Latest / The Layback Podcast / FlexPro Grip Updates and Upcoming Schedule (Ep. 90)

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FlexPro Grip Updates and Upcoming Schedule (Ep. 90) · The Layback Podcast

0:00
What's up everyone, welcome back to the Lay Back podcast.
0:03
I am running this thing solo today.
0:07
Things are a little weird with the whole podcast space
0:10
surrounding Thanksgiving and surrounding holidays in general.
0:13
But given we release on Thursdays, last year I released
0:18
an episode on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving.
0:20
A lot of the podcast I listened to do something like that, but
0:24
this year I decided to stick with the normal Thursday release
0:28
date. But rather than having a guest
0:32
join us, I decided to do this thing solo.
0:35
I have a couple of awesome episodes lined up for you guys.
0:40
We have an athlete interview with Hayden Lewis, who is a
0:45
senior pitcher at University of Washington.
0:48
He's been through some UCL stuff himself, twice actually. 2 prior
0:51
surgeries in his past and he talks about a comparison of
0:57
really his two rehabs and just his journey of development
1:01
through college ball. So awesome story.
1:03
They're really looking forward to getting that, getting that
1:06
one out to you guys. You may have seen that was
1:08
actually scheduled for today's episode to release on
1:12
Thanksgiving, but I really didn't want to sacrifice any
1:16
listens there. Then we have an interview with
1:19
Anthony Casiola who is a big deal in the return to throw
1:24
world, especially if you were on Instagram or TikTok.
1:27
Definitely has a good personality on there but really
1:31
provides some excellent information.
1:34
He has really transformed himself from being an athlete
1:38
who endured so many hardships with labrum surgery to now being
1:43
an advocate for objective guided systems, but reminding athletes
1:49
that this is still a game, it's still fun.
1:51
So he has a really unique approach to the rehab space and
1:56
he gets into the weeds for how he helps athletes and is sure to
2:01
share that with you guys. So looking forward to getting
2:03
those both out to y'all. Also on the horizon, we'll kind
2:08
of stick on this horizon discussion for the moment.
2:11
Another reason for going solo episode today and trying to keep
2:15
those two interviews in the back pocket is we have a lot of
2:18
travel coming up with flex program.
2:21
We have the MLB winter meetings. This will be let me think, is
2:28
this our third year attending possibly 4th.
2:32
Let's see, we've done San Diego, we've done Nashville, we have
2:37
done gosh, now, now I'm struggling.
2:40
Why? Why is this so hard for me to
2:43
put together? But San Diego, Nashville, and
2:46
then last year was Dallas. So this year in Orlando, this
2:50
will be our 4th winter meetings. We are not presenting officially
2:55
anywhere this year, but we have a lot of meetings set up kind of
2:58
along those lines. Really exciting news to share
3:01
with you all. We actually have representation
3:04
currently in 24 of the 30 big league organizations.
3:09
So in some organizations that means they are truly a partner
3:13
org with us. If a player wants Flexpro Grip
3:16
and they're a member of that organization, the organization
3:19
provides Flexpro Grip for them. Those groups are amazing to work
3:24
with. We're hoping to add another
3:26
couple this go around this offseason and really set those
3:30
orgs up for success for the 2026 campaign.
3:34
Then we have a large handful of organizations that we do not
3:41
work with, work with directly, but we work with a handful of
3:46
players in those groups. For instance, we have two
3:50
organizations in particular that we have 8 plus pitchers that we
3:55
work with directly. And those, those are kind of
3:57
funny situations because we're, we're often going back and forth
4:00
with the rehab professionals in those organizations or the
4:04
coaches or the R&D team, really anyone that the players may want
4:11
us to have conversations with or maybe assisting in that player's
4:15
journey. But it really creates a like a
4:18
good relationship, A1 on one relationship with us and the
4:21
player and then certainly empowering the player to bring
4:25
those within the organization that they trust into the circle
4:29
for a more, I guess, in depth discussion to ensure that we
4:36
always have the players best interest in mind.
4:38
So, yeah, just a little look into, I guess, winter meetings,
4:43
what we have on tap. I'll get into kind of our big
4:46
offering coming out of winter meetings in a little bit that
4:51
that'll probably be the meat and potatoes of this podcast today.
4:55
But like I said, the the highlights we're not working
4:58
with in some capacity 24 of the 30 organizations and really seen
5:05
a lot of growth in terms of consistency among those users,
5:10
not just assessing or testing here and there, but truly
5:14
training regularly. And on top of that, we're seeing
5:19
a consistent growth in professional pitchers who are
5:23
reaching out to us to work with us, whether it's just offseason
5:27
work to prep for the season, whether it's helping them manage
5:30
workloads in season, A lot of exciting stuff there.
5:33
Then on the back end of winter meetings, so immediately the
5:37
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, following the week of winter
5:40
meetings, we have what is now an annual event for us as well at
5:45
this point, the Wake Forest Player Development Seminar.
5:49
We will be hosting a little bit of a different presentation this
5:54
year with the Wake Forest Player Development Seminar.
5:57
We will be doing a breakfast and player panel, 8:00 AM Saturday
6:03
morning, that's December 13th, so very low pressure discussion.
6:08
In the past we've been on the mainstage in front of everyone
6:11
in the auditorium, big PowerPoint or slide deck and
6:16
running through some very in depth stuff regarding elbow
6:20
injuries, flexor mask training and really everything that goes
6:25
into Flexpro grip. The nitty gritty details, but
6:30
this time around I and I say I so it's not it's not as much we
6:34
doing this presentation this time around, which will be a
6:37
little bit funky. Daryl's going to be coming and
6:39
hanging out, but I will be leading a player panel with the
6:44
likes of Blake Morningstar, who is been a staple of college
6:50
baseball, especially in the ACC for the past couple of years.
6:54
But is a highly touted prospect or draft prospect, I should say,
6:59
going into this college season. This will be his junior year and
7:02
he is slated to be the Friday guy at Wake Forest.
7:05
Then we have Dawson Nets, who you guys heard an interview of
7:10
just a short couple of weeks ago.
7:12
Or shoot, I guess that was this past week's episode.
7:16
I'm all discombobulated in the head right now, but Dawson Nets
7:20
will be there. He just finished his rookie
7:22
campaign with the Chicago Cubs and is a University of Arizona
7:26
alumni. We will have Aiden May, who just
7:30
finished his rookie year with the Miami Marlins.
7:35
He also pitched in the Arizona Fall League, saw a lot of
7:38
success this past fall and he is a lay back alumni as well.
7:43
He graduated from Oregon State and hopped around a little bit
7:47
in his college career, or I say graduated.
7:49
He finished his career at Oregon State.
7:51
For all I know he's graduated at this point.
7:54
He's probably, well, he is a smart guy, so he's probably
7:56
working towards that degree in some capacity.
7:59
Then rounding out that player panel is another Lay Back
8:05
Podcast alumni or alumnus I should say.
8:08
Let me get my words right in Josh Hedgeka.
8:11
Josh Hedge, because currently a minor league free agent, has
8:14
spent time in both the Mets and the Phillies organization.
8:18
He is looking for a team for this coming year and on top of
8:21
that, he also works for Driveline Baseball.
8:25
He is very deep in the weeds on the research and development
8:29
side of things, specifically regarding workload, workload
8:33
management, pulse and constructing the data that goes
8:39
into throwing and throw tracking.
8:41
Some loose plans for the discussion.
8:44
I'm actually supposed to meet with the guys later this week to
8:48
go over our plan and kind of how we're going to work through this
8:52
hour long presentation. But we plan to discuss what
8:57
players are presented from a data technology perspective and
9:04
what that stuff really means to them.
9:06
Every time you go to one of these seminars or go to a
9:09
convention, we always hear from coaches telling us what we
9:14
should be doing with our players or how players learn, how
9:17
players perceive and what works for them.
9:20
But we never really hear from the players.
9:23
And even at that, it's a really funky situation if you're a
9:26
coach or if you work in an org to go to one of your players and
9:30
say, tell me what you want more of.
9:32
Yeah, there's a lot of people that do that, and I think that's
9:34
awesome. But sometimes it gets really
9:37
difficult to meet the needs of every individual or talk to
9:40
every individual along the way. So what we want to do in this
9:43
setting is take 4 athletes with vastly different backgrounds.
9:49
Hedgeco is AD three guy who signed out of Indy ball.
9:53
Dawson Nets signed as a undrafted free agent after
9:56
spending almost a year as a graduate assistant coach.
10:00
Aiden May was drafted in the second round and Blake Morning
10:03
Star is slated to be a top couple arounder.
10:06
So we we got a lot of different backgrounds there, guys who have
10:11
come from all over the country. They've experienced different
10:14
level of travel ball and data and information exposure.
10:19
They're a part of different organizations with different
10:22
philosophies. So we should get a really solid
10:24
look into what is actually important to these individuals
10:29
and then how do they internalize that data and that information?
10:35
How do they use it? Do they want to just rely on the
10:39
trust factor with those who are expressing the data, or do they
10:43
really want to know the what in the why behind all of these
10:47
numbers and data points and why decisions are being made?
10:51
I don't want to answer anything for these guys.
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I'm just really looking forward to leading a discussion and
10:57
hopefully giving the audience some really solid takeaways so
11:02
they can go back to their teams, their clubs, whatever, and just
11:06
have a different perspective for how they're communicating with
11:09
their players and what the information they share actually
11:14
means to hopefully develop some pretty solid outcomes.
11:19
But yeah, that's that's the next couple of weeks, guys.
11:22
So it is pretty crazy. Of course, it's Thanksgiving, so
11:25
I've got family in town right now, which has been great.
11:28
I'm finally able to record a podcast without a baby at my
11:33
feet. Super exciting stuff in that
11:34
regard. But now let's get into, like I
11:38
said, the meat and potatoes. So one of our big offerings
11:42
coming up for the pro orgs during winter meetings, this is
11:47
super applicable to our college groups as well.
11:50
And then just kind of what we've been working on lately and what
11:54
we'll continue to work on throughout these winter months.
11:58
And then of course, I'll address some of the rehab and the return
12:01
to throw stuff. We're continuing to iterate on
12:03
that. We think that's been an awesome
12:06
progression, really a scene, tremendous adoption of those
12:12
protocols and a continuation of those conversations that we had
12:17
just a short month ago at this point as we introduced our
12:21
baseball rehab network return to throw in training guidelines to
12:27
assist clinicians, players, whoever in the rehab process.
12:31
We totally expect to have a lot of those discussions over winter
12:34
meetings and over the coming months, but I've buried the lead
12:37
enough. The true meat and potatoes is
12:40
what we are calling dynamic programming.
12:43
Now. We don't need this crazy fancy
12:45
title. Dynamic programming might sound
12:48
like a fancy title, but it really should explain what we're
12:53
trying to create and that is in season programming that will
12:58
adjust to what your game day or throwing schedule looks like.
13:05
So dynamic programming should move with whatever you did with
13:10
a ball that day, if you had an off day, if you threw in a game,
13:15
if you threw a side, if you just played like catch.
13:18
We are creating a system where an athlete can open up their
13:23
Flex Pro Grip app. Right from there, they answered
13:28
just a few questions. Are you a starter reliever?
13:31
Was today game day? Did you throw in the game?
13:34
Did you throw within 10 mph of your peak velocity?
13:38
We're still working through some of the questions, but we are
13:41
trying to create the most direct and specific protocol decision
13:48
for you as the individual to ensure that you are doing the
13:54
best protocol for you given your current situation.
13:59
Whether that's maintain whatever strength you built in the
14:03
offseason or maintain that level of stiffness that you tried to
14:06
achieve in those muscle tending units.
14:09
To create the most resilient robust flexor mass possible to
14:14
reduce risk of a UCL or forearm injury.
14:17
Whether it's to recover before your next outing or support you
14:23
as kind of a primer before you go out and throw the next day.
14:27
And then, yeah, sometimes we're even going to program off days.
14:31
I know that sounds kind of crazy, but based on the
14:33
information that you might put into the app, we might tell you
14:36
the best decision you can make is no training today.
14:40
There's going to be other days that we suggest higher intent
14:43
training. There's going to be certain days
14:45
that we suggest mid to low intent training or really just
14:49
recovery work. But this has been a long, I
14:55
don't know if I want to say arduous process, but it's
14:58
certainly been long. We have done a lot of digging on
15:02
throwing schedules, what we're commonly seen at the
15:05
professional levels from a rotation standpoint, when guys
15:09
are throwing their sides, how often relievers are going
15:12
back-to-back. And although all of those
15:16
details are super important, it's really just collecting
15:20
information for us in order to make sure our app in our
15:25
programming can be can be as dynamic as possible to support
15:30
all those different possibilities.
15:32
So we're really looking forward to getting that in front of
15:36
these big league organizations who are constantly asking the
15:40
questions and might add the right questions for not just how
15:46
do we program Plex program in the offseason because that's
15:50
pretty easy, but how do we ensure that our guys are ready
15:54
to go when their name is called and we're not adding fatigue by
15:58
training these muscle tendon units.
16:00
So that's that's what we get into.
16:03
And really if, if we're going to get into the weeds and I guess
16:07
you guys don't really have a choice, I'm going to get into
16:09
the weeds just a little bit here.
16:11
So a few of the notes that we address with these protocols are
16:17
maintaining a base level of flexor tone.
16:20
So we don't talk about tone a lot, but the purpose of tone is
16:24
just a like a baseline level of preparedness or a baseline level
16:30
of readiness and we can maintain that with really low level
16:34
training. So think our low intensity long
16:37
hold protocols, what that provides for us is basically a
16:42
reduction and long term softening of the muscle tendon
16:48
unit. I know that's another word that
16:49
we don't talk about like softening or hardening, but in
16:52
this sense it's just maintaining that level of stiffness that we
16:57
built in the offseason with really dedicated training,
17:00
ensuring that we have that basic level of preparedness and just
17:05
sticking with a maintenance schedule in that regard.
17:07
So a lot of the dynamic programming will encourage
17:10
significant low intensity long hold work.
17:14
And when I say significant, I mean often will be, it will
17:17
often be programmed. Then the other piece here is
17:22
neural stiffness. So we we talk a lot about the
17:26
stiffness of the soft tissues or the muscle tendon units.
17:31
Neural stiffness goes a little bit beyond that.
17:34
It's not quite rate of force development, but it's basically
17:39
maintaining the speed at which the nerves will fire or trigger
17:44
the muscle tendon unit. So we're not trying to
17:48
necessarily gain rate of force development during this season.
17:51
Again, we just want to maintain the work that we did in the
17:54
offseason. And thankfully this can be done
17:56
with some pretty low effort in the grand scheme of things work
17:59
we would probably classify it as mid intensity in about that 30%
18:04
of your one Rep Max range. But with the sustained holds
18:08
associated with these 30% level reps, the holds result in
18:17
constant contraction relaxation of the muscle tendon unit,
18:22
therefore a on off switch or a trigger of that neural firing.
18:27
So we're able to tap into that neural stiffness stimulus then
18:32
of course in the collagen or maintaining that muscle tendon
18:38
unit stiffness as well. The 30% work will help with that
18:43
a little bit. But we are programming now once
18:46
every couple of weeks or if we know we have a little bit longer
18:50
recovery window. So maybe if there's an off day
18:53
built in there for big league guys, a little extra travel,
18:57
something like that or we know we're down for a little bit and
19:00
there's an added day, we will do a mid to higher intensity
19:05
session. Maybe 50% of A1 Rep Max or
19:08
slightly above, just as a spark to that strength stimulus in a
19:15
sense, just making sure that we still have those peak levels of
19:18
strength output. Again, those are still going to
19:21
have eight second hold times associated with each Rep.
19:26
So we we should be able to really tap into that stimulus
19:29
well and of course it's the continued single finger work,
19:33
the continued ulnar radial deviation and extension work.
19:37
So the system as a whole remains the same.
19:40
We just want to get more dynamic to support the individual
19:44
pitcher needs and on top of that make sure we are not doing too
19:50
much. So now, now is where we can kind
19:53
of divide the conversation. We talked about maintenance.
19:56
Everything I said previously was all about maintenance.
20:01
Now we can switch gears and talk about development or making
20:06
gains. If we want to make gains or if
20:09
we want to continue the strength, stiffness, RFD
20:13
developments. We can take our more traditional
20:16
Flexpro grip programming and just continue with that.
20:21
Yes, we will still maintain the same thought process of this is
20:26
a high intensity throw day or this is a low intensity day and
20:30
we need to recover or we need to push.
20:33
We we will still go through that decision making process to
20:37
ensure that we have the athletes goal in mind and their the
20:41
athletes health in mind. But if we if we really are going
20:46
to be critical of ourselves, we have probably been maybe a
20:50
little more aggressive than necessary for what we thought
20:54
would maintain guys and we've continued to push guys during
20:58
the season. Now nothing bad has happened
21:01
from that. There's no been no increase in
21:03
injury or anything like that. But we're baseball people and if
21:08
we're pushing people or we're pushing the athletes, maybe that
21:12
means we're taking away ever so slightly from a performance
21:17
output. And ultimately that's why these
21:19
guys play the game and that's why they're doing Flexpro Grip.
21:22
They're not doing it to be good at Flexpro Grip.
21:24
They're not doing it the hit numbers on our device or in the
21:28
weight room. They're doing these things
21:30
because they want to win and they want to perform and
21:33
baseball is the best. So we we want to make sure we
21:36
support that. But if we have an athlete who
21:40
maybe isn't in a position where they can impact the game or get
21:45
a victory for their club or they are weak and they need to make
21:49
significant gains in order to be healthy, to have a long
21:53
illustrious career. That's a guy that we might have
21:57
continued the strength training or the more traditional
22:00
programming. As I was saying, that's kind of
22:02
a basic meandering run through of what we've been working on
22:08
and what we will continue to work on over these winter
22:11
months, over the dark days as some might say.
22:14
But if you have specific questions of how this might
22:18
change our protocols or change our approach, definitely reach
22:22
out. We plan on getting on Zoom calls
22:24
with all of our partners, our colleges, our high schools, our
22:28
individuals, and of course the pro orgs as we work through
22:32
this. I say that's what we've been
22:35
working on. There's another massive, massive
22:38
piece here. We'll we'll present this at
22:40
winter meetings as well. Truthfully, this part's probably
22:42
a little less important for winter meetings, but a lot more
22:46
important for individuals that we work with as well as our
22:49
colleges. We have something new called our
22:53
weekly protocol schedule that probably doesn't sound new or
22:57
fancy or particularly exciting, but if you have worked with us,
23:02
you know that along with what we do in the app and what we do
23:06
with the device, Google Sheets or Excel has kind of become our
23:10
best friend from an athlete programming perspective.
23:15
Now, I still love Google Sheets and I appreciate everything
23:20
Excel has to offer, but we are at a point now that we can do
23:24
all of that programming within our app and that little tab in
23:30
the app is called the weekly protocol schedule.
23:33
You can access the weekly protocol schedule by going to
23:36
the profile tab in your Flex Pro Grip app and then you'll just
23:40
see a line of text that says weekly Protocol schedule.
23:43
If you tapped that and you don't see anything, that's because you
23:47
don't have a schedule programmed for you.
23:49
If you would like a schedule programmed for you, reach out to
23:53
either your Teams manager or a coach you work with.
23:58
Or of course reach out to us at Flexpro.
24:01
Reach out to me, reach out to Daryl, reach out to Gavin and
24:04
we're or John of course. Sorry John.
24:08
Sorry for shorting you on that. John's probably programming for
24:10
more people than anyone at this point.
24:12
I forgot to say his name, but reach out to any of us for and
24:16
we are happy to get you set up with a program that supports
24:20
your specific needs, something that's individualized to your
24:25
velocity. You're throwing schedule and
24:28
what you're hoping to achieve. And then rather than having to
24:32
go back to a Google Sheet, you can open your weekly protocol
24:36
schedule and select your daily protocol right from there.
24:42
Maybe after talking about this weekly protocol schedule, after
24:46
previously talking about the dynamic programming, I should
24:49
probably talk about the differences between the two.
24:52
The weekly protocol schedule is tremendous for the offseason or
24:56
for an individual as I had mentioned.
24:59
Now in season where things become a little bit more
25:02
variable, especially for a reliever and things are a little
25:06
bit more difficult to plan for ahead of time.
25:10
The dynamic programming enables an athlete or user to answer
25:14
questions up front and then our system or our algorithm will
25:20
kick a protocol back to them. The weekly protocol schedule is
25:25
a pre planned program for an individual, which fits really
25:30
well into a development schedule or a timeline that we're working
25:34
off of. So the guys that I'm working
25:36
with currently, we're all using the weekly protocol schedule
25:41
versus what we'll likely do in season.
25:44
Unless we know someone is on a very, very specific program, we
25:50
will utilize the dynamic programming as that gets built
25:54
out. So super excited to get that in
25:57
the app and test it. We have a beta version available
26:00
for us currently and I think it's extremely promising.
26:04
Just have a few kinks to work out for y'all with.
26:07
Kind of like our map and our decision making process, but I
26:11
feel great about it. So guys, I think that will do it
26:16
for me today. Thanks for bearing with me as I
26:20
just chatted. Your ear off has probably felt
26:23
like the longest episode yet, even though this is a shorter
26:27
one in the grand scheme of things.
26:29
But solo episodes always feel like this.
26:32
I, I hope you guys have an incredible Thanksgiving,
26:35
incredible holiday weekend, have fun with family, enjoy this time
26:39
off. I know this probably isn't going
26:41
to get as many listens unless the baseball world, you guys are
26:45
finding a way to sneak your phone out.
26:47
But then again, this is now a dead period for recruiting, so
26:50
maybe you coaches don't have your phones on you like you
26:53
maybe did before. I guess the NCAA is hurting me
26:56
too. We're all in this together guys.
26:57
But jokes aside, I really appreciate all of you out there.
27:02
This is the time to give thanks and for me to share how much
27:06
gratitude I have for this community, how you guys have
27:10
stuck with us through this growth, through this process as
27:14
I get to kind of moonlight as a podcaster every so often.
27:19
But I loved spending my day with you once again, speaking to you
27:26
guys directly. If there's anything that we can
27:29
help with, of course, of course, of course, reach out to us.
27:32
We're here for you guys. Whether it's return to throw
27:35
suggestions, rehab suggestions, flex pro grip programming,
27:40
getting connected with someone in the baseball space, really
27:44
anything. Our role, I like to say goes
27:47
well beyond just training the muscles of the forearm and
27:50
protecting the UCL. But I know that's what a lot of
27:53
people see us as. To be fair, that is how we got
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started, but we we like to be so much more for you guys.
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As you know, I really view Lay Back as a community and
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hopefully you guys view it as the same and you're thankful for
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what we've created together because none of this would be
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possible without you guys. And I guess this brings us to
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one final thing as always, and I really hope you know that I mean
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it. Thanks for laying back with us.