Latest / The Layback Podcast / Josh Willitts, RHP at University of Richmond (Ep. 62)

Transcript

Josh Willitts, RHP at University of Richmond (Ep. 62) · The Layback Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lay Back podcast.
• 0:02
  Joining us today is Josh Willits, graduate student
• 0:06
  right-handed pitcher at the University of Richmond.
• 0:09
  And our special bond is we are 2022 Coastal Plane League
• 0:14
  champions with the Savannah Bananas.
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  Back when it was a college summer team.
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  It was really fun to follow Josh that summer, train with him a
• 0:23
  little bit and then caught the injury bug a little bit, missed
• 0:26
  a couple years of college ball, but he's been back on the bump
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  now hitting all time PR this year in the mid 90s.
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  And we're really excited for what's to come and really to see
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  this season finish out strong for the Richmond Spiders.
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  But Josh, thanks a ton for coming on.
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  Looking forward to getting into the story today.
• 0:44
  Happy to do it. Heck, yeah.
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  All right, so basic start here. I'd love if you could just tell
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  everyone a little bit about yourself, your background, where
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  you're from. On the visual side, we got the
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  Jalen Hurts poster behind you. I I can't quite tell which
• 1:00
  Philly that is over your left shoulder.
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  OK, all right. So sliding dirty into second
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  base or is that just hard nosed baseball?
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  Hard nosed baseball. That's right.
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  Yeah. Like a like a true South Jersey
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  guy, right. So take us through the initial
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  jump into baseball and maybe even how you ended up at
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  Richmond. Well, I'm from South Jersey.
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  Like we just went over so big big Philly guy, even though I'm
• 1:23
  not from Philly and to baseball, kind of started taking it more
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  seriously. I guess like my freshman year, I
• 1:29
  was like 70, mid 70s kind of guy my as a freshman.
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  So I was like very, very average.
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  And then I started taking training very seriously, started
• 1:40
  putting on some weight. So like as a freshman I was like
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  6 foot 125, something like that. So I was like, and I started
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  getting the weight around like four or five times a week,
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  started putting on a lot of weight.
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  So I went from, that's my sophomore year, I probably put
• 1:55
  on like 30 lbs, got up to like low 80s ish, maybe up to like
• 1:59
  85, something like that. But still like no college looks
• 2:03
  as a sophomore at all. Like very much a late bloomer.
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  And then finally my junior year I got up to like 200 lbs.
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  So I put on like 80 lbs ish, 75 lbs over the course of two
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  years, like grinded in the weight room and then got up to
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  like 9091 as a junior. So just no, I didn't like change
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  my mechanics or anything. Just kind of grind it in the way
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  or took took the physicality of things very seriously.
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  And then that's when I started finally getting some college
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  looks like my junior summer going into my senior year, which
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  was interesting. Like I don't know, I feel like
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  that's pretty late nowadays for, for looking into college, but I
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  was looking like just academic schools out of high school.
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  That's kind of where my head was at 'cause I wasn't getting like
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  cool Power 5 looks. So I was thinking like I might
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  as well go somewhere that's good academics.
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  So I was looking at like a lot of Patriot League schools, a lot
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  of A10 schools. But Richmond just, it's awesome.
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  Like, do you visit Richmond? It's like the nicest campus ever
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  and like a super cool area. Like the facilities are awesome
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  and the coaches here are awesome too.
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  It's just like such a perfect situation.
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  So I ended up choosing Richmond. So yeah, that's kind of how I
• 3:14
  got there, but it's kind of an interesting road to get there.
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  Backing it up just a bit, were you a two way player for your
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  high school team, multi sport athlete?
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  I mean, I've, I've run some sprints with you.
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  You can fly a little bit. You're you're pretty athletic
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  and. Actually as my as a sophomore, I
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  didn't really get college looks, like I said, but I was only
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  throwing like 82, but I was swinging it pretty well.
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  So like some of the college interests that I did get was
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  actually as a hitter and I got no looks as a pitcher at all.
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  So that was pretty interesting. I kind of, I love pitching,
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  don't get me wrong, but I kind of wish I pursued hitting a
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  little bit more. I loved that as well.
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  And then I was also playing basketball and football in high
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  school. So I was a three sport guy.
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  Once I committed to Richmond, I quit basketball and football
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  because I don't want to get hurt my senior year going into
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  college, which kind of sucked too because my senior year was
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  COVID year, so I didn't even get to play baseball in my senior
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  year, but the basketball and football season still happen.
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  So I was like, man, I kind of like wish I just did that
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  because that would have been my only shot to play a senior year
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  sports. But I don't know, I guess it was
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  a good decision. I saw like like Harris ACL
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  playing football in the fall and I was like, yeah, I'm not I
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  can't do that. So I ended up just quitting.
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  But yeah, 3 sport guy, two way guy.
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  But I struck out too much so I guess once I saw above 85 I was
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  lost at the plate so. How long did you think you were
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  going to be the next Mike Trout? Though, Oh yeah, up until like
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  probably my junior year, that's when guys actually started
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  throwing hard and I was like, oh, I'm cooked this level, like
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  86 and a slider, no shot. But when I was like a sophomore
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  and I was like, oh, like trout. Yeah, I'm the man.
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  Yeah. Was there, was there any point
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  during the early years at Richmond where you tried to say,
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  like, coach, if you, if you need a, you need a pinch hitter, I I
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  might be your guy. If you need a center fielder,
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  could be me. Yeah, I mean, I I still say that
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  honestly, but the pitchers, BP, I'll just go crazy and be like,
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  yeah, you know, she's. Between the.
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  Game right? Got some pops still.
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  That's right. But as a freshman I was
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  actually, I'm not actually annoyed, but my like senior year
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  of high score, whatever I was, I was swinging it all right.
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  And like the little summer league things when, you know,
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  the season got cancelled and everything and I wanted to fall.
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  And of course the coaches are always like, yeah, you can 2
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  away if you want to. Like you can try it out.
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  So I was like as a high school, I was like, oh, they definitely
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  mean that. In reality, I feel like they
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  just tell that to everybody. Like I got to campus thinking I
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  might try out the two way and they finally get that
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  opportunity. Had your bat with you first day
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  at the field? Never know.
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  And they're like, now we're just going to use you as a pitcher.
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  I was like, yeah, figures. Makes sense.
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  So what was that then? First year of baseball, like at
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  Richmond, The the big transition from high school ball in Jersey
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  up to D1 baseball. E10 definitely has some really
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  hidden talent, there's no question about that.
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  There's been some really quality players to come out of it.
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  Handful of big leaguers have come out of the A10.
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  So I'd love if you could walk us through what that first year
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  looked like. Was it a tough transition or did
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  you really just kind of hit the ground running?
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  I wouldn't say like the tough part came into like the season.
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  My freshman year, my freshman fall, I came out.
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  Part of the hard part too, I guess, was school.
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  My freshman year, I was actually a physics major, which was
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  difficult. I ended up stopping that pretty
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  early because I realized how difficult it would be.
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  So that part was hard because I'd be like standing up until
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  like 1:00 AM studying and then have five hours of sleep into a
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  lift and two, trying to compete in an inner squad to earn a spot
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  or not earn a spot but like earn a roll.
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  Yeah. So that part was pretty tough my
• 7:02
  freshman fall, but I played fine.
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  My freshman fall. I was hitting like below PRS,
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  like in high school, I think my below PR was like 91.
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  And then I came out, my freshman fall was up to like 94 and like
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  play. It was playing really, really
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  well. Like I thought I'd earned a
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  pretty solid spot on the team going into the spring.
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  So like the fall was actually baseball wise.
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  Thought it would be pretty easy, honestly.
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  I mean, I feel like a lot of freshmen like that too, or they
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  had way too much confidence or like, Oh yeah, you're the man
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  from high school. So you go and I think you're
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  going to dominate. And then my fall actually did
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  really well. So I was like, oh, it's not,
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  this is not that hard. I guess the only tough part was
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  like in high school, especially South Jersey, like you'll face
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  like a couple teams here and there that are like insanely
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  good. But for the most part, if you
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  throw like 90, you're probably not ever going to get hit hard.
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  And then there's a couple outings my freshman fall where I
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  was like, like I said, like throwing pretty hard, throwing
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  harder than I ever had before and I was still giving up like
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  hits. I gave up like a home run or
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  gave up three hits in an ending. I was like, damn, like how am I
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  giving up hits right now? So that part was interesting
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  too, knowing like can't just blow it by guys even if you
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  throw pretty hard in college. But other than that, like I
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  didn't think it was too insane to be honest.
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  But came out of then my fresh in spring was a little bit more of
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  a tougher transition because when I started walking guys a
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  lot and I wasn't throwing as hard, which was like weird to me
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  too. Like I went from like being 90
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  to 90 for my freshman fall to like sitting 8890 in the spring.
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  So I was like a little flustered from that.
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  And then I started walking guys so that I was flustered from
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  that. And then I didn't pitch like the
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  first two weeks of the season And I feel like as a fresh, when
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  you don't get playing time right away, it kind of messes with
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  your confidence a little bit. So that was difficult trying to
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  learn how to like manage that. Well, when you're not playing
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  right away, you're no longer like the guy of the team.
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  That's always, I feel like a tough transition.
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  But I had like great like senior captains or whatever that would
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  honestly like talk to me from the first week and be like, I
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  know it's tough. Like don't feel like you're
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  selfish for like talking to me about her, like having to rant a
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  little bit about not playing like I know it's difficult.
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  So that that was very helpful. Like I had some good friends
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  that talked me through it a lot. But once I got out there, I
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  actually did really well at first.
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  Like I thought I was in a really bad spot, like leading going
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  into the season where I like I said, I was super flustered from
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  earning a spot, not throwing harder walking guys, like I was
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  a little all over the place. But I started out really well
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  the beginning of my freshman year.
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  I like my first like 8 innings or something like that.
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  I had not given up a run. So that was very cool.
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  Got a lot of confidence and then, like I said, when you get
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  hit for the first time in college, that's kind of an eye
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  opener too. So I I did super well.
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  Then I faced Dayton, actually, they're all modern and they just
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  destroyed me and I was like, oh, wow, like I was not expecting
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  that at all. They they had this kid Marcos
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  fools. You know, he had a ball like the
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  classic, like first home run. You give up as a freshman, like
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  you'll never forget he had a ball like 450, like 115, like
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  bat flipped it to take the lead. And I was like, oh.
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  God. These kids were good, dude, 32
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  slider. Like I was like, that's a great
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  pitch and he just destroyed it And I was like, oh wow.
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  So that was like kind of my welcome to college moment, which
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  is like halfway into the season. I mean, overall I was like a
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  pretty solid freshman year. I think my even like I had
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  moments my freshman year where I started become an eye opener,
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  but my sophomore year was like much more challenging, like I
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  had much more up and downs my sophomore year, which was more
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  of like a challenging experience.
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  I guess like I said, I think freshman, I think this holds
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  true for like a lot of people I've seen.
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  It's like you have this like unwavering confidence out of
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  high school because you've done so well your entire life.
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  I think that confidence kind of propels you as a freshman.
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  And then, and I see a lot of sophomores, when they really
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  start to struggle for the first time, that's when a lot of kids
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  I've seen like kind of really go through it a little bit and I
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  have to like really work on it, stuff like that.
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  I think that's stated really well and probably rings true
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  throughout all college athletics, all sports, all
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  levels use everybody who plays a college sport was the best
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  player on their team, exactly the best couple.
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  If you're from one of those really fancy academies down in
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  Florida or something like that, yeah, you, you go from being the
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  man. And until you get humbled, why
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  wouldn't you continue to think that anyways?
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  And for you to be able to carry that momentum for so long, why,
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  why wouldn't you think you're invincible?
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  And then ultimately, when you're in the middle of the season, if
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  you have good teammates, you can kind of ride that high.
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  So until you hit the real personal struggle, it's kind of
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  hard to know what you don't know.
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  And if success is all you know, that's freaking awesome.
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  It's going to be really easy to feel good about yourself.
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  But then then you said your your sophomore year came a few more
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  struggles. So was it a role change?
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  Was it things within your control or out of your control?
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  What do you think kind of brought on these difficult times
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  that second year of college ball?
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  So I think the biggest thing for me was like an expectation
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  change or it's like your freshman year.
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  I feel like it's kind of like an underdog mindset, like a little
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  chip on your shoulder just trying to yourself.
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  And then once I did have like that good freshman year, I was
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  expecting to be like even better my sophomore year and I was
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  expecting to take that next step up.
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  And like I had all these crazy goals for myself that were
• 12:48
  probably a little unrealistic. But like, I, I mean, I don't
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  hate the fact that I had high goals for myself, but I didn't
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  factor in the possibility of like going through struggles a
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  little bit. Also like the role change was
• 13:00
  part of it too. I'm assuming my sophomore year I
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  did myself for fall. I did super well.
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  Like one of the best I've ever pitched was back up, you know,
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  wise like we had lost our some of our weekend starter.
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  So I was like very much thought I was going to be a weekend
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  starter. I don't know, like Friday guy,
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  Saturday guy, whatever. But I was pitching really well
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  and I thought I was going to be a weekend starter.
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  But then I didn't get that right away like entering the season,
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  but I was still like in a very good role.
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  So I was like fine with it, but I still I guess had like a
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  little bit of a chip on my shoulder in the beginning where
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  I was like, oh, I, I like, I didn't get the role I wanted.
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  Oh, I started off my sophomore year really well again, first
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  3-4 weeks of the season I hadn't allowed to run again.
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  So I like still had a great start.
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  And then they put me, I think like I started getting like a
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  start opportunity and stuff like that.
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  And I was kind of expecting to take that, finally take that
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  step up and you know, I was looking really good.
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  Then my first outing I let up runs.
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  It was like against Villanova. And I just like kind of stuck
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  like give up a lot of runs, gave up the game.
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  And I think from there, like I since I had such high
• 14:07
  expectation levels for myself, I was like, now I'm definitely not
• 14:10
  going to be a weekend starter. Like now I'm definitely not
• 14:13
  going to have the season. I thought I was going to just
• 14:15
  because of this one bad outing. And I think that messed with my
• 14:18
  confidence so much that like the my next 3-4 outings, I was
• 14:23
  really bad and I stopped playing for like a little bit, went from
• 14:27
  a major high to a major low where that was like the first
• 14:30
  time my career where I like had continued struggles.
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  And that messed with my confidence a lot.
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  But like F seen was finally at Richmond, Josh Epstein.
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  And from you knowing him, I'm sure you know, he's like a very
• 14:41
  big mental side of the game guy, like.
• 14:44
  The biggest? Yeah.
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  So I'm actually like, I'm super happy that he was at Richmond
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  because that's like exactly what I needed because my stuff was
• 14:55
  pretty good at that point. I had success.
• 14:57
  But like my mental side after my first like couple really bad
• 15:02
  outings was just shot, kind of just lost all my confidence.
• 15:05
  So he introduced me to to mental game of or the mental game of AB
• 15:10
  CS, mental pitching of AB CS pitching, mental AB CS,
• 15:14
  something like that. So I started reading that book a
• 15:16
  lot and I kind of started turning things around, kind of
• 15:18
  trying to get my confidence back up.
• 15:20
  And then by the end of the season, I was really, really
• 15:22
  good again. But it took like a couple
• 15:24
  outings for I like, you know, one from being like super
• 15:27
  prominent role to like now I'm pitching 1 inning in a not close
• 15:30
  game or I'm like pitching 1 inning in a midweek.
• 15:34
  So I kind of like how to take those opportunities as they came
• 15:37
  to try to slowly get back into it.
• 15:39
  But he helped me out a lot in the mental game.
• 15:42
  The baby CS just kind of big for me there, which is crazy.
• 15:46
  I never thought I would say that.
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  It sounds stupid, I guess for a lot of kids, but it helped me
• 15:51
  out a ton. So I'm, I'm, I'm really glad she
• 15:53
  helped me out through that. How were you able to shift from
• 15:57
  a fatalistic mindset to maybe this more Zen style approach or
• 16:05
  just letting the opportunities come to you?
• 16:07
  Because it sounds like early on, good or bad, you treated
• 16:12
  everything as either 100% good or 100% bad.
• 16:17
  There was no spectrum to anything.
• 16:19
  It was just this is the best thing to ever happen or it's the
• 16:22
  worst thing to ever happen. The black and white, yes and no,
• 16:26
  that that can be very difficult. It's easy to fall into that
• 16:30
  place when you just get comfortable riding highs and
• 16:33
  then thinking your world's coming to an end.
• 16:36
  But how were you able to make that shift?
• 16:38
  Was it just the work with the book recommended by Coach
• 16:43
  Epstein, Conversations or introspection?
• 16:47
  What was that for you? I think part of it definitely
• 16:51
  was the book. I think the book helped me out a
• 16:52
  lot, kind of shifted a lot of the mindset I had.
• 16:56
  But I think part of it too is, like we said earlier, like just
• 16:59
  getting kind of humbled a little bit.
• 17:01
  Like I think up until that point, like I really thought how
• 17:04
  I was like the best pitcher ever.
• 17:06
  And every like time I allowed runs was like a bad game unless
• 17:09
  it was like one run or whatever across however many innings.
• 17:12
  But if I like gave up some hits, like gave up a home run or
• 17:17
  allowed some walks, I was like, oh, I sucked today.
• 17:19
  But once I kind of went through it and like just had some
• 17:23
  terrible outings. Like I had some outings where I
• 17:26
  walked three guys and got pulled or I had one outing against
• 17:29
  Saint Louis where I was part of three pitchers.
• 17:32
  I gave up their all time hits record in a single game.
• 17:34
  Like they had like 26 hits and I gave up like 9 of them across 2
• 17:39
  innings. Once I kind of went through
• 17:40
  that, it kind of went into the understanding like struggles are
• 17:44
  going to happen to me and finally accepting that and not
• 17:46
  every outing is going to be perfect.
• 17:49
  I kind of started becoming a little more process oriented
• 17:52
  rather than result oriented. So I was like try to get into
• 17:56
  like an analytical mindset of like, OK, what went wrong?
• 17:59
  What do I need to do better instead of just labeling that
• 18:03
  outing as oh, that sucked. I can't let that happen again.
• 18:06
  I was like, OK, this is the stuff I need to do better.
• 18:08
  My next outing, a lot of it was one just throwing strikes in
• 18:12
  general, but throwing all speed for strikes to allow myself to
• 18:15
  not get into these two O fastball counts like that was a
• 18:18
  big thing for me. So in my next outing, if I was
• 18:21
  like able to start landing sliders in a OO count or one O
• 18:24
  count or something, I was like, even if I didn't do that well
• 18:26
  that outing, at least I was able to start doing that better
• 18:29
  because that's something I need to do better.
• 18:31
  So I think it was just having an understanding of, you know, not
• 18:34
  every outing is going to be perfect and these are things I
• 18:37
  need to work on. If I can do these things well
• 18:39
  consistently, the most likely I'll have a good outing, and it
• 18:42
  doesn't necessarily matter the outcome of this one specific
• 18:45
  outing if my process is still there.
• 18:47
  Right. So you're able to find small
• 18:49
  victories or Silver Linings and everything you did, which
• 18:53
  ultimately stacks the WS as you go on and makes it easier to be
• 18:58
  successful in the long run. So all of this is still early on
• 19:05
  in your college career. We're we're in your sophomore
• 19:08
  year at this point. And it's crazy to think that
• 19:10
  you've now gone through this complete mental evolution prior
• 19:15
  to you catching the injury bug at this point at all.
• 19:20
  Are you having any arm discomfort or did that manifest
• 19:24
  later your junior year? No my sophomore year like an arm
• 19:27
  injury was like a complete non factor for me.
• 19:31
  Like I would I was throwing seven days a week long tossing 3
• 19:35
  * a week. Like throwing bull pens.
• 19:38
  At this point too, especially when I was struggling, I was
• 19:40
  throwing bull pens all the time trying to figure stuff out.
• 19:42
  Like my arm never felt like my arm was great.
• 19:45
  I feel like I took good care of myself, my body, which helped me
• 19:49
  too. But like from a workload
• 19:51
  standpoint, didn't care at all how much I was throwing every
• 19:54
  day just cuz I never had arm pain before.
• 19:57
  Yeah, I'm like I ever had arm pain.
• 19:59
  Was that when I was like really young?
• 20:01
  But like all throughout high school and my first years of
• 20:03
  college, my arm was never even like, sore probably.
• 20:06
  Didn't even think about it. No, didn't even like an injury
• 20:09
  was not even something I ever thought about.
• 20:11
  Oh, that is not something that'll happen to me.
• 20:15
  Which is. Naive.
• 20:17
  But which I mean, that's I, I think it is hard when we deal
• 20:21
  with arm injuries all the time. Generally the people that we
• 20:24
  talk to or that use flex pro grip, even if they don't
• 20:29
  currently have an injury, they probably had something prior in
• 20:33
  their life. And it's just become so
• 20:36
  commonplace for us to discuss it.
• 20:38
  But really, the world you were living in is the best place you
• 20:41
  can be. And like, yes, you should do
• 20:44
  things to mitigate the risk of injury or trained to be the best
• 20:48
  you can. But often times the things that
• 20:50
  are going to help you with performance are also going to be
• 20:53
  the things that reduce the risk of injury.
• 20:55
  So why ever think, my gosh, if I make this pitch, I'm going to
• 20:59
  get hurt? That's a terrible place to live
• 21:01
  mentally and physically. Yeah, I don't.
• 21:05
  I don't fault you for that by any means.
• 21:07
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you should, you should
• 21:10
  live freely mentally, not fearing injury.
• 21:13
  Otherwise you, I mean, you're going to put yourself in a
• 21:16
  terrible place and live a miserable existence if you
• 21:19
  constantly think like, oh, this could be the one.
• 21:22
  Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
• 21:24
  But yeah, let's let's Fast forward now maybe to when things
• 21:28
  did ultimately start to go bad. So was that the fall of your
• 21:32
  junior year or where? Well.
• 21:34
  So I I threw like the innings of my sophomore year and then I
• 21:38
  threw another 25 innings in Savannah with you.
• 21:42
  So I threw total of like 75 innings across the spring and
• 21:46
  summer, somewhere around 757075, something like that.
• 21:49
  So in the fall talk to FC and he's like the best, like very
• 21:54
  understanding. So I kind of talked to him was
• 21:56
  like, I feel like it'd probably be best to take some time off,
• 21:59
  like just through 75 innings. I don't know if you need to see
• 22:01
  something out of me in the fall because that's where like a lot
• 22:04
  of guys try to earn their spots and everything coaches
• 22:06
  confidence and stuff like that. But it was very understanding,
• 22:09
  had a lot of confidence to me already.
• 22:11
  So he kind of allowed me to take some time off And then I kind of
• 22:14
  went into a VLO program so I didn't have to pitch in like
• 22:17
  fall in her squats or anything like that.
• 22:19
  I like I said, I was my, I was throwing hard in the falls, but
• 22:22
  I was like very confused why that VLO wasn't translating into
• 22:26
  the spring. So I that was like the one goal
• 22:28
  I had going into my junior year was like, I want to find a way
• 22:31
  to get that veal out into the spring and not be peaking in the
• 22:35
  fall. So that was my goal going into
• 22:37
  my junior year. So I did that all fall and then
• 22:40
  over winter break. At that point I was just trying
• 22:43
  to get prime for the season and then leading up to my junior
• 22:47
  season, my arm was like kind of killing me.
• 22:49
  I think I was like the workload management finally caught up to
• 22:52
  me and plus we were doing like pod systems.
• 22:55
  I don't know if you're familiar with that but like a lot of
• 22:57
  college baseball teams nowadays are trying to have pitchers go
• 23:02
  less innings but pitch more frequently.
• 23:05
  So like every 3-5 days, something like that, depending
• 23:07
  on your role and everything, but even starters will only go like
• 23:10
  3-4 innings. So they can pitch from a Friday
• 23:13
  to a Tuesday and then back to a Saturday and stuff like that
• 23:15
  just to get, I think the whole premise of it is to try not let
• 23:18
  pitchers go three times through an order or something like that.
• 23:21
  So that's what I was preparing for.
• 23:22
  And then now since I was pitching and gain more
• 23:25
  frequently, like I think the workload management finally
• 23:28
  called out to me where I was like, I was still trying to like
• 23:31
  gain Velo leading up to the season where I was trying to
• 23:33
  long toss a lot, trying to pull down a lot.
• 23:35
  My midweek bullpens would still be like way too high of effort.
• 23:39
  And I think it finally called out to me.
• 23:40
  Arm was kind of killing me going into the season.
• 23:43
  And then we opened up at Alabama and I think they were ranked at
• 23:47
  the time very good, but I I didn't do well against them.
• 23:50
  But that's not important to the story.
• 23:52
  They're just they were very good.
• 23:54
  And the second week of the season we played Yale and at
• 23:59
  this point, like I was a weekend starter too.
• 24:01
  So I was like pretty happy with where I was at.
• 24:03
  So it's very frustrating that I end up getting hurt.
• 24:06
  But and that Yale game, like I went my first inning, I threw
• 24:10
  like a decent amount of pitches and I went out for the second
• 24:13
  inning of my elbow just like I felt like a almost like a crack
• 24:16
  or something in there, something like just 100% to not feel
• 24:19
  right. But I was like I looked down at
• 24:21
  the bullpen the second inning, no one's warming up.
• 24:24
  So I was like, that's a problem. And I'm kind of looking at at
• 24:26
  our coaches to see if anyone's kind of noticing that I'm like
• 24:29
  shaking my arm and nobody's looking at me.
• 24:31
  So I'm like, I guess I'll just throw, throw it like it seems
• 24:35
  all right. Like I, I throw a couple more
• 24:36
  warm up pitch. So I was like, seems like it'll
• 24:39
  be good enough to go, I guess. And then I threw that inning and
• 24:43
  then there was actually like a play at the plate where we got a
• 24:46
  guy out like pretty big moment in the game or I guess for the
• 24:49
  second inning, but it was like a cool play or whatever.
• 24:51
  So I gave like a little fist bump and then I just felt like
• 24:54
  insane amount of pain in my elbow just from like a fist
• 24:57
  bump. I was like, oh God, like that's
• 25:00
  not good. I threw in a lot of pitch that
• 25:02
  inning too. And like I said, we were doing
• 25:05
  this pasta somewhere. The starters were only going
• 25:06
  like 3 innings. So thankfully he was like, all
• 25:08
  right, you're done, whatever, we're going to the next guy
• 25:10
  anyway. So I was like, thank God, like
• 25:12
  my arm shot. And then after the game, like I
• 25:14
  was talking to our trainer and everything and I was like my
• 25:17
  eye, like my arm is like completely shot.
• 25:20
  Like it hurt so bad. And then she ran me through some
• 25:23
  tests and everything and she was like, she didn't think it was my
• 25:26
  UCL. So I was like, all right, that's
• 25:28
  good. We got an MRI and I had a stress
• 25:31
  fracture in my Lacron on. So it's like, yeah, I part of
• 25:35
  the elbow, hence why like a fist pump would hurt, like any
• 25:38
  extension kind of movement would really hurt.
• 25:41
  And that hurt to the point where it's like I couldn't do like a
• 25:43
  push up or I couldn't like Sprint really with the my elbow.
• 25:47
  Like it hurt like that bad. But then stress fracture in my
• 25:50
  junior year. Then I took the recommendation
• 25:53
  was to take like 6 to 6 to 8 weeks off, like 6 to 8 week on
• 25:57
  ramp and then you'll be good. So I was out for that season
• 26:00
  already. But at that point in time I was
• 26:02
  like, obviously I was so upset that I was out for the years
• 26:05
  only the second week of the season, But in my head I was
• 26:07
  like still be able to play summer ball, still get a year
• 26:10
  back. I'll be good by my senior year.
• 26:12
  I was like, that's all like this stinks, but it wasn't like a
• 26:15
  crazy long term injury. And as far as like at least it's
• 26:18
  not TJI feel like that's how pictures are now.
• 26:20
  If it's not TJ, it's fine. So that's kind of where my head
• 26:22
  was like it's not TJ, like it could be worse.
• 26:25
  So then in the summer I start ramping back up and actually one
• 26:29
  of my old pitching coaches was a pitching coach in the Cape and
• 26:32
  he like reached out to me and asked me how my arm was because
• 26:36
  he saw I didn't pitch that year. And I was like, oh, like it was
• 26:38
  a stress fracture, but I should be getting like a month like in
• 26:41
  in July or something like that. So you offered me a contract and
• 26:44
  like was supposed to go up to the Cape and I was like super
• 26:47
  pumped up for it. Like it's a Cape sick.
• 26:50
  So I started throwing, bullpen started ramping up and I threw a
• 26:54
  bullpen at like 80% effort where I was like sitting 8385.
• 26:57
  My arm just started killing me again.
• 26:59
  And I was like, oh, great. And then I kind of texted him
• 27:02
  like I almost wanted to like just try to pitch through it
• 27:05
  just because how cool of an opportunity that was.
• 27:08
  But I didn't want to hurt him. Have me come all the way up to
• 27:11
  The Cave and I'll pitch through this injury or whatever.
• 27:13
  So I end up getting another MRI and I had another stress
• 27:17
  fracture, same place. And I was like that.
• 27:20
  Now I'm starting to get a little frustrated because I'm like, why
• 27:22
  did that happen again? And there's not like a ton of
• 27:25
  rehab to do for it, honestly, like a stress fracture, it's
• 27:28
  just like your bone. So you just need to allow your
• 27:30
  bone to heal. And that's really, at least from
• 27:33
  what I was told, that was like really the only thing I truly do
• 27:36
  is just let the bone heal. So then the second time, I think
• 27:39
  I ended up taking like 12 weeks off because the first time I
• 27:42
  took 8. The second time I was like, all
• 27:43
  right, 8 didn't do it. Let's take 12.
• 27:45
  So I was out for like from at that point like July to like
• 27:49
  November which was like 3-4. I think it was like right around
• 27:54
  four months. Then I pitched in our last week
• 27:56
  of the fall, finally got back up and I was throwing 100% bullpens
• 28:00
  at this point. I like actually felt pretty
• 28:02
  solid and then pitched an inner squad in the fall and 1st like 2
• 28:09
  batters I felt fine and then I knew it happened again.
• 28:13
  At this point, I knew what it felt like because I had already
• 28:15
  had a stress fracture twice. So at that point I knew it would
• 28:18
  have felt like in the middle of the outing I was like, Oh yeah,
• 28:20
  I know it's messed up again. But I was like, this is probably
• 28:23
  my last outing for a while. So I was just like, screw it, I
• 28:26
  guess I'll just keep finish out this inning.
• 28:29
  Like why not? I haven't finished him forever,
• 28:31
  Have some fun, but got another MRI, another stress fracture.
• 28:36
  And at this point I was like obviously incredibly frustrated.
• 28:40
  Like three straight stress fracture, like clearly
• 28:42
  something's not going right. And then I was talking to the
• 28:46
  doctor that I was originally working with.
• 28:48
  But to be honest, at this point, I just kind of wanted a second
• 28:51
  opinion. So I was like, obviously, I
• 28:53
  don't know, I'd rather get a second pair of eyes on it since,
• 28:56
  you know, this thing keeps happening.
• 28:57
  So I went to a place in Philly. He he's like the Phillies
• 29:01
  surgeon, I think, or a physician, something like that.
• 29:04
  Erickson. No, it was Zuccotti.
• 29:06
  OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:07
  So he, he's like very well known and you know, I guys that I knew
• 29:10
  that worked with him before who talked really highly of him.
• 29:13
  So I was like, I'll try him out and he saw like a partial tear
• 29:19
  in my UCL. And I think he he didn't really
• 29:22
  go into like detail about this, but it seemed like he even
• 29:25
  thought like you could probably pitch through the partial tear
• 29:29
  part. But since like I kept having
• 29:31
  these stress fractures, I think there's this, I'm sure you know,
• 29:34
  but there I think there's this weird thing sometimes where it's
• 29:37
  like if your UCL is not completely stable, sometimes it
• 29:40
  can result to recurrent stress fractures.
• 29:43
  So that theory by that doctors like your UCL is like a full
• 29:48
  tear. It's not necessarily that bad of
• 29:50
  a tear, but it's like damaged enough to where your elbow is
• 29:54
  very unstable and that's what's causing these stress fractures.
• 29:57
  And then he recommended just like getting full TJ.
• 30:00
  He was like, you've already been hurt for so long.
• 30:02
  I don't want you to go through the brace and it not work or I
• 30:06
  don't want you to get like a PRP shot and that not work.
• 30:09
  Even though like typically I think he was kind of inferring
• 30:12
  that implying that he might recommend like something like a
• 30:15
  PRP shot, but he was like, it's been so long, just get the full
• 30:18
  TJ be done with it. So I took his word on that and
• 30:21
  they got full TJ. So then I was out my whole
• 30:23
  senior year and then finally came back 100% healthy like this
• 30:29
  past winter break before the season started and then I got
• 30:32
  hurt again. So I can keep going on with that
• 30:34
  too. But like 2 weeks before the
• 30:36
  season started, I was throwing lives, starting well, but like
• 30:40
  my arm is starting to hurt me again.
• 30:41
  And I was like, all right, but I was like, I got TJ like I would,
• 30:44
  I felt more confident. Like maybe this is just like
• 30:47
  growing pains. And TJ like a lot of guys have
• 30:49
  told me before, like your elbows not going to always feel great.
• 30:52
  Like it's going to feel tight. It's not going to feel 100% all
• 30:55
  the time. Over time it'll start getting
• 30:57
  better and better. So in my head I was like, I was
• 31:00
  not feeling great just because that's just TJ.
• 31:03
  Like you got to fight through it a little bit.
• 31:05
  And then my last outing I was like my arm was just shot again.
• 31:09
  I was like trying to like throw a ball afterwards just to see if
• 31:12
  it was good or not. And I was like terrible pain.
• 31:16
  So I was like, oh, like I thought I retorn my UCL again or
• 31:20
  something like that. I didn't know what happened.
• 31:21
  So got another MRI right for the season started and it was like
• 31:26
  weird there's like a lot of inflammation around my UCL and
• 31:29
  there said it could have been a possible stress reaction and my
• 31:33
  I don't know it's like the bone that your UCL attaches to I.
• 31:36
  Don't know. OK, Medial Epicondyle.
• 31:38
  Yes, that's it turns that well still, but yeah, they said it
• 31:43
  was a possible stress reaction there and like recommended.
• 31:46
  I talked to my doctor at in Philly and he recommended
• 31:50
  another month off. I want to say of throwing and
• 31:54
  then another month of like throwing again, like rehab.
• 31:58
  And at this point I was talking to sorry, I kind of skipped over
• 32:00
  this part. At this point.
• 32:01
  I was talking to Dylan, Dylan newcomer a lot, who was the
• 32:04
  driveline guy. So I kind of like fully relied
• 32:07
  on him for like trying to get me back to to full health because I
• 32:13
  I just started working with him like weeks before I re injured
• 32:18
  myself. So over winter break, I.
• 32:22
  Got started working with him like the end of the fall.
• 32:27
  When I signed up for Driveline, I didn't want to waste money.
• 32:32
  I guess lack of better ways to put it if I wasn't at 100%
• 32:37
  health. Part of it's obviously getting
• 32:39
  healthy and that's part of what you're paying for it, but part
• 32:41
  of it also is you want to get better.
• 32:43
  So I was like, I don't want to sign up with them if I'm like
• 32:47
  throwing 80 off the mound right now and I'm like, not even close
• 32:49
  to 100%. It's like, how much can they
• 32:51
  really do for me at that point? And hindsight, I kind of wish
• 32:54
  I'd worked with them sooner because Dylan was so helpful
• 32:56
  that maybe he could have prevented that from happening in
• 32:59
  the first place. But I mean, hindsight's always
• 33:02
  2020. I mean, I started working with
• 33:03
  them like right around winter break, right before winter
• 33:06
  break. OK.
• 33:07
  So calling a quick timeout and running things back.
• 33:10
  So we're going to run. No, it's all good.
• 33:12
  I didn't want to kill the flow. So calling a replay on what you
• 33:17
  experienced with the elbow, especially in the backside, so
• 33:20
  the electronon and then maybe even the lateral side of your
• 33:23
  elbow as well, What you were explaining is really common.
• 33:26
  And this is me calling kind of a quick like Physiology, I guess
• 33:31
  just for contacts. There are three main structures
• 33:35
  that receive load as we're working through a throw.
• 33:38
  It is the UCL, it is the Bony collision on the backside of the
• 33:43
  elbow and it's the muscle tendon units that overlay the UCL.
• 33:48
  So what can happen if there's additional laxity on the medial
• 33:54
  elbow or the inside of the elbow?
• 33:55
  Specifically at lay backers, we're working through maximum
• 33:59
  external rotation. If there's more laxity, that
• 34:02
  means there's more space or more stretch on the front of the
• 34:05
  elbow, which then leads to a greater collision of the bones
• 34:10
  on the backside of the elbow. So for you, you probably had
• 34:14
  this increased laxity or because of the partial tear of your UCL,
• 34:19
  it led to an increased Bony collision, whether a more
• 34:24
  intense collision or more rubbing over time that resulted
• 34:29
  in this fracture that just kept reoccurring.
• 34:33
  And as a result, I totally see why Doctor Shikhati looked at
• 34:38
  this and said, OK, we cannot guarantee that this won't happen
• 34:42
  again unless we go in there and tighten things up.
• 34:46
  Yeah. So I just wanted to address that
• 34:49
  piece because that is common. It is interesting how a lot of
• 34:53
  athletes will say like, oh, like my elbow hurts and your coach
• 34:56
  will say oh, where at, Or a trainer will say where at and
• 35:00
  they say the backside and people will brush it off like it's no
• 35:02
  big deal. But oftentimes that can just be
• 35:05
  the precursor of something that's going on at the medial
• 35:09
  elbow. So I think the way that you
• 35:11
  handled that was probably the right way.
• 35:13
  I'm glad finally got things taken care of.
• 35:16
  But now Dylan newcomers entered the chat.
• 35:19
  I'm excited to talk about this chapter of the progression.
• 35:23
  Yeah, and just how all of that played out.
• 35:26
  So you got the MRI again. You said possible stress
• 35:29
  reaction to the medial epicondyle.
• 35:32
  You've got Dylan on your team now, and he's been with you for
• 35:35
  about four or five weeks, I would guess, maybe six weeks.
• 35:38
  So what happened next? So yeah, I talked to the doctor
• 35:44
  about this and everything and the reason why I was like a
• 35:47
  possible stress reaction, not just a for sure like 100% was
• 35:51
  because of TJ. So like maybe this will result
• 35:54
  in you giving another physiological a break.
• 35:58
  Apparently there's like when you get TJ, they like tie it to like
• 36:02
  that part and that inflammation that pops up on the MRI.
• 36:06
  It's very hard to tell if that's from like them drilling your new
• 36:09
  UCL into that area or if that's actually a new stress reaction
• 36:13
  apart from surgery. So it's kind of just like
• 36:17
  doctor's discretion at that point because the MRI can't
• 36:20
  necessarily tell you 100% one way or the other.
• 36:23
  The doctor's going to have to kind of give it his or her best
• 36:26
  guess on this is new or if this is from surgery.
• 36:29
  And I too, I talked to two different doctors, the one who
• 36:31
  gave the MRI enrichment, the one who was back home in Philly, and
• 36:35
  both of them said different things.
• 36:36
  One of them was like told me it's probably from surgery and
• 36:41
  you probably just have built up inflammation and just take like
• 36:44
  2 weeks off, get back to throwing.
• 36:45
  And the other one was like, surgery was so long ago at this
• 36:48
  point that because this is about a year removed from from
• 36:51
  surgery, it's so long from surgery that I don't think it's
• 36:54
  from surgery. I think this is a new stress
• 36:55
  reaction. He would recommend like 4 weeks
• 36:58
  off or something like that. So I had no idea what I was
• 37:00
  going to do. So I kind of just relied fully
• 37:02
  on Dylan. I was like, I'm just going to
• 37:04
  trust what he says. Like he's their driveline guy.
• 37:06
  I'm just going to fully trust what he says, see what, see what
• 37:09
  happens. And I think he was almost like
• 37:11
  kind of in between the two, kind of forget what he said.
• 37:15
  But moral of the stories, he said that the inflammation or
• 37:19
  the pain that I was feeling, regardless of if it was a new
• 37:22
  small stress reaction or if it was from surgery or whatever.
• 37:25
  Like regardless of that, it was from like the lack of strength
• 37:29
  in my tendons or stiffness in my tendons that was in my UCL.
• 37:34
  That's what he theorized because he was saying more like, Long
• 37:37
  story short, your UC LS putting on more stress is taking on more
• 37:41
  force. And it should right now.
• 37:42
  And that's why I'm feeling this pain.
• 37:44
  So that's why it's a possible stretch reaction.
• 37:46
  That's why I'm built up inflammation, whatever.
• 37:48
  I also started taking like a steroid pack because he
• 37:51
  recommended like if I could get a cortisone shot to try to clear
• 37:56
  up that inflammation before I start throwing again.
• 37:58
  But cortisone shot like near your UCL is risky according to
• 38:03
  the doctor that I talked to. Like they placed in the wrong
• 38:06
  spot could possibly like rupture your UCL again, I was told just
• 38:11
  like I don't feel comfortable giving a cortisone shot, but
• 38:13
  I'll give you the steroid pack. That's like basically like tries
• 38:17
  to emulate a cortisone shot. So it's like just a basically a
• 38:20
  heavy anti-inflammatory. So I started taking that and
• 38:23
  then Dylan had me work with flex pro grip a lot where he started
• 38:27
  giving me the test, the right the throwers readiness test and
• 38:31
  my scores were zeros across the board.
• 38:35
  I was up to 93 at this point post TJ and so I put in like 93
• 38:41
  is my expected velocity, like top velocity.
• 38:43
  And I was like my expected velocity at the time is like 84
• 38:46
  or something like that, like really, really bad.
• 38:49
  And he kind of said that Oh yeah, this is after I gave those
• 38:53
  tests. He was like, Oh yeah, this is
• 38:55
  100% the issue here. So he was like basically take
• 38:59
  two to four weeks off, something like that and then like a four
• 39:03
  to six week on ramp. So now this is like going to be
• 39:05
  a 10 week process. And he said the flex pro grit
• 39:09
  numbers like even though they might improve in the short term,
• 39:13
  you're not going to see the like the the full result of them
• 39:16
  until like right around 10 weeks is when your tendons are really
• 39:19
  going to start seeing some serious results or improve
• 39:22
  strength, improve stiffness. You can explain this part a lot
• 39:25
  better than me once I get done this, but I started, I started
• 39:28
  doing all the strength trainings for a while and when I started
• 39:32
  throwing right, right away again, I threw my first bullpen
• 39:35
  like 4 weeks after something like that, like at 70 miles an
• 39:38
  hour, my arm's still killing me like hurt really bad.
• 39:41
  So I, we really slow down the throwing process to try to give
• 39:45
  the flex program more time to like really see some serious
• 39:49
  results, you know, so we slowed it down a lot.
• 39:51
  And then 10 weeks or 8 weeks down the road or whatever it was
• 39:54
  when I was finally starting to ramp up intensity again, that's
• 39:57
  when I finally felt great, which was very strange.
• 40:00
  I changed my mechanics a little bit too.
• 40:02
  I worked with Dylan about this too.
• 40:03
  I had a really pushy arm action, which is like a common TJ
• 40:08
  mistake. It's like when you start
• 40:09
  throwing again and try to guard your elbow, you'll become really
• 40:13
  pushy. So the only other thing I did as
• 40:16
  far as trying to get my arm to feel better was.
• 40:18
  Try to create this looser arm action that wasn't so pushy,
• 40:21
  that was hopefully putting my arm in a better position to not
• 40:25
  feel pain I guess. OK, so I will take over real
• 40:29
  quickly again and just add some context to what you said there.
• 40:34
  You are 100% right with your phrasing.
• 40:36
  With strength and stiffness, what happens is no matter what
• 40:41
  you do training wise, whether it's with Flexpro grip for the
• 40:44
  forearm or anywhere in your body or what we see as strength gains
• 40:50
  outpaces stiffness. Stiffness takes about 10 to 12
• 40:55
  weeks to really, I guess, become more evident Or if we were going
• 41:01
  to do real testing, if we were going to look at the Young's
• 41:05
  modulus, that's the measure of stiffness of any material that
• 41:10
  is going to take longer. So we need to do ultrasound
• 41:13
  elastography to actually look at the stiffness of a muscle tendon
• 41:17
  unit. But the research would say is we
• 41:20
  can see neuromuscular gains or what we commonly notice as
• 41:24
  strength gains in as little as four weeks, if not sooner,
• 41:28
  right? You can think about the first
• 41:29
  time you ever picked up a weight in your life.
• 41:32
  I'm sure that that first summer you dedicated to strength
• 41:35
  training when your bench press went from to 45 lbs to all of a
• 41:40
  sudden you're doing 100 to Then you go back to school in the
• 41:43
  fall and you're bench pressing 200% more than you ever imagined
• 41:49
  you could bench press. You're all of a sudden benching
• 41:51
  180. You know, three months ago you
• 41:54
  couldn't get £65 off your chest. And that stuff can happen fast
• 41:58
  because you're pretty much creating new neural pathways.
• 42:02
  You're, you're firing muscle that you already have.
• 42:05
  You're creating a better ability to fire, for lack of better
• 42:08
  words, or to trigger an action. Versus stiffness comes when we
• 42:13
  train at or above 70% of your maximum voluntary contraction.
• 42:19
  So there's a little bit more science to it and it requires
• 42:22
  very specific loading over a certain amount of time under
• 42:26
  tension, which is why the longer runway is super helpful.
• 42:31
  So now you think about, in a perfect world, you can include
• 42:35
  that in your training kind of an offseason to ensure that you get
• 42:40
  all the benefits from stiffness early on.
• 42:43
  So then you don't have to chase that at the same time.
• 42:46
  You're also chasing Velo. You want the health side of
• 42:49
  things or the stiffness side of things to outpace what you're
• 42:52
  trying to do on a performance side.
• 42:54
  You were just in this really difficult position of trying to
• 42:57
  do both at the same time, which is why you were always on this
• 43:01
  teeter totter seesaw, going from a velocity that was comfortable
• 43:06
  to ticking up a mile per hour or two.
• 43:08
  And all of a sudden the pain sets in again.
• 43:11
  Right, Exactly. Yeah.
• 43:13
  Like my arm was feeling great up until like I was starting to
• 43:15
  throw against live hitters and then that's when it kind of
• 43:19
  started when I was increasing my intensity and everything.
• 43:22
  So yeah, so like I did this 10 weeks.
• 43:25
  I mean we didn't like plan it out exactly to be 10 weeks, but
• 43:28
  we just try to give it like around 8 to 10 weeks of time of
• 43:32
  training, like seriously training the with the flex pro
• 43:35
  grip. And then finally 10 weeks later
• 43:38
  was like halfway through the season at this point.
• 43:40
  It was like a 2 month period of when my elbow first start
• 43:43
  hurting me up to when I got back in game again.
• 43:47
  At that point, my elbow was feeling great and that's when I
• 43:51
  hit a Velo PR like was up to 95, my first outing back after TJ
• 43:56
  and yeah, it ended up working out great.
• 44:00
  Yeah. That.
• 44:00
  I mean, flex, like Dylan telling me about this because at this
• 44:03
  point, like, I didn't know about flex pro grip at all, really.
• 44:06
  Like we have them at Richmond, which is great, but I had like,
• 44:11
  I didn't really know too much about it.
• 44:13
  So him giving me all these all like the protocols that he
• 44:16
  wanted me to do what, when to do what, telling me how important
• 44:19
  it was and then actually doing it and seeing the results of
• 44:21
  that was like massive 100%. Like it went from my arm killing
• 44:26
  me to not feeling pain at all. Like now I'm throwing six days a
• 44:30
  week. I can throw.
• 44:31
  I've been times in game where I was like throwing in the midweek
• 44:35
  on Tuesday, then back in game on Saturday.
• 44:37
  Now I'm like actually able to like pitch again.
• 44:39
  And it's like not really too much of A concern about my arm
• 44:42
  health anymore, which is like super, super cool and fun again.
• 44:46
  Right. You no longer feel like you're
• 44:48
  rehabbing. You actually feel like a pitcher
• 44:50
  again. Exactly, Yeah.
• 44:53
  Which is a massive step. And I'd even, I'd love if you
• 44:57
  could spend some time on that, even the transition that you've
• 45:01
  had to go through of years of rehab to feeling like a pitcher
• 45:06
  again. So we we talked about the mental
• 45:09
  side early on that freshman to sophomore year, that kind of
• 45:12
  fatalistic approach to that, making the jump of like having
• 45:17
  to clear the mind again and just going out and competing.
• 45:20
  Yeah. I think like at first it was it
• 45:23
  actually made it easier. I've talked about this with
• 45:26
  Epstein a lot of my pitching coach here.
• 45:29
  Like my first two outings, I went three up three down both
• 45:32
  times my first two innings and like was really good.
• 45:35
  And I think having those injuries and, you know, finally
• 45:39
  being back out there was almost like helpful in the fact was
• 45:42
  like I couldn't care less how I did out there.
• 45:44
  It's like I'm pitching a game again, like this is so fun.
• 45:47
  Like I suck, I don't care at all.
• 45:49
  It's like I'm pitching in the game again.
• 45:51
  I had 0 expectations like was just kind of like I'm still
• 45:54
  competing obviously, but like more or less was more happy to
• 45:57
  be there than I was competing. So I think that helped me a ton.
• 46:01
  And then the harder part was like my third outing, like I
• 46:05
  kind of walked some guys gave up like a fun single, like kind of
• 46:08
  just ran into some, some crap and my command wasn't fully
• 46:11
  there. Then it was like, that's when I
• 46:13
  first started thinking about like, OK, like enough of the
• 46:16
  just happy to be here. Let me try to start figuring
• 46:19
  stuff out. I think the a very difficult
• 46:21
  part that I wasn't expecting, which is kind of I'm still going
• 46:25
  through it a little bit right now is trying to like figure out
• 46:29
  how to get through stuff again. Like I thought I had, like I, I
• 46:33
  thought I had it down like my sophomore year after I went
• 46:35
  through that tough time and everything.
• 46:38
  But it just feels like, it almost feels like I'm a freshman
• 46:40
  again with how long it's been since I've pitched where it's
• 46:43
  like, oh, I, you know, I've had some command issues.
• 46:46
  Like how do I change my mechanics?
• 46:49
  Do I like just clear it? Not like nothing happened.
• 46:52
  Going through those processes have been like much more
• 46:58
  difficult than I thought they would be.
• 47:00
  That kind of like the new challenge I'm facing right now.
• 47:02
  But I think I'm starting to figure it out a little bit.
• 47:05
  But another hard part about this has been like since I haven't
• 47:09
  like since I've lost my command a little bit and like a couple
• 47:12
  outings recently, I'm trying to still work like manage my
• 47:16
  workload since I'm like, OK, I can't just get comfortable in
• 47:19
  the fact that like my arm feels good again.
• 47:21
  Finally where it's like now let me just forget everything and
• 47:24
  like why I possibly got hurt in the 1st place to try to fix
• 47:27
  this. Like I'm still trying to manage
• 47:28
  that workload while working on stuff.
• 47:31
  So that's been like another thing that's been on my mind
• 47:34
  too. But yeah, those are I guess the
• 47:36
  the new challenges that that get brought up post post surgery and
• 47:40
  post injury and everything. I feel like I seen that a lot
• 47:43
  last year. It almost helped me a little
• 47:45
  bit. One of my good friends last year
• 47:47
  was my roommate came off at TJ and had a lot of struggles to
• 47:50
  his first year and how to deal with that a lot.
• 47:53
  And like a lot of what he was saying was like not feeling
• 47:54
  comfortable, like not not really sure how to get out of it and
• 47:58
  everything. So I've been talking to him a
• 47:59
  little bit, but I think that's like fairly common thing that
• 48:03
  happens to to pitchers coming off of TJ and everything like
• 48:06
  that. So that's the challenge I'm
• 48:07
  trying to pass over right now, I guess.
• 48:11
  Yeah, no matter what, you're different.
• 48:12
  You had surgery, you went through all these things.
• 48:15
  You change your mechanics, you're moving a new way, so
• 48:18
  there are going to be new struggles.
• 48:20
  It's one thing if you thrown the same way your entire life and
• 48:24
  never been hurt and you have a little hiccup, you can very
• 48:28
  easily go through the check boxes and figure out what might
• 48:31
  be off. Whereas in your situation, it's
• 48:34
  almost like you have this completely new canvas again,
• 48:37
  that you're trying to figure out how to make the correct
• 48:41
  adjustment to complete the end result.
• 48:44
  Now there there was a little a little thing in there, a little
• 48:48
  story that I wanted to add. I don't even know if you've
• 48:51
  talked about this, but it's a little anecdote I got from
• 48:55
  talking to Coach Epstein after your first appearance back.
• 48:58
  He said what I think is really an amazing story from seeing
• 49:04
  your evolution as an athlete. He said your first pitch, and I
• 49:09
  don't know if it was the first pitch, but it works for the
• 49:11
  story. But your your first pitch back,
• 49:16
  you spiked A fastball like OK, yeah, you you're throwing some
• 49:22
  like low mid 90s fastball into the dirt or well or into the
• 49:26
  turf 56 feet. And he said right away he saw
• 49:31
  you smile like laugh just like laugh shuffle.
• 49:37
  Yeah. I still got the.
• 49:39
  First one, I got it back and I started cracking up and I was
• 49:42
  like, that's one way to start off my, my first outing back
• 49:46
  spiked fastball. Nothing like that.
• 49:48
  I was like, that's just so funny, especially because like
• 49:50
  the stuff I've been through, like command was always the
• 49:53
  thing that was holding me back or like an issue I've had.
• 49:57
  So it's like the first fit back and I spiked A fastball, I was
• 49:59
  like, oh, that's just of course, like that's just so funny.
• 50:03
  But yeah, that was, that was a fun moment, funny moment.
• 50:06
  But yeah, it was like he, he said that to me.
• 50:08
  It was like a full circle moment because like that's why I like
• 50:11
  I've talked to him. He's like, you need to go back
• 50:12
  to like where you were when he first like came back for like
• 50:16
  you're not over analyzing pitches.
• 50:18
  Because now I've gotten this point where like I'm starting to
• 50:20
  over analyze a lot of stuff. It's like.
• 50:22
  From the analytics guy, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm starting to over
• 50:25
  analyze clapping, but yeah, that first pitch I didn't think about
• 50:29
  it at all. I was like, oh that's funny.
• 50:30
  And then I just threw my next pitch and didn't really think
• 50:33
  too much about it. Like it was just it's fun to be
• 50:35
  there. Didn't really think about
• 50:37
  spiking A fastball too much now or I guess hopefully not
• 50:40
  anymore. But like, and then there was
• 50:41
  like a two week period where flash spiked the fastballs like,
• 50:44
  oh, what was I doing? Like, why did that happen?
• 50:46
  Whatever, That's a cool. That was a cool little moment.
• 50:50
  Yeah, I loved hearing that. Just hopefully the podcast
• 50:54
  listeners understand that too, based on the progression you
• 50:56
  went through of like, Oh my God, I spiked this pitch.
• 51:00
  It's the end of the world to now.
• 51:03
  You were at a point where you literally just started laughing
• 51:06
  on the mound. Yeah, it's like, well, that's
• 51:08
  funny. I can't believe that just
• 51:09
  happened. Yeah, no, it was a cool kind of
• 51:12
  a whole circle moment. Didn't UK the side in your first
• 51:15
  appearance back or a couple of cases?
• 51:18
  I spiked the first pitch. Second pitch, I just sort of
• 51:21
  right down the middle, grounded out to first base and then I
• 51:25
  shrug out the next two guys. OK, all right, so not so bad.
• 51:28
  I guess, yeah, it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad.
• 51:31
  Yeah. So now, now let's even talk
• 51:34
  about the progression that you're working through
• 51:36
  currently, right. You said you are getting a
• 51:39
  little over analytical with yourself or or maybe nitpicking
• 51:43
  in certain regards which we already discussed can happen
• 51:47
  coming off of surgery or coming off of a long break.
• 51:50
  That's that's very common when guys are working through
• 51:55
  something new or a new feeling. So what are things that you've
• 51:58
  now been able to go back to or rely upon that you can find that
• 52:03
  center again or find a bit of success that you can latch on
• 52:07
  to? Yeah, Like you said, I think
• 52:10
  it's been difficult in the fact that just a totally different
• 52:13
  picture now. So a lot of the things that I
• 52:15
  did go back to weren't working. So I think that's the part why I
• 52:19
  was getting like very flustered early on or when I was first
• 52:23
  having a little bit of command struggle was like, oh, my old
• 52:26
  cues that I thought I had like aren't working as well.
• 52:29
  Also part of the issue is I went from a complete over the top
• 52:33
  foreseeing ride guide to like now I'm like almost sidearm like
• 52:38
  very low 3/4 because that's just like when I said I was like
• 52:41
  working on fixing my pushy arm action.
• 52:43
  That was like, oh, this feels super natural and easy.
• 52:46
  It feels pretty good on my arm. It just felt a lot better for
• 52:49
  me. Now I'm from throwing like
• 52:52
  sinkers. So if I'm missing arm side a
• 52:54
  lot, which I, I was for a period of time, like my old cue is just
• 52:59
  like, oh, I'll just move my sights over to the left side and
• 53:03
  let it come back. If I'm missing arm side, simple
• 53:05
  solutions to move over a little bit, let it run off, whatever.
• 53:10
  And then I whenever I did that, I was starting to like yank the
• 53:12
  sinker instead of having a slight adjustment.
• 53:15
  So that part was very difficult. That the thing that I think I
• 53:18
  have been able to keep with me is the mental side of the game I
• 53:21
  think has has carried with me to a certain degree.
• 53:24
  One trying to like find the silver lining in the process
• 53:29
  again has been really helpful for me.
• 53:31
  My last two outings weren't great, but I was able to do
• 53:33
  things a lot better. So that that's been helpful is
• 53:37
  like not losing my confidence just because my first two
• 53:39
  outings were perfect to then my last two outings weren't great,
• 53:42
  but they were a lot better than like walking two guys.
• 53:45
  So that part has been good to like find achievement in process
• 53:50
  and not necessarily results. And then 2 is not necessarily
• 53:54
  overthinking too much. Like I said, I've been
• 53:57
  relatively analytical and trying to fix mistakes right away.
• 54:01
  But I wasn't worried about like mechanics at all.
• 54:04
  I was trying to trust the fact that my mechanics are good
• 54:07
  enough as they were and they take me this far so not to worry
• 54:11
  about them. So those are some of the things
• 54:13
  that I've held constant. I've helped me a little bit and
• 54:16
  getting back into like a competing mindset, I guess.
• 54:19
  But like I said, I think my mechanics are so different that
• 54:22
  like some of my old cues and since I pitched so long ago that
• 54:27
  some of my old cues aren't necessarily helpful for me right
• 54:30
  now. So I think that was the
• 54:33
  challenging part. Now I think I'm finally starting
• 54:35
  to find new cues that are that are starting to work for me a
• 54:37
  little bit. Like I said, I think the most
• 54:40
  important part for me to learn is I'm not the same pitcher that
• 54:43
  I was before. I'm not going to try to use the
• 54:46
  same exact cues. I might have to tweak them a
• 54:48
  little bit or or see what works best for me now and not to just
• 54:51
  assume that I'm the same pitcher as I was before.
• 54:54
  That understanding has been more helpful for me than anything
• 54:57
  else at this point. Well, Josh, I'm sorry to make
• 55:01
  you do this and it's probably crappy podcasting on my side,
• 55:05
  but we've gone through such an amazing evolution of yours that
• 55:08
  I'm just now realizing that we completely skipped over the
• 55:11
  actual TJ rehab. We we don't need to go crazy on
• 55:15
  it. But with that being such a big
• 55:18
  part of this podcast, I definitely want to take a little
• 55:21
  bit of time where you actually talk through, I guess that
• 55:25
  chapter that we missed the actual surgery to then when you
• 55:29
  sought out Dylan Newcomer back in November, December.
• 55:34
  I'll start it from even before surgery, like I was working with
• 55:39
  a strength coach from back home and I was kind of talking
• 55:42
  through it and like see what he thought from like a strength
• 55:45
  standpoint or whatever. So right away it was very
• 55:47
  important for me to like keep doing arm care and lifting a lot
• 55:53
  even leading up to surgery because at first I like this
• 55:56
  wide text. I'm like, is it even like worth
• 55:58
  it? Like is it even going to do
• 55:59
  anything for me? Like should I keep doing these
• 56:01
  workouts and doing these arm cares?
• 56:03
  I'm just going to have to take time off afterwards anyway.
• 56:06
  And she was like, Oh no, like it's this is like incredibly
• 56:09
  important to keep doing all this strength training, all of your
• 56:13
  arm care still, even though you're about to get surgery.
• 56:17
  So that was important right away.
• 56:18
  That was the first, I guess part of it.
• 56:21
  And then after surgery, it's like you can't sweat for a
• 56:25
  while. And so like that part was hard
• 56:27
  because as soon as you get surgery or at least made you
• 56:30
  want to do stuff right away, like you got in this mindset of
• 56:33
  like, I'm going to come back better or whatever.
• 56:35
  Like it's almost inspirational in a way of like, this is a new
• 56:39
  chapter for me. I'm going to take it head on.
• 56:41
  It's very difficult in the beginning to find this little
• 56:44
  stuff to do that's still important, but it's not going to
• 56:49
  like make you sweat because you have the stitches in there.
• 56:51
  It's not going to mess up your arms.
• 56:52
  Also, I got the TJ out of my knee, which I guess could be
• 56:56
  important because that was part of my rehab.
• 56:59
  A lot of people get it out of their wrist now, I think.
• 57:02
  Yeah, the Pulmaris longus tendon, which not everybody has,
• 57:06
  or it's too small for some people.
• 57:08
  So you had the gracilis hamstring tendon pulled out of
• 57:12
  your legs? Zuccotti was, since it's not
• 57:16
  good for everybody, since it's like could be short or not thick
• 57:19
  enough or whatever, he was like, I just take it out of
• 57:20
  everybody's knee or the hamstring tendon.
• 57:22
  That's consistent for everybody. That works every time.
• 57:25
  So that's where I got it out. So like a lot of my rehab in the
• 57:28
  beginning was like hip strengthening exercises to try
• 57:32
  to protect that hamstring since I couldn't do anything upper
• 57:34
  body wise. So that was like the first
• 57:36
  portion of my rehab. I don't know if you've heard
• 57:39
  this from people before, but like the knee and the hamstring
• 57:42
  up until I started throwing again was like more, way more
• 57:45
  difficult for me than my arm, which was incredibly annoying.
• 57:48
  I didn't think of anything of it.
• 57:49
  I was like, Oh yeah, take like whatever, it's going to be fine.
• 57:51
  But that would like prove to be quite the challenge in the first
• 57:55
  couple months or whatever. So that was the first portion of
• 57:57
  it. And then as soon as you get out
• 58:00
  of your cast, you kind of start working on range of motion.
• 58:03
  I'm pretty sure like pretty pretty much right away after
• 58:06
  that or pretty soon after. So a lot of my rehab at that
• 58:09
  point was just my, my trainer like kind of bringing me through
• 58:12
  different ranges of motions. I would do it on my own as far
• 58:15
  as I could back and forth. And then she would also do, I
• 58:19
  don't know, passive, is that right?
• 58:23
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 58:25
  So I'll do it on my own. And then she would kind of try
• 58:27
  to push it a little bit up until the end ranges.
• 58:31
  So that was like one of the first steps is to try to get
• 58:34
  that back. I think there was even a period
• 58:36
  of time to and scar rubbing, whatever.
• 58:39
  That right, Yeah, you're just trying to prevent build up of
• 58:42
  additional scar tissue basically.
• 58:45
  So that was part of it as well. I think there was a period in
• 58:47
  time too where it was like the range of motion wasn't great
• 58:50
  right away and there was something you could do.
• 58:52
  Or it's like you get dry needled like right around your scar and
• 58:56
  I think that's supposed to free you up a little bit.
• 58:59
  So I did that at one point, but got the range of motion back.
• 59:02
  That was fine. And then you kind of start right
• 59:04
  away with just like wrist curls because I think like the
• 59:07
  forearm, as we've talked about is like a very big part of it.
• 59:10
  So you start with like 1 LB and then you start trying to work
• 59:13
  your way up. You start doing assisted push
• 59:15
  ups against the wall and then work your way up.
• 59:17
  Very standard like shoulder rehab stuff.
• 59:19
  But I found that easier and more standard than all the other
• 59:23
  stuff you have to do. Shout out to your coach on the
• 59:25
  front end telling you to keep doing everything that you were
• 59:28
  doing. Yeah, exactly.
• 59:31
  Yeah, He that I think that was a big help cuz my it didn't feel
• 59:34
  like as weak as I thought it would.
• 59:36
  I felt like my strength came back a lot sooner than I thought
• 59:40
  it would. Another thing I did that I kind
• 59:42
  of forgot about too is not my arm was still like in a cast.
• 59:45
  I would do a lot of opposite side training.
• 59:48
  Yes. So even though like I wasn't
• 59:51
  able to sweat out, try to like keep it at a moderately low
• 59:54
  workload, but I would be doing like one arm benches, one arm
• 59:57
  rows a lot, stuff like that. One arm curls all on my left
• 1:00:00
  side. And apparently, like I said, you
• 1:00:03
  can talk more about this if you want because you know more, but
• 1:00:06
  apparently it's supposed to carry over to your right side if
• 1:00:10
  you train your left side. So I snapped for a while too.
• 1:00:13
  In the beginning when I couldn't train my right side at all, I
• 1:00:16
  would kind of grind on my left side of my upper body.
• 1:00:19
  So yeah, so I think that was like some of the more niche
• 1:00:22
  parts of my training that happened right away.
• 1:00:25
  I think a lot of it too is like just like mobility stuff.
• 1:00:28
  I think like my shoulders ended up getting pretty tight.
• 1:00:31
  Honestly, this sounds a little crazy, but when your arm is in
• 1:00:34
  the cast for this long, I felt like my shoulder was very tight
• 1:00:39
  afterwards from like kind of holding it around like that.
• 1:00:42
  So I did a lot of like shoulder mobility exercises, like pretty
• 1:00:46
  early on in my rehab process. So yeah, a bunch of stuff like
• 1:00:50
  that. Another thing that was like kind
• 1:00:52
  of interesting was like the pull up progression.
• 1:00:55
  OK. I I try to do research on this
• 1:00:58
  and it was like difficult for me to navigate through it, but a
• 1:01:04
  challenging part was I would be able to do like pretty heavy
• 1:01:07
  rows or like a pretty heavy bench press at this point but
• 1:01:09
  like pull up still felt really weird.
• 1:01:12
  I try to start off by just like doing long holds on the pull up
• 1:01:16
  bar, like dead hangs pretty much and then start doing eccentric
• 1:01:20
  pull ups. So like I did like dead hangs
• 1:01:22
  for like a two week period and then I might do like eccentric
• 1:01:24
  pull ups for like a two week period and then I would start
• 1:01:27
  doing actual pull ups. So that was another part that
• 1:01:29
  was like kind of hard. So yeah, I think that's pretty
• 1:01:32
  much everything I can I can remember that was niche or
• 1:01:35
  challenging. I also.
• 1:01:37
  Pulled very inactive of the way you handled the pull ups.
• 1:01:40
  That's, I mean that's handled perfectly as far as I'm
• 1:01:43
  concerned. Yeah, I was still working with a
• 1:01:47
  strength coach from back home that was helping me throw it.
• 1:01:49
  Like, I don't know, I I trusted him 100%.
• 1:01:53
  But like for me it was like, oh, this feels really weird.
• 1:01:55
  Like I didn't know it's like a mental block almost of that.
• 1:01:58
  But yeah, another weird part was my hamstring like pulled really
• 1:02:01
  bad twice from by the the part they, the tendon they took out
• 1:02:06
  for my knee. So like the Sprint progression
• 1:02:09
  was also kind of challenging. I think felt fine.
• 1:02:12
  I kind of hopped right into it too soon.
• 1:02:14
  It was like, oh, you can Sprint on this day.
• 1:02:16
  I was like, oh cool, like I'll Sprint and like string like
• 1:02:19
  bruised, like pulled and bruised up a lot.
• 1:02:21
  And I was like, great, like. Classic there's.
• 1:02:25
  A hamstring back to health too. Awesome training.
• 1:02:28
  Lower body was also very helpful with like using a safety squat
• 1:02:31
  bar. The only other thing I'll say
• 1:02:33
  like I was able to do that like pretty pretty quickly pretty
• 1:02:37
  much as soon as I got out of the cast.
• 1:02:40
  You can't really like hold on with the brace, I don't think or
• 1:02:43
  wasn't supposed to, but like. Or at least no elbow.
• 1:02:46
  Valgus. Yeah, back.
• 1:02:48
  Squatter, I didn't do front squat, so like having the safety
• 1:02:51
  squat bar was like super helpful because I was able to still
• 1:02:53
  train my legs pretty heavy with the safety squat bar.
• 1:02:57
  So that part was pretty helpful as well.
• 1:02:59
  Which is massive. I think that gets missed way too
• 1:03:02
  often in rehabs where often athletes will be instructed to
• 1:03:07
  load later in the process as opposed to doing what they can
• 1:03:12
  to become a quote UN quote normal person or normal athlete
• 1:03:17
  as soon as possible. Yes, you might not be able to
• 1:03:20
  load your operated right arm like crazy early on, but you
• 1:03:25
  nailed it with the left arm. So you tapped into the cross
• 1:03:28
  education principle. And then by hitting your legs
• 1:03:32
  like crazy, not only did it probably help with the hamstring
• 1:03:35
  rehab you needed to go through, but it made becoming an athlete
• 1:03:39
  again significantly easier. And with the D training effects
• 1:03:43
  that we see with power, with strength, with all of that, you
• 1:03:46
  were able to mitigate those effects by getting back in the
• 1:03:51
  gym as soon as possible. Yeah.
• 1:03:54
  For sure. And then last question maybe on
• 1:03:57
  the rehab for you prior to the hiccup that you had in that
• 1:04:03
  winter period this past year. How?
• 1:04:06
  Was the throwing progression. The throwing progression I
• 1:04:10
  thought the most challenging part.
• 1:04:12
  Overall it was good. The annoying parts like right
• 1:04:14
  away like your arm still feels terrible.
• 1:04:17
  At least mine did. Maybe other are better than
• 1:04:20
  mine, but Rado I've talked to other kids on our team.
• 1:04:23
  We've had TJ before too though, and they've all said the same
• 1:04:26
  thing. So I think I'm not alone in
• 1:04:27
  this. It's like the first like week of
• 1:04:30
  throwing my arm felt OK. It just felt weird really.
• 1:04:33
  Pretty much after that for a month period, it was like my
• 1:04:35
  arms like didn't like hurt, but like it was like, oh, I like
• 1:04:39
  this feels not great at all isn't it?
• 1:04:42
  Not comfortable at all, Like little Nicks and pains here and
• 1:04:45
  there just didn't feel great. So that part was kind of
• 1:04:49
  challenging and I like I try to hop on like meloxicam like these
• 1:04:52
  anti inflammatories or try to like deload like my I did the
• 1:04:57
  Reynolds throwing program, Reynolds throwing program.
• 1:05:00
  Mike Reynold. Yeah, Reynold.
• 1:05:02
  Yeah. So his one was supposed to be a
• 1:05:05
  little bit better with like planning out your deload weeks,
• 1:05:08
  allegedly. I think that's the part that's
• 1:05:10
  different with his and some of the other ones.
• 1:05:13
  But I sort of like moving my D load weeks around a little bit.
• 1:05:17
  And maybe I think I took one extra deal a week and was on the
• 1:05:20
  program because I think early on, at least from what I was
• 1:05:23
  told and what I did, you don't want to like push anything at
• 1:05:26
  all. Like if your arm is hurting,
• 1:05:28
  you're not really supposed to throw through it.
• 1:05:30
  So I ended up moving D load weeks up.
• 1:05:33
  I think I added one here, like added one over the course of
• 1:05:36
  time. So that part was really tough to
• 1:05:38
  navigate in the beginning, I think especially when your arm's
• 1:05:41
  not probably not going to feel great.
• 1:05:43
  It's like knowing when to schedule your deload weeks.
• 1:05:46
  And then the other challenging part for the throwing program
• 1:05:50
  was the intensity progression. At this point, actually, I was
• 1:05:53
  working with Dylan, it was towards the end of the fall.
• 1:05:55
  So he helped me out a lot with this.
• 1:05:57
  And I think it ended up working out well in most TJ programs, at
• 1:06:02
  least the ones that I've seen, a lot of the times it's three
• 1:06:05
  weeks, two or three weeks at a specific intensity level.
• 1:06:09
  So they'll give you like your first two or three bullpens will
• 1:06:12
  be at like 50% and then your next like 5 bullpens will be at
• 1:06:15
  like 70%. And that's like very hard.
• 1:06:19
  I think at least for me, it was like what velocity is that?
• 1:06:23
  Because it's not like 70% of it. At least what they say is like
• 1:06:26
  it's not 70% of your Max Velo, it's 70% intensity.
• 1:06:30
  Those two things are different. I had no idea how hard I was
• 1:06:33
  supposed to be throwing and stuff like that.
• 1:06:36
  That part was like super hard. So I started working with Dylan.
• 1:06:40
  At this point, I think that's why I actually did was like, I
• 1:06:42
  have no idea what to do as far as philosopher aggression I'm.
• 1:06:44
  Right, you just lost. You need objectivity somewhere.
• 1:06:47
  And I started trying to do some research on it, but like on my
• 1:06:51
  own it was like too difficult. I thought I could figure it out
• 1:06:53
  but I was like, I'm not seeing enough online to feel confident
• 1:06:57
  in it. So I I started working with him
• 1:06:59
  and his big thing was never increasing your velocity more
• 1:07:02
  than like 3 miles an hour over the course of a week.
• 1:07:06
  So even though my a one week stretch might go from 50% to
• 1:07:10
  70%, he was like don't just add 20% because you're supposed to.
• 1:07:15
  So like if I had one week at 50% or I'll start at 70%, that might
• 1:07:20
  be like 70 miles an hour for it. So I'll say like 70 miles an
• 1:07:23
  hour for the whole week. And then even the next week was
• 1:07:25
  supposed to be at 70%, I would increase it to like 72 or 73 or
• 1:07:30
  something like that. And the next, if the next week
• 1:07:32
  was at 90%, I wouldn't all of a sudden add like 7 miles an hour.
• 1:07:35
  I would just every single week I would just try to add 2 right
• 1:07:38
  around 2 miles an hour. So normally throw 2 bullpens a
• 1:07:41
  week. Those two bullpens I would stay
• 1:07:43
  at the same and same velocity level.
• 1:07:45
  And then the next week I would just try to add 2 miles an hour
• 1:07:50
  up until I got up to like my Max velocity.
• 1:07:52
  I think that was by far the hardest thing for me.
• 1:07:55
  But like I said, Dylan helped me out a lot with that, and I think
• 1:07:58
  my arm actually felt pretty good doing that.
• 1:08:00
  Like those velocity increases felt a lot more manageable.
• 1:08:03
  Yeah it's so weird how so many places in life it makes complete
• 1:08:09
  sense to do very small progressive overloads, but for
• 1:08:13
  whatever reason for years return to throw programs will just slap
• 1:08:17
  a 20% increase on someone, be like oh you'll be fine, but you
• 1:08:22
  would never do that anywhere. Thinking about that, an athlete
• 1:08:26
  who weighs 200 lbs, imagine telling them, OK, well next week
• 1:08:31
  we need you at 40 lbs. Yeah, that's a 20% increase.
• 1:08:37
  That's insane. Imagine if we just slapped a 40
• 1:08:40
  LB weighted vest on you and say this is how much you weigh.
• 1:08:43
  Now we don't do that with anything else and asking an
• 1:08:48
  athlete to do that, especially a rehabbing athlete, is absolutely
• 1:08:52
  insane. Yeah, that was like, that was
• 1:08:56
  where I was at too. I was like, like, I remember for
• 1:08:59
  the first time when I was throwing like 70, I was like,
• 1:09:01
  that felt kind of hard. And then the next week I was
• 1:09:04
  supposed to be up to like 77. That feels insane to me.
• 1:09:07
  I just wasn't able to do it. So that's when I'm like, I, I
• 1:09:11
  reached out to him and I was like, yeah, it makes way more
• 1:09:13
  sense. And then there's like part of
• 1:09:15
  it's like a pull down progression too.
• 1:09:17
  Like there's like a little weak stretch for you doing like flat
• 1:09:20
  rounds or like pull downs or something like that.
• 1:09:22
  Compression throws. So doing it over those courses
• 1:09:26
  of times too. Like I, I was at a point where I
• 1:09:27
  was V loading every throw I made during the like every single
• 1:09:32
  day, every single throw I made it was V load.
• 1:09:34
  So my late days it would want to keep it under a certain amount.
• 1:09:38
  All my compression days I would want to try to hit this velocity
• 1:09:42
  and then on my bullpen days, obviously same thing want to try
• 1:09:45
  to hit a velocity or not go too far, not go too low.
• 1:09:48
  So I was at a point where I was V loading every single throw I
• 1:09:50
  made which helped out a lot to keep my late days late and what
• 1:09:53
  not. Exactly.
• 1:09:55
  It's amazing what objective feedback can actually do when
• 1:09:59
  you have data. I I'm sure this helped you with
• 1:10:02
  your analytical mind as well, where you're like, oh, finally I
• 1:10:05
  have something hard to go on. I have some real evidence, not
• 1:10:10
  just like, oh, well, how do you feel today?
• 1:10:12
  Well, I don't know, because I could feel great, but the radar
• 1:10:15
  gun could tell me I'm throwing 62 miles an hour and that means
• 1:10:19
  I'm in a really shitty spot. Yeah, or other times where it's
• 1:10:22
  like I felt great and I would try to keep it at a certain
• 1:10:27
  level and I was like, I don't know if that was too hard or
• 1:10:29
  not. You don't what like I said, like
• 1:10:31
  not going too hard. It's like a very important part
• 1:10:33
  of it too. So I was like just lost
• 1:10:35
  throwing. It's like I never knew how hard
• 1:10:37
  to throw, how hard I was throwing, like all that stuff.
• 1:10:39
  So yeah, I just put up like a little tripod in a pocket, radar
• 1:10:44
  behind me and every single throws monitor.
• 1:10:46
  I loved it. I was actually rehabbing with
• 1:10:48
  another canonic team, same surgery, right around the same
• 1:10:50
  timeline, like his like two weeks after me and I had the
• 1:10:54
  veal on him too. And he was like, Oh my God, like
• 1:10:56
  I can't believe I wasn't doing this before.
• 1:10:59
  It was like, this has been so helpful.
• 1:11:01
  So I mean, that part was pretty awesome, that part.
• 1:11:03
  Was and This is why we needed to actually talk about the rehab
• 1:11:07
  process. Yeah, This is why I needed the
• 1:11:10
  real real things back in for a minute.
• 1:11:12
  For sure, I forgot about a lot of that.
• 1:11:16
  There, there was just so much to cover.
• 1:11:18
  I I do appreciate you running that back a little bit.
• 1:11:22
  Now we will Fast forward to where we're at with the season
• 1:11:26
  now. So at the time of this
• 1:11:27
  recording, you guys have a couple weeks left.
• 1:11:30
  Obviously the spiders started off crazy hot, hit a little bit
• 1:11:33
  of a skid. Hopefully we still get this out
• 1:11:36
  before the season completes. So what are we thinking?
• 1:11:39
  I know early on I was hoping spiders to Omaha.
• 1:11:42
  A lot of things still have to go right now, now at this point for
• 1:11:46
  a postseason birth. So where?
• 1:11:49
  Where's your head at? Where where are we at with the
• 1:11:51
  team? Just let me have it.
• 1:11:54
  Shoot me straight. This is actually, it's been like
• 1:11:56
  the craziest season I've been a part of.
• 1:11:59
  So like we started out, I think it was like 20 and 2, something
• 1:12:03
  like that, something crazy. And at that point we had beaten
• 1:12:06
  UVA, we had beaten beat Boston College, we've beaten North
• 1:12:10
  Carolina, NC State swept our first weekend of conference like
• 1:12:15
  one on like a 15 game one streak could not be hotter as a team.
• 1:12:18
  Like cannot be feeling better about ourselves.
• 1:12:20
  Like it was just we have like a couple studs in our team that
• 1:12:23
  we're just like playing super well.
• 1:12:25
  Scouts were coming to games like everybody's just cannot be
• 1:12:27
  feeling better. And then we lost a weekend
• 1:12:32
  series to Saint Joe's. And I think it hit a little
• 1:12:35
  harder even than it like it should have because at that
• 1:12:38
  point, like I said, we had beaten 3 ranked team or two or
• 1:12:41
  two ranked teams at this point, like had such a good record that
• 1:12:44
  we were like, Oh my God, if we sweep Saint Joe's, like we could
• 1:12:47
  actually get ranked. We were like right outside the
• 1:12:49
  ranking. And that was before we beat UVA.
• 1:12:51
  So if we were like, oh, now we beat UVA, we're like, if we
• 1:12:54
  sweep Saint Joe's were ranked and then we lost two out of
• 1:12:57
  three and we're like, oh, that just, it just really, I think
• 1:13:01
  hit hard because of how hot we were and all these expectations
• 1:13:04
  that we're going to get ranked. We could get in that large bid.
• 1:13:06
  We might not even have to win our conference at this point.
• 1:13:09
  And then we lost two out of three and we're like, oh, that
• 1:13:11
  like kind of ruins everything. It was just like one weekend in
• 1:13:14
  commerce that we lost. We were like, oh, that ruins all
• 1:13:17
  of our plans. So like I think that killed us.
• 1:13:20
  And then for the next like 3 weeks, like if we pitched well,
• 1:13:23
  the hitters didn't hit well. If the hitters hit well, the
• 1:13:25
  pitch didn't pitch well. We are pressing.
• 1:13:27
  It wasn't even like the players themselves are playing bad.
• 1:13:30
  It was just like as a collective, we couldn't figure
• 1:13:33
  out a way to win games. So that was just crazy.
• 1:13:36
  But now we're we're at this point Fast forward where it's
• 1:13:39
  like we're not even supposed to make her the conference
• 1:13:42
  tournament. As of now, we're like 2 games
• 1:13:44
  back for the seven seed and the seven seeds last seed.
• 1:13:47
  But two weeks ago we found a way to give ourselves a chance
• 1:13:51
  still, even though we've we've largely been pretty bad in
• 1:13:53
  conference, but we've given ourselves a chance at this
• 1:13:58
  point. I'm almost optimistic still
• 1:14:00
  because I think the biggest problems we were pressing so
• 1:14:03
  much because we had all these crazy expectations for
• 1:14:07
  ourselves. Well, since all of that's out
• 1:14:09
  the window at this point, I feel like we're finally back to like
• 1:14:11
  just playing like loose and like playing free.
• 1:14:14
  So I think we've been playing a lot better recently.
• 1:14:16
  And if we make the tournament, then all of a sudden I think
• 1:14:19
  like it's right in front of us. We're clearly a good team.
• 1:14:21
  We can just to find a way to make the tournament.
• 1:14:24
  I feel pretty good about about things, but the expectation
• 1:14:27
  piece is always like always messing things up.
• 1:14:30
  So I think that messed up, messed us up as a team a little
• 1:14:33
  bit too, I feel. I think that might be the
• 1:14:36
  reoccurring theme of this podcast.
• 1:14:38
  Expectations need to come with a grain of salt at times.
• 1:14:42
  Yeah, expectations will kill you, apparently, passing over
• 1:14:46
  and over again. At some point, I'm going to have
• 1:14:48
  to learn and we're going to have to learn.
• 1:14:50
  Right. Well, I mean, we, we've been at
• 1:14:53
  this for a while and it's been an awesome conversation.
• 1:14:55
  Of course, it's been amazing to reconnect.
• 1:14:58
  Is there anything else that you think would be awesome to leave
• 1:15:02
  the audience with, whether it's a word of advice or maybe just
• 1:15:06
  something that you hope to accomplish here in the next
• 1:15:08
  year? Not that we just hated on
• 1:15:10
  expectations or anything. No, I mean I won't say anything
• 1:15:13
  I hope to accomplish, I don't know, use flex program.
• 1:15:18
  I'll take that. No, I'm going to hate on that.
• 1:15:21
  Yeah, I don't know. I would just say have fun with
• 1:15:24
  it. You never know when the game
• 1:15:25
  will be taken away. I've I mean, I'm having so much
• 1:15:28
  fun now and I never, you know, I always took baseball for
• 1:15:31
  granted. I'm a fifth year careers could
• 1:15:33
  be coming to an end one and two, I had it taken away for three
• 1:15:36
  years and now it's like I'm not going to beat myself up over a
• 1:15:41
  bad outing. I'm just having fun.
• 1:15:43
  So I think that's like the biggest thing I would say to
• 1:15:46
  guys nowadays. Just have fun with it.
• 1:15:49
  Never know. Never know when it's going to
• 1:15:50
  come to an end. And when it does come to an end,
• 1:15:52
  you're going to be punching yourself for being sad after a
• 1:15:55
  bad game, I promise. That's all I really got, I
• 1:15:58
  think. I think that's the perfect place
• 1:16:01
  to cap this off. I really appreciate your time
• 1:16:03
  today, Josh. Looking forward to watching you
• 1:16:06
  guys finish strong and hopefully get a bid here.
• 1:16:08
  It's been amazing to work with you guys and of course, seeing
• 1:16:12
  what you've been able to endure and now accomplish has been
• 1:16:16
  incredible. So thanks again to you, Josh,
• 1:16:19
  and to all the listeners out there.
• 1:16:21
  Thanks for laying back with us.