, this is
• 1:42:39
  something that you need to work through.
• 1:42:41
  And it is why in rehab you can often hit Rd. bumps not just on
• 1:42:47
  the physical side, but also because of where you're at
• 1:42:50
  mentally as you work through the process.
• 1:42:53
  To me, This is why providing as much objective data along the
• 1:42:57
  way becomes incredibly powerful. So an athlete knows that they
• 1:43:02
  are doing everything in their power to advance properly and
• 1:43:06
  know they're OK each time they're required to advance or
• 1:43:11
  each time they're required to do something new in their rehab
• 1:43:14
  progression. The way this was stated by
• 1:43:18
  Slater with IHT was the brain only cares about staying alive.
• 1:43:23
  So if your brain's approach is always going to be reliant on
• 1:43:28
  safety, you need to ensure that your brain feels safe in
• 1:43:32
  whatever environment you are in. Now, they talked about ways you
• 1:43:36
  can address this with different exercises.
• 1:43:38
  I think if I tried to address those myself, I would end up
• 1:43:42
  butchering it, which I do not want to do.
• 1:43:44
  So I would definitely encourage everyone to reach out to Pat
• 1:43:48
  Robles and Jared Slater to learn more.
• 1:43:51
  However, what I do agree with fully, and I'm more than happy
• 1:43:57
  to share my stance on is you need to at some point dip your
• 1:44:03
  toe in the water and expose yourself in a rehab setting or
• 1:44:07
  in a performance setting to something that is either
• 1:44:11
  difficult or something that you haven't experienced before.
• 1:44:15
  We talked about this very much with the MLB panel.
• 1:44:18
  You can't just dive right in. As great as that sounds.
• 1:44:21
  And as much as we encourage people to jump right into
• 1:44:24
  something or they they'll sink or swim and it'll all be OK,
• 1:44:27
  when we're playing with a player's life in their
• 1:44:30
  livelihood, each time they pick up a ball in each time they put
• 1:44:34
  on a uniform, taking the jump isn't worth it to me.
• 1:44:38
  I do think we need to slowly progress our way into the pool
• 1:44:42
  and test the water if that's going to be the case.
• 1:44:45
  This calls for exposure to a stimulus with things such as
• 1:44:50
  impulses or things such as isometrics that can give you
• 1:44:55
  time under tension or give you low risk exposures to something
• 1:45:02
  that may have previously been painful or dangerous in your
• 1:45:05
  mind and show you that this is OK I.
• 1:45:08
  Think it's very gracious kind of, you know, summary and and
• 1:45:11
  perspective. Honestly, I think from my
• 1:45:13
  perspective, I would have liked to see a little bit more peer
• 1:45:16
  reviewed research, whether that's something they've tried
• 1:45:18
  to do internally, because they did make some very I'd say bold
• 1:45:21
  or claims that maybe are are novel or, you know, maybe, maybe
• 1:45:26
  not many people have have considered before.
• 1:45:29
  So I would have liked to see either some peer reviewed
• 1:45:30
  research, maybe that they based a process on like their
• 1:45:33
  different methodology for using certain type of exercise or
• 1:45:36
  certain type of thing, or even some like internal research that
• 1:45:38
  they've done at their own facility.
• 1:45:39
  Like, hey, we had 30 athletes go through this.
• 1:45:41
  These are the outcomes that we've seen.
• 1:45:42
  I think they had like a one specific athlete example, but
• 1:45:44
  ever but like if the system is truly beneficial, I think they
• 1:45:47
  hopefully that would be shown through and some of the peer
• 1:45:49
  reviewed research that hopefully they're conducting and being
• 1:45:51
  able to produce. Because I know a lot of the
• 1:45:54
  time, I'm sorry, not to say a lot of time, but I know there's
• 1:45:56
  been systems in the past that are kind of AI mean.
• 1:45:59
  I think back to like the power balance bands at the at the at
• 1:46:03
  the Dick's Sporting Goods where they put you on a power band and
• 1:46:06
  like, oh, your balance suddenly improves.
• 1:46:07
  But it's a lot of times, you know, it's very nuanced in the
• 1:46:10
  sense of like what exactly? How exactly are they
• 1:46:12
  manipulating you to get you to stay balanced?
• 1:46:15
  But then often times it's like there's even there's even
• 1:46:17
  research even outside of like the fraud category, like like
• 1:46:20
  power balance, like let's say a well meaning physical therapist
• 1:46:23
  is like, OK, I want to help increase your range of motion.
• 1:46:26
  And so I walk in the building, I just drive my car and he gives
• 1:46:29
  me, he or she gives me an exercise and you know, I go do
• 1:46:32
  this exercise and they test me before they test me after.
• 1:46:35
  It's like, oh, your range of motion increased.
• 1:46:37
  Well, often times what also increase my range of motion is
• 1:46:39
  just going hopping on a bike for 5 or 10 minutes and like getting
• 1:46:41
  my blood flow into my body, right.
• 1:46:42
  So these very well meaning people that like think they're
• 1:46:44
  actually like doing like impacting people.
• 1:46:47
  Often times it's like it's actually caused by something
• 1:46:50
  else. So I think that's really
• 1:46:51
  important to have peer reviewed research that has controls and
• 1:46:55
  like basically says, OK, like if we think this works, let's
• 1:46:59
  actually come up with a way of demonstrating that and like
• 1:47:02
  appreciate it. So I hope that's something that
• 1:47:03
  they're doing and coming up with, with evidence for their
• 1:47:06
  for their methods, because I think that'd be, that'd be
• 1:47:09
  awesome to see like if they had find evidence supporting it.
• 1:47:12
  Something I'm going to push back on a little bit, I don't know,
• 1:47:14
  push back on the right way of saying it.
• 1:47:15
  But I do think there's this almost a misconception that the
• 1:47:19
  mental and the physical side of things are two distinct things.
• 1:47:22
  But I think in reality, there's a much more significant over
• 1:47:26
  like interplay between these two elements where what's happening
• 1:47:29
  physically is affecting my mental and what's happening
• 1:47:31
  mentally is affecting my physical.
• 1:47:32
  It's like it's, they're very, very tightly connected.
• 1:47:34
  And I think one example of this that comes to mind immediately,
• 1:47:37
  there's a study where they asked people to estimate the height of
• 1:47:40
  a hill, for example, or like the steepness of a hill.
• 1:47:42
  And basically people who weren't tired.
• 1:47:44
  And then they had people like go run up and down the hill a bunch
• 1:47:46
  of times and they're really, really tired.
• 1:47:48
  And they're saying like, well, how steep is this hill?
• 1:47:50
  How high is this hill? And the more tired you are, the
• 1:47:52
  higher you perceive the hill to be and the steeper that you
• 1:47:55
  perceive the hill to be. Where our perception of of the
• 1:48:00
  environment is, is impacted by our physical ability to interact
• 1:48:04
  with the environment. And so a lot of times, you know,
• 1:48:06
  building mental capacity or whatever is kind of from what
• 1:48:09
  you said actually. So I'm guess I'm not pushing
• 1:48:11
  back. If anything I'm agreeing with
• 1:48:12
  you is that there is this level of like gradual exposure or like
• 1:48:16
  building confidence physically, which actually ends up helping
• 1:48:19
  you mentally. So I think that's an extremely
• 1:48:21
  important part, recognizing that they're not separate things.
• 1:48:23
  It's like, OK, let's get this stronger physically and let's
• 1:48:25
  work on my mental game completely separately.
• 1:48:27
  They're very closely related. And my perception of things in
• 1:48:30
  terms of like what I'm afforded to do in my environment is going
• 1:48:32
  to be drastically changed by like my mental perception of the
• 1:48:35
  environment. And my mental perception
• 1:48:36
  environment is going to be drastically changed by the
• 1:48:38
  physical performances I have in that environment.
• 1:48:40
  I'm going to continue on a tangent a little bit here
• 1:48:43
  getting a getting a tad bit away from the actual performance
• 1:48:47
  neurology presentation. Granted, I I do want to address
• 1:48:51
  you made a tremendous point about the research.
• 1:48:54
  If I was going to make any recommendation coming off of
• 1:48:57
  this to Pat and Jared is find a way to whether it's in house.
• 1:49:02
  It does not have to be a clinical trial, but if you can
• 1:49:05
  just present on a larger data set, I think you are going to
• 1:49:09
  have a ton of people that are all over this.
• 1:49:11
  There's no question to me that this nervous system piece of
• 1:49:15
  performance is widely untapped and certainly presents a blue
• 1:49:19
  ocean if someone can get into it.
• 1:49:22
  There's a lot that we all can learn from in this world.
• 1:49:25
  Don't know a lot about the nervous system myself.
• 1:49:27
  You think about all these nervous injuries or ailments
• 1:49:31
  that affect pitchers and players on a daily basis.
• 1:49:34
  If you can address that and it can come from making the brain
• 1:49:38
  feel safe, that's amazing, even if it's just a small percentage
• 1:49:42
  jump in the right direction. So I would definitely encourage
• 1:49:45
  the guys at IHT to get into this and it sounds like they do have
• 1:49:49
  enough subject matter to do it. They they have enough athletes,
• 1:49:53
  they have enough teams. So guys definitely get into it,
• 1:49:56
  please, because I, I do find what you're doing interesting,
• 1:49:59
  but we are a data-driven world and I, I just would want a
• 1:50:04
  little bit more hard data on it. Now the tangent I was going to
• 1:50:08
  get into Josh, I this I think we'll be up your alley a little
• 1:50:12
  bit from what you were discussing with the hill.
• 1:50:16
  I think that can be simply defined as people should do hard
• 1:50:19
  shit. If you don't do hard shit, you,
• 1:50:21
  you don't know what you're going to be prepared for.
• 1:50:24
  At some point you need to do hard things in your training.
• 1:50:27
  Now if that's a, if that's a 2 minute split squat ISO.
• 1:50:33
  I, I don't know if I'm going to be the one that recommends that
• 1:50:36
  or a 5 minute split squat ISO like the IHT guys recommended.
• 1:50:40
  I mean, that's crazy work. If you can do a 5 minute split
• 1:50:43
  squat, ISO, you can probably do a lot of things just for the
• 1:50:47
  mental fortitude that comes from that.
• 1:50:49
  Think about running marathons. Like, yeah, there's a massive
• 1:50:53
  physical component to running a marathon, but I would probably
• 1:50:58
  argue, granted, this is a guy who's never run a marathon in
• 1:51:01
  his life, but I've run 12 miles before and I did that
• 1:51:05
  accidentally. I went out trying to go for a
• 1:51:09
  run and I just kept going and I looked down.
• 1:51:12
  Later I found out I ran 12 miles.
• 1:51:15
  It's the most I had ever run at a single time in my life.
• 1:51:18
  By 6 miles. I doubled the the most miles I'd
• 1:51:22
  ever run in one run. I didn't build up for it.
• 1:51:27
  There's probably people that argue that's just entirely dumb,
• 1:51:32
  and maybe it is, but I was in a place mentally that allowed me
• 1:51:36
  to do this. That's, that's one of those
• 1:51:38
  things to me that a lot of times you don't know what you, you can
• 1:51:43
  do if you don't try, like a lot of people put false limiters on
• 1:51:47
  them. And where I'm going with this
• 1:51:49
  and where I'll probably turn it over to you is then maybe the
• 1:51:54
  dangers that potentially come with wearables like Whoop or or
• 1:51:58
  a ring where people put false constraints on themselves
• 1:52:02
  because something told them that they're not optimally recovered.
• 1:52:05
  No, I couldn't agree more. And I think the key insight here
• 1:52:07
  is that the game is hard. And so like even outside of so
• 1:52:10
  like in a personal, even in a personal setting, I completely
• 1:52:12
  agree with you. But especially in a performance
• 1:52:14
  setting, like if we're saying the game is very dangerous and
• 1:52:17
  uncontrolled and there's all these stresses and all these
• 1:52:19
  things that happen and we never actually experience any of those
• 1:52:21
  things in a safe, controlled environment of training, like,
• 1:52:23
  what are we doing? But even yeah, even the idea of
• 1:52:26
  wearables, it's like, OK, well, I have a bullpen today, but my
• 1:52:29
  whoops said I didn't sleep well. Well, guess what?
• 1:52:31
  In in season I'm going to have to pitch on no sleep.
• 1:52:33
  So I better fucking get used to it and go practice it right now.
• 1:52:36
  I'm sorry, I don't know, swearing is a lot on this
• 1:52:38
  podcast. I said shit three times in my
• 1:52:40
  answer to you. OK, so it's like, but yeah, so
• 1:52:42
  it's like, yeah, I, I at some point you just got to like, go
• 1:52:45
  be a dog, right? And so if you're never training,
• 1:52:48
  if you're going to have to be a dog in season and you're never
• 1:52:50
  training to be a dog in the offseason, well, what are you
• 1:52:53
  doing? Once again, what are you doing?
• 1:52:55
  So I think I, I, I could not agree more.
• 1:52:57
  I do think there's an, there's a level where at some point you
• 1:52:59
  just got to like push yourself. I, I personally use the
• 1:53:02
  wearables for more of like long term trends tracking and like,
• 1:53:04
  not necessarily on a day-to-day basis of like, should I affect
• 1:53:07
  my workout today because I didn't sleep well last night?
• 1:53:09
  Like no, like at some point, like like we're trusting the,
• 1:53:12
  the, the, the progressive overload of the of the actual
• 1:53:15
  training plan. And yeah, maybe have a big life
• 1:53:18
  stress that comes out. Maybe I can modify from that.
• 1:53:19
  But because I got 1 poor night of sleep, yeah, probably not.
• 1:53:23
  I know I brought us out on a tangent, but we might have
• 1:53:26
  already kind of given our closing thoughts on IHT.
• 1:53:29
  I think it is an interesting platform that these guys are
• 1:53:34
  standing on with performance neurology.
• 1:53:36
  It's something I would definitely like to hear more
• 1:53:38
  about. I remain inquisitive with
• 1:53:41
  everything in this realm, especially when it comes to
• 1:53:43
  training the brain and training the nervous system.
• 1:53:46
  So guys, Jared, Pat, please, the more that you guys can research,
• 1:53:52
  I'm going to be all ears. I want to see it, I want to read
• 1:53:55
  it, I want to hear about it. Anybody that is trying to push
• 1:53:58
  the industry forward, I support. Yeah, no doubt.
• 1:54:01
  And we obviously don't have all the answers.
• 1:54:03
  And I think any, anytime there's like these new ideas that come
• 1:54:05
  up, like I, I, I'm always open minded, especially if there's
• 1:54:09
  evidence that backs them up. And obviously until then we, we
• 1:54:13
  can kind of like, OK, if, if the underlying mechanism makes
• 1:54:16
  sense. So, and I don't know enough
• 1:54:17
  about the underlying mechanisms with the brain aspect to know if
• 1:54:19
  they make sense, if the underlying mechanisms make
• 1:54:22
  sense. I mean, you know, as we're
• 1:54:23
  waiting for some of these peer reviewed research, it can be
• 1:54:24
  like, OK, like that's something that I maybe I think is true.
• 1:54:27
  And then maybe the research proves us wrong.
• 1:54:28
  It's like, OK, well, is there another way that this mechanism
• 1:54:30
  actually can and can, you know, affect change in a certain way?
• 1:54:33
  So, but regardless, I think it's like, if the, if the truth is on
• 1:54:37
  their side, like then then the research will be as well.
• 1:54:39
  So I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing some some stuff
• 1:54:41
  come out of IHT in that regard to round things out.
• 1:54:45
  Now, Josh, how did you feel about everything as a whole?
• 1:54:48
  Because that does it presentation wise.
• 1:54:50
  Well, clearly I was mentally stimulated considering we talked
• 1:54:53
  about it for four hours together.
• 1:54:55
  So I honestly came away from the weekend, yeah, the weekend
• 1:55:00
  basically just saying like I feel extremely, extremely
• 1:55:02
  mentally stimulated in terms of like just a lot of thoughts
• 1:55:05
  running through my head. And I like wrote down a huge
• 1:55:07
  document, just a bunch of my thoughts.
• 1:55:08
  So it was, overall it was fantastic.
• 1:55:10
  And I'm, I'm, I'm really glad I was able to go.
• 1:55:12
  So I appreciate you inviting me onto the Flex program panel.
• 1:55:15
  Of course, man, I I really enjoyed having you.
• 1:55:19
  Of course, getting to pick your brain, spend a weekend with you
• 1:55:21
  and now debrief everything. This is just an extension of our
• 1:55:26
  car ride, I guess, to and from Winston Salem back to Charlotte,
• 1:55:31
  a little bit on the plane as we tried to watch the Lions.
• 1:55:34
  And I actually think they won. No, that was the Rams.
• 1:55:37
  They got beat, unfortunately. So, yeah, that was that was the
• 1:55:40
  start of the downfall. I apologize, man.
• 1:55:42
  Yeah, that was a tough one. So I guess when we weren't sadly
• 1:55:46
  watching the Lions drop a game, we were, we were talking about
• 1:55:49
  player development and what we can do.
• 1:55:52
  And now I guess we'll, we'll follow up that question with
• 1:55:55
  after hearing how rewarding the was the weekend was for you,
• 1:55:59
  which I fully echo. I, I thought it was a tremendous
• 1:56:02
  weekend. I love the content presented.
• 1:56:05
  If now I can task you with making a recommendation to the
• 1:56:10
  player development crew at Wake Forest for something you might
• 1:56:13
  want to see next year, what do you think that would be?
• 1:56:17
  That's a great question. How about let me give this
• 1:56:20
  presentation and we'll find out. That's a good question.
• 1:56:25
  You kind of put me on the spot here.
• 1:56:26
  I honestly don't have a good answer for you.
• 1:56:28
  I do think there was a lot of interesting stuff this year.
• 1:56:31
  I actually kind of like some of these ideas of like, like some
• 1:56:34
  of the things that Chase Aldridge talked about.
• 1:56:36
  I would like to see maybe some of those ideas applied to
• 1:56:38
  practice design a little bit. So like obviously, I think the
• 1:56:40
  ideas themselves were really thought provoking and
• 1:56:42
  extraordinary, but there wasn't probably because of the the
• 1:56:46
  proprietary information of the Dodgers, right?
• 1:56:47
  Like it's the Dodgers ideas and practice design and stuff.
• 1:56:51
  But I would like to see some some presentations potentially
• 1:56:53
  on how you can actually impact practice, impact training based
• 1:56:58
  on some of these concepts. I know there's a group,
• 1:57:00
  Transforming Basketball that does some really interesting
• 1:57:02
  things on the basketball side in terms of of of building really
• 1:57:05
  cool training environments. Something similar to that on the
• 1:57:07
  baseball side would be really interesting.
• 1:57:09
  I know my good friend Garrett Baker, who's a pitching coach
• 1:57:11
  with the the New York Mets, He's very close with Alex Serrama,
• 1:57:14
  who founded Transforming Basketball.
• 1:57:15
  So I think someone like Garrett would be a great guy every
• 1:57:17
  presentation. But yeah, I think this just kind
• 1:57:20
  of exploring some of these ideas of of motor learning rather than
• 1:57:23
  just like maybe higher level like ideas of player
• 1:57:25
  development, diving deeper into the weeds of like motor learning
• 1:57:28
  and how people actually learn a skill or like is learning a
• 1:57:32
  skill even a thing and you can skill be acquired.
• 1:57:35
  But kind of these ideas of more in depth I think would be would
• 1:57:38
  be fascinating for a lot of the coaches there.
• 1:57:40
  Since I asked the question, I'll be sure to give an answer.
• 1:57:43
  Yeah, I was going to say, what's your, what's your opinion?
• 1:57:44
  Here, of course. Yeah.
• 1:57:45
  Well, I appreciate you asking Josh.
• 1:57:47
  I'd love to share. I'm going to share one that
• 1:57:51
  Darrell and I have actually talked about now for a couple
• 1:57:54
  years that we would love to see on the Wake Forest Player
• 1:57:57
  Development seminar. So it will be a joint suggestion
• 1:58:00
  from the Flex Pro Grip founding team, and that would be to have
• 1:58:05
  some sort of structured debate. I think Lance Brozdowski would
• 1:58:10
  be a tremendous host once again to set up this kind of
• 1:58:13
  discussion. Someone that's, yeah, someone
• 1:58:16
  that is knowledgeable enough to, I guess, guide a very
• 1:58:20
  educational discussion. And I don't mean a debate where
• 1:58:24
  two people are trying to make jackasses of one another to win
• 1:58:28
  an argument. I would really like to see two
• 1:58:31
  people that exist in similar lanes that really do support one
• 1:58:37
  another but have different biases.
• 1:58:39
  A perfect example, actually, I and I, I hate using me or Daryl
• 1:58:45
  as the example here, but it would be kind of the Flexpro
• 1:58:48
  grip team versus the Kinetic pro team, meaning Casey.
• 1:58:52
  And the reason I say that is Casey is always going to put
• 1:58:56
  workload first, right? Us with Flexpro, we're always
• 1:59:00
  going to put strength or muscular preparedness first or
• 1:59:04
  muscular stiffness first. We both highly value the other
• 1:59:08
  thing. Casey mentions using strength
• 1:59:10
  testing to measure fatigue and adjustment workload management
• 1:59:14
  accordingly. However, on our side with
• 1:59:16
  strength, we always mentioned that strength can be the driver
• 1:59:21
  of how long of a leash we can give you with workload.
• 1:59:25
  So we both value the same things and our end goal remains the
• 1:59:29
  same. And really there's no winner
• 1:59:32
  loser at the end of the day. We're just presenting two
• 1:59:34
  different sides of the same coin at that point.
• 1:59:38
  And at the end of the day, we're all winners.
• 1:59:40
  If people know more about what we think and why we think
• 1:59:46
  strength in muscle, tendon unit stiffness is the ultimate driver
• 1:59:51
  versus on KC side, if he thinks throwing fitness is the driver,
• 1:59:54
  I think something of that nature like that's the closest or the
• 1:59:58
  the hardest example that I could give, but we could probably
• 2:00:02
  continue that. I mean, Chris Martin, you could
• 2:00:04
  put him with bench press and probably aerobic capacity up
• 2:00:09
  against. I don't know if somebody else
• 2:00:12
  that thinks you should never run more than 20 yards at a time and
• 2:00:16
  have those two guys go at. Yeah, I mean, I think you said
• 2:00:19
  we want some of we're all winners.
• 2:00:20
  I think that'd be interesting. I want to see someone.
• 2:00:22
  I want people coming to blows. I want, I want to see like, I
• 2:00:25
  want to see people who are like very, very.
• 2:00:28
  I want to see teacher man versus like drive on baseball hitting
• 2:00:32
  like versus Jeff Fry. Yeah.
• 2:00:34
  And give me that. That's that's the kind of debate
• 2:00:37
  I'm there for. I think that'd be fantastic.
• 2:00:39
  I mean yes, from an entertainment value, but even I
• 2:00:42
  think insane obviously from an. Entertainment value, but maybe
• 2:00:45
  Fry's not the best example. So he's kind of a bad faith the
• 2:00:48
  debater or like in bad faith perspective.
• 2:00:50
  But I think someone like teacher man also is a bit of a Jackass
• 2:00:53
  on the Internet. But like, he is Aaron Judge's
• 2:00:55
  hitting coach. So like, even if you disagree
• 2:00:56
  with what you're saying, you have to kind of respect that
• 2:00:58
  He's like coaching the athletes at a high level.
• 2:01:01
  And I do agree with disagree with a lot of what he's saying.
• 2:01:03
  And I do think there's probably some value in some of the stuff
• 2:01:05
  he says. So I think someone like that who
• 2:01:07
  are like maybe people who are very well respected in different
• 2:01:10
  in different ways. I think Doug Lotta versus like
• 2:01:15
  Travis Fita. No, that's another one that
• 2:01:17
  would be, I think, very interesting.
• 2:01:19
  Yeah, I think that. 'D be cool.
• 2:01:21
  I think that would be great if we could get some sort of debate
• 2:01:24
  stage going. And of course, it doesn't have
• 2:01:26
  to be every presentation, as much as I would enjoy give me.
• 2:01:29
  Give me, give me one or two. Give me one or two for the
• 2:01:31
  weekend. Maybe one debate on Friday, one
• 2:01:33
  debate on Saturday. You have a panel whatever,
• 2:01:35
  right? Yeah, you have.
• 2:01:36
  You can replace one of the panels.
• 2:01:37
  I think that would be awesome stuff.
• 2:01:39
  So that's that's our Flex Pro Grip suggestion for the masses.
• 2:01:42
  I love it. Maybe we can rally for that.
• 2:01:44
  But Josh, I just want to say thank you again at this point.
• 2:01:48
  I mean, we put a lot of hours into this and I hope you found
• 2:01:51
  value in being able to review our thoughts.
• 2:01:54
  I, I certainly did. This was a great way for me to
• 2:01:57
  get everything out. I know you're a writer.
• 2:02:00
  I like to think of myself as a writer, but at this point, I've
• 2:02:03
  really become much more of a speaker and I, I appreciate you
• 2:02:06
  sharing this time with me. Not just last weekend or I guess
• 2:02:10
  a couple weekends ago now, but a few additional hours recording a
• 2:02:14
  podcast. I'm gonna I'm gonna end with one
• 2:02:15
  more thing, which is I was reading this idea recently that
• 2:02:18
  like like large language model chant GBT summaries of things
• 2:02:21
  are never actually going to replace like reading through
• 2:02:25
  something right? Because the actual, the
• 2:02:27
  important thing isn't the knowledge itself.
• 2:02:29
  And it's like memorizing what you hear in a summary, but
• 2:02:33
  actually wrestling with an idea in your head for hours and hours
• 2:02:36
  and hours. And so being able to wrestle
• 2:02:37
  with these ideas with you for four hours and like the many
• 2:02:39
  other hours I spent thinking with it myself, like it's helped
• 2:02:43
  clarify some things for myself. It's helped me maybe have some
• 2:02:46
  other ideas or tangents that I wouldn't have otherwise gone on.
• 2:02:48
  So I think it's very valuable time to kind of like spend
• 2:02:50
  reflecting and talking about these things.
• 2:02:52
  And as Ioffer one last response to a common of yours, if I can
• 2:02:57
  now digest that and share the way that I approach it, it's
• 2:03:01
  what I have said to you routinely.
• 2:03:03
  Now coming off of that weekend. It's less about the actual
• 2:03:07
  content of a presentation and it's way more about the
• 2:03:11
  substance for me. And if you just read a summary,
• 2:03:15
  all you're getting is the content.
• 2:03:16
  You're not getting the substance and how you actually apply it to
• 2:03:20
  who you are and where you are in your own career.
• 2:03:23
  And by going to things like this and putting yourself out there
• 2:03:26
  to have these conversations and giving yourself a chance to
• 2:03:32
  admit a lack of knowledge to bring in more, I think gives you
• 2:03:37
  the opportunity to figure out what you're missing and where
• 2:03:40
  you can apply new things. I appreciate your take away
• 2:03:43
  message there, Josh. I think that was amazing.
• 2:03:46
  And if you don't mind, I think I'm actually going to call it
• 2:03:49
  quits on this one. Let's do it.
• 2:03:51
  Great job. To the masses, this was a long
• 2:03:54
  one, but thanks for laying back with us.
• 2:03:57
  See you on the book club.