Latest / The Mound Visit / Alan Jaeger: The Lost Art of Long Toss
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: All right, So for today's episode, we have a very
- 0:02Speaker 1: special guest, Alan Jaeger. I've known about Alan for many,
- 0:07Speaker 1: many years, going back to when I was in high
- 0:09Speaker 1: school in the two thousand and seven to twenty ten range.
- 0:12Speaker 1: I did his Long Toss program, just watched his videos
- 0:15Speaker 1: religiously used as jaybands. He's been very instrumental in my
- 0:19Speaker 1: own career, as well as very many other players and coaches.
- 0:23Speaker 1: On this episode, we're going to dive into long Toss.
- 0:25Speaker 1: Me and Josh are going to go back and forth
- 0:27Speaker 1: asking them questions about it, different strategies, different scenarios, and
- 0:31Speaker 1: we're also going to talk about the mental game, specifically
- 0:35Speaker 1: breath work, meditation and how that applies not only to
- 0:37Speaker 1: pitching but to life. This was by far one of
- 0:40Speaker 1: my favorite episodes that we've done so far. I think
- 0:42Speaker 1: you're gonna get a lot of value out of this.
- 0:44Speaker 1: So without further ado, here's Alan Jager.
- 0:57Speaker 2: All right, super excited for this one. Got Alan jay
- 1:00Speaker 2: ge hey with us. I think he needs no introduction.
- 1:04Speaker 2: Everyone in the baseball world would know him, and honestly,
- 1:07Speaker 2: I just want to get right into it. I just
- 1:09Speaker 2: want to dive in Alan and I have told for
- 1:12Speaker 2: a while and he told me something that was super interesting.
- 1:17Speaker 2: And in the world of you know, Villo and everyone's
- 1:20Speaker 2: trying to gain velo Alan, you said something to me
- 1:23Speaker 2: that was super interesting, and you said that most of
- 1:26Speaker 2: the injuries that we see can be mitigated if you
- 1:31Speaker 2: properly stretch out through the long toss, and so I
- 1:35Speaker 2: kind of wanted to ask you about that. Why do
- 1:37Speaker 2: you think that, and what's kind of the reasoning behind that.
- 1:41Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first of all, thank you both for for
- 1:45Speaker 3: having me on and doing this. I'm super excited to
- 1:49Speaker 3: you know, chat with you guys and delve into some
- 1:51Speaker 3: areas that I think we all know are begging to
- 1:55Speaker 3: be looked into. So yeah, as far as long toss,
- 1:58Speaker 3: you know, I think long toss is part of it.
- 2:01Speaker 3: I think it's a big part of it, but I'd
- 2:03Speaker 3: say the biggest part really is more just focusing on
- 2:07Speaker 3: conditioning the arm and training the arm and building endurance
- 2:10Speaker 3: which leads to great recovery. And so I'd almost say
- 2:14Speaker 3: that long toss is, yes, a major piece of it,
- 2:17Speaker 3: but I think the focus is still really on just
- 2:21Speaker 3: changing the paradigm to throwing more conditioning more putting the
- 2:25Speaker 3: conditioning ahead of the velocity chasing, if you will, but
- 2:30Speaker 3: specifically long toss. Yes, I mean we've been teaching long
- 2:33Speaker 3: toass for thirty four years and I did it myself
- 2:38Speaker 3: and it's I think the main piece is this. When
- 2:42Speaker 3: you long toss, a few things happen, well, several things happened,
- 2:45Speaker 3: but a few really really crucial things happen. One is
- 2:48Speaker 3: is that you build a type of range of motion.
- 2:52Speaker 3: As you throw the ball higher and higher, you know,
- 2:54Speaker 3: and change your release point and change your body movements,
- 2:58Speaker 3: you're able to position in your body to stretch out,
- 3:02Speaker 3: so to speak. I mean, that's one of the common
- 3:03Speaker 3: terms of long toss, is really stretching out too. By
- 3:08Speaker 3: throwing the ball further and further, well, you're you're having
- 3:11Speaker 3: to be become more athletic, You're having to use your
- 3:14Speaker 3: legs and your core more. You know. From I'll still
- 3:18Speaker 3: a lot of stuff from Randy Salivan. He's a dear
- 3:19Speaker 3: friend of mine, and you know, he talks about things like,
- 3:22Speaker 3: you know, turning on your little glutes and pelvic tilt
- 3:25Speaker 3: and you know, hip load, glute load, ground forces. You know,
- 3:28Speaker 3: there's a lot of things that happen by throwing the
- 3:30Speaker 3: ball higher and higher that are just not activated nearly
- 3:34Speaker 3: as well, when you don't get the distance and you
- 3:36Speaker 3: don't get the height. Next is is this the further
- 3:41Speaker 3: you throw the ball? And again we're talking about building
- 3:43Speaker 3: out that distance. Of course it takes time, but at
- 3:45Speaker 3: some point, as you get out to twenty two, three,
- 3:49Speaker 3: twenty and so on, if that's what you're capable of
- 3:51Speaker 3: doing well, you have to throw a lot more. Right, So,
- 3:55Speaker 3: in other words, you have to build up a lot
- 3:57Speaker 3: of volume, and volume equals and during and endurance equals
- 4:01Speaker 3: better recovery and so so I think just for an opener,
- 4:05Speaker 3: I would say that those are some of the real,
- 4:07Speaker 3: you know, key pieces to why long toss. I'll say
- 4:09Speaker 3: one last thing about long test too, is as you
- 4:12Speaker 3: go out further and further, you're you're gaining what's called
- 4:16Speaker 3: again another word I stole from Randy is you know, variability, adaptability, feel.
- 4:21Speaker 3: And I think one last thing that's really important to
- 4:23Speaker 3: talk about is, you know, I know, motor preferences is
- 4:26Speaker 3: becoming a huge deal now. And the one of the
- 4:30Speaker 3: other unbelievable benefits of long tossing is that you tend
- 4:34Speaker 3: to tap into your innate movement patterns. So you're you're
- 4:37Speaker 3: connecting with your feel you're connecting with how your body
- 4:40Speaker 3: wants to work, and that's from a health perspective, is vital.
- 4:45Speaker 3: It's vital to get an alignment with how your body
- 4:47Speaker 3: wants to move.
- 4:50Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. And like, I kind
- 4:52Speaker 1: of want to continue the conversation on longtos because I
- 4:54Speaker 1: feel like this was my first quote unquote velo program
- 4:58Speaker 1: was long tossing and following year plans back when I
- 5:01Speaker 1: was in high school and you know, two thousand and
- 5:03Speaker 1: seven to the twenty ten range, that's when I really
- 5:05Speaker 1: started to tap into some of that stuff. And I
- 5:07Speaker 1: was a guy and I know I've heard you talk
- 5:09Speaker 1: about this, but I'd love to dive into it more.
- 5:11Speaker 1: I was a guy that could long toss super far.
- 5:13Speaker 1: I could throw it three hundred plus feet, you know
- 5:16Speaker 1: I was. I was a small guy. I was, you know,
- 5:17Speaker 1: five ten, one hundred and fifty pounds, and I could
- 5:19Speaker 1: launch it three hundred plus feet no problem. And then
- 5:22Speaker 1: I would get on the mound and it whenn't translates,
- 5:24Speaker 1: I would be throwing eighty miles an hour. And I
- 5:26Speaker 1: think it kind of comes back to what you were
- 5:28Speaker 1: saying about the freedom in it. Your natural innate throwing
- 5:33Speaker 1: mechanics come out, your authentic mechanics come out to where
- 5:36Speaker 1: you were just athletic and natural, and then there was
- 5:38Speaker 1: probably looking back. I got away from that the second
- 5:41Speaker 1: I got on the mound and I started to become
- 5:43Speaker 1: a pitcher and in other words, robotic and not not
- 5:47Speaker 1: actually tapping into what I was doing through those authentic
- 5:50Speaker 1: mechanics and long toss. So I guess my question would
- 5:53Speaker 1: be do you see that frequently? And if you do,
- 5:56Speaker 1: what what are some things that players can do to
- 5:58Speaker 1: translate the lantape us to the moundwork a little bit
- 6:01Speaker 1: more so that they are going, you know, from that
- 6:03Speaker 1: aggressive extension longsos to those pulldowns and then ultimately being
- 6:06Speaker 1: able to translate that on the mound where it matters most.
- 6:10Speaker 3: I love that question, Jared. It's funny. I get that
- 6:12Speaker 3: a lot, and it's pretty much the same answer. And
- 6:18Speaker 3: when I give people the answer, especially through like DMS
- 6:21Speaker 3: and stuff, they're like, yeah, that was it? That that
- 6:24Speaker 3: that helped? And two things One is is that the
- 6:27Speaker 3: funny thing is and I got this from Andrew Check
- 6:29Speaker 3: It's maybe twenty years ago. He talked about when you're
- 6:33Speaker 3: at he used the term, you know, three hundred and
- 6:34Speaker 3: fifty feet or so, when you're at your furthest throw,
- 6:37Speaker 3: you're actually acclimating to your most innate mechanics on the mound,
- 6:42Speaker 3: which I know sounds funny to someone that's really maybe
- 6:44Speaker 3: more into mechanics and repeatability and stuff like that. But
- 6:50Speaker 3: so number one, to your point, yes, if you would
- 6:53Speaker 3: have been more in tune or more aware of just
- 6:57Speaker 3: who you were at three hundred and three twenty and
- 7:00Speaker 3: then bringing that back into the mound and then trusting
- 7:04Speaker 3: that movement, I think it would have shocked you at
- 7:08Speaker 3: how much more free, natural explosive you would have been.
- 7:13Speaker 3: But what happens is to your point too, is and
- 7:16Speaker 3: even if people know to do that, there is sort
- 7:20Speaker 3: of this interesting almost like a paradox, which is when
- 7:27Speaker 3: you come in from long toss. Let's let's use three
- 7:29Speaker 3: hundred feet as a simple example, and let's say it
- 7:32Speaker 3: took you, you know, close to one hundred percent effort
- 7:35Speaker 3: to get out to three hundred feet. Well, the way
- 7:38Speaker 3: we teach pulldowns, a true pulldown by definition, is maintaining
- 7:42Speaker 3: your furthest throw we'll call X. So you're maintaining X
- 7:46Speaker 3: as you move back into towards your throwing partner. Now,
- 7:48Speaker 3: in all truth, we've kind of backed off from three
- 7:51Speaker 3: hundred feet to like one point fifty of maintaining X,
- 7:53Speaker 3: saying you know what, just throw eighty eighty five percent
- 7:56Speaker 3: and you're on flat ground. Let's you know, let's get
- 7:59Speaker 3: through the ball. Well, well, but maybe one fifty and
- 8:01Speaker 3: n with a really good corohaps are getting support from
- 8:04Speaker 3: your lower half. Let's start getting it up two hundred percent.
- 8:09Speaker 3: And so the idea is you learn it's training. It's
- 8:12Speaker 3: an art form to learn how to maintain X from
- 8:15Speaker 3: one fifty one forty one thirty, one hundred and ninety
- 8:18Speaker 3: eighty seventy. In fact, we have we had our older guys,
- 8:24Speaker 3: yeah we we wouldn't want them closer than seventy feet
- 8:27Speaker 3: unless you had a geared up catcher with a face mask.
- 8:29Speaker 3: Because they got they learned the art. Especially some of
- 8:32Speaker 3: the guys are out the three fifty, right, They learned
- 8:35Speaker 3: the art of maintaining X all the way back in,
- 8:39Speaker 3: which is not easy to do unless eight are aware
- 8:41Speaker 3: to do it and be you've practiced it. I have
- 8:44Speaker 3: a quick story when I was down in the Dominican
- 8:46Speaker 3: with the Rangers. Luckily they had eight or nine catchers.
- 8:50Speaker 3: They had two teams in the Dominican Summer League, and
- 8:54Speaker 3: so on the polldown day for the guys to really
- 8:56Speaker 3: understand this, it was a beautiful thing. These guys were
- 8:59Speaker 3: all launched balls. I mean it was just I wish
- 9:02Speaker 3: I had it on video, but they were launching balls
- 9:04Speaker 3: three thirty three fifty, three sixty And then when they
- 9:08Speaker 3: came in at first they decelerated a little bit because
- 9:10Speaker 3: it's not easy as you get closer to your partner,
- 9:12Speaker 3: because the main thing is it's very hard to get
- 9:15Speaker 3: over the front side and get down and through the
- 9:17Speaker 3: ball when you've just gotten uptail thirty five to forty degrees.
- 9:20Speaker 3: So long story, short is is and they got it. Now.
- 9:26Speaker 3: They had to aim maybe ten twenty feet in front
- 9:28Speaker 3: of the catcher's toes to pull this off. But they
- 9:31Speaker 3: were able to take this three thirty to three fifty
- 9:35Speaker 3: aim downhill and still have the ball ride to ankle
- 9:40Speaker 3: knee height and so Jared, really, I know it was
- 9:43Speaker 3: a long way to go. But the point is this
- 9:45Speaker 3: is that almost all players that I've been around, I've
- 9:50Speaker 3: been doing this for thirty four years. If I have
- 9:52Speaker 3: them pulled down after coming in from a lot of distance.
- 9:57Speaker 3: It's rare, if ever, rarely, if ever have I seen
- 10:00Speaker 3: someone maintain the X the max distance as they get
- 10:06Speaker 3: in closer and closer to the partner. In other words,
- 10:08Speaker 3: there's some deceleration. The main reason why is A they
- 10:11Speaker 3: want to play catch. B they don't want to launch
- 10:13Speaker 3: the partner because they just went upfiel. It doesn't look good. See,
- 10:18Speaker 3: they're just not aware. They're just not They don't know what.
- 10:21Speaker 3: They don't know to how to pull down. So the
- 10:24Speaker 3: answer is is that as you come back in from
- 10:26Speaker 3: your long distance is you have to it's an art form,
- 10:29Speaker 3: but you have to learn how to maintain X as
- 10:31Speaker 3: you get closer and close. And I'm telling you it's
- 10:34Speaker 3: magic when you see someone for the first time. Try
- 10:37Speaker 3: this with some of your players, when you see them
- 10:39Speaker 3: come in and pull down, especially that last one hundred
- 10:42Speaker 3: and twenty feet. And again, don't let them come in
- 10:43Speaker 3: closer to seventy peaks. If they have good arms and
- 10:46Speaker 3: the other players not geared up with a mask, it
- 10:48Speaker 3: can get it can get dangerous because that's how much
- 10:50Speaker 3: life comes out of the ball. And that's the whole
- 10:53Speaker 3: point is that you're you're able to translate that freedom
- 10:57Speaker 3: and openness and athleticism into shorter distances and not miss
- 11:02Speaker 3: a beat because you know to not decelerate, and that
- 11:06Speaker 3: is not easy to do if you haven't trained to
- 11:08Speaker 3: do it.
- 11:12Speaker 4: Yeah, that's awesome.
- 11:14Speaker 2: I want to dive into the pulldowns just a little
- 11:17Speaker 2: bit since we're on that topic.
- 11:18Speaker 4: You know, I love pulldowns.
- 11:20Speaker 2: I was at a drive line baseball and you know,
- 11:22Speaker 2: we would all line up and do the pulldowns with
- 11:24Speaker 2: the way the balls. I'm curious, what is the difference
- 11:29Speaker 2: between like a pulldown where you'll see in a facility
- 11:32Speaker 2: where the athlete hasn't done any long toss beforehand, versus
- 11:37Speaker 2: the pulldowns that you do after long tosts? Like, what's
- 11:40Speaker 2: the importance of the long tost before actually coming in
- 11:43Speaker 2: and doing those pulldowns?
- 11:46Speaker 3: Josh, maybe the most important thing we talk about tonight.
- 11:49Speaker 3: So thank you for that layup and that question, because
- 11:53Speaker 3: it's profound to me. This is the potentially single greatest
- 11:58Speaker 3: reason we're having arm injuries. What's happening nowadays is between
- 12:04Speaker 3: the metrics and kids having personal records and personal records
- 12:08Speaker 3: to achieve like the four minute mile. There's like this
- 12:12Speaker 3: obsession or addiction. Right with with more velocity or getting
- 12:17Speaker 3: a personal record, or now with pitch design right, whether
- 12:21Speaker 3: it's spin rate, vertical break whatever, whatever it is, we're
- 12:24Speaker 3: trying to get more of it. And so my concern
- 12:27Speaker 3: is that these kids, whether they go out to a
- 12:29Speaker 3: field and and have the equipment there or they go
- 12:32Speaker 3: to an indoor facility, it's by far my greatest concern
- 12:37Speaker 3: with an arm breaking down is is that the mindset.
- 12:42Speaker 3: This again is the paradigm shift. The mindset is to
- 12:45Speaker 3: focus on conditioning, arm care, arm endurance, long toss throwing
- 12:50Speaker 3: with arc volume building, massage throwing. So these are all
- 12:53Speaker 3: things that are just this is part of building the beast.
- 12:58Speaker 3: And so what's happening as we're putting the car before
- 13:01Speaker 3: the horse. Of course, and I'm not saying everybody's doing this,
- 13:03Speaker 3: but from what I've been from questions I've been asking people,
- 13:06Speaker 3: and the pulse I'm starting to feel out there is
- 13:08Speaker 3: that these kids are going out and they're and I
- 13:12Speaker 3: understand it's like a toy. It's like a new toy.
- 13:14Speaker 3: It's like if I through eighty eight today and then
- 13:18Speaker 3: tomorrow I can go out and get tested again and
- 13:20Speaker 3: try to get to eighty nine and maybe I'm a
- 13:22Speaker 3: little sore, or maybe I'm just not thinking about that,
- 13:26Speaker 3: you know, do a little arm care and thrown in
- 13:28Speaker 3: the net for five minutes. No, you know, for us,
- 13:33Speaker 3: it took us. We had a pro camp for twelve
- 13:36Speaker 3: fourteen years where we had them for eight weeks January
- 13:39Speaker 3: and February before spring training. It took us a month,
- 13:42Speaker 3: one month to get them into throwing shape before they're
- 13:46Speaker 3: really pulling down with any intent. And they weren't even
- 13:49Speaker 3: on the mount of course yet. So to your great question, Josh,
- 13:53Speaker 3: is that if there's one shift that I feel like
- 13:57Speaker 3: needs to happen for this community to start to fix
- 14:00Speaker 3: this problem, and this to me is the source. The
- 14:04Speaker 3: focus has to now be on arm conditioning, endurance building,
- 14:09Speaker 3: volume building, throwing with arc, stretching the arm out, building
- 14:13Speaker 3: into a long toss program, of course, doing a thorough
- 14:16Speaker 3: arm care program, all before throwing with high intent. Whether
- 14:21Speaker 3: you're throwing at an academy or on a mound, or
- 14:24Speaker 3: doing pulldowns or running guns, it's like the cake. You're
- 14:29Speaker 3: doing the cake. You don't even think about the icing,
- 14:32Speaker 3: which is the pulldowns or the running guns or throwing
- 14:35Speaker 3: off the mound. It's not even a concept that comes
- 14:40Speaker 3: as a byproduct of forty five minutes to an hour
- 14:43Speaker 3: worth of preparation and throwing or whatever the number is.
- 14:47Speaker 3: And you're kidding yourself if you're going out somewhere. You know,
- 14:51Speaker 3: we talked offline about the house of cards. To me,
- 14:53Speaker 3: maybe this is the best time to bring it up.
- 14:56Speaker 3: It's like the House of Cars is impressive. You see
- 14:58Speaker 3: this thing getting bilk it and bilk it built. That's
- 15:00Speaker 3: the velocity chasing. And then if we just remove one
- 15:05Speaker 3: one card right, the house of cards gone. That to
- 15:09Speaker 3: me is an arm injury. Is the pulling one card out.
- 15:12Speaker 3: The velocity chasing, to me is a house of cards
- 15:16Speaker 3: until we start to flip the script and focus on
- 15:20Speaker 3: the base and the conditioning and the endurance building. And
- 15:23Speaker 3: as you said, Josh, before you go out and pull down,
- 15:27Speaker 3: it might be forty five. We have guys that go
- 15:30Speaker 3: through ten things, you know, or I've seen guys go
- 15:33Speaker 3: through ten things. Armcare wise, it takes some twenty thirty
- 15:35Speaker 3: you guys know it takes you could take you twenty
- 15:37Speaker 3: thirty minutes to get your arm prep if you do
- 15:40Speaker 3: a full long tost program out let's say two fifty
- 15:43Speaker 3: to three fifty. It's going to take you eighteen twenty
- 15:46Speaker 3: twenty two minutes. Okay, now you're ready to pull down,
- 15:52Speaker 3: or now you're ready to pull down and throw with
- 15:54Speaker 3: high intent off a mountain. It's the end of the conversation.
- 15:58Speaker 3: There's nothing else to think about. So I I'm glad
- 16:00Speaker 3: you brought that up, Josh, and I don't think it
- 16:02Speaker 3: could be more passionate about that as being arguably the
- 16:06Speaker 3: single greatest reason. I have other reasons too, and I
- 16:10Speaker 3: know you guys do too, but that that to me
- 16:12Speaker 3: is probably number one. Because sorry, last thing I'll say
- 16:15Speaker 3: is throwing is king, period and in softball, I say
- 16:20Speaker 3: throwing is Queen.
- 16:23Speaker 1: That's awesome. There's a couple of really good nuggets in there.
- 16:26Speaker 1: The first thing I want to touch on is how
- 16:29Speaker 1: you talked about with your pro camp building up you
- 16:31Speaker 1: know for a month or you know, six weeks, whatever
- 16:33Speaker 1: it is, depending probably on how long they were off
- 16:36Speaker 1: before you get on the mound, or doing pull downs
- 16:38Speaker 1: and then getting on the mound. That is probably one
- 16:40Speaker 1: of the most frustrating things I go through with you
- 16:43Speaker 1: know now being in the private sector and hearing what
- 16:45Speaker 1: their coaches are wanting them to do, and they go
- 16:46Speaker 1: to school, and it's the ramp ups are almost always
- 16:50Speaker 1: way too fast in my opinion, like they're they're throwing
- 16:53Speaker 1: for maybe two weeks and they're already back on the
- 16:55Speaker 1: mound after being shut down for a month, or they
- 16:57Speaker 1: don't have you know, the way I know you like
- 17:00Speaker 1: to think and I like to think is is have
- 17:02Speaker 1: the end in mind of where do I need to
- 17:04Speaker 1: be by a certain date, and then you you can
- 17:06Speaker 1: work backwards from there. If I know I need to
- 17:08Speaker 1: be able to throw five innings on you know, February fifteenth,
- 17:12Speaker 1: opening day, Okay, we need to work backwards from there
- 17:14Speaker 1: to figure out what does that progression look like, and
- 17:16Speaker 1: then I can figure out what is the most amount
- 17:18Speaker 1: of time I can take off if at the bare minimum,
- 17:21Speaker 1: and ideally have a clear plan of what that progression
- 17:23Speaker 1: is going to look like. And I just think that's
- 17:25Speaker 1: one of one of the other things that leads to
- 17:28Speaker 1: the injuries, is just not the proper build up and
- 17:31Speaker 1: not not preparing themselves, you know, in a different way
- 17:34Speaker 1: to prepare for what they're going to do. Like I
- 17:36Speaker 1: had a kid even today that has not thrown in
- 17:39Speaker 1: six weeks and he told me that he's expected to
- 17:41Speaker 1: throw in a showcase in three weeks, and I was like,
- 17:45Speaker 1: you can do what you want. I personally don't recommend
- 17:47Speaker 1: that by the time we do what we need to do,
- 17:49Speaker 1: you're probably not going to be ready by that time.
- 17:52Speaker 1: But that's that's the conversations we have to have with
- 17:55Speaker 1: with kids and even even pro guys in some situations.
- 17:58Speaker 1: But I love what you said about that, about just
- 18:01Speaker 1: the preparation and building up for that.
- 18:04Speaker 3: You know.
- 18:05Speaker 1: Now the question I have, you know, shifting gears a
- 18:07Speaker 1: little bit towards the velocity chasing. It's it's interesting and frustrating,
- 18:13Speaker 1: and I understand both sides. Is that's what's being valued
- 18:17Speaker 1: right now. Right it's it's being valued by colleges, by
- 18:20Speaker 1: pro teams to throw harder, and the numbers support it
- 18:23Speaker 1: from a performance standpoint. The harder you throw, typically the
- 18:26Speaker 1: numbers are better. And I don't think you're saying that,
- 18:29Speaker 1: you know, throwing hard or trying to throw harder is
- 18:31Speaker 1: bad obviously, because through what you've done with many guys,
- 18:34Speaker 1: through your long toss program, guys have added velocity.
- 18:39Speaker 3: You know.
- 18:39Speaker 1: The way I'm interpreting what you're saying it's almost like
- 18:41Speaker 1: guys are are impatient with it. They're trying to get
- 18:44Speaker 1: ahead of the horse and doing doing, you know, quicker
- 18:46Speaker 1: strategies or different things that they're not ready to do
- 18:49Speaker 1: in order to throw harder and maybe trying to throw
- 18:51Speaker 1: as hard as they can on days where the body
- 18:53Speaker 1: physically isn't ready for it. So correct me if I'm
- 18:56Speaker 1: wrong on that. But what do you think is the answer?
- 18:58Speaker 1: If that is what is being valued at the highest level,
- 19:01Speaker 1: how do we ultimately shift that?
- 19:04Speaker 3: You know?
- 19:04Speaker 1: With that in mind?
- 19:06Speaker 3: Yeah, great, great, shared. The answer is actually really simple
- 19:11Speaker 3: and straightforward. I put a tweet out about this the
- 19:14Speaker 3: other day, which is basically, you chase the arm conditioning,
- 19:19Speaker 3: you chase the arm endurance, you chase the arm preparation,
- 19:26Speaker 3: you chase a great long toss build up back to
- 19:29Speaker 3: your kid three weeks. We have a very simple rolla
- 19:32Speaker 3: thumb which is, and we did this. We got this
- 19:34Speaker 3: from fourteen years or so of feedback from the players
- 19:38Speaker 3: we work with before spring training. It's a minimum of
- 19:42Speaker 3: three weeks just to get out to your max distance.
- 19:45Speaker 3: That's throwing six to seven days a week just to
- 19:49Speaker 3: so you're not even pulling down yet. So for us,
- 19:51Speaker 3: it's without even thinking about it. It's one month just
- 19:54Speaker 3: to get into what we call pulldown shape. You're not
- 19:56Speaker 3: even on a mound yet, so yes to the just
- 20:00Speaker 3: to reference that real fast. But no, the bottom line
- 20:04Speaker 3: is is that your your question, Jared is until we
- 20:08Speaker 3: change the paradigm, and look, I wanted to throw them.
- 20:11Speaker 3: I still want to throw the ball as far as
- 20:13Speaker 3: I can. So we're that's why we love pulldowns. You know,
- 20:16Speaker 3: to Josh's point, one of the greatest feelings for me,
- 20:19Speaker 3: I've played third base, I hit, you know, I did
- 20:22Speaker 3: both sides, so I playing defense, you know, pitching. Of
- 20:26Speaker 3: all the things I've done in my life, maybe you know,
- 20:29Speaker 3: not even in a game, is just pulling down. There's
- 20:32Speaker 3: something magical about So we want the velocity too. All
- 20:36Speaker 3: we're saying is is that we want the velocity as
- 20:39Speaker 3: a byproduct of first having the base in place, so
- 20:42Speaker 3: you get the best of both worlds. So that's the
- 20:45Speaker 3: The answer is is that the velocity is still you're
- 20:48Speaker 3: put this way. Your best velocity is gonna come anyway,
- 20:51Speaker 3: and maybe even better velocity as a byproduct of doing
- 20:57Speaker 3: A before b A is is get your arm as healthy, durable,
- 21:01Speaker 3: strong as you can from a conditioning, endurance, volume building
- 21:06Speaker 3: point of view, athleticism point of view, appropriate reception point
- 21:09Speaker 3: of view, at your release point through long tops, engaging
- 21:13Speaker 3: your core, engaging your legs, get engaging ground forces by
- 21:16Speaker 3: throwing the ball higher and further. So just start there
- 21:21Speaker 3: and then at the end it's a beautiful thing because
- 21:24Speaker 3: not only are you going to tap into your best
- 21:26Speaker 3: velocity anyway, but you're going to have the health, endurance, recovery,
- 21:31Speaker 3: feel athleticism to go with it. So I hope I
- 21:34Speaker 3: know I went back and forth, but hopefully Jared that
- 21:37Speaker 3: that hit the bottom line with the.
- 21:39Speaker 1: Question, Yeah, that's perfect, thank you.
- 21:42Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so awesome and so full.
- 21:46Speaker 2: Like an athlete who doesn't have a coach to program
- 21:49Speaker 2: them or like is watching over them, when can they
- 21:53Speaker 2: know that they're ready to stop going into these velocity
- 21:58Speaker 2: programs and that the almas conditioned enough and is ready
- 22:03Speaker 2: to go and do these higher intent throwing decisions.
- 22:07Speaker 3: Great question, man, you guys are crushing it.
- 22:11Speaker 5: So we had a rule, Josh, which was with our
- 22:16Speaker 5: guys because look, by the time mid January really ended,
- 22:20Speaker 5: the January turn into early February, especially for guys that
- 22:23Speaker 5: were going to early camp.
- 22:25Speaker 3: Of course, we had them throwing in December away from us,
- 22:28Speaker 3: but they were starting to want to get off the
- 22:32Speaker 3: mound sooner than later. Of course, we had more time
- 22:35Speaker 3: with guys going to minor league camp March first or so.
- 22:39Speaker 3: But we had a real thumb which was not only
- 22:42Speaker 3: did they have to be and believe me, the ones
- 22:44Speaker 3: that were around us for a while knew there was
- 22:47Speaker 3: no rush, but they had to get to their max distance.
- 22:50Speaker 3: And it wasn't just their max distance. I'm going to
- 22:52Speaker 3: use a simple number like three hundred feet. They not
- 22:55Speaker 3: only had to get to three hundred feet, but I
- 22:57Speaker 3: could tell and they knew if it was three hundred
- 22:59Speaker 3: feet by getting there too fast or overthrowing, by coming
- 23:03Speaker 3: like like, we don't mind guys coming out of the mechanics,
- 23:05Speaker 3: we want them to be athletic, but if it looked ridiculous,
- 23:09Speaker 3: you know, we knew that they were rushing. Number two
- 23:12Speaker 3: is that not only did they have to get to
- 23:13Speaker 3: their max distance, they had to make eight to ten
- 23:16Speaker 3: or five to ten very comfortable throws at their max distance, which,
- 23:20Speaker 3: by the way, I think just about every time we
- 23:23Speaker 3: did this they would end up going further right like
- 23:26Speaker 3: they thought thrinted was the endgame, and then they ended
- 23:29Speaker 3: up three twenty you know, two sessions later. But the
- 23:32Speaker 3: point is is we knew that they were ready to
- 23:35Speaker 3: pull down by being what we call fully opened up
- 23:39Speaker 3: or fully stretched out, because it was really obvious they
- 23:42Speaker 3: would get to their max distance and they weren't just
- 23:45Speaker 3: one great bolt and they were done. They had to
- 23:49Speaker 3: make like I said, five to ten throws there comfortably,
- 23:53Speaker 3: and that was sort of our tell tale sign that
- 23:55Speaker 3: they were ready to pull down. And then, believe it
- 23:57Speaker 3: or not, Josh, even though technically you're fully opened up
- 24:00Speaker 3: so you're fully ready to pull down. We probably told
- 24:05Speaker 3: them like ninety percent the first day, you know, pull
- 24:08Speaker 3: down ninety percent, you know, just like long tage, you
- 24:11Speaker 3: build into it. We wanted them to build even to
- 24:13Speaker 3: their pulldowns. So maybe the next session two day we
- 24:16Speaker 3: went like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so maybe Wednesday ninety ninety
- 24:20Speaker 3: five percent, and let's say we had we had them
- 24:23Speaker 3: earned three sessions of good pulldowns with their max distance,
- 24:27Speaker 3: and that's when we felt like, okay, you're ready to
- 24:30Speaker 3: get off a mount and throw it full in ten,
- 24:32Speaker 3: even if it was only fifteen to twenty pitches. But
- 24:36Speaker 3: for someone at home, as you said, that's sort of
- 24:38Speaker 3: winging this or trying to what does it mean to
- 24:40Speaker 3: listen to my arm or listen to my body or
- 24:42Speaker 3: when is the right time to pull down? You're right,
- 24:44Speaker 3: so it could be a very ambiguous question. That to
- 24:47Speaker 3: me is one of the most full proof ways to
- 24:50Speaker 3: know that you're ready to pull down.
- 24:54Speaker 1: That's good stuff. I'm going to build on that because
- 24:57Speaker 1: I think it's interesting, you know, with the weighted ball
- 24:59Speaker 1: pull downs and what guys are doing with those, like
- 25:02Speaker 1: how would those tie in do you think to what
- 25:05Speaker 1: you guys are doing with the extension long toss and
- 25:07Speaker 1: the pulldowns with the baseball, Like what's your feeling and
- 25:11Speaker 1: your take on doing pulldowns with with weighted baseballs? And
- 25:14Speaker 1: if you're for it, do you think that they would
- 25:16Speaker 1: just be added in and blended in at the same
- 25:18Speaker 1: time during the regular polldown phase or how would you
- 25:21Speaker 1: blend the weighted ball use.
- 25:24Speaker 3: Yeah, so to full disclosure, I'm really good about punting
- 25:29Speaker 3: things that are not in my wheelhouse. You know. The
- 25:32Speaker 3: funny thing is we've partnered with drive Line for several
- 25:35Speaker 3: APCA shows and I just haven't done a good enough
- 25:40Speaker 3: job it's really on me to kind of delve more
- 25:43Speaker 3: into weighted balls and you know how they're incorporating because
- 25:47Speaker 3: this question does come up a decent amount. And so
- 25:49Speaker 3: what I do, Jared is I always punt that question
- 25:52Speaker 3: to the following number one. As I say, this throwing
- 25:55Speaker 3: is king or Queen, and you still want to go
- 25:59Speaker 3: through the process of building up your long test distance properly,
- 26:02Speaker 3: building up your endurance properly, and building into your pullouts properly.
- 26:05Speaker 3: You want to that's the macro. I love macro micro.
- 26:09Speaker 3: I use that metaphor all the time. So let's get
- 26:11Speaker 3: the macro done. Once the macro is done, how you
- 26:15Speaker 3: blend and integrate weighted balls or clios or anything else,
- 26:20Speaker 3: you know, shaping movement patterns, that's something that I don't
- 26:25Speaker 3: have an answer for because I have I don't have
- 26:27Speaker 3: first hand experience, but I would just say that my
- 26:30Speaker 3: my knee jerk reaction is is that once you get
- 26:34Speaker 3: into great pulldown shape, that would be the time on
- 26:38Speaker 3: a polldown day, probably even on a polldown day that
- 26:42Speaker 3: maybe you're not even throwing off the mound. That would
- 26:44Speaker 3: be more conditioning or training where you're working on weighted
- 26:49Speaker 3: ball pull downs, assuming that the weighted balls were incrementally
- 26:53Speaker 3: also properly built into the program. Right, there's no there's
- 26:57Speaker 3: no shocking of the army. That's a word that you'll
- 26:59Speaker 3: hear from me probably more than once tonight. So yeah,
- 27:02Speaker 3: I think the best thing to do is just sort
- 27:03Speaker 3: of put on that. I'd probably ask you guys, you
- 27:06Speaker 3: know what your experience is, because for me, it we
- 27:10Speaker 3: just liked our lane of let's just get the let's
- 27:12Speaker 3: do the macro first. You just can't miss it's the cake.
- 27:16Speaker 3: You can't miss on the cake. Bringing in supplements can
- 27:20Speaker 3: be amazing and can be very helpful, but you can't
- 27:24Speaker 3: you can't mess up the cake has to be done right.
- 27:28Speaker 3: So i'd be curious what your guys is take would
- 27:30Speaker 3: be on you know, blending in you know, weighted balls
- 27:34Speaker 3: and things like that.
- 27:37Speaker 1: What do you got, Josh?
- 27:42Speaker 2: I think for me, as you said, it just has
- 27:43Speaker 2: to be a slower progression, you know, like as you said,
- 27:47Speaker 2: you don't want to shou up the arm And uh,
- 27:50Speaker 2: what I kind of did was I long toss with
- 27:53Speaker 2: weight to bulls as well, and so I would long
- 27:56Speaker 2: to us with the six ounce seven ounce even a softball,
- 28:00Speaker 2: and so my almost kind of built up to do
- 28:02Speaker 2: those pulldowns with the with the way to bulls, you know,
- 28:06Speaker 2: with the lightables. It's a little bit different because I
- 28:08Speaker 2: didn't lung to us with them, and you know, even
- 28:11Speaker 2: like pulling down the three ounces, I really did feel.
- 28:15Speaker 4: It felt stressful on the arm, so I limited those.
- 28:18Speaker 2: But I think, as you said, it just has to
- 28:21Speaker 2: be a progression and like something that just has to
- 28:25Speaker 2: slowly incorporate into your throne program.
- 28:29Speaker 3: I think it's perfect because at the that's what I
- 28:33Speaker 3: would tend to hear from other pitching coaches and people
- 28:37Speaker 3: have talked to about this, is that it's all it
- 28:40Speaker 3: always comes back to. It's funny, even long toss, it
- 28:43Speaker 3: just comes back to incremental, right, Like there's adapt there's
- 28:45Speaker 3: an adaptability phase that we just have to go through smartly.
- 28:50Speaker 3: And Josh, to your credit, you know you could have easily.
- 28:54Speaker 3: You know, that's my concern is that you know under
- 28:57Speaker 3: and overloading can maybe have a quick impact on below.
- 29:02Speaker 3: But to your credit, you had an awareness and a
- 29:05Speaker 3: sensitivity to whether you knew it intuitively or our coach
- 29:10Speaker 3: you know, suggested it to you. That was really smart
- 29:13Speaker 3: of you, because just this jumping is so shocking to
- 29:20Speaker 3: the arm. I gotta just tell you one other quick story.
- 29:23Speaker 3: I worked with a kid once in the nineties who
- 29:26Speaker 3: was you talked about. His dad was way ahead of it,
- 29:29Speaker 3: like not that they weren't weighted balls out there. I mean,
- 29:32Speaker 3: this is I think pre internet. But he had the
- 29:36Speaker 3: colored balls right, the blue, the red, the yellow, and
- 29:38Speaker 3: I think it was it went from like five in
- 29:43Speaker 3: a co five and a half or five minute whatever
- 29:45Speaker 3: it was up to maybe twelve ounces. But his dad
- 29:49Speaker 3: used like, I think, his whole high school career three
- 29:51Speaker 3: years to get to the twelve ounce ball. To where
- 29:54Speaker 3: this kid thrown the twelve ounce ball. We warmed up
- 29:57Speaker 3: with it before we long tossed, which I I had
- 30:00Speaker 3: the first time experience of what a shock to the
- 30:02Speaker 3: arm can be if you're not careful. But the point
- 30:05Speaker 3: is is that he threw this thing like nothing, and
- 30:08Speaker 3: I could tell and his movement patterns were smooth and perfect.
- 30:11Speaker 3: This kid's name was Matt Harrington. Matt was going to
- 30:14Speaker 3: maybe go first overall in the draft that year, but
- 30:18Speaker 3: based on a number of things, he went I think
- 30:20Speaker 3: seventh and never ended up signing. It's a whole long
- 30:24Speaker 3: story that it's an unfortunate story. But who knows, maybe
- 30:29Speaker 3: not unfortunate because he got on his path to something else.
- 30:32Speaker 3: But he was up to ninety eight in high school
- 30:35Speaker 3: when ninety eight was one hundred and ten, you know
- 30:38Speaker 3: what I mean, Like you can look him up Matt Harrington.
- 30:40Speaker 3: But that was my first experience. This is I'm telling
- 30:44Speaker 3: you this is in the nineties with weighted balls. But
- 30:46Speaker 3: the point is is that his dad had the awareness
- 30:50Speaker 3: to incrementally build this weight into his son's arm over
- 30:54Speaker 3: a like a three or four year period in high school. Oh,
- 30:57Speaker 3: by the way, he was also a hardcore long task
- 31:00Speaker 3: and his dad taught him about this is before we
- 31:02Speaker 3: met It's beautiful. His dad taught him when they went
- 31:04Speaker 3: to pull down. They went to a park and he
- 31:07Speaker 3: told him the naim for the bottom of the fence
- 31:10Speaker 3: because his dad intuitively knew that a true pulldown meant
- 31:15Speaker 3: you have to take all your uphill throwing and then
- 31:17Speaker 3: use that advantage of the leverage right and the angles
- 31:21Speaker 3: in the centerpical force of going downhill. And he also
- 31:24Speaker 3: knew the ball would fly up if you didn't have
- 31:27Speaker 3: that focal point. And so anyway, his dad was also
- 31:29Speaker 3: into I don't even know if he knew they were
- 31:31Speaker 3: called pull at what they were called. But he was
- 31:33Speaker 3: into this concept of uphill and downhill at a young age.
- 31:37Speaker 3: And what a shock, this kid have the best arm
- 31:39Speaker 3: in the nation, especially for our high school pitcher. But anyway,
- 31:43Speaker 3: as I digress.
- 31:45Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's very interesting, and I like the way
- 31:49Speaker 1: you put it. You know, a little bit ago about
- 31:51Speaker 1: how you got to get the cake right right and
- 31:54Speaker 1: the weighted balls or different supplements or different tools. That's
- 31:58Speaker 1: like the cherry on top. If we don't get the
- 32:00Speaker 1: first part right though, like it doesn't matter after I
- 32:02Speaker 1: were just putting ourselves at a risk, Like I would say,
- 32:04Speaker 1: like especially we're talking about younger players, you know, high
- 32:07Speaker 1: school kids or especially early high school kids, like master
- 32:10Speaker 1: long toss. And if you're doing it the way you're
- 32:11Speaker 1: talking about it, and they're doing all this prep, they're
- 32:14Speaker 1: doing their arm care, they're in the weight room getting stronger,
- 32:16Speaker 1: they're doing all these things, they're gonna throw harder and harder.
- 32:19Speaker 1: They don't need to necessarily skip steps in my opinions,
- 32:22Speaker 1: to try to try to rush the process, so to speak.
- 32:25Speaker 1: So if they know, if they're able to get every
- 32:27Speaker 1: ounce out of you know, out of the long toss
- 32:29Speaker 1: and out of you know, all their other training protocols.
- 32:32Speaker 1: As they're building that foundation, then they can add that
- 32:34Speaker 1: on later on. Like for me, I mean, I experimented
- 32:37Speaker 1: with everything. I didn't throw very hard, and I could
- 32:39Speaker 1: throw strikes and know how to pitch, but velocity was
- 32:41Speaker 1: my limiting factor as a player. So when I was
- 32:44Speaker 1: in my early twenties to mid twenties and I'm playing
- 32:46Speaker 1: independent ball, I was trying everything. I was long tossing
- 32:49Speaker 1: with weighted balls. I would I'd start with eleven ounce ball,
- 32:52Speaker 1: go to a nine, and go to a seven, and
- 32:53Speaker 1: I'm throwing a six ounce as far as I possibly can,
- 32:55Speaker 1: and then pulling down with a four ounce or a
- 32:57Speaker 1: three ounce, just trying to do whatever it took. But
- 33:00Speaker 1: that's not something I would necessarily recommend to most players
- 33:04Speaker 1: are a kid I was, in my opinion or not
- 33:07Speaker 1: my opinion, but my thought process was I had to
- 33:10Speaker 1: be a little bit more aggressive or risky with my
- 33:13Speaker 1: training to try to throw a little bit harder. And
- 33:15Speaker 1: I did throw harder. But I also ended up having
- 33:17Speaker 1: Tommy John that year, so there's something to be said
- 33:20Speaker 1: for that too. But that was just the stage of
- 33:22Speaker 1: my career where it was either throw harder and start
- 33:25Speaker 1: pitching better, or your career is going to be done.
- 33:27Speaker 1: So I felt comfortable with that risk.
- 33:30Speaker 3: Yeah, and you were also in a place in your
- 33:31Speaker 3: career where you know, there's the thought process of it.
- 33:35Speaker 3: If you're thirty eight and you've got fifteen years in
- 33:37Speaker 3: the big leagues, and you know, someone teaches you a
- 33:42Speaker 3: splitter or something that's really hard on the elbow theoretically,
- 33:46Speaker 3: and it could cause an injury, but it could also
- 33:49Speaker 3: keep you in the game for one more year or
- 33:50Speaker 3: a chance to win a World Series. You know, there
- 33:52Speaker 3: comes a point where you're like, Okay, that might be
- 33:54Speaker 3: a you know, it might be a decent trade off,
- 33:58Speaker 3: because you know, I'm playing with the house money, and
- 34:00Speaker 3: at your point of your life, Jared, you thought, you know,
- 34:03Speaker 3: I I want to get into affiliated baseball. I want
- 34:06Speaker 3: to get to the big leagues, and so I may
- 34:08Speaker 3: have to try some drastic things, but not I not
- 34:11Speaker 3: don't even call them drastic as you use the word experimental.
- 34:15Speaker 3: But I think the purpose of this podcast is to
- 34:18Speaker 3: get people to understand that, you know that where that
- 34:21Speaker 3: might be a last resort. I think this podcast can
- 34:25Speaker 3: almost be called you know the cake. You know, it's
- 34:27Speaker 3: it just feels like everything's coming back to the cake.
- 34:31Speaker 3: You know, the metrics, we're chasing the metrics. It's not
- 34:33Speaker 3: to chase. Don't chase the metrics, chase the cake. Your
- 34:35Speaker 3: metrics are going to get better.
- 34:37Speaker 4: I love that's that's so awesome.
- 34:42Speaker 2: I'm super curious, h is it an alternative to lung toss?
- 34:48Speaker 2: And I'm just asking because you know, Improvo, especially in
- 34:53Speaker 2: in season, I don't think I saw a single person
- 34:55Speaker 2: long toss. And you know, even even though I you
- 35:00Speaker 2: it was probably good for me to do it, Like
- 35:02Speaker 2: in season, no one wants a lung toss.
- 35:04Speaker 4: Like you're tired, you just want to kind of.
- 35:06Speaker 2: Like especially on light days, you just want to play
- 35:08Speaker 2: catch and get out. And so I'm curious, is it
- 35:12Speaker 2: an alternative to long toss?
- 35:16Speaker 3: Wow, my knee jerk reaction, Josh is No, there's not.
- 35:23Speaker 3: There's just no substitution. I mean, if you're in an
- 35:25Speaker 3: indoor facility and you're desperate to stretch your arm out,
- 35:29Speaker 3: you can gradually throw uphill into a net and get
- 35:31Speaker 3: your thrinnered feet in, so you can that that's a substitution.
- 35:34Speaker 3: But as far as like trying to get by a
- 35:37Speaker 3: season by not long tossing. No, it's it's a very
- 35:40Speaker 3: black and white issue. And and to your point, it's
- 35:44Speaker 3: something that I've I've been trying in my own way,
- 35:46Speaker 3: whether it's through the manuals that you know I've written,
- 35:50Speaker 3: or through podcasts, or through just you know, talking to
- 35:53Speaker 3: coaches over the years, I have tried to, you know,
- 35:58Speaker 3: get this awareness way up that especially like on a
- 36:03Speaker 3: five day or six day rotations, especially with I have
- 36:05Speaker 3: an article a lot I've written with Adam Revelette on
- 36:08Speaker 3: really pitch your protocols, like don't get me started on
- 36:12Speaker 3: Ncason stuff. Absolutely, if you're not, first of all, the
- 36:16Speaker 3: reason why players get tired, it's like an oxymorn well,
- 36:22Speaker 3: or there's like a paradox to this. Well, you're getting
- 36:24Speaker 3: tired because you're not long tossing, because you're saving your
- 36:28Speaker 3: arm for the game like a relief pitcher, and you're
- 36:32Speaker 3: because you think you need to save your juice. You're
- 36:35Speaker 3: not conditioning, you're not building endurance, so then you're not
- 36:37Speaker 3: going to recover as well, and so you're kind of
- 36:40Speaker 3: hanging on for dear life. We call that a negative cycle,
- 36:43Speaker 3: where a positive cycle is the opposite. You come into
- 36:47Speaker 3: spring training where let's say on a five day cycle.
- 36:50Speaker 3: You know, you you pitch on a on a Monday
- 36:54Speaker 3: is your start day, and then like a Thursday is
- 36:56Speaker 3: how we do it day three as a side, right,
- 36:59Speaker 3: and then on Saturday theoretically is your start day. So
- 37:03Speaker 3: you have three days like Monday, Thursday, Saturday where you
- 37:06Speaker 3: can stretch your arm out pretty much to max distance.
- 37:09Speaker 3: Now you don't have to pull down much on those days,
- 37:11Speaker 3: but we'd say if nothing else, you have like a Monday, Saturday. Sorry, yeah,
- 37:18Speaker 3: your start day, sorry, your start day, and then your
- 37:21Speaker 3: next start day. So that's two out of like eight
- 37:24Speaker 3: days so to speak. You're going to get full distance
- 37:27Speaker 3: in and full pull downs. And then that mid week
- 37:30Speaker 3: or mid cycle pen you're still going to get three
- 37:34Speaker 3: hundred feet you just don't have to really pull down much.
- 37:36Speaker 3: So the point is this, you're doing a lot of
- 37:39Speaker 3: endurance and conditioning and stretching it out and athleticism and
- 37:42Speaker 3: engagement of your core and legs and so on and
- 37:44Speaker 3: so forth, so you're getting stronger. One of the telltale
- 37:48Speaker 3: signs of our guys. I know this is going to
- 37:49Speaker 3: sound like it's almost because we did it or we
- 37:52Speaker 3: want to make it sound good. I'm just telling you
- 37:54Speaker 3: the truth. One of the telltale signs of our guys
- 37:57Speaker 3: unless they were not allowed to long toss in the organize,
- 38:00Speaker 3: which is was a major issue in the nineties and
- 38:03Speaker 3: early two thousands, they got healthier and stronger throughout the year,
- 38:08Speaker 3: or at least sustained it. They got healthier or stronger
- 38:11Speaker 3: in game, or at least sustained it because they were
- 38:14Speaker 3: built that way the cake, and then they maintenanced through
- 38:19Speaker 3: the season. It's sort of like you lift all off
- 38:21Speaker 3: season and then you just go cold turkey, literally do
- 38:25Speaker 3: not touch a weight for six months, right. Or you're
- 38:30Speaker 3: doing yoga all off season, then you stop doing yoga,
- 38:33Speaker 3: or you're meditating off season and then you stop meditating.
- 38:35Speaker 3: It doesn't make any sense. So it doesn't mean you
- 38:38Speaker 3: have to go long tossing three or four days a week,
- 38:41Speaker 3: got to three hundred and pull down as far as
- 38:42Speaker 3: you can. But my goodness, is there a desperate need
- 38:47Speaker 3: for these guys through the season, especially in probo when
- 38:51Speaker 3: you're out there every day and it's like, look, it's
- 38:56Speaker 3: like putting money in the bank. Right. Your arm is
- 38:59Speaker 3: like this bank account. Your body is this bank account. Right,
- 39:02Speaker 3: So you put a ton of money in the off
- 39:06Speaker 3: season into this bank account, and now it's a career.
- 39:09Speaker 3: It's compounding. You want it to compound, right, And then
- 39:12Speaker 3: you hit the brakes when you get to spring training
- 39:14Speaker 3: and all of a sudden you're not long tossing as much. Oh,
- 39:18Speaker 3: by the way, it's back to our House at Cards syndrome.
- 39:21Speaker 3: So you get to spring training. I'm not blaming this
- 39:22Speaker 3: on the organization or the player. I'm just saying, if
- 39:24Speaker 3: this happens, it's the house of cards all over again.
- 39:28Speaker 3: You start putting more energy into high intent throws and
- 39:31Speaker 3: then saving your arm or protecting your arm. And so
- 39:35Speaker 3: now what you're doing is the emphasis is on the
- 39:38Speaker 3: higher intent throwing and now it's away from the conditioning piece.
- 39:45Speaker 3: And so this again is where the shocking of the
- 39:47Speaker 3: arm starts to happen. And so anyway, Josh, the question
- 39:55Speaker 3: is so important because as we all know, all three
- 39:57Speaker 3: of us, that once this and starts, there's a lot
- 40:01Speaker 3: of theories out there as to you know, how to
- 40:04Speaker 3: stay in the arm and maintenance it. And for us,
- 40:07Speaker 3: it's a it's a it's it's a slam dunk. If
- 40:10Speaker 3: you are not getting in some type of long toss
- 40:12Speaker 3: throughout the season once to twice a cycle as a starter,
- 40:17Speaker 3: and a is a bullpen guy, there's an article. People
- 40:22Speaker 3: are interested in looking it up. But if you're a
- 40:25Speaker 3: bullpen guy and you're not the long guy, the long
- 40:27Speaker 3: guy is the only tricky one to kind of figure
- 40:29Speaker 3: this thing out with. But if you're a one or
- 40:31Speaker 3: two inning guy, which pretty much everybody is nowadays, well,
- 40:36Speaker 3: if you're not stretching your arm at at least every
- 40:39Speaker 3: third day at the absolute minimum, too close to your
- 40:42Speaker 3: normal long toss distance, or here's another way of saying this,
- 40:46Speaker 3: if you're not out to two hundred and two forty,
- 40:48Speaker 3: if you're a three thirty guy, most days you don't
- 40:52Speaker 3: have to look, you don't have to pull down at all.
- 40:55Speaker 3: But you can get some stretching, get some range of motion,
- 40:58Speaker 3: build some conditioning, built some volume. Oh, by the way,
- 41:03Speaker 3: that is going to prepare you for if you do
- 41:05Speaker 3: get in the game that night. There's gonna be less
- 41:07Speaker 3: of a shock on your arm. You're gonna have way
- 41:10Speaker 3: better arm strength, you're gonna get looser better, and you're
- 41:13Speaker 3: going to recover the next day better because you went
- 41:16Speaker 3: out to two forty and didn't save your arm for
- 41:18Speaker 3: the game. And if you threw forty eight pitches the
- 41:21Speaker 3: night before, which doesn't happen much anymore. I get it.
- 41:24Speaker 3: You might only go out to one fifty eight the
- 41:26Speaker 3: next day, some guys might go to one twenty. I
- 41:29Speaker 3: get it. But then that next day, whether you're going
- 41:32Speaker 3: in the game or not, at that that night, if
- 41:35Speaker 3: you're not going at least two hundred to fifty because
- 41:37Speaker 3: you're a three point thirty guy, it doesn't make any
- 41:39Speaker 3: sense to me on any level, with any paradigm when
- 41:43Speaker 3: you're talking about training and development and maintenance, right, I mean,
- 41:46Speaker 3: what do you guys say about that? Yeah?
- 41:51Speaker 1: No, I totally agree. And I think it's like, as
- 41:53Speaker 1: long as you're training this way, if, like you say,
- 41:55Speaker 1: you're long toss in three four times a week, whatever
- 41:57Speaker 1: it is during the offseason, there's no reason you can
- 42:00Speaker 1: maintain it.
- 42:00Speaker 3: Now.
- 42:00Speaker 1: If you're not doing that, you're probably gonna have to
- 42:02Speaker 1: have a gradual progression with it, just like anything. But
- 42:05Speaker 1: if you completely shut it down from what you're doing
- 42:07Speaker 1: all off season, doesn't fully make sense. And what I
- 42:10Speaker 1: like to think about with the long tooss is, like
- 42:13Speaker 1: you always say, you're massaging the arm. The extension part
- 42:16Speaker 1: of the long tooss isn't aggressive throwing, which I think
- 42:19Speaker 1: some people have to get out of their head is
- 42:21Speaker 1: long toos doesn't necessarily mean I'm throwing it as hard
- 42:24Speaker 1: as I possibly can. Every thrower I'm pulling down on
- 42:27Speaker 1: those days. If you're doing long tooss properly, the extension
- 42:30Speaker 1: phase is it literally feels like you're massaging and stretching
- 42:33Speaker 1: the arm. You're not throwing it with any sort of
- 42:36Speaker 1: velocity or on a line as you're starting off. And
- 42:38Speaker 1: that is like one thing I try to get out
- 42:41Speaker 1: of guys when I'm throwing with them is like their
- 42:44Speaker 1: first throw of the day is like as hard as
- 42:45Speaker 1: they can on a line right at me from sixty
- 42:47Speaker 1: feet versus, Okay, we're gonna gradually build out. I'm gonna
- 42:50Speaker 1: go nice and easy. And the term I like to
- 42:52Speaker 1: use a lot with guys is see how easily or
- 42:55Speaker 1: how effortlessly you can reach me, whether I'm at ninety
- 42:58Speaker 1: feet one twenty one point fifty, how easy can you
- 43:00Speaker 1: reach me in this? And eventually you're gonna do a
- 43:02Speaker 1: point to where you have to put more effort into
- 43:03Speaker 1: the throw, but you can get out. You know, if
- 43:06Speaker 1: you're a three hundred foot long toss guy, you can
- 43:08Speaker 1: get out to two hundred to two twenty with fairly
- 43:10Speaker 1: minimal effort if you have arc on the ball and
- 43:13Speaker 1: it starts to know, it feels good. Like that's that
- 43:15Speaker 1: was my experience with longtas is like I wanted to
- 43:17Speaker 1: do it more and more because it just felt good
- 43:20Speaker 1: on the arm, and as I got away from longos,
- 43:22Speaker 1: which I didn't really ever get away from, but when
- 43:24Speaker 1: I did, at times, my arm usually didn't feel as
- 43:27Speaker 1: good and it wasn't as strong. So to your point,
- 43:30Speaker 1: it's long toss isn't just throwing it hard. There's there's
- 43:34Speaker 1: multiple benefits and you can stretch it out without having
- 43:38Speaker 1: you know, high intensity into the throw. So I think,
- 43:40Speaker 1: like that's one of the first things is guys have
- 43:41Speaker 1: to understand throwing it easy with an arc massage and
- 43:44Speaker 1: the arm stretching it out as you're going out.
- 43:47Speaker 3: You know what's cool about that too, is you you
- 43:50Speaker 3: make such a brilliant point that I need to I
- 43:52Speaker 3: need to bring that up more often because the truth
- 43:56Speaker 3: of it is is that long toss is probably seventy
- 44:01Speaker 3: percent of the time, if not more but let's say
- 44:04Speaker 3: at least seventy percent, let's say seventy five is around
- 44:06Speaker 3: her number three cores at the time. It's as you said,
- 44:11Speaker 3: it's it's stretching. It's massaging, right, it's throwing with arc,
- 44:15Speaker 3: it's relaxation, it's fluidity, right, it's a it feels good. Right,
- 44:20Speaker 3: we're stretching the arm out. And to your point, Jerry,
- 44:23Speaker 3: which is super smart, is yeah, look at long toss
- 44:27Speaker 3: more is more often than not. Is you're just getting
- 44:29Speaker 3: a good stretch in, you're getting distanced, you're building velocity, sorry,
- 44:33Speaker 3: you're building endurance, you're building athleticism. Yeah, that's long toss.
- 44:39Speaker 3: Pulling down is a is a piece of long test
- 44:42Speaker 3: that you do, you know, infrequently compared to general long
- 44:48Speaker 3: toss throwing. So I think it's a it's a really
- 44:51Speaker 3: smart point and I'm really glad you brought it up.
- 44:53Speaker 3: That's what life's about, man, I mean teaching. You know,
- 44:56Speaker 3: I'm a student as much as a teacher too, right,
- 44:58Speaker 3: So thank you for teaching me a a great way
- 45:01Speaker 3: of talking about long toss that way.
- 45:06Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so awesome.
- 45:08Speaker 2: And you know, I just want to play Devil's advocate
- 45:11Speaker 2: a little bit here during my playing career. So you know,
- 45:16Speaker 2: in season I didn't really long toss because you know,
- 45:20Speaker 2: no one really wanted to. But I felt like I
- 45:22Speaker 2: could get a similar feeling if I threw a heavy
- 45:26Speaker 2: appliable into the wall. And you know, so it doesn't
- 45:29Speaker 2: have to be like max effort, but it's just slowly building,
- 45:31Speaker 2: slowly building. So what is the I guess what I'm
- 45:37Speaker 2: trying to get at is like, what is the magic
- 45:39Speaker 2: in throwing uphill versus like throwing straight? Because like I
- 45:46Speaker 2: felt like if you grab the heavier bowl then it
- 45:48Speaker 2: would open up your arm just as much as if
- 45:51Speaker 2: I had done like a long toss session.
- 45:54Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, first of all, great question, and look, there
- 45:58Speaker 3: are things that people may do that I've never experienced.
- 46:02Speaker 3: You know, it would be more of a question for
- 46:04Speaker 3: someone like Randy Sullivan as far as what is happening,
- 46:09Speaker 3: you know, biomechanically, and you know, knowing Randy will get
- 46:12Speaker 3: down to the chemistry of how the body's operating because
- 46:16Speaker 3: of it. So it is possible, Josh, that by you
- 46:19Speaker 3: using a heavier ball that you were stimulating a lot
- 46:22Speaker 3: of the same movement patterns or the same you know,
- 46:28Speaker 3: range of motion and stretching, and you know, stimulating things
- 46:32Speaker 3: that need to be stimulated. That happens when you long toss.
- 46:34Speaker 3: So it's not to say that it didn't work for
- 46:37Speaker 3: you or that it's not similar. Back to your earlier
- 46:39Speaker 3: question about can you you know, his long toss replaceable,
- 46:43Speaker 3: but I would still say this, and this is pure instinct,
- 46:46Speaker 3: but it's also I feel very strongly about this. There
- 46:49Speaker 3: are so many things that happen, not just in your shoulder,
- 46:52Speaker 3: but you know you talk about you know, variability again,
- 46:55Speaker 3: variance adaptability. The way your body moves it is just
- 47:01Speaker 3: night and day. When you throw the ball at any
- 47:04Speaker 3: degree on a line, right, it's a very repetitive, almost
- 47:08Speaker 3: like an even a robotic movement to the The body
- 47:11Speaker 3: likes to diversifying for the most part, right, It likes
- 47:15Speaker 3: it's it's like creative. Your body is very creative. It
- 47:18Speaker 3: wants freedom, right, and so especially as an athlete, where
- 47:23Speaker 3: you want the body to have all these this again,
- 47:26Speaker 3: variability adaptability. So so i'd say that to your question, Josh,
- 47:31Speaker 3: the thing you would lose number one, I would say
- 47:33Speaker 3: that the very slow incremental throwing up uphill into the
- 47:38Speaker 3: very slow incremental throwing up downhill is just very hard
- 47:41Speaker 3: to duplicate, even with a heavier ball, if you're throwing
- 47:44Speaker 3: them on a line, even if you're getting some similar
- 47:47Speaker 3: crossover from it. That's one, but two as important, your
- 47:51Speaker 3: body is just not moving in ways that I feel
- 47:54Speaker 3: like are extremely supportive in extreme and promoting movements and
- 48:01Speaker 3: athleticisms and again innate movements that we want. You know,
- 48:06Speaker 3: I can talk so much, even just about the idea
- 48:09Speaker 3: of again throwing the ball uphill. You're promoting so many
- 48:14Speaker 3: things that you can't promote throwing the ball on the line,
- 48:16Speaker 3: whether it's the pelvic tilt, whether again it's hip and
- 48:19Speaker 3: glute load, whether it's a different type of ground forces.
- 48:23Speaker 3: Randy Sullivan again taught me something really important about as
- 48:26Speaker 3: the ball goes higher, as you throw higher and you
- 48:28Speaker 3: turn on these little glutes, that that's something that activates
- 48:32Speaker 3: that I don't think activates at all when you throw
- 48:35Speaker 3: the ball on the line. So, Josh, at the end
- 48:38Speaker 3: of the day, if there's things that people can do
- 48:40Speaker 3: that make them feel similar or in the ballpark, by
- 48:43Speaker 3: all means, you know, do it. And I don't have experience,
- 48:47Speaker 3: of course with all these different modalities, but I would
- 48:50Speaker 3: just say that as a rule of thumb. My guess
- 48:54Speaker 3: is is that you did things that approached it and
- 48:57Speaker 3: helped a lot, and maybe even the shoulder self got
- 49:01Speaker 3: a very similar sensation of what you'd get from long
- 49:03Speaker 3: toss traditionally, I would still say there there's a lot
- 49:09Speaker 3: being left on the table.
- 49:10Speaker 1: If that makes sense, that's good stuff. I kind of
- 49:18Speaker 1: want to translate, or not translate, transfer to a little
- 49:22Speaker 1: bit of the mental side and how that ties in
- 49:25Speaker 1: even to long toss, because you know, when you talk
- 49:28Speaker 1: about long toss, there's a lot of breathing and relaxation
- 49:30Speaker 1: in it. And I know you're really big with meditation,
- 49:33Speaker 1: and I'd love for us to dive into that, and Josh,
- 49:36Speaker 1: I'm not putting you on the spot here, but I
- 49:38Speaker 1: kind of want to talk a little bit about the
- 49:41Speaker 1: yips and how you know, how this all ties in
- 49:44Speaker 1: to the mental side and maybe some of your experiences
- 49:46Speaker 1: alan with maybe working with some players that have gone
- 49:49Speaker 1: through that and have been able to overcome it or
- 49:51Speaker 1: not been able to overcome it in some of those strategies.
- 49:53Speaker 1: But I guess my first question is pretty open ended,
- 49:56Speaker 1: but how did you become so into the mental side,
- 50:02Speaker 1: What what has gotten you interested in it, you know,
- 50:05Speaker 1: to the point to where you know, this is one
- 50:06Speaker 1: of I would say, along with Lonsos, like you're known
- 50:08Speaker 1: for the meditation as well. What got you into that?
- 50:10Speaker 3: Ultimately, Yeah, I was a junior at cal State North,
- 50:14Speaker 3: which it's a really easy answer, and I went through
- 50:19Speaker 3: just a very challenging period of time mentally, didn't know
- 50:23Speaker 3: what was happening or why, and essentially I had to
- 50:29Speaker 3: walk away from the team. I did come back toward
- 50:32Speaker 3: the end of the season. I did go out and
- 50:34Speaker 3: play in the summer in Kansas for maybe a month,
- 50:38Speaker 3: but it essentially was like the end of my career.
- 50:42Speaker 3: And I feel like, as hard as it was what
- 50:46Speaker 3: I was going through, you know, it's one of the
- 50:49Speaker 3: greatest gifts I've ever received in my life and because
- 50:52Speaker 3: it got me on my path. And when I say
- 50:54Speaker 3: my path, it's not just the path of the mental
- 50:57Speaker 3: game and all that, but it's it's really more the
- 51:00Speaker 3: path of life. Meaning I spent four years, you know,
- 51:04Speaker 3: doing a lot of research, doing a lot of meditation
- 51:07Speaker 3: sas sports psychologists when back then sports psychology was a
- 51:12Speaker 3: very foreign topic. And yeah, I feel like what I
- 51:18Speaker 3: learned through this process and how I had to evolve
- 51:20Speaker 3: to kind of move through these challenges was like, this
- 51:26Speaker 3: just incredible inspiration of just wanting to share this because
- 51:31Speaker 3: I feel like what I went through was really a
- 51:34Speaker 3: snapshot of life as far as what happens on the
- 51:39Speaker 3: field is the same thing, of course, that happens in life,
- 51:42Speaker 3: whether it's the future or the past, or worrying about
- 51:44Speaker 3: consequences or worrying about results, or worrying about what people
- 51:47Speaker 3: think or overthinking things, and all these things, to me
- 51:52Speaker 3: were things that I worked on really mostly through Zen
- 51:57Speaker 3: and through meditation. And I did switch my major to
- 52:01Speaker 3: psychology and got my degree in psychology, but I got
- 52:05Speaker 3: very heavy into Zen and meditation. And the main reason
- 52:09Speaker 3: that Zen hit me so hard is Zen is really
- 52:12Speaker 3: about what's called no mind or no thought. And if
- 52:14Speaker 3: you ever watched Bruce Lee videos, you'll hear him talk
- 52:17Speaker 3: about this quite a bit. But the idea is that
- 52:21Speaker 3: when you're in no mind or no thought, you're in
- 52:23Speaker 3: what's called pure instincts. And so, as someone who played
- 52:26Speaker 3: sports my whole life, I thought, well, I know that
- 52:28Speaker 3: when I'm not thinking and I'm being purely instinctive, it's
- 52:31Speaker 3: the best I'm going to play like it's like being
- 52:34Speaker 3: in the zone, right, And so it just appealed to me,
- 52:38Speaker 3: like it just you talking about getting hit by two
- 52:41Speaker 3: by four like wow. And so I spent four years
- 52:45Speaker 3: really delving into that world and writing you know, my
- 52:49Speaker 3: book Getting Focused, Staying Focused. And so to your question, Jared,
- 52:54Speaker 3: you know, that was really the leaping off point and
- 52:58Speaker 3: very very passionate about it. And I feel like it's
- 53:01Speaker 3: absolutely we talked about long passes that like the you know,
- 53:05Speaker 3: the cake, like take care of the cake, and I'd
- 53:09Speaker 3: say that the mind, you know, so to speak, is
- 53:13Speaker 3: the cake of the game in life. So yeah, I'm
- 53:17Speaker 3: quite open to talk about anything there because that that
- 53:20Speaker 3: is truly what I first started in and it's something
- 53:23Speaker 3: that I am incredibly passionate about.
- 53:28Speaker 4: Yeah, that's awesome.
- 53:29Speaker 2: And I know we talked a little bit about the
- 53:32Speaker 2: meditation and how it helps players with the yips.
- 53:35Speaker 4: I want to get like super practical hit. So if
- 53:39Speaker 4: you were dealing with.
- 53:40Speaker 2: An athlete who you know, was either struggling with the
- 53:43Speaker 2: yips or you know, just wanted to get into more
- 53:45Speaker 2: of this meditation type stuff, being more present breathing stuff
- 53:49Speaker 2: like that, what would be like a daily exercise slash
- 53:54Speaker 2: program that you would advise them to.
- 53:57Speaker 3: Do well, as you know, oh, Josh, I mean it's
- 54:00Speaker 3: twofold right. On the one hand, you need to deal
- 54:04Speaker 3: with the behavioral aspects, the psychology of it, right, the
- 54:07Speaker 3: strategy of it. And then to me, the meditation is
- 54:11Speaker 3: more of the underbelly, right, the meditation is where you're
- 54:14Speaker 3: actually changing let's say, the actual neuroplasticity, right, the neural
- 54:18Speaker 3: patterns of neural programming, so you're changing behavior. So it's
- 54:23Speaker 3: a two prong approach, as you know. And so to
- 54:27Speaker 3: keep it super simple from a practical point of view
- 54:30Speaker 3: is that, you know, we have our work on the field,
- 54:34Speaker 3: so to speak, where we'd work on you know, I
- 54:37Speaker 3: have history with like O c D and so with OCD,
- 54:41Speaker 3: you know, going through it myself, it's you know a
- 54:44Speaker 3: lot of it is exposure therapy changing behaviors, if you will.
- 54:49Speaker 3: And so I've view I've learned from that another gift
- 54:53Speaker 3: that working with players with throwing issues and you know,
- 54:57Speaker 3: and things like that, it's really important that they have.
- 55:01Speaker 3: First of all, they have to be educated on what
- 55:03Speaker 3: they're going through, Like you need to know the why.
- 55:05Speaker 3: Shout out to Nate Troscy. But you know, you need
- 55:07Speaker 3: to know the why. So you know, you first have
- 55:11Speaker 3: to educate very important as you know, you have to
- 55:13Speaker 3: be educated and what's going on? Why is the mind
- 55:17Speaker 3: doing this? Right? You know, because once you know the why,
- 55:20Speaker 3: there's a lot of relief and there's a lot of
- 55:21Speaker 3: peace of mind, like okay, I have an idea now,
- 55:24Speaker 3: and then here's the game plan, and there's the why
- 55:26Speaker 3: behind the game plan. So the game plan is too full.
- 55:29Speaker 3: It's a lot of exposure therapy, it's a lot of learning.
- 55:32Speaker 3: How to allow is one of my favorite words. Now,
- 55:35Speaker 3: you have to learn to allow the body to do
- 55:37Speaker 3: what it's going to do, even if it makes a
- 55:39Speaker 3: really bad throw. You have to learn to let that
- 55:42Speaker 3: pattern or sow or that response come out of your
- 55:46Speaker 3: system and allow it. Because by allowing it, what you're
- 55:50Speaker 3: doing is you're not feeding the fear or you're not
- 55:52Speaker 3: feeding the loop. Right. And so without going to is
- 55:57Speaker 3: you know, we can go into a great detail. So
- 55:58Speaker 3: I think to keep it simple is you know you
- 56:01Speaker 3: have to really of course do a lot of work
- 56:03Speaker 3: on the field with exposure therapy or change in the behavior.
- 56:10Speaker 3: And then the second part to me, which is is
- 56:12Speaker 3: going to be the foundation. It's still the rubber. Where
- 56:15Speaker 3: the rubber hits the road is the meditation. Because with
- 56:18Speaker 3: the meditation is doing is it's allowing old programming to
- 56:22Speaker 3: sort of express itself and ideally run its course so
- 56:26Speaker 3: that what's left is like I use the sun and
- 56:28Speaker 3: the clouds as an example. All the time. You know,
- 56:30Speaker 3: the clouds are like the like the throwing challenges, right,
- 56:35Speaker 3: but the sun, which is who you were before you
- 56:37Speaker 3: had it and who you are when you're in the
- 56:39Speaker 3: zone on the mound or at the plate, that's the well,
- 56:42Speaker 3: the Sun's always there. I have a saying, which is
- 56:45Speaker 3: the zone's always happening. It's just whether or not you've
- 56:47Speaker 3: left it because you're thinking about something. So you can
- 56:51Speaker 3: apply that also with this where you could say that
- 56:55Speaker 3: the throwing issues are the clouds, but we're trying to
- 56:58Speaker 3: get reidentified with the sun, not with the clouds. We're
- 57:02Speaker 3: trying to let the clouds just sort of dissolve and
- 57:05Speaker 3: move move move beyond so the sun can just shine
- 57:09Speaker 3: and get back to that instinctive zen movements, right that
- 57:13Speaker 3: that naturalness. And so the last thing I'll say, so
- 57:18Speaker 3: I know we can maybe dig into something else is
- 57:20Speaker 3: that where the meditation becomes so important is that you
- 57:26Speaker 3: are even though on the field there's a lot of
- 57:29Speaker 3: important stuff going on, we still have to get to
- 57:31Speaker 3: the source of learning how when the mind thinks things
- 57:36Speaker 3: or worries about things, that we start getting much better
- 57:39Speaker 3: at being neutral, allowing the mind to think what it
- 57:43Speaker 3: needs to think, even the fear right, even the worries
- 57:46Speaker 3: like letting that come out, but no longer identifying with
- 57:50Speaker 3: that conversation, in other words, not engaging what the mind
- 57:53Speaker 3: is saying and knowing that you're not that you're not
- 57:57Speaker 3: those thoughts. And the meditation we call it, among many things,
- 58:02Speaker 3: the silent witness. You know, you're just silently now watching
- 58:07Speaker 3: the mind, but you're not identifying with it because you're
- 58:11Speaker 3: just saying, my thoughts are my thoughts. But now I
- 58:13Speaker 3: want to just watch this from silence, because the silence
- 58:17Speaker 3: is the sun. And that bridge. That transformation is massive
- 58:22Speaker 3: because you're now learning that you're not your thoughts, you're
- 58:26Speaker 3: and you're also realizing that I don't have to block
- 58:28Speaker 3: out my thoughts or push them away or you know
- 58:31Speaker 3: what I'm saying. That's where a lot of times we
- 58:33Speaker 3: kind of feed the issue and it's a very delicate movement,
- 58:38Speaker 3: but it's a beautiful thing where you just start allowing
- 58:41Speaker 3: the mind to do what it does, and you start
- 58:44Speaker 3: being okay with it, and you start focusing on more
- 58:48Speaker 3: just breathing and the present and just action, even if
- 58:52Speaker 3: the action is just to be quiet. And so those
- 58:56Speaker 3: new neural pathways, right, that change in behavior can replace
- 59:02Speaker 3: the old behaviors. And five words that really affected my
- 59:07Speaker 3: life about ten years ago from a leader in the
- 59:10Speaker 3: Mindful of Community and community named doctor Shanna Shapiro, is
- 59:14Speaker 3: you become what you practice. And so a lot of
- 59:17Speaker 3: this is the practice on the field, but to me,
- 59:19Speaker 3: the cake is still getting into the meditation where you're
- 59:23Speaker 3: becoming the practice of the meditation, where you're now starting
- 59:26Speaker 3: to put you're aligning yourself with the sun and not
- 59:31Speaker 3: the thoughts. I love that.
- 59:35Speaker 1: And this just made me think of something that you
- 59:37Speaker 1: actually share with me. You might not remember this, but
- 59:39Speaker 1: you shared this with me my last year playing, so
- 59:41Speaker 1: this would have been in twenty seventeen. You sent me
- 59:44Speaker 1: a recording of you walking through a breathing exercise. There's
- 59:49Speaker 1: just an audio recording of just I guess, I guess
- 59:53Speaker 1: you just called just a meditation, and it was focused
- 59:55Speaker 1: on the breath, and that season I did it before
- 59:58Speaker 1: every single start, literally just lay in the outfield grass
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: at three o'clock in the afternoon, whatever time it was,
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: and just essentially just focus on the breath, relax, clear
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: my mind of distractions. To use the word that you
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: just used a little bit ago, and that was one
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: of the most helpful things for me to eliminate distractions
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: when I was on the mound. And what I thought
- 1:00:21Speaker 1: was powerful about it is even though it wasn't you know,
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: anything to do well, it had everything to do with it,
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: but not directly anything to do with baseball or pitching.
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: Is it was me practicing just once again, using what
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: you just talked about, practicing being able to focus on
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: something as simple as my breath and not be distracted
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: about other thoughts of what was I going to do
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: after the game or what did I need to do
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: thirty minutes from them, but actually practicing being able to
- 1:00:46Speaker 1: focus on my breath for an extended period of time.
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: At first, maybe I could do it for thirty seconds
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: and then a distraction would come, and then over time
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: you start to get better and better at it, so
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: then you know when I started getting the games, it
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: started to be easier to focus on the task at hand,
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: and it became easier to get back when I would
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: get distracted, because that's what I don't want to say
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: struggle with. But one thing I'm trying to get better
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: at with the players that I work with is the
- 1:01:12Speaker 1: mental side.
- 1:01:13Speaker 3: For sure.
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: It's I feel like it's one of the toughest things
- 1:01:15Speaker 1: that I have. You know, out of all the things
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: that I do, i'd say that's one of the more
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: difficult things, is helping players with that mental side, whether
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: it's belief in themself confidence, helping them not worry about
- 1:01:26Speaker 1: that last pitch that they just made, whether it was
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: good or bad, whatever the result was, but being able
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: to focus on what was directly in front of them,
- 1:01:33Speaker 1: which was that next pitch. So I would love some
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: more practical ideas for that as well. Obviously me doing
- 1:01:41Speaker 1: the meditation stuff and helping them with that will be
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: a huge addition, which I haven't done and I need
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: to do. But what are some strategies that have been
- 1:01:48Speaker 1: helpful for you and your players. Let's just say when
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: they're they're on the mound and they they're just having
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: a crappy day. It's one of those days. Nothing is
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: going their way, the ball is getting hit hard, or
- 1:01:59Speaker 1: it's fall into the hole. They're walking people and they're frustrated.
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: What are some of your reset strategies to get guys
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: to come back to just focusing on that next pitch.
- 1:02:09Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that, Jared. First of all, you become
- 1:02:12Speaker 3: what you practice. You're laying down the outfit every day,
- 1:02:17Speaker 3: way more powerful than I think you could possibly ever
- 1:02:19Speaker 3: have realized. You were really changing your neural pathways and
- 1:02:24Speaker 3: you're really tuning into a space that you became, and
- 1:02:30Speaker 3: very very powerful. So really cool about really cool to
- 1:02:34Speaker 3: hear that. It took me about twenty five years. I've
- 1:02:38Speaker 3: been doing this for thirty four and I think about
- 1:02:41Speaker 3: nine or ten years ago I kind of had a
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: little bit of an epiphany that kind of flipped. That
- 1:02:47Speaker 3: flipped and everything. It just sort of made everything succinct.
- 1:02:51Speaker 3: And what I started realizing is that from a practical
- 1:02:55Speaker 3: point of view, let's say on the mound, all strategies
- 1:03:02Speaker 3: sort of came down to one basic strategy that I
- 1:03:04Speaker 3: just started, I think cutting to the chase with athletes,
- 1:03:08Speaker 3: and they loved it. It was very simple and I
- 1:03:11Speaker 3: think it's the most direct angle, which is a word
- 1:03:17Speaker 3: that a lot of people talk about now, but I'll
- 1:03:19Speaker 3: explain it a tiny bit more detail, which is the process.
- 1:03:23Speaker 3: And what happened is is I started getting pictures and
- 1:03:25Speaker 3: hitters or tennis player where not the tennis player, but
- 1:03:29Speaker 3: whoever I would deal with, we do the same thing
- 1:03:31Speaker 3: in their sport, or we do it with an attorney
- 1:03:34Speaker 3: arguing in a court case. It's all the same, which is,
- 1:03:37Speaker 3: you know what two or three things do I need
- 1:03:38Speaker 3: to do right now to make the best pitch of
- 1:03:40Speaker 3: my life? And everybody's a little different. Ironically, with pictures,
- 1:03:44Speaker 3: they're very similar. I'll give you mine mine as would
- 1:03:47Speaker 3: be to take a breath, have a focal point, and
- 1:03:50Speaker 3: attack that focal point with conviction. I didn't saynything about mechanics, ironically, right,
- 1:03:55Speaker 3: Not that I wouldn't because there was a time I
- 1:03:58Speaker 3: would really want to think about hitting my balance point.
- 1:04:01Speaker 3: Which is funny because a lot of people talk now
- 1:04:03Speaker 3: about getting down the mound faster. But whatever it is,
- 1:04:07Speaker 3: the bottom line is this, those are three constants. If
- 1:04:11Speaker 3: I know the three constants that are setting me up
- 1:04:15Speaker 3: to make the best pitch of my life. There's nothing
- 1:04:20Speaker 3: else I need to know. I don't need to know
- 1:04:22Speaker 3: a country i'm in, I don't need to know what
- 1:04:24Speaker 3: level I'm at. I don't need to know if there's
- 1:04:26Speaker 3: thirty scouts in the stands or zero scouts in the stands.
- 1:04:30Speaker 3: It doesn't matter, because all that matters is my intrinsic
- 1:04:34Speaker 3: value of executing my plan, knowing it's going to position
- 1:04:39Speaker 3: me to make the best pitch of my life. So,
- 1:04:42Speaker 3: now here's the cool thing. You have these three constants. Well,
- 1:04:44Speaker 3: guess what, anything that comes up in the mind, anything,
- 1:04:48Speaker 3: the weather, you're hungry, doesn't matter. Those are variables. And
- 1:04:54Speaker 3: there's a million interchangeable variables in the world, a million.
- 1:04:59Speaker 3: There's more than a million. So the question is do
- 1:05:02Speaker 3: you want to focus on three things that you can control,
- 1:05:04Speaker 3: that you've agreed to ahead of time, are going to
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: lead to the best pitch of your life, or do
- 1:05:08Speaker 3: you want to focus on a million interchangeable variables that
- 1:05:11Speaker 3: are out of your control. And so when you just
- 1:05:14Speaker 3: break it down, so this is thirty four years into
- 1:05:16Speaker 3: five minutes, right, And so I'm not saying there aren't
- 1:05:20Speaker 3: other things to kind of get into and play with,
- 1:05:22Speaker 3: but the bottom line is is that that's where I
- 1:05:25Speaker 3: go now. And the athletes love it because it makes
- 1:05:28Speaker 3: a lot of sense. It's very simple. It's a relief
- 1:05:32Speaker 3: to their mind that they don't have to think about.
- 1:05:34Speaker 3: And I'm not saying they're great at this right away,
- 1:05:35Speaker 3: because they have a lot of old programming, maybe with
- 1:05:38Speaker 3: scouts in the stands or the draft, or I'm in
- 1:05:40Speaker 3: Triple A trying to get to the big league, or
- 1:05:42Speaker 3: I'm in the big leagues trying to stay in the
- 1:05:43Speaker 3: big leagues. Right, it's endless. But as they change their neuroplasticity,
- 1:05:51Speaker 3: right as they start to change their awareness of going
- 1:05:55Speaker 3: from identifying with these old variables to now other identity.
- 1:06:00Speaker 3: Is this three step process or two step process or
- 1:06:04Speaker 3: four step process. Now we're talking Bruce Lee, ten degree
- 1:06:08Speaker 3: black belt. There is no time, there is no future,
- 1:06:12Speaker 3: there is no pass the idea of having a bad game.
- 1:06:14Speaker 3: You mentioned that earlier, which I totally understand what you mean.
- 1:06:18Speaker 3: But there comes a point now you realize that there's
- 1:06:21Speaker 3: not even there's only this pitch, as you said, and
- 1:06:24Speaker 3: I actually am using this term a lot more lately
- 1:06:26Speaker 3: called the continuum, which is the continuum means there's only
- 1:06:30Speaker 3: this moment, and this moment keeps happening. Literally, there is
- 1:06:34Speaker 3: no future, and that we can talk about the future,
- 1:06:37Speaker 3: we can talk about the past, it doesn't actually exist.
- 1:06:40Speaker 3: The only thing that exists is this moment that's happening now.
- 1:06:44Speaker 3: And so now you have a process that's just channeling
- 1:06:47Speaker 3: you into the now. That are three things or four
- 1:06:54Speaker 3: things that you said are the keys to you making
- 1:06:56Speaker 3: the best pitch in your life. So I know that
- 1:06:58Speaker 3: was a lot to say, but basically, Jared, from a
- 1:07:01Speaker 3: practical point of view, if someone that's listening to this
- 1:07:03Speaker 3: and is new to the Metal game or older the
- 1:07:05Speaker 3: Metal game, and this gives them something to really sink
- 1:07:09Speaker 3: their teeth into, Like, Wow, if I just figure out
- 1:07:11Speaker 3: my processes and then I'm just great at my process
- 1:07:15Speaker 3: and I execute my process. In my mind, can still
- 1:07:19Speaker 3: think about the future or the past, but I no
- 1:07:22Speaker 3: longer have to engage that. I no longer have to
- 1:07:25Speaker 3: take that dance. I just want to dance with my process.
- 1:07:29Speaker 3: And so that to me is like from thirty four
- 1:07:32Speaker 3: years man, I'm telling you that that is all I
- 1:07:35Speaker 3: talk about now with athletes is it's almost too simple
- 1:07:40Speaker 3: in theory, but it's as we all know, in life.
- 1:07:43Speaker 3: There is a lot of power in the simplicity.
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: Yeah, that's beautiful, that's perfect, thank you.
- 1:07:50Speaker 4: Yeah, that's awesome.
- 1:07:52Speaker 2: I just want to quickly dive into the meditation. You know,
- 1:07:57Speaker 2: there's so many different types of meditation, and I've tried
- 1:07:59Speaker 2: a lot different types, you know, just sitting with my
- 1:08:02Speaker 2: eyes closed or walking meditation, or you know, even just
- 1:08:07Speaker 2: like you know, there's a ton of different meditations that
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: I've experimented with. What's your favorite way of doing meditation
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: and what would you recommend to play as who are watching.
- 1:08:18Speaker 3: This, Well, it's a it's a great question the way
- 1:08:23Speaker 3: you pose it, because you know you talked about diversifying
- 1:08:27Speaker 3: you know, different ways you've done it, Josh, and so
- 1:08:29Speaker 3: I'd always start with that, which is try out many
- 1:08:34Speaker 3: different styles and see what resonates, you know, see what
- 1:08:38Speaker 3: fits well. I would say my favorite sort of angle
- 1:08:42Speaker 3: in the and what I really teach first and foremost
- 1:08:45Speaker 3: is really more this idea about being quiet another word
- 1:08:49Speaker 3: is sort of like being neutral. You know, you lets
- 1:08:51Speaker 3: you let the mind empty out, you let it decompress,
- 1:08:56Speaker 3: you let it think about whatever it wants to think.
- 1:08:58Speaker 3: And what your job is is to start being that essence,
- 1:09:02Speaker 3: that's not the thoughts. And when I say essence, think
- 1:09:05Speaker 3: about the last time you got lost in a good
- 1:09:07Speaker 3: song or a good movie, or you were locked in
- 1:09:10Speaker 3: you know, or in the zone in a game. You
- 1:09:13Speaker 3: can say that your essence was just flowing and you know,
- 1:09:17Speaker 3: so to me, that's sort of what we're really focusing on,
- 1:09:20Speaker 3: is just getting back to this essence. And so the
- 1:09:24Speaker 3: types of meditation I would recommend early on are some
- 1:09:27Speaker 3: really basic things to where it might be hard for
- 1:09:31Speaker 3: someone to first just sit down and or lay down
- 1:09:34Speaker 3: and just let their mind you know, spew without engaging it.
- 1:09:41Speaker 3: So some really basic exercises that are still very powerful
- 1:09:47Speaker 3: would be something you know, sort of as simple, not
- 1:09:50Speaker 3: that it's simple to do, but simple in theory is
- 1:09:52Speaker 3: you know, count your breath to thirty, you know, in
- 1:09:54Speaker 3: hell one XL two, in hell three XL four. So
- 1:09:58Speaker 3: you have somewhere to put your attention. And so even
- 1:10:00Speaker 3: if the mind is thinking, it's sort of like a bridge,
- 1:10:03Speaker 3: you're just practicing this first step of like, okay, I'm
- 1:10:07Speaker 3: letting my mind thinking, I'm not maybe watching it and
- 1:10:10Speaker 3: learning how the skill of allowing it to be there,
- 1:10:12Speaker 3: but at least I'm I've got this mantra with my
- 1:10:16Speaker 3: with my counting, that's keeping me very focused. And and
- 1:10:20Speaker 3: by keeping focused on that, you're taking the focus away
- 1:10:24Speaker 3: from the mind. So I think just some basic counting
- 1:10:27Speaker 3: of the breath would be one. I think anything you
- 1:10:30Speaker 3: can do really to just be comfortable in your body
- 1:10:34Speaker 3: and stop. I think you know, the word rest is
- 1:10:38Speaker 3: a word I've talked about in this meditation group I
- 1:10:41Speaker 3: have where I think a lot of people they don't.
- 1:10:44Speaker 3: We don't really understand the word rest very well. We
- 1:10:46Speaker 3: all know what it means to rest and relax, but
- 1:10:49Speaker 3: I don't know if a lot of people would really
- 1:10:51Speaker 3: get what it means to sit in a chair to
- 1:10:55Speaker 3: literally rest, to not do a thing, just stop, not
- 1:11:01Speaker 3: even try to do anything, just kick your feet up,
- 1:11:07Speaker 3: chill out, tune out, relax, whatever it is, tune in.
- 1:11:12Speaker 3: So I think the main answer to your question, Josh,
- 1:11:17Speaker 3: is that investigate. You know, look around. There's there's a
- 1:11:20Speaker 3: trillion resources on the internet now with guided meditations, and
- 1:11:24Speaker 3: there's apps. As you guys know, we have free stuff, Jared,
- 1:11:29Speaker 3: you know, reference something that you know we have free
- 1:11:31Speaker 3: stuff online. We have tons of resources where you know
- 1:11:37Speaker 3: you won't feel you know in the dark, you know.
- 1:11:41Speaker 3: So I think the main thing is, maybe to put
- 1:11:43Speaker 3: a cherry on top of this, is it's it just
- 1:11:47Speaker 3: comes down to the doing right. It's the practice. It's
- 1:11:50Speaker 3: the continuity, it's the consistency, it's it's making a part
- 1:11:53Speaker 3: of your life every day. And so to me, that's
- 1:11:57Speaker 3: the teeth of this is that whatever you do, make
- 1:12:01Speaker 3: it part of your day and not two minutes, make
- 1:12:06Speaker 3: it at least five to ten minutes. Hopefully it grows
- 1:12:11Speaker 3: because once you start to have a daily practice, you
- 1:12:14Speaker 3: become what you practice right. And here's the other thing.
- 1:12:18Speaker 3: The more you practice, the more you have a chance
- 1:12:20Speaker 3: to bring this practice into your day and into your
- 1:12:23Speaker 3: life and into your sport. And that's back to Jared's
- 1:12:27Speaker 3: experience in the outfield, is whether he knew it or not,
- 1:12:31Speaker 3: at the time, he was deepening this connection with his meditation,
- 1:12:35Speaker 3: with this awareness, with this connection, and he was becoming
- 1:12:39Speaker 3: that and that was expanding into the rest of his life.
- 1:12:43Speaker 3: It maybe in the short run you saw it more
- 1:12:45Speaker 3: as expanding onto the mound, but I guarantee you that
- 1:12:48Speaker 3: if we put the electrodes up to him that year
- 1:12:51Speaker 3: versus the year before, he probably was a lot more
- 1:12:54Speaker 3: relaxed and calmer and quieter and more in the present
- 1:12:57Speaker 3: moment in life that particular season.
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: Yep, no doubt you hit the nail on the head. Well, Alan,
- 1:13:05Speaker 1: you've been gracious with your time. We don't want to
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: take up too much more of it. I just really
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: long toss and meditation and just to hang out. This
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: has been awesome. So I know you got a few resources.
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: You got your year Round Throwing Manual, which is awesome.
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: I've gone through that many times. What other resources do
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: you want to promote or shout out for our listeners
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: that take a look at.
- 1:13:30Speaker 3: Yeah, so my book, despite it being from the nineties,
- 1:13:35Speaker 3: it's still very current. So getting focused thing focused would
- 1:13:38Speaker 3: be one. We have our guys at the office, my
- 1:13:42Speaker 3: partner and our VP put together a really cool sort
- 1:13:46Speaker 3: of introduction to meditation called the Mental Warrior Program, which
- 1:13:51Speaker 3: is just awesome. And on the throwing side, you mentioned
- 1:13:56Speaker 3: the manual, we have a free also pro off season
- 1:14:01Speaker 3: throwing manual, and we also have along with Randy saliv
- 1:14:04Speaker 3: and I collaborated on a Return to Throwing Manual. It's
- 1:14:07Speaker 3: also free. But yeah, we have a lot of resources
- 1:14:11Speaker 3: online that are free as well. So yeah, you know Google,
- 1:14:16Speaker 3: go to YouTube and google Jager's Sports or my name,
- 1:14:21Speaker 3: or go to Google google our YouTube it go to
- 1:14:26Speaker 3: our website jagersports dot com and we're at jager Sports
- 1:14:30Speaker 3: on Twitter and Instagram as well and even TikTok.
- 1:14:35Speaker 1: I love it awesome. Well, thanks again, Alan for your
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: time and a lot to have you on again sometime.
- 1:14:40Speaker 3: Hey, I can't thank you guys enough for having me on,
- 1:14:42Speaker 3: and I have a lot of respect for both of you,
- 1:14:44Speaker 3: so just know like this is a real treat and
- 1:14:46Speaker 3: a real honor.
- 1:14:48Speaker 1: Awesome, You're the man. Thank you all.
- 1:14:50Speaker 4: Thanks A. Lole Banks.