Latest / The Layback Podcast / Chris Martin, LSU Baseball Head Strength Coach (Ep. 73)

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Chris Martin, LSU Baseball Head Strength Coach (Ep. 73) · The Layback Podcast

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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lay Back podcast.
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Joining us today is national champion head strength and
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conditioning coach at LSU, Chris Martin.
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Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.
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Really appreciate you making the time and I'm excited to get into
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this conversation. Of course, I'm going to kick it
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to you right away for the bio and then from there I'll take it
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away with some questions. Awesome.
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Thanks, Adam. Appreciate you having me on as
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well. So I'm Chris Martin.
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I'm the head strength and conditioning coach for baseball
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at LSU. Going back into the past a
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little bit, I pitched collegiately at Kent State
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University for five years and then from there hopped straight
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into an internship with the Houston Astros.
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Spent ultimately a little over five years in the Astros
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organization. Did some strength and
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conditioning work with the rookie ball team a little bit in
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the Dr. Spent 2 1/2 years as our rehab strength and conditioning
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coordinator and then my final season there was as the minor
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league strength and conditioning coordinator.
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Then I came over here to LSU last August.
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So just coming up on one complete year and and about to
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dive into our second season with fall ball right around the
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corner. Was funny for me to witness this
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crazy emergence of you like coming onto the scene.
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Of course you are working in baseball forever, but as soon as
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you step out of pro ball and you can develop your own social
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media presence, it felt like you just were thrust into the
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Twittersphere and all of a sudden everyone knew who you are
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in September or October. It's like, wait, who's this guy
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that's all of a sudden has takes about workload and strength and
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conditioning? I just found that really funny.
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So I guess how did it feel to have that outlet for the first
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time in 5-6 years? Honestly a bit uncomfortable.
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I'm not naturally the one who wants to go and just throw
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everything out there on social media.
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Obviously in the professional setting, you pretty much can't
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share a lot of the stuff. Everything kind of stays in
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house and the stuff that you do share is more so in private
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conversations. But like the public transmission
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of information or state kept secrets does not really happen.
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So I came over here to LSU and I actually had a couple of people
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that I know and trust really well who were the ones who kind
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of pushed me towards starting to to have a little bit more social
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media presence. And they basically both told me
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they were, they said, you know, while you're at LSU, you don't
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leverage the power of the brand that LSU has to kind of make
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your own personal brand as a strength and conditioning coach.
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You're kind of being an idiot. And again, I, I trust them.
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It's not my like natural Forte to, to do to post all that stuff
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on social media or especially to hop in front of a, a camera and
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sit down and just talk into a mic.
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But you learn through repetition.
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You get more comfortable through repetition.
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And so I've tried to be somewhat consistent with that.
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Probably fell off a little little bit during the season,
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just getting busy on the day-to-day grind of, of being in
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season. But yeah, that's kind of how it,
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it unfolded. And so I, I do enjoy it.
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It's, it's actually helped network a ton.
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I've met a lot of really, really smart and cool people through
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it. And so I'm really glad about
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that. As part of my mission as a
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strength coach in general, I want to help as many athletes
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and coaches as I possibly can. And so in the pro setting,
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you're kind of limited to to those you specifically work
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with. And now being able to have a
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little bit wider, you know, reach, it's cool because y'all
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get, I'll get questions from high school players, high school
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coaches, parents, this and that. And so that's been a really cool
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part of the experience of, of being in the college setting
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where you don't have to be so tight lipped about everything
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you're doing. For sure.
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I mean, me as a fan of the game, beyond just someone involved in
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it from the performance and health side of things, I love
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when more people are involved, sharing their ideas, sharing
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their experiences And I, I think you are really uniquely
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positioned to share so much given your background in pro
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ball and now in high level collegiate sports.
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You're seeing some of the best athletes in the world as well as
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having to understand how these things scale.
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You are not numb to the fact that you guys have great
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resources at LSU and you had incredible resources with the
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Astros. So I'm sure a lot of what you
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have done has had to come with the creative grain of salt in a
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sense, as you have these conversations with people like,
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well, this is how we do it. But I also understand you don't
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have all of this technology or all these or all this manpower
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at your disposal. So here's potentially how you
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could do it at a lower level. So maybe we can take that
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thought and go into this a little bit.
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What has changed for you, if anything, going from the pro
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side to the collegiate side, whether it's from manpower, from
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a programming approach or the touches that you have with your
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athletes? Yeah, that's a great question.
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You know, I'll start and say like, we have phenomenal
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resources at LSU. We had unbelievable resources
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with the Astros, but the biggest difference straight up in terms
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of resources between professional baseball and
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college baseball is you touched on it, there's the manpower.
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So in professional baseball you've got departments built
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out. On the baseball OPS side, you've
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got strength and conditioning. That's going to be, depending on
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the org, 15 to 20 people. Medical is going to be 20 to 25,
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plus R&D, player development, bio mechanics, all sorts of
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sports science. So there's all sorts of
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departments and culminates and you've got, you know, a couple
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100 people or 100 hundred 2200 people kind of working on trying
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to find the solutions to the ultimate question of how do we
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make better baseball players or how do we keep our players
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healthier. And so there's so many really,
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really smart, talented people looking at problems from
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different angles. So you get a lot of ideas.
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The example I give is in Florida when I was with the Astros as
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our coordinator, I actually pulled our our sports scientist
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at the complex down into my office.
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And so he and I shared an office and he he sat right next to this
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whiteboard. And so when I would start to
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think about maybe a report I wanted to see or a study design
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that we wanted to run, like we would just get up on the
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whiteboard and start drawing it up together, talk about it for
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30 minutes and then 4 hours later he'd have an app built for
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me. Things happen at a really high
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level like that in pro ball. Now, one of the downsides of of
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that with having all of those people is sometimes decisions or
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processes or projects can be slow to, to be rolled out or to
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seem to completion just because so many people have their
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fingerprint on it. So compare that to the
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collegiate setting and our staff is much smaller.
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So it's myself an assistant on the strength and conditioning
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side. We have two athletic trainers.
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We've got our coaches, a director of hitting development,
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a director of pitching development, a director of OPS,
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and then student managers. So again, we're talking like
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outside of the student managers or even including them, 20 to 25
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total staff members. So things are smaller.
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So you kind of have to pare down the details or how in depth you
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go with things just because you get pulled in more directions,
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you kind of have to wear more hats.
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So when I was the coordinator for the Astros, I didn't do a
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ton of coaching on the floor. So that freed me up to do a lot
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of the higher level project thinking or things like that or
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communicating with different levels or different, different
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departments. And then I'm here at LSU and I'm
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on the floor for between two and four hours a day, probably most
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of the days hands on coaching. So there goes 2 to 4 hours of
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stuff that could be deployed towards other projects or
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reporting or creating dashboards or this or that.
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I would say the difference in manpower is, is significant.
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I think at the collegiate setting, players have more to
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gain from strength and conditioning as a whole than at
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the professional setting, especially as they work their
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way up and they get a little bit older and they AAA, big leagues,
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AA guys, they're a little bit older, have a little higher
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training age. So the strength and conditioning
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in terms of moving the needle performance wise probably gets
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smaller as you go up there. A lot of the guys that we have
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coming in here at LSU are extremely highly talented, but
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the physical development is kind of like a big unlock for them.
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Our left fielder last year was one of the best freshmen in the
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country. He came in basketball skills,
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unbelievable. Ability to control the strike
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zone as the hitter, unbelievable.
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He just was small. He didn't hit the ball with a
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ton of authority. He he barreled it.
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His barrel accuracy is unbelievable.
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And when you compare his Max EV to his average or his 50th
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percentile, the 50th percentile average are actually pretty darn
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good for what his his Max was. So with him it's like, OK, let's
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just build a bigger engine. Then you're going to have a guy
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who's going to get picked in the top half of the first round like
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he's just that good. So that's another unique
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difference between the college and the pro setting is I think
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the strength and conditioning lens or the strength and
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conditioning factor can be a bigger X Factor for these guys
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in college. It's always fun to talk to the
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people that have so much at their disposal.
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But I do want to throw this out as the glass half full reminder
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for all of you listening. At small schools or high schools
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or underfunded programs, you don't need to run anything by
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anyone. And I'm sure there's been times
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where you have thought to yourself like, wow, it would be
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so nice if I could just act without asking a single
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question. Absolutely.
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Actually, I get, I get really good, I get really good freedom
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to kind of run the program as I want to here.
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But again, in pro ball, like you've got to get approval from
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different levels, whether that's working your way up to your
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director or maybe people in the front office or you've got to
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get other departments on board. There's a little bit less of
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that here. Yeah, it makes sense and we
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definitely need to didn't need to spend a lot of time on that.
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For me, it was just kind of funny after interviewing Chris
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Matarazzo at Vanderbilt and hearing what they have available
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to them, of course talking to you and what you guys have
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available. And we we talked to so many
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people with these unbelievable resources.
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I know it is easy to get caught feeling sorry for yourself if
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you are someone that doesn't have those resources or you can
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look up like, well, there's just another thing that we have to
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struggle with. But you also have the beauty in
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those situations of unilateral decision making or much smaller
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communication chains in order to put something in place.
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Not that I'm trying to turn this into a business dynamics
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podcast. I just figured I would bring it
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up. So with that, let's dig into the
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weeds a little bit. And I, I know you have
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experience working as both a rehab strength coordinator, as a
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minor league strength coordinator and now doing more
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high performance work as a whole.
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You, you've seen the whole gamut of the, the rehabbing athlete
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and the healthy athlete. I think maybe the 1st place to
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start and I was excited to send you this question ahead of time.
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Specifically, is the possible delineation between rehab
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programs and programs for a healthy or high performing
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athlete. Should those waters be muddied?
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Should those programs look different or really like?
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I guess there's no right or wrong answer.
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I would assume so just kind of what's your take on that whole
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space? Yeah.
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So they they should look similar and they should look different
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at the same time. And it's going to depend on
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where you're at in the rehab process and what the injury was.
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But generally my philosophy regarding training a healthy
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athlete is we're going to reverse engineer the time energy
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demand of the sport. Look at what the sport demands.
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And OK, that's what we're going to train for, to build the
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engine so that you can express your skills in that sport.
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Think strength and conditioning is very general as opposed to
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specific, far more general than people like to think.
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Like they think they're like really specific.
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But we're just building the engine, building the hardware
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for them to go and express the skills that they have or to help
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them at times learn new skills. We're doing the same thing with
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injured athletes. You just have the constraint of
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whatever the injury is, we're still working towards that
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ultimate goal while working within the limitations of the
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injury or the contraindications of the injury.
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And again, it depends on where they're at in the process.
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So if it's very early in a return to play setting and if
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it's a more serious injury like a surgical intervention of some
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sort, the first and foremost things are going to be like,
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let's return to just function like activities of daily living.
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Let's get the wound cleaned up. Let's kind of get some of that
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acute inflammation out of there as quickly as we can.
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And then once we get OK from the medical side, like we'll start
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to train lightly and we're going to train with respect to not
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doing anything that's going to further injure the already
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injured spot. But we're going to work with
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what we can. So I think a good example is a
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Tommy John surgery and the guy comes out of surgery, he's going
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to start therapy hopefully the next day depending on the
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setting or within a couple days. And they'll start to do some
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light range of motion with that. Eventually the stitches are
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going to come out and once the incisions close and they're good
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to sweat, usually when we get the OK to start doing some
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activities. So we're going to start training
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the rest of the body. If our right arm's down, we're
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going to be able to train the left arm doing some sort of
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pressing, pulling. We're going to be able to do
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some sort of core work that doesn't involve using the right
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arm. We're going to train the legs.
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We're going to toss them on a bike and start to build back an
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aerobic base and get some just capacity work going.
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And then as we go and when we take the steps to the rehab
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process, eventually we get clearance to do more and more.
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And it's basically a matter of just catching up that injured
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spot to the rest of the body. But everything else we're, we're
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still training as if we're healthy almost but but we're
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just having respect for the injured body part.
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So really the delineation comes through in the form of
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specificity more than anything else.
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We're still trying to maintain the same principles.
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When we look at a rehab program versus a high performance
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program, we of course want the rehabbing athlete to maintain
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whatever they can. Of course it's not going to be
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perfect when a limb is tied down to the side of their body or
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they don't have complete function of everything at their
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disposal, but we we want things to seem normal.
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From what I'm understanding, where things kind of separate is
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just as you alluded to, the very specific care or the
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modifications that you have to make so the athlete can continue
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on with their daily routines. Yeah, absolutely.
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And again, it's, it's always a conversation back and forth with
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the medical staff that's also providing care treatment for
14:57
that athlete. And even if it's a more minor
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case, it might just be something along the lines of exercise
15:03
modification. And maybe somebody's tweaked
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their back or, you know, they've got something where we don't
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want to load them with a bar on their back.
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And we we go to a some sort of like a pitch shark belt squat.
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It's a very simple example there.
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But at the end of the day, we're still chasing a relatively
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similar adaptation, whether it's lower body strength or power and
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whatever, whatever our focus is there.
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But the, the methods that we're using might be a little
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different. And, and that might be something
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that we stick with for a long time.
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It might be something that we stick with for a couple days or
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a week until we feel like, OK, we're, we're ready just to kind
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of return to normal. And again, each case is
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different. Like I said, the the water
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should be muddied, especially the closer they get to return.
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Like at that point we need to train more and more like we're
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healthy and and we are bringing that injured a body part up to
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speed as we go. Maybe advancing this discussion
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a little bit, as you started to mention there kind of the later
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stage where the waters do become muddy.
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I'd love to go down the road of return to play versus return to
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performance. I feel like that can be viewed
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as semantics when you get to a high enough level of
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understanding, but for the layperson, or really for the
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purpose of these conversations, I feel like discussing the
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differences in those phrases becomes important.
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With return to play, there is this idea, to me at least, we're
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we're just trying to do what is minimally necessary to get back
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on the field. When it comes to return to
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performance, at least in my mind, again, the way things
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shift is we begin to take into consideration all of the
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performance metrics or standards that need to be achieved in
16:45
order for an athlete to truly be back in the game at the level
16:51
they expect to be. I'm curious if you take those
16:55
considerations into the way that you design programs, especially
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given that there are times, I'm sure, where you are just trying
17:06
to help a potentially graduating senior who will never play
17:09
baseball again just get back on the field to play versus a
17:16
freshman or sophomore who is marked as a future top 2
17:20
rounder. Kind of revitalize their career
17:24
or save their career in a sense. Yeah.
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So this is, there's a lot going on with this question for sure.
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I'll say, I'll say it again. When you get to a certain level,
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return to play, return to performance, it's semantics.
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It could be in the same thing, but I think it kind of
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emphasizes where your priorities are.
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So for me, when I look at what are my priorities when I, when
17:45
I'm rehabbing an athlete, number one, first and foremost, well,
17:49
I'd say I call these one A1B. Number one is retention.
17:53
So when we go back in into play, we don't get re injured, whether
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it's the same injury or something that maybe was the
17:58
downstream effect of the first injury.
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So that's the first one. The second one, 1B is that we
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return to at a baseline or at a minimum the level performance
18:09
that we were at before. And ideally, especially the
18:12
longer the rehab process is, you should return a better athlete
18:16
than before. So when you've got up somebody
18:18
who's out for several months or up to a year or a year plus,
18:23
that is a massive window of developmental opportunity
18:26
outside of just the rehab itself.
18:28
So you should be returning as good of, if not better of an
18:31
athlete then the the tertiary priority.
18:35
Far below those for me at least is the timeline.
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I think if you take care of the first two principles there, the
18:42
timeline takes care of itself. And so when you talk about
18:47
return to play, it almost flips that where it's like, OK, we
18:51
just want to get back on the field as fast as possible.
18:53
Well, then timeline becomes your priority and you might skip
18:56
steps or return somebody who's not fully ready.
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You could say it depends for everything in sports
19:01
performance. So take that with a grain of
19:03
salt because it does depend. If we're at LSU and we're in the
19:06
postseason and one of our star players tweaks something, we
19:10
might put him back out onto the field before, you know, you
19:13
typically might see, hi, a player in the middle of June
19:17
who's a prospect for for a major for a, you know, pro
19:20
organization, because we need the production from that guy
19:24
right then and there. And again, it's then it just
19:27
becomes a cost benefit analysis. And so the cost of of him
19:31
getting re injured might be outweighed by the benefit of us
19:35
as a team having him on the field.
19:37
And part of that goes into then conversation with the athlete,
19:40
what they're comfortable with. And things are different
19:43
nowadays in the collegiate setting because everyone's got
19:45
an agent and an advisor that has an opinion too.
19:47
But generally for me, in a quality return to play or return
19:51
to performance setting, we are looking for retention, not
19:55
getting reinjured and returning to at least the baseline level
19:58
of performance that we're at. Those are the two most important
20:00
things. And I think a lot of times
20:01
people get caught up in the timeline because when you get
20:04
the injury diagnosis, you usually get a prognosis too.
20:06
Sprained ankle, four to six weeks.
20:09
Well, the athlete might respond much better and we could get
20:12
them back in a week and 1/2 or two weeks, but.
20:15
Since we arbitrarily said 4:00 to 6:00 at the beginning,
20:17
sometimes people hold them out longer.
20:19
And again, that to me is reversing the principles and
20:23
putting them in a reverse order versus like, OK, how's the
20:26
athlete return to function? Great.
20:29
Now what other boxes do we need them to check?
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They check this box, Great, move to the next one.
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And whenever they check the box, they check the box.
20:36
There are again, then I say that.
20:38
And there are times where you do have to have some respect to
20:41
general tissue healing timelines, specifically with
20:44
surgical cases. And This is why you should
20:46
always be working hand in hand in lockstep with your medical
20:50
staff. So you're all on the same page,
20:52
and it's important to lay out processes as a staff of saying,
20:56
hey, when we have this injury or this type of injury, these are
21:00
the boxes that we want checked before we put an athlete back on
21:03
the field. And then it's your
21:04
responsibility as a staff to uphold those and not be
21:07
influenced by outside pressure. You might have a coach that's
21:10
really pushing for somebody to get back on the field, or you
21:13
might have an agent or an advisor who's pushing for them
21:16
to be on the field, or they're actually saying like, hey, he
21:19
shouldn't be returned yet. He's not ready.
21:21
So again, there's a lot of just people that have their opinions
21:23
on the decision, but ultimately as a as a high performance staff
21:27
between strength and conditioning, medical and then
21:29
your coaching staff as well, you all need to be on the same page
21:32
throughout that whole process. You weren't kidding.
21:35
A lot definitely went into that question and probably more went
21:38
into the answer, especially because I'm not so sure I
21:41
phrased it in the most succinct way possible.
21:44
Of course, after I ask it, I'm going back and thinking how I
21:47
could have asked it better, but I I thought you did a wonderful
21:49
job answering it. Let's take the same concept and
21:53
let's get a little injury specific.
21:56
Knowing the nature of this podcast being very medial elbow
22:00
oriented, I'd love if you could now go down the road of
22:04
explaining what goes into a well run UCL rehab as far as you are
22:10
concerned versus maybe one that misses steps along the way or a
22:14
mediocre program. I got to be careful with my
22:17
answer here because I'm going to rub people the wrong way.
22:21
That's what we're all about here, though.
22:22
At least I hope we're on the same page with this.
22:25
If you want a mediocre program, go to your surgeon and ask for
22:30
their return to throw program. That's what's going to get me in
22:33
trouble. That's fair.
22:34
We're we're on the same plane as you with that.
22:37
I know that's very blanket, but that's how I feel is like these
22:41
programs are archaic. They were written 15 to 20 years
22:45
ago. They are distance based, which
22:47
if you want to go down that rabbit hole, I will fire away.
22:50
I think distance based throwing programs are just unbelievably
22:55
dumb. They're all the same, they're
22:56
cookie cutter. They have pre built deload weeks
22:59
which physiologically makes no sense just to randomly throw
23:02
deload weeks in. There's a lot of issues with
23:04
standard return to throw programs.
23:07
I will say the the world of throwing, rehab and high
23:11
performance is starting to get much better at it and there are
23:14
a lot of people that are starting to see the problems and
23:17
work on solutions. That's a that's a plus outside
23:19
of just the throwing program in general.
23:22
I think if you want a mediocre return to play program, you're
23:25
going to go somewhere where the medical staff, the person that
23:28
is prescribing or coaching or watching you throw, and the
23:31
strength and conditioning coach for some combination of that.
23:34
If they are siloed and not working well together, you're
23:37
going to get bad results. You're going to get guys that
23:39
are doing the same thing in PT that they are in their lists.
23:42
You're going to get guys that are doing things in their lists
23:44
that are their PT says it's contraindicated and those people
23:47
are going to butt heads. So there's a lot of ways you can
23:49
run a poor UCLA return to throw program.
23:52
I think the ones that are well run are objective based.
23:55
When it comes to prescribing the return to throw.
23:58
You have to have some objective measure and distance is not
24:00
good. I repeat, distance is good.
24:03
So you there's different ways to measure this.
24:05
I think the easiest one that's broadly available is velocity,
24:09
but you can get into things like arm speed.
24:11
Now splitting hairs, I don't really like torque on any of the
24:14
wearables that are currently out there.
24:16
I think the driveline pulse does a decent job with arm speed.
24:19
I think you've got to be able to objectify readiness in some
24:24
capacity, whether that's using the Flex Pro Grip, which we just
24:27
got some. So we're excited to dive into
24:29
those RIP strength, shoulder strength testing, range of
24:33
motion testing. So stuff like that has to happen
24:36
regularly to assess progress and readiness.
24:38
You have to, again, objectively write the throwing program, but
24:42
there has to be a place for subjective feedback from the
24:44
athlete and you have to be sensitive to that as the
24:48
prescriber or the coach because if you're not listening to the
24:51
athlete what they're telling you about their body, you're being
24:54
an asshole. Now you've got to know the
24:55
athlete and understand like, OK, who, who is giving me like
24:58
really quality information that I know I can make decisions off
25:01
of and who do I have to take with the grain of salt?
25:03
Maybe they have a really, really low pain threshold and what
25:07
they're describing as pain might just be general soreness.
25:09
So there's some education that needs to happen in there too,
25:12
from coach to athlete or PT to athlete.
25:15
But I think those are some qualities that make a generally
25:17
good return to throw program and we can dive into the rabbit hole
25:21
on any of those. The first rabbit hole I'm going
25:23
to go down is exercise selection, and I think this
25:28
might even go a different Rd. than you were expecting, which
25:32
kind of has me excited on my side.
25:35
So outside of the actual throwing program and specific
25:40
flexor training, what exercise or exercises do you think are
25:47
100% necessary in a program or often get overlooked in a return
25:54
program? So necessary, I think you've got
25:56
to cover your bases in terms of what's happening with the
26:00
forearm flexor. So I think we need to train some
26:03
form of wrist flexion. We need to train wrist
26:07
extension. We're not getting the flexures
26:09
there, but we need to train basically all planes of the
26:11
wrist flexion, extension owner and radial deviation.
26:14
And I think we need to spend a lot of time with the flexion.
26:17
I think we need to train with our fingers at length.
26:20
So the rock climbing community is a really cool place to look
26:23
for this and Doctor Keith Barr and some of his research.
26:26
But those, those guys have some of the strongest hands on the
26:30
planet. And so I like anything that's
26:32
going to train grip strength at length, whether that's a
26:35
yielding or an overcoming isometric.
26:37
So you can use things like the Flex Pro grip to get more of it
26:41
and overcoming isometric trying to push against that immovable
26:44
object. I think something that's it's
26:46
kind of yielding in nature, but it's like like holding the caps
26:49
of dumbbells. I think it's great.
26:51
I think just doing general grip work, whether it's with a grip
26:54
machine or just a handheld, and then you can kind of progress
26:58
those. All that should be included when
27:00
it comes to to training the forearm flexors.
27:04
We get to less isolated exercises and maybe we start to
27:07
do a bicep curl and bicep curl variations that are going to
27:12
train different parts of the forearm.
27:14
Again, still isolated movement, but we're kind of working up and
27:17
now we've got a bigger joint moving and I think that's also a
27:20
huge part of this. Yeah, and I'm going to ask this
27:24
piece again. I'm very happy that you hit on
27:27
forearm flexion in particular in hopes that we can get kind of
27:31
creative or talk about something new here.
27:34
What outside of the ARM potentially do you think
27:38
programs are potentially missing?
27:40
Outside of the arm, I think generally a high level aerobic
27:44
base is missing in the sport of baseball, not just in the return
27:48
to play setting, but generally in the sport.
27:50
And it's funny, I think the pendulum has swung on this over
27:53
the decades. So you go back 80s, nineties,
27:57
and it was through your conditioning was running polls
27:59
and it was at times like a lot like 20-30 polls.
28:04
Then it swung towards, well, we need to be super, super specific
28:07
to the demand of the sport. And you throw one pitch and then
28:10
you rest for 20 seconds and then you do it again and you sit down
28:13
for five to 10 minutes and you do that seven times.
28:15
We got to a point where people were doing interval training or
28:19
a lactic training, repeat Sprint training.
28:22
And we got to this point where is like, OK, well, we're missing
28:26
a foundational piece of aerobic development.
28:28
And that is just general capacity.
28:31
It's the boring work. There's, there's nothing you can
28:33
really replace it with because everybody wants to look for the
28:37
shortcut that's going to reduce the time.
28:38
How do I train my VO2 Max or whatever in the least amount of
28:41
time possible? Oh, HIT training.
28:43
OK, cool. Well, all the research on HIIT
28:45
training is like very limited to short windows of time.
28:48
And if you expand that over a wider horizon, high volume, low
28:52
intensity aerobic work actually is going to give you a bigger
28:55
change in BO2 Max over a long period of time, talking 12
28:59
months plus. So I think that's missing in
29:02
baseball. I I think you need to have some
29:05
of the high intensity work. I think pitching itself like
29:08
gives you some of that stimulus, but you can supplement it with
29:11
repeat sprints or tempo runs, the slow, long steady distance
29:16
or the the slow zone 2 zone one steady state stuff where you're
29:20
going 3045 sixty plus minutes multiple times a week, 11 to
29:27
multiple times a week. I would say, depending on time
29:29
of year. Get gets missed a lot.
29:31
And what a lot of people don't appreciate is when you talk
29:35
about energy systems now, and you know, we use the the ATPPCR
29:41
system when we pitch and that's what we use for explosive bouts.
29:44
And it's one, one second of work and then 20 seconds of rest.
29:48
Yeah. But having a well-rounded
29:50
aerobic system also is going to help replenish that quicker.
29:52
And so I think that gets missed a lot of times.
29:55
So I would say that's probably one of the things that I see
29:58
missing the most in the sport of baseball.
30:00
And the reason is, is time. It's time intensive and it's
30:03
boring. It takes a level of discipline
30:05
that's different than getting under a heavy bar or lifting a
30:09
heavy deadlift. It takes a different kind of
30:11
discipline to go for a jog for an hour or to ride a bike for an
30:15
hour because you're just sitting there staring at something and
30:18
and it can be really easy to not want to do that.
30:21
So it takes it. It takes a type of discipline to
30:23
get that work in. It's easy and it's boring, which
30:26
is interesting. Specifically for your pictures,
30:29
how often are you programming that sort of work and does it
30:34
vary? I'm assuming it varies during
30:37
the time of year, but does it vary dependent on the pitchers
30:41
role? As in if they're a starter or a
30:43
back end guy. Yes, to both of those.
30:46
In the offseason, everybody's relatively the same.
30:48
We're gonna work up to 45 to 60 minutes of Zone 2 cardio
30:53
probably twice a week. And then we're going to
30:55
supplement that with tempo runs one or two times a week beyond
30:58
that. And then we're going to Sprint
31:00
twice a week. But I don't, I don't want my
31:01
Sprint sessions to turn into conditioning.
31:03
But like that's the general scope of sprints and
31:06
conditioning that we're doing with these guys.
31:08
As we transition closer to the season, we, we really dial that
31:12
back into the great thing about aerobic capacity is it's like,
31:15
it's like Max strength. It's very hard to gain, but it's
31:19
also very hard to lose as long as you're maintaining a little
31:23
bit like you're going to keep those those residuals that
31:25
you've gained. So when we transition over to in
31:27
season, we're going to run tempos once a week.
31:30
We are going to do our Zone 2 stuff once a week and that's
31:34
going to generally be 30 to 45 minutes one session a week.
31:38
So again, a lot lower of the demand there, but a lot of these
31:41
guys are getting a higher aerobic demand just by playing
31:44
the sport and pitching more often or pitching longer
31:47
durations. For the starters.
31:49
Now that I come to come around, like I don't even think it's
31:53
that much different. The the relievers might do their
31:56
conditioning throughout the week in a different order depending
31:59
on when they throw in games. But they're still going to get
32:01
at least the one steady state and the one set of tempos.
32:04
And maybe we'll add one if they if we just need an extra
32:08
recovery day or for some reason the schedule shows it.
32:12
The starters will kind of be on a very set schedule when they're
32:15
going to do their stuff. That's the biggest difference.
32:18
I don't know how much of a quote UN quote conditioning talk we've
32:22
ever had on this podcast. So as it started to come up, AI
32:26
knew I needed to ask a few questions.
32:28
Now I want to go back to specifically the forearm flexors
32:33
as you had mentioned earlier. And now let's get into
32:36
specifics. Obviously, you guys are bringing
32:38
on Flexpro grip. You mentioned it a couple times,
32:41
but prior to that or even what you're planning to do as well,
32:46
how do you build mass of the forearm flexors and tendon
32:50
resiliency in the offseason and then how do you look to maintain
32:55
that in season? Yeah.
32:58
So a lot of the work also happens with our athletic
33:02
trainers. So they have arm care programs
33:05
for our pitchers that are three separate days that are done on
33:08
different days of the week around their throwing programs.
33:11
That encapsulates a lot of the forearm work that they're going
33:13
to end up doing in the offseason when throwing load and throwing
33:18
intensity or volume and intensity are both typically
33:21
lower. I will give them additional
33:24
forearm work in the gym. So we might do wrist curls, we
33:28
might do grip stuff with plate walks, we might do PVC rolls or
33:33
barbell rolls. And, and we're going to add a
33:35
few sets of that towards the end of a workout, probably twice a
33:39
week, some guys maybe even a little bit more if that's like
33:41
an area that we have concern for.
33:44
And then they're, they're pretty much year round as long as
33:47
they're here and doing some sort of throwing, they're doing arm
33:49
care work with the athletic trainers.
33:52
And then as we get into the season and depending on the guy,
33:55
I will back off on that a little bit because they're just,
33:58
they're getting so much throwing volume from playing in games and
34:01
throwing bullpens. And a lot of the rest of the
34:04
volume that the that is needed is coming through their arm care
34:07
program with the athletic trainers.
34:09
Do think you can get to a point where you're just creating more
34:12
fatigue and not not letting the body adapt or recover throughout
34:15
the season. And I don't want to be pushing a
34:18
guy to a point where his forearm flexors or his forearm muscles
34:22
are fatigued because of the work that he's doing with the
34:26
strength and conditioning program in season.
34:28
How have you seen arm care change over the years?
34:32
I guess what's considered arm care?
34:35
And then even the specifics of the programs that either you
34:40
write or that. You are a part of.
34:42
So I think again, it's gotten more advanced in terms of
34:45
exercise selection. I think it's gotten more
34:48
advanced in terms of understanding the anatomy and
34:52
the bio mechanics of the shoulder, the arm in general.
34:56
We're not just talking about the shoulder girdle or the elbow,
34:58
but we're talking about the scapula moving on the rib cage
35:01
and we're talking about the rib cages ability to contract and
35:04
expand. So I think as practitioners have
35:07
gotten a better sense of that, we can get a little bit more
35:10
targeted in terms of what specific individuals need versus
35:14
long time ago is like let's do our IYTS or our empty cans and
35:17
call it a day. And we would probably do that
35:20
right after we throw. And then band work kind of came
35:23
into the fold. And now I think the methods are
35:25
a little bit more advanced. I think there's more of an
35:27
appreciation for not just doing like lightweight high Rep stuff
35:31
with developing shoulder. This is called arm musculature,
35:35
shoulder and arm musculature. I think there's an appreciation
35:38
for using higher loads and getting a bigger stimulus from
35:42
that. And then I think again, using
35:44
objective testing has been able to now create more targeted
35:48
programs. So if the guy is weak in a
35:50
specific area, that can become more of a a focus instead of
35:54
just blanket everybody's doing this program when they're done
35:56
throwing. So if we've got a guy who as low
35:59
shoulder external rotation scores, like we're going to work
36:01
to build those up. If we measure your shoulder
36:05
external rotation and you've fallen below baseline, well, now
36:09
we need to make a, an acute change to your program, whether
36:13
that's us adding exercises to try and add strength or if we
36:19
think this is an acute fatigue issue and we need to remove
36:22
exercises to just allow you time to recover and allow the tissue
36:25
to come back to baseline. So I, I think there's just with
36:28
the introduction of technology, the, the understanding of
36:32
anatomy and bio mechanics getting better across the field
36:36
and then an advancing methods, I think all of those have kind of
36:40
led to generally better arm care programs.
36:43
Based on some of your answers earlier in the podcast, IE the
36:49
throwing programs, specifically the return to throw programs,
36:52
and now discussing arm care, it sounds like objectivity and
36:56
technology has really played a major role both in advancements
37:02
and then now just your ability to manage the day-to-day of all
37:07
of your athletes. So when it comes to tech, what
37:11
is it that is going to make you want to adopt something new?
37:15
That's the money question when it comes to any sort of tech is
37:18
like why? And generally the why has to be.
37:22
It's going to help us make better decisions on behalf of
37:26
the athletes in our organization.
37:27
And if it's not going to do that, then we don't need it.
37:30
So first you're bringing on new tech.
37:31
It's got to be valid and reliable.
37:33
Once you've got that box checked, what decision is it
37:36
helping us make better? So yeah, I, I have used tech a
37:40
lot, whether it's force plate technology, measuring grip
37:44
strength. Now we'll get to be a little bit
37:46
more specific with our forearms, measuring with the, with the
37:48
Flex Pro grip, whether it's using driveline pulse and
37:51
calculating workloads from it or something even more rudimentary
37:55
where we're counting number of throws and maybe we're assigning
37:59
A subjective high, medium or low intent calculate a workload off
38:03
of that. But it's got to help you make
38:05
better decisions. And so then if I'm collecting
38:08
and measuring workload, like what am I doing with it?
38:10
Cuz we're in a day and age now where resources are so readily
38:13
available that everyone's, not everyone's got them, but a lot
38:16
more people have access to them than just professional
38:18
organizations. And all the professional
38:21
organizations have them. But not everybody gets the same
38:24
results with the same technology.
38:26
And it's OK. How are we using it to drive
38:28
decision making that's going to benefit us.
38:30
So if I'm measuring workload, well, now I need to be making
38:35
programming decisions or recommendations to the coaching
38:38
staff or the player about day-to-day workload things.
38:42
An example might be if we're measuring some sort of workload
38:46
with throwing, you could call it stress, you can call it arm
38:49
speed, you could call it arbitrary units depending on
38:51
what you're measuring. And maybe days are split into
38:53
high, medium, low volume, high, medium, low intent and we can
38:58
calculate an AC ratio and, and say, OK, here's the window we
39:01
want to stay in. We're running a little bit high
39:03
today should be a low intent, low volume day.
39:07
Or maybe we've got some room to play with, with a, with our AC
39:11
ratio, we want to have a higher throwing load day.
39:15
OK, well, how do we accomplish that?
39:16
Do we want to go high intensity, low to moderate volume or high
39:21
intensity, high volume? Or do we want to go moderate
39:24
intensity, high volume? So there's a lot of different
39:27
ways you can kind of come to those conclusions.
39:29
But at the end of the day, you've got to be using that tech
39:31
to help drive the decision making stuff that's not throwing
39:35
specific like the force plates, for example, if I'm having guys
39:39
jump on them, I need to, I need to be making programming
39:42
decisions off of it. Or even if it were relating it
39:45
to throwing and maybe we're jumping a guy somewhat
39:48
regularly, maybe it's daily during a return to throw process
39:52
to to add as part of a readiness test.
39:56
And we compare that with some subjective information.
39:58
He comes in and jumps like crap and you ask him how he's feeling
40:03
and he's like, I'm just kind of beat up from the workout and
40:06
maybe I didn't sleep well last night.
40:07
OK, well, that's also a signal to me that maybe we need to go
40:10
change something with the throne today.
40:12
So all of these packs. I think the people who use them
40:16
best blend them together to just bolster their decision making
40:19
process, and those who make the most right decisions over a big
40:23
enough sample size are going to end up having the biggest
40:25
outcomes or the best outcomes and creating the biggest
40:29
competitive advantage. Makes a ton of sense.
40:32
And here's another data tech question for you.
40:36
I I was having a conversation the other day with a kitchen
40:41
coach at A Division Three school.
40:43
They have force plates that they're able to use in the
40:45
weight room, which has been awesome for them.
40:48
But one of the things that we were discussing is not just the
40:53
dangers or flags that go off when someone is performing below
40:58
standard, but also on the other end of the spectrum when someone
41:04
seems to be peaking. Not just maintaining their
41:07
trend, but setting off alarms like, Oh my gosh, this guy is
41:11
outperforming anything he has ever done before.
41:14
Is that ever entering your mind as a risk factor when an athlete
41:19
is entering like kind of like a quote UN quote peak area where
41:25
they're outperforming anything that they've done previously on
41:28
record? It can be, yes.
41:30
Like when we think about throwing specifically outside of
41:32
previous injury, what's the biggest predictor of injury
41:35
risk? Well, it's an individual
41:37
increasing his his velocity. We have a guy who was topping at
41:41
95 and who comes out and one day or for a week or two weeks, he's
41:47
now 96 to 98. That is a new stressor that his
41:53
body has not managed before. And so if we treat it as if he
41:57
is just doing everything as normal, we could be playing with
42:01
fire. So maybe we need to introduce
42:03
extra recovery modalities. Maybe we need to be very mindful
42:08
of volume in that time frame until that person has built up
42:12
what we would assume to be an acceptable chronic workload
42:15
under the new intensity. So absolutely.
42:17
Same thing with Sprint speed. If I have an athlete who hits a
42:20
new top speed wearing the catapult in game or we're
42:23
running a time 30 yard dash and he hits a new top speed, yeah,
42:27
like I'm cognizant of the fact that that's a massive central
42:30
nervous system stressor. His tissue has never handled him
42:34
running that fast. So yes, for the coming days,
42:37
like I got to be mindful specifically with running of
42:40
what that athletes doing so we can hopefully avoid having any
42:43
sort of soft tissue injury risk. I don't think that concept is
42:48
discussed as often. We we have gotten pretty good at
42:51
an industry of recognizing the red flags in the basement when
42:55
when guys are bottoming out. We can recognize like that's not
42:58
good. We should probably do something
43:00
about it, but it is way harder to try to bring a guy back down
43:05
to earth when he's outperforming what we think of as status quo
43:11
because obviously we want the highest performance output
43:15
possible. But there there's risk
43:18
associated with that. And we we can talk about that
43:21
from kind of the acute to chronic workload ratio concept.
43:25
At that point, you're effectively outside of the
43:28
ratio. You're you're creating forces
43:32
outside of what your body has previously handled, and that is
43:36
a shock to the system. Yeah, and that can be central to
43:40
the nervous system. Your nervous system might get
43:42
fried from it, but your peripheral tissue just might be
43:45
more beat up and damaged. And so again, we use the
43:48
velocity concept. If I throw harder, it's
43:52
reasonable to assume that my forearm flexors are probably
43:55
working harder. And a lot of times when a guy
43:57
goes and hits AV, low PR, they tend to be a little bit more
44:00
sore the next day. And that's OK.
44:03
That doesn't mean they're hurt, but that means we have to be
44:05
very cognizant of the fact that they just did something that
44:09
they've never done before. And that's what we want as a
44:12
coach. Like you think about general
44:13
adaptation syndrome and we, we have valleys and then we, we
44:17
want that to translate into a peak over time after exposing
44:20
ourselves to a stressor. We just then have to be
44:24
cognizant that, that, that, that might require a little bit of
44:28
extra attention. And I think the reason is, like
44:31
you said, when something gets flagged as bad, like it's
44:34
already negative. So we're we're OK with
44:36
addressing it. When something is positive, we
44:39
want to celebrate it and we want more of it, more, more, more.
44:42
Well, yeah, yeah, over time. But like, let's rein it in.
44:46
And, and so again, like the guy who goes and hits a Velo PR and
44:50
maybe he's a reliever that can, we'll just make up a guy, maybe
44:52
he's a reliever and he's typically used for somewhere
44:54
between 20 and 30 pitches in an outing.
44:58
Well, maybe if he's going to get used again that weekend or in
45:02
the next coming days, we limit it to say, say, hey, like you're
45:05
going to go like 3 batters or probably 15 pitches at most.
45:08
Like that's a reasonable way to manage that PR.
45:12
You don't want to punish somebody or restrict somebody
45:15
for that, but you should be aware and maybe make some slight
45:19
modifications or maybe it's something where we give you an
45:21
extra day of rest and it's not a volume thing.
45:23
It's not like, oh, you threw 50 pitches compared to 30 because
45:26
everybody then knows like, yeah, we should give you a little
45:28
extra rest if you're not used to it.
45:30
And then they get through 97 as opposed to 95 and everyone wants
45:33
to celebrate it and do it again. Was like, no, it's, it's the
45:36
same concept. It's just a different variable.
45:38
It's it's intensity, not volume. Now, I want to shift this a
45:41
little bit to the volume discussion earlier in the year.
45:45
It got celebrated and picked on when Kate Anderson threw 120
45:52
something, 130 pitches, whatever it was in that unbelievable
45:56
outing he had back in what was it April against Oklahoma or
46:00
something? And it was against Oklahoma,
46:03
right? Oklahoma.
46:04
Probably week 4 of SEC plays. So yeah, early April, late late
46:08
March, somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah, obviously that that
46:11
was the talk of the town in baseball, social media, that a
46:15
college pitcher threw that many pitches.
46:17
I'd love to know what adjustments you guys made to his
46:21
program after that to get him ready for his next start, if
46:26
any. And then also what work went in
46:29
ahead of time to know that he's good for this.
46:33
Because I know you guys are not making a decision, just like
46:36
looking at a lineup card or like, oh, he's got the hot hand,
46:39
we got to ride him. You guys are using data-driven
46:42
decision making to understand that he's good to go out for the
46:46
125 or whatever it was. Yeah, so it was 135 pitch,
46:51
complete game shot out with 14 strikeouts.
46:53
And he'd probably tell you he should have had 16 or 17
46:56
strikeouts. Come on, dude.
46:57
So a lot went into that. First and foremost, credit to
47:00
Cade, like he is one of the most professional guys we had on the
47:04
team last year. He came in and he worked his
47:07
butt off from day one, even before I was here as a freshman.
47:10
That's how he was. And he comes in, he does
47:13
everything that's asked of him to AT maybe a little bit more,
47:16
but definitely no less. And he's not the guy that's
47:18
going and doing so much extra that you're like, what is he
47:20
doing? So credit decayed first and
47:22
foremost, I think he built a really good aerobic capacity
47:25
throughout the course of the year.
47:26
He got stronger. He, he was in a better spot
47:29
physically in season than he was when he arrived on campus in
47:32
August at the beginning of the year.
47:34
So there's that piece of it. Like physically he had put in
47:36
the work to handle some pretty, pretty high workloads.
47:40
Then our coaching staff does a really good job of, and I think
47:44
this happens a lot across high level baseball is early in the
47:48
season they slowly ramped up his pitch counts.
47:52
His first week of the year he probably threw 70 pitches.
47:55
His second start it was probably 80, maybe 85 pitches.
48:01
I don't think he threw 100 pitches until maybe his fourth
48:04
start, 5th start in this Oklahoma game was probably his
48:08
7th or 8th start. And so then he had a few outings
48:11
of 100 pitches or maybe up to like 110 was kind of like 100 to
48:16
110 was usually what he would end at.
48:18
So he did have a relatively good chronic workload built up in
48:24
terms of like there this like yes, it was a spike, but it
48:27
wasn't a massive spike. Other pieces that went into this
48:30
decision making process were Kate struggled in the first
48:34
inning of that game. I think he got out of a a jam in
48:37
the first of two guys on her bases loaded and then maybe
48:40
another one in the third. And then after that he retired
48:43
something like 12 or 14 guys in a row or something.
48:47
So there's a lot of really low stress innings.
48:49
He was pitching out of the wind up.
48:51
He wasn't laboring inning to inning all that much.
48:54
And so that played a part at like as as the game went on, he
48:58
appeared to be getting stronger and he had several very short
49:01
innings. The coaches were they're
49:04
checking in with him every inning, but specifically as that
49:07
gets later and later and they're checking in with him on how he's
49:11
feeling. And Kate does a good job of
49:13
being pretty open with that. And then on the back end of
49:16
this, he also had an extra day of rest.
49:18
So typically in college you're going to pitch Friday and
49:20
Friday, but this game was on a Thursday.
49:22
So we had an extra day of rest the following week and we were
49:24
aware of that. So that that played into the
49:27
decision making factor of letting him go to 135 and then
49:32
coming out of that because we had an extra day the day
49:36
following that, that outing. Typically we'll have a guy lift
49:39
and do some conditioning, some steady state for a starter.
49:42
The day after they pitched, we did do some steady state work,
49:45
but his lift, we came in and we did 20 minutes of mobility.
49:49
We just got the body moving around, feeling, feeling good.
49:53
So we moved the the hips, we moved the spine, we moved the
49:56
shoulders, We got some good breathing work in.
49:58
And then he did 30 or 40 minutes of just an inclined walk on the
50:02
treadmill. We cut it.
50:03
So very low stress day, more of like a feel good recovery day
50:07
than he typically would have the day after his outing.
50:10
And then from there, we just opted into his weekly, normal
50:12
weekly routine. I I love that you guys were able
50:16
to take the situation at hand. Consider all the factors can
50:20
make a decision accordingly. I mean that that's how these
50:23
things should be done. I think it's grossly unfair to
50:27
look at some of these organizations or programs and
50:30
think that coaches or Staffs are just making decisions for a win
50:35
and loss column. Of course, win and loss column
50:37
matters a ton, but you're working with the livelihoods of
50:41
young athletes and given everything that you explained
50:45
there, that obviously opened our eyes to what goes into that
50:50
process. So I I appreciate you doing that
50:52
for sure. There.
50:53
There are a couple more things I want to get to before I let you
50:57
go. And I know with only about 15
51:00
minutes left, we, we should probably hit these pretty hard.
51:03
So next thing in the mix, when you look across baseball, is
51:10
there anyone that you're gaining insights from or that you think
51:14
is leading the way thought wise or is inspiring you to think
51:19
about the game or your practices in a new manner?
51:22
There's probably too many to list, man.
51:25
Like I think social media is a dangerous place these days for
51:30
the ability for athletes and people to receive bad
51:33
information. But on the flip side of that, it
51:36
is such a wonderful place for really bright minded people to
51:40
share information. I've been fortunate enough to to
51:43
be connected with a lot of people who are doing really cool
51:45
things in the game of baseball, whether it's some physicians
51:48
when I was with the Astros and our team positions and kind of
51:51
working with them to to rewrite our our throwing programs.
51:55
Physical therapists who I think some of the brightest and best
51:59
physical therapists are the ones who I don't see everything
52:02
through a medical lens. Like they see it through a high
52:04
performance lens, they see it through a skill acquisition
52:08
lens. I think Daniel Newcomer, A
52:10
driveline, does a really good job with that.
52:12
I think Nolan Repay, I don't know how to say.
52:15
Yeah, Nolan repay. I think he does a really good
52:17
job of that. And then on the high performance
52:21
side, like there's a ton of people.
52:23
I know you guys are close with Casey Mulholland, but he he does
52:26
a lot of really cool things. I think some of the folks at
52:28
Driveline and their high performance guy, Bryce Kreider
52:31
puts out some really good stuff. A former Driveline guy, Chris
52:35
Langan puts out some really high level stuff on pitch quality and
52:39
pitch design and things like that.
52:41
There's too many to list and I'm going to leave people off.
52:43
And that sounded just like a Driveline promotion, but it
52:45
really wasn't. I talked to Chris last night and
52:48
said that was one that came fresh to mind.
52:49
I think the guys over at Cressy have done a really good job in
52:53
this industry for a long time of doing really like doing the
52:57
basics at a very high level and very consistently and then like
53:02
slowly branching off and getting better at some of the
53:05
intricacies. But like those guys do the
53:08
staples better than anybody and that's why they get results.
53:10
Just too many people to continue to list, but that's like
53:13
generally it. Something I find interesting
53:16
about that answer, until you mentioned the Cressy guys at the
53:20
end, Bryce Kreider was really the only like super high
53:25
performance esque guy. You mentioned a lot, A lot of
53:28
stuff on the throwing side, a lot of stuff on the rehab side,
53:33
which now has me curious, how much baseball specific content
53:38
are you consuming to get better every day as opposed to strength
53:43
and conditioning content? Like what?
53:45
What is that spectrum for you? Yeah, it's in terms of content
53:49
that I'm consuming. It's probably a little bit more
53:52
strength and conditioning as opposed to baseball specific.
53:56
Again, I go back to, I think strength and conditioning is
53:59
very general, but if you apply it in the right ways, it can a
54:02
lot of methods can be applied to certain environments.
54:05
And so I follow a ton of people on social media.
54:08
I also think it's very easy to feel like you're behind
54:11
everybody when you're seeing like, man, this, these guys do
54:14
this unbelievably well. This person does this
54:16
unbelievably well. It's probably a 2/3 strength and
54:20
conditioning, 1/3 baseball. And then it's like podcasts or
54:23
books that I'll that I'll read and listen to those.
54:26
I would say it's a wide range. It might be business related, it
54:31
might be strength and conditioning related.
54:33
It might be just listening to people talk about Major League
54:37
Baseball currently or college baseball.
54:39
So it's kind of all over the place.
54:41
From this content consumption, is there any research, whether
54:49
clinical or just basic case study work that you are hoping
54:55
is coming down the line? Like is there something that you
54:58
want to dig into or that you think baseball or high
55:02
performance needs to spend time on that hasn't gotten much
55:07
attention yet to date? I think one that I would love to
55:10
see and again, this is really in return to throw.
55:14
There's a little bit out there in terms of like we need to
55:16
create proxies that are easily understandable for people for
55:20
the masses to complete a return to throw program.
55:23
We need proxies for intensity. Granted, you can buy yourself a
55:27
pocket radar and you spend a few 100 bucks there and you've got a
55:30
great resources that shows you how how hard you're throwing the
55:33
ball. But like what does that mean for
55:37
certain individuals? How do we how do we quantify
55:40
what does 80% of Max velocity mean for one versus another?
55:44
I like the concept of using velocity like heart rate reserve
55:47
where you can't throw a baseball 0 miles an hour the same way
55:50
your heart can't beat 0 beats per minute.
55:52
So heart rate reserve takes your Max heart rate minus your
55:56
resting heart rate, and then that assigns a percentage.
55:58
Again, like diving into like, how does that apply to throwing?
56:02
You know, what's a what's an acceptable minimum velocity?
56:05
How does that, you know, change from guy to guy?
56:08
And then how does that change your prescription?
56:09
Because you know, if we have 295 mile an hour arms, one guy, you
56:14
know, and again, I say minimum velocity, it's like a throw that
56:17
actually resembles us throwing a baseball and not just like
56:20
lobbing something somewhere or, you know, throwing a dart or
56:23
something like that. I don't know, just creating
56:25
proxies that that can be generally used for the masses
56:28
because I think in elite sport and professional sport and high
56:32
level college or high level facilities, we're getting better
56:35
and better and better at prescribing these kinds of
56:38
things. But a lot of kids, high school
56:39
kids don't have access to that kind of resource.
56:42
And how do I, how do they then go and complete a high quality
56:45
program without just making 20 throws at 60 feet and then 20
56:48
throws at 75 feet and then 20 throws at 90 feet and so on so
56:53
forth? Yeah, without forcing you to
56:56
talk about distance again, because I I know that's like
57:00
handing Superman kryptonite. We're we're going to make you
57:03
crumble into something. It's so mad.
57:06
Yeah, I do think it's really interesting that concept of the
57:11
heart rate and reserve, kind of like velocity and reserve.
57:15
There's pro guys that I talked to that throw an average
57:18
fastball of 95 mph or something insane, and then you talk to
57:24
that same guy about playing catch and those guys
57:28
legitimately can't throw a ball slower than 8485 miles an hour
57:34
just because they're so twitchy and the way they move.
57:37
If they are going to throw a ball in the 60s or 70s, it is an
57:42
entirely different movement solution to get that done.
57:47
And how do you consider that in a return to throw?
57:50
Obviously 8485 is still a very high velocity throw in the grand
57:56
scheme of things in the baseball world.
57:58
But then if we're looking at individual stresses, is that the
58:02
same as one of us trying to throw 85 or some guy?
58:06
Like, I mean, yeah, there's other guys who throw 95, but the
58:10
first throw they make every day is 54 miles an hour or something
58:15
like that. Some guys have to add that
58:17
steady build up. Then you have your twitchy
58:20
superhuman individuals that pick up a ball.
58:23
They pick up anything and every single thing they do is done at
58:28
90% of their Max capacity just when they're going through the
58:32
motions. Yeah, I do think that would be
58:35
an unbelievable road to go down when it comes to research.
58:38
And I don't know how we begin to structure that.
58:41
I don't know if you have ideas, but I'm all nothing.
58:45
Concrete. Yeah, nothing concrete at the
58:47
moment. I guess if anybody has ideas,
58:50
please write in in some capacity.
58:52
And Chris, I'll probably continue to poke your brain
58:56
after the call about some of this, because now you've got my
59:00
wheels spinning. I do have one last question for
59:04
you before I let you go, and it involves you being an ultimate
59:09
winner. You have all these rings.
59:12
At this point, I don't know how you have enough fingers for all
59:16
the rings that you've achieved over the years, but I'd love if
59:20
you could just kind of talk about championship culture, what
59:24
you have seen as kind of consistencies from team to team,
59:29
even though they're all different settings that you've
59:32
won these championships in. What goes into a real
59:36
championship Makeup? Yeah, So I think the first thing
59:38
when you define culture, it's not buzzwords, it's not hooting
59:44
and hollering, it's not ELE. Everybody love everybody.
59:48
It should be though. Great movie.
59:49
Yeah, I just had to throw the semi pro reference in there.
59:53
Culture, very simply, the best definition I've ever seen for it
59:56
is it's what you accept and it's what you don't accept.
59:59
And upholding that standard, I think that's very Simply put,
1:00:03
like here's our standards. If you're going to be a part of
1:00:05
this program or this organization, this is what we
1:00:07
stand for and this is what we do.
1:00:09
And that goes for staff, that goes for players, that goes for
1:00:11
everybody involved. And I think the the ones who do
1:00:13
it at the best, the best cultures are the ones who really
1:00:17
uphold those standards. And if you're going to be a part
1:00:19
of this, you have to to get on board.
1:00:21
And if you don't want to get on board, you can't be here.
1:00:24
And that's OK. That doesn't mean you're a bad
1:00:26
person or that we don't like you as a person.
1:00:29
It just means this isn't the best fit for you.
1:00:32
And the people who are OK with saying like, you can't be here
1:00:35
and that's OK. It's not a malicious thing.
1:00:38
Like, those are some of the best leaders you'll ever find.
1:00:41
I think you have to have individuals within that group
1:00:44
that are willing to say that to people or willing to tell them
1:00:47
like, hey, what you just did is not up to our standards to win
1:00:50
championships. You also have to have really
1:00:51
good players. And so everywhere that I've
1:00:54
been, I've been very fortunate to be in a spot where we had
1:00:57
very good players. And that happens through
1:00:58
development, but it also happens through things like recruiting
1:01:01
and signing the right people. So like, let's not let that be
1:01:04
lost on us. But some other things I've
1:01:06
noticed, I do think that the teams that tend to win, like
1:01:10
they like to be around each other.
1:01:12
It's not a chore to go to the ballpark everyday and go to work
1:01:16
as as a staff member or go to work as a player.
1:01:19
You don't dread going to see everybody.
1:01:21
So you want to be there. And I think that when you have
1:01:23
everybody generally pulling in the same direction too.
1:01:26
So there's not people undermining the the mission of
1:01:29
the organization. This team that we had this past
1:01:32
season at LSU, I've never seen a team closer than them.
1:01:37
I've never seen a team more relaxed than them.
1:01:40
When things got hard almost to a fault at times, like you wanted
1:01:43
them to like dig in a little And it was just like, we'd go down 5
1:01:48
to one in the third inning and there'd be like, well, they
1:01:50
still got a pitch to a six times like, yeah, good luck.
1:01:55
So they didn't really, you know, feel pressure.
1:01:57
They were relaxed. They and I think that stems from
1:02:00
they like to be around each other.
1:02:01
They rooted for each other. The guys who didn't play were
1:02:04
genuinely happy when the starters did.
1:02:06
Well, that's special when you've got guys who aren't like, man, I
1:02:10
hope this guy sucks this weekend so I can get a shot next
1:02:13
weekend. I didn't see that.
1:02:15
That's special. That's not common.
1:02:17
So I think those are some general characteristics of a
1:02:20
high cult, high level culture. Beautiful.
1:02:23
Yeah. And I'm sure you have a very
1:02:27
interesting perspective on it with you not necessarily being
1:02:31
the one who writes the lineup card.
1:02:33
You probably get more human interactions with these guys
1:02:38
then maybe anybody else in these programs aside from Isaac, an
1:02:43
athletic trainer, somebody who's support staff, right.
1:02:47
Generally, support staff get the human or the.
1:02:51
Bartenders. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
1:02:54
We guys here the. Problem.
1:02:56
They sit. They sit and they spit
1:02:58
everything to us. Some of the bartenders we get
1:03:00
the behind the scenes info. That's that's stated perfectly.
1:03:04
So maybe the first team that actually labels their support
1:03:08
staff on their website as bartenders.
1:03:11
That is the ultimate recipe for success.
1:03:14
It might be it might be that simple.
1:03:16
It probably should be. Now I want to keep going down
1:03:19
this culture and makeup rabbit hole, but unfortunately we do
1:03:24
have to let you go cuz championships don't sleep.
1:03:27
And I know you guys have a recruiting visit coming up and
1:03:29
you have to be fully engaged for that.
1:03:32
So Chris, with that I, I do want to say thanks a ton for joining
1:03:35
us today. This has been a pleasure and I
1:03:37
look forward to many more conversations.
1:03:40
Awesome. Again, I appreciate it Adam.
1:03:42
Love what you guys are doing helping grow the game and and
1:03:45
hopefully, you know, being a big piece of this arm injury
1:03:49
epidemic that hopefully we can get under wraps here soon.
1:03:52
For sure we believe and we're glad to have you guys on board.
1:03:56
So I I guess we can finish the only way we know how with
1:03:59
someone from LSU on board, which is a go.
1:04:02
Tigers love it. All right, everyone out there,
1:04:06
thanks for laying back with us. Catch y'all next time.