Latest / The Layback Podcast / Tom Brosnahan, SPT and Head of Sports Performance at Alpha Baseball

Transcript

Tom Brosnahan, SPT and Head of Sports Performance at Alpha Baseball · The Layback Podcast

0:00
What's up everyone? Welcome back to The Layback
0:02
Podcast. Joining us today is Tom
0:04
Brosnahan. Tom and I originally got
0:07
connected. Well, I guess first it was on
0:09
social media, but really started conversing back and forth in his
0:14
role at Alpha Baseball down in Cincinnati.
0:17
We've had the fortunate partnership with Alpha now for a
0:20
while with Greg Williams. And it's funny how those things
0:24
work. We, we could have Darrell and
0:26
Greg talking back and forth and then we, it just got to a point
0:30
where I was looking at some of the Alpha data and I was like,
0:32
you know what, I follow Tom on Instagram.
0:34
I'm just going to shoot him a message and see if we can get a
0:37
couple things taken care of here.
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And our amazing 2020, I guess it was back then, it was 2025 world
0:45
of instant messaging and being able to get back and forth and
0:48
hop on a Zoom and discuss. We had all those problems solved
0:51
in a matter of a week just with some quick conversation.
0:55
So yes, that is my, I guess, start of the relationship story
1:00
with Tom is just your typical 20252026 love story where you
1:06
just connect on Instagram, you share a couple DMS, you laugh
1:09
back and forth. Next thing you know, you're
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suggesting workouts to one another.
1:13
And there you have it. Now you're on a podcast talking.
1:16
So Tom, I know that didn't cover a single thing about who you are
1:20
and what you actually do on the day-to-day, but I would rather
1:24
you talk about that because you know your story a heck of a lot
1:26
better than I do. I just figured I'd give the
1:28
masses a little look into how we ultimately got connected.
1:30
So, Tom, thanks for coming on and looking forward to the
1:33
conversation today. Yeah, I appreciate it.
1:36
All right. Like you said, yeah, I'm the
1:38
head strength conditioning guy here at Alpha Baseball.
1:40
I also do a lot on our throwing side.
1:45
I do all of our return to throw work, whether that's Tommy John,
1:51
UCL, sprains. We've had a couple guys with
1:53
some shoulder problems, everything from like your big
1:56
surgery to bicep tendonitis type stuff.
1:59
Passion started way back. You could go like about four
2:02
years old, played baseball all the way through, started my
2:05
career at Ohio University as a catcher, bounced around, played
2:09
a little junior college ball, and then finished my career at
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Western Carolina down the mountains.
2:16
If you've ever been in Western North Carolina, it's heaven on
2:20
earth. And I caught my first four my
2:23
last year. I converted to a pitcher and
2:25
that's kind of where the like throwing and pitching side of
2:28
things came from. And then after graduation, came
2:32
home, had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
2:36
Knew I liked baseball, didn't know if I wanted to coach,
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didn't know if I wanted to do strength and conditioning,
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didn't know if I wanted to pursue further education.
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And we're three years postgraduate and I'll start my
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doctor physical therapy program in August.
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So it's been. So ultimately did decide to
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explore a little bit more education.
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Yes, after my dad is a chiropractor so we talked a lot
3:05
about how we could make it work and how like what I want to do
3:10
career wise and it was like OK, I love the sport.
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Also love like the performance side of things and I had a few
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teammates. Luckily I never had like a huge
3:21
injury as a catcher you're always banged up.
3:24
But I never had like a surgery or anything.
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But I had some teammates who went through like the surgery
3:29
process, labrums, Ucls, and it was like I could just notice.
3:34
Like there could be a spot for me in the rehab setting where
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you can like blend sport performance and rehab into one
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and take perspective from each and really build on that.
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And that's where the pursuit of the doctor physical therapy came
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from. And that really seems to be kind
3:56
of the modern approach to performance training, physical
4:00
therapy, athlete health in general.
4:02
We obviously talked to Dylan Newcomer all the time on here,
4:06
Nolan Repay, the list goes on and on with who we have, why
4:12
they got into what what they do currently.
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And it seems like the most progressive, the most forward
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thinking in the industry right now are the ones that had a
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playing background, a strength background, and then took on the
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real educational pursuit of becoming a doctor of physical
4:32
therapy or going some other out, whether it's pursuing athletic
4:36
training. Now, of course, you haven't
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started your program yet, but where do you think you may have
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an advantage going into the program?
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And possibly where do you think you might be at a disadvantage
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because you didn't go straight into school coming out like you,
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you got into the real world, you worked in SNC.
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And of course, I do want to talk about your role at Alpha, but
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since we're on the education topic, I I would rather just go
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that route straight. Away into it, yeah.
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Advantage, I would say 100% is real world experience, like
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dealing with athletes, dealing with guys who've been injured
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and understanding like that piece of paper you get handed
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after surgery where it's like this is your plan is a great
5:22
guideline with some serious misunderstanding because it's
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like week one, week two, week three-week 4.
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Like here's what we spoke, here's where we're supposed to
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be, here's where you should be, but that that doesn't happen.
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Like that's not 100% clip or it's just like we're there.
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What do I do if he's not there? And I think for me, that's where
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I'll have a little bit of a leg up where it's just like I worked
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with a kid who was 18 months post op Tommy John and he was a
5:54
90 mile an hour arm as a sophomore in high school.
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And we couldn't pull down 78. And it was so it was 1 where
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it's like, hey, man, like we have a lot of work to do now.
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You're playing like motivational speaker, psychologist, like all
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of that and being like we've made it like you have to keep
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pushing. We are out of this.
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We are out of surgery, we're out of rehab.
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Like you're 18 months out. Like it is now time for
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performance. It is time to play.
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We have to get that mental block away from us and just push,
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obviously in a safe manner, but also like there has to be that
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line where it's like I'm approaching almost being out of
6:36
control. But we have to get there.
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We cannot stay below the threshold forever because if we
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want to play at the highest level, if you want to get back
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to where you were, your rehab protocol can only take you so
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much. Like your brain has to also be
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there to where it's like, I'm confident what I can do.
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And if God forsaken, if it happens again, like we'll have
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to deal with it, we'll have to go.
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But like, at least for me personally, I'm a guy who's
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like, I'd rather die on the sword than never make it back.
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Like that to me is like a worst nightmare scenario for guys I
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who I work with. It's like I, you have to be the
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guiding hand to get in there, but they have to do the, the
7:21
rowing, they have to row the boat.
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Like we have to, we have to push eventually.
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Because I don't want to see a kid who is super high talent
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have this traumatic event. And then it's like this is
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horrified mentally. It's destructive to kids.
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It's like you see them post op and they're just like, what do I
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do? What am I?
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Because for a lot of high school athletes, their sport is
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everything and it's like I'm lost.
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That's my identity. Like you don't want to see them
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never get back to that. So that's where I find a lot of
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passion in it, where it's just like I'll be the guy who will
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hype you up. I'll be there for the good days,
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the bad days and everything in between.
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I'll be there smack you on the ass, patch on the back, like
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whatever it takes. But it's like we got to go.
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This is a you and I. It's not.
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We're not. That piece of paper is not gonna
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get us there, Doc. The surgery is not gonna get us
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there. It's us.
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I do feel like a lot of that comes from the athletic world,
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it comes from the S&C world. Not only does it afford you the
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experience with confidence and a positive mindset, or I guess
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being able to handle the ups and downs, the standard athlete
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approach to things that nothing is ever gonna be sunshine and
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rainbows. But where I also think this
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potentially provides an advantage for you is the ability
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to be creative in the sense that no case is the same.
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And the problem is when you go off of guidelines or you go off
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of a sheet of paper, it limits what you can do creatively.
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It limits what you can do from a programming perspective.
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And instead of trying to find potentially outside of the box
9:06
solutions, everything is a nail to a hammer.
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And I feel like that's what happens in a lot of traditional
9:14
rehabs of the, hey, your elbows hurt.
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We got to restore range of motion and we got to do your
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throwers 10. And we're just going to focus on
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those few things. Now, of course, you do have to
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get the elbow strong. You should restore range of
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motion. You have to create a system that
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can handle force. But you know how these things
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allow the athlete to go from the training table or go from the
9:40
rehab space back to the field. And ultimately you need to be
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able to rotate a certain way. You need to be able to function
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on unstable ground or make a cut or whatever it is.
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Trust your stuff. When you have a batter 3, two in
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the bottom of the ninth. Those are all very real things
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that I think come from real world experience.
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So this is me just kind of, I guess reassuring you if that
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wasn't in your mind at this time.
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I'm sure it was given the journey you've been on going
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into school and kind of assessing where you might be,
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what's in front of you. But I definitely think that is a
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key component that you're going to have as a notch in your tool
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belt when you go or notch in your regular belt or tool in
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your tool belt. I combine two different phrases
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there. Yeah.
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But when you when you go into school this August.
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Yeah, it's been. That's actually probably my
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favorite part in the return to throw is getting to kind of
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like, because we see it all the time, guys will just like
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they'll throw out of their stretch for 16 weeks at a super
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sub Max velocity. And the next thing you know,
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they're supposed to be on the mound.
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And now I'm moving like a robot. And that's where I find a lot of
10:55
fun where it's like, hey, we're going to we're going to throw
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weird quotes. We're just going to use a ton of
11:01
different constraints. We're going to use a ton of
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different implements and we're going to just ride with it.
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Like my first two weeks of throwing for guys, I have them
11:09
scheduled out at Louis says be Josh Allen.
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And we got a football and we're moving side to side, trying to
11:15
be athletic and we're just tossing And just to get them
11:18
away from that, like the last time.
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And the big time I threw a baseball was when I blew.
11:24
It time out. You know you're in Cincinnati,
11:26
right? And you're, you're telling guys
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to be Josh Allen. Yes.
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Not you're not telling them to be Joe Burrow.
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No. Wow. 65250 is a lot cooler.
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I like the gunslinger. Hey, hey.
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I needed to make sure that that that was covered.
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I wanted to make sure you understand where you are.
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I'll get you so much. Tickles.
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My parents are from Kansas City so not even a Bengals fan.
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I I'm sure that creates some tremendous debates and fights
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on. The Well, it's terrible last
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night with you guys. Yeah, last night when the Chiefs
12:01
traded up six or three picks to get a cornerback, I got like 5
12:06
texts and they were like, what a stupid thing to do.
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And I was like, OK, sorry guys. I I'm glad that's what your
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athletes are texting you at 9:45 on a school night.
12:17
Yeah. Just I'm just catching flak for
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something the Chiefs general manager decided to do.
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Because you had complete control over that.
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I and also, I do apologize for killing your tangent there.
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I, I just need to hop in and make sure you know,
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geographically where you're located.
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Not that I'm a Bengals fan or anything like that.
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It was just surprising for me to hear Josh Allen come out of your
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mouth instead of Joe Burrell. It's, well, I can also go down
12:45
the bridge like I got a guy in rehab.
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I'm going to be honest, I'd prefer him to be a little more
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like Josh Allen, Joe Burrow. Hey, that's fair.
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Yeah, as durable as durable can be, I mean.
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You can't knock that guy out of the game.
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Yeah. Well, hey, maybe, maybe we'll
13:01
hitch our wagon to that right now given the strength
13:04
background and we we can kind of come back to this about if we're
13:07
looking at a guy like Josh Allen, it is kind of weird to
13:10
say that the modern baseball player is starting to look a lot
13:15
more like that. The days of old, back when your
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average middle infielder was 510, five, 11170 lbs, and now
13:26
you're seeing catchers and shortstops for that matter, both
13:30
be 64210. Plus you're having absolute
13:34
mammoths on the baseball field. Obviously, you can't control
13:37
your height. That's just kind of something
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you're predisposed to now. I think some of the surgery
13:43
outlets in Turkey might feel a little bit differently.
13:46
And if you guys want to sponsor us, yeah, yeah, if you guys want
13:50
to sponsor us and give us deals for femur elongation or tibia
13:55
elongation, sure. We'll, we'll accept that.
13:58
We can definitely be bought out as podcast.
14:01
I am willing to admit that to the masses.
14:03
We'll, we'll accept a sponsor from just about anywhere.
14:06
Not maybe not everywhere, but just about anywhere.
14:09
However, you can 100% control your strength and your
14:13
explosiveness. Well, of course, there are
14:15
limits, but you can control those things and you can at
14:17
least pursue getting better at those things.
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So I know you yourself are a relatively large man, Tom, but I
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would love for you to kind of go down the road of your exposure
14:28
to the weight room, what you've learned and maybe what you're
14:31
seeing in your current high school athletes.
14:34
All right, exposure to the weight room starts a long time
14:38
ago. I think I started working out
14:40
when I was like 11 and it was introduced to me in my garage by
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my dad with a cement filled PVC pipe where I learned to power
14:53
clean and overhead squat. And that's where we that's where
14:57
we started from the chiropractor.
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Yes, of course. Yeah, smart guy.
15:03
He started, he started me off the base was there and I ran
15:07
with it and I have not left the weight room since.
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It's to my detriment. I think I spent more time
15:12
working out than skills practice.
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I just loved it and it was 1 where is like I love the
15:17
suffering. Like there was like no better
15:20
day than when we walked into the 6:00 AM weights when I was at
15:24
Western Carolina up in the mountains.
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It gets chilly still. So we're like 6:00 AM, it's like
15:29
28°. We're going outside for a
15:32
morning warm up and it's just like, I love this.
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I've been up since 4:45. I've already eaten breakfast.
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I've showered like I looked forward to it and it was just,
15:42
we could have like just the worst leg day of all time.
15:44
And it was just like, this is going to be great.
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You just have a big smile on your face the entire time you're
15:49
in there. I also he mine was a college
15:51
football player. So it was one of those were like
15:54
you're going to have a mentality of like you can't kill me, kind
15:58
of just like hammered into me. So I was like, whatever, we'd
16:01
have conditioning and it would be like, this sucks, but it
16:03
doesn't matter. We're just going to keep going.
16:05
So what are you seeing now or maybe what are you programming
16:08
for your guys? Because it sounds, it sounds
16:12
like to an extent you grew up on the you can't kill me.
16:15
So I'm sure it was just the very much the meathead approach.
16:18
Lift as much as you can, as often.
16:20
As you can no, like I said, he is a chiropractor, so there's
16:23
like some smarts to it, but it was also like you need you need
16:29
to be strong. Like the old saying, weak things
16:31
break is a fact, but you also have to have that, that general
16:35
base is I think the most important thing because for a
16:39
time it was baseball specific, sports specific.
16:43
And I, we're seeing that pendulum kind of swing back and
16:48
away from that. Because what I'm seeing with a
16:51
lot of high schoolers is they're just like super over skilled and
16:54
super underdeveloped. I can count on one hand a kid
16:59
who is like 210 lbs and throws like 94, but like 160 lbs those
17:06
90 I. Got a lot of those.
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Beacon Orthopedics down the street sees a lot of them.
17:13
Sadly, a lot of the high school athletes I see, whether that's I
17:17
go to a game to watch one of our guys or in the weight room.
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It's just a lot of underexposed to strength training.
17:27
The idea of like you could drop a baseball player on any sports
17:34
field and they got a shot this way.
17:37
I feel like what it used to be, it was like, I can play
17:39
football, I play basketball, you play, but he's a baseball
17:41
player. I think that's some of that has
17:44
gone by the wayside to a sense and now it's like, well, he's a
17:49
baseball player. He needs to only do baseball
17:52
things. And so my biggest thing in the
17:55
weight room is exposing guys to like good structured general
17:59
strength training until a certain point when it's time to
18:04
like, OK, we can get a little more specific.
18:08
And it's exposing them to sprinting, plyometrics, all
18:12
sorts of different just twists and turns the body.
18:15
Like I don't want you to be a robot.
18:17
I want you to be strong, but I don't want you to not be able to
18:20
move. That's kind of where my head is.
18:23
And that's kind of something that I like took for myself.
18:27
It was like we need to be able to play our play the sport, but
18:33
don't take away from your ability to practice because when
18:37
you were in the weight room, you just strictly copied those
18:39
patterns. They see some guys who like only
18:43
do rotational training and then it's like now we're going to go
18:46
throw 150 times and then the next day I can't bend over to
18:50
tie my shoe because my back is just bright.
18:54
And so for me, it's just hammer the basics until you are so good
18:58
at the basics that they're boring.
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And for a a large sum of high school athletes, that time will
19:04
be once they are in the next level.
19:07
I want to expand on that a little bit.
19:09
And you talk about hammering the basics.
19:10
Can you map us out a little bit of what a program looks like
19:14
now, of course, you don't need to share the secret sauce, but
19:16
for for the standard athlete that's coming in to work with
19:19
you, what does a week look like? Are they in four days a week to
19:24
work out? So it depends on the guy.
19:27
We have guys who come in four days a week, We have guys who
19:30
come in three mostly for lifting sessions.
19:35
If you are a guy who can make it in four days a week, we will go
19:39
a lower upper split twice a week.
19:43
So like a a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or like a
19:48
Thursday, Saturday, depending on when a guy can get in and
19:51
usually that depending on the season more.
19:53
So that's a lower on Monday, upper on Tuesday, lower on
20:01
Thursday, followed by another upper on those lower body days
20:05
like a 20 minute like speed and plyometric session.
20:08
And then as like we get a little closer to like ramping up the
20:13
season, we'll start trying to work like matching like your
20:17
higher throwing day. You can get mixed reviews.
20:21
I think with this think if a guy wants to work out four days a
20:24
week. He usually wants to do an upper
20:27
body lift after he throws. I'm kind of, again, I'm willing
20:33
to converse with athletes. I'm not going to look at
20:36
somebody and go no, I totally disagree with that.
20:40
But like when we're going like matching like high CNS, low CNS,
20:44
like your lower body day is much more draining on the central
20:48
nervous system then your upper body day.
20:51
I would never want a kid to do an upper body lift before
20:54
throwing like a high day. Due to localized fatigue.
20:59
Yeah. Right.
21:01
But I don't hate them doing a upper body lift the day after
21:05
depending on like what we're working on.
21:07
Like if it's like a dynamic effort upper body day, that'd be
21:10
terrible. Like it's just like you'd be so
21:11
fried from throwing that you'd get nothing out of it.
21:14
Right, there's no. There's playing with it,
21:17
especially with high school athletes because the schedule is
21:19
so hit or miss. And some of them be like, well,
21:22
actually I just had like high schools lifting today and it's
21:25
like, OK, we're going to have to just go totally off script.
21:29
And I'm starting to get a little more towards like three days a
21:33
week might be like the sweetest spot because you can just
21:39
manipulate and make it work. Because with a three day a week
21:42
split, you can go lower upper total, you can go 3 totals and
21:47
you can kind of just play with it.
21:48
How guys can make it in when guys can make it in what they're
21:52
throwing schedule, what they're playing schedule looks like.
21:55
And so I've been playing with that with guys.
21:58
A lot of them are a little like they think they don't get enough
22:01
exposure. So it's like relaying the
22:04
message of like, if you, if you push, if you're doing what
22:08
you're supposed to in the weight room, you will, you'll get what
22:10
you need. And that's I could go down a way
22:14
longer rabbit hole of the athlete makes the program, not
22:18
the program makes the athlete because it's like you could have
22:20
the best program in the world and if they don't push it, it's
22:24
worthless. That's something Dande talks
22:27
about a lot. Dande who's been on her podcast,
22:30
I don't know if you've conversed with him at all or anything, but
22:34
I think he's a great yeah, yeah, The Hog.
22:37
I think he's a great follow on social media for anyone out
22:40
there who doesn't know who he is, but I know that is part of
22:44
the reason why with the way he approaches things.
22:48
He treats his training as invite only because he can write any
22:53
program he wants, but at the end of the day he knows that the
22:57
culture and who he brings in is going to matter way more than
23:00
what he writes on a sheet of paper.
23:02
Just as you said, there's literally no other way to say
23:06
it. The harder you go as an athlete,
23:08
no matter, no matter what it is you are doing, the more you're
23:11
going to get out of the program, the situation, etcetera,
23:16
etcetera. I mean, the perfect I saw on, I
23:20
think it was Instagram, I saw a video of Broussard Gradterall's
23:23
workout in the offseason and it was like 4 by 20, just circuit
23:29
of like 10 exercises. Just go, no water, nothing.
23:33
It's like if you were to sit there and go from like a
23:35
performance perspective, you'd be like, that is the dumbest
23:39
thing ever. Well he throws like 104 so you'd
23:43
be arguing with the wall. To a point, yeah.
23:46
Yeah, that's always a tough discussion to get into because
23:50
we could sit here going through the schooling, look at
23:54
everything we learned in achieving A CSCS and getting
23:59
that certification and say like, Oh, well, it's so I'll optimized
24:05
for what he is trying to achieve.
24:08
But then if we quote UN quote optimize his training, does that
24:12
mean Bruce R Gradaral is going to throw 111?
24:14
Like what? What is it that we can like,
24:17
what more could we get from one of those athletes?
24:20
Or, for example, Geraldus Chapman, who's doing bodybuilder
24:24
splits? Like the dude is so frickin big
24:28
and so frickin strong, but then you watch him and he he doesn't
24:31
do anything that you would deem as explosive.
24:35
He's just doing curls until the cows come home.
24:39
He's doing heavier bench press than I could ever even fathom
24:44
in. Of all different.
24:45
Varieties of all different varieties.
24:47
So you look at one workout of Geraldus Chapman on Instagram
24:51
and it's straight bar bench, incline bench, decline bench,
24:55
dumbbell bench, bicep curls. Still failure.
24:58
That's his dumb lateral raise dumbbell shoulder press.
25:00
Oh yeah, and like, that is the workout.
25:03
And like that's just his like that's his chest day and then
25:06
you come back and then he's doing rows all day for his back
25:09
day or whatever. Like he truly is a bodybuilder
25:12
in the dude throws 103 still at however old he is now.
25:17
So that's I guess now where the question comes in.
25:20
How important do you really think optimizing is?
25:24
Or when when are you going to try to push and move the dials
25:29
to quote UN quote optimize? It's a good one.
25:33
I like this. I actually hate the idea of it.
25:38
OK. Like I think from like a
25:40
facility performance perspective, like as like you
25:45
play in college, you understand, like maybe I, I did not play at
25:50
the highest level. I do not know how like the SEC
25:53
runs their days, but it's like when I was at Western, we if we
25:58
had a team lift that day and we were inner squatting that
26:01
evening. I remember going in and being
26:03
like strength coach asked who's throwing tonight, 6 guys raised
26:08
their hand. He's like, that's awesome you're
26:11
lifting. Because it was just like, we
26:14
have a certain amount of training days, we have a certain
26:16
amount of days we can play and we got to go like we only have
26:19
15 weeks and then you go home for winter break, then you come
26:23
back and then it's we have to win games.
26:26
I fear that so much in the private space is optimize,
26:32
optimize, make sure like everything matches and it sets
26:38
up players for failure at the next level due to no fault of
26:43
their own. It's like this is just the
26:45
space. Like college coaches are there
26:48
to win baseball games, help guys get drafted, help guys play at
26:54
the highest of their potential. But at the end of the day, it is
26:57
if I don't win baseball games, someone else will be the head
27:00
coach. And so I don't, I don't blame
27:03
college coaches. I had a great relationship with
27:05
mine. And but you, I see it all the
27:07
time. Like you, you're pitching
27:08
coaches all the time. I need 8 guys.
27:11
I need 8 guys I can take over the world.
27:13
And it's like to sit here and go, yeah, you can take your
27:17
hour, 30 minutes to get loose, do your 45 minutes of
27:22
correctives, then go through your 20 minute plyo routine,
27:27
then go through your catch play. It's good for a short period of
27:32
time until it's time to till you get that call in the 7th inning
27:36
and you're in the bullpen. You haven't moved for 45
27:38
minutes. And it's like, hey, you need to
27:40
get hot and you're, you have the next error.
27:42
And so that's where I get to a place where it's like, OK, there
27:46
are so many kids who hear about optimizing, optimizing,
27:49
optimizing. And it's, it should be, how
27:52
robust can I be? Can I get ready in 5 minutes?
27:57
Can I get ready in? I'm the, I'm the Friday guy, can
28:00
I get ready in an hour and a half or can I get ready when
28:02
they call me and say I have the next guy?
28:05
Kyle Hart, who is with the Padres, great guy.
28:08
He comes in during the winter and I remember talking to him
28:11
about it and he said I know what I need to do to get ready and I
28:17
know when I can do it because he made the switch.
28:21
He played in Korea, He was a starter, gets to the Padres.
28:25
Now he's in the bullpen. And funny enough, he got moved
28:28
to the bullpen and I think he's having, he's doing great, like,
28:32
and a lot of guys would fear that, like I'm not a starter
28:34
anymore. But he said it like it took some
28:37
time to figure out what, how to get loose, how to stay ready.
28:41
But now he said like after a year, he's like, I can do like 3
28:45
things to get loose and I'm on the slope or I can do 15 things.
28:51
But it's like he was able to adapt.
28:53
He's able to like change his perspective of what it takes to
28:58
go get outs and that's kind of where I hope some of especially
29:03
it's more so in the private sector.
29:04
I feel like they have the opportunity to realize training
29:09
is beautiful thing and helps guys succeed, but it's also the
29:13
focus has to be playing the game.
29:16
Do you think that robustness or the ability to get ready super
29:19
quickly comes more from mental preparedness or physical
29:23
preparedness? Now of course I understand this
29:26
is not like truly black and white one or the other, but I'm
29:30
curious what your take is and then how you might go about
29:35
assisting with an athlete figuring that out.
29:39
I think mentally you have the advantage, like if I can just,
29:44
OK, screw it, I'm in, let's go. I don't have time for this.
29:49
I played with guys in college who like you got the call and
29:51
it's like, hey, get in the game. And he was like, OK, I threw, I
29:56
threw. I didn't throw a baseball.
29:58
I did blue ply like 4 times. I'm in the game, I got to go.
30:01
But he was a guy who the work had been done.
30:05
Like he trusted the fact that I've worked really hard.
30:08
I've done all these things. It's I'm AI can do this.
30:12
It doesn't matter if you give me 30 seconds, I'm going to go out
30:15
there and I'm going to compete like nobody's business.
30:18
And he used to always say I got 8 pitches on the mound anyway.
30:22
So I think mentally it's the advantage.
30:25
And I think what we can do from a coaching perspective is
30:30
instilling that idea in them early.
30:35
It's like, hey, yes, right now you can take your time.
30:39
You can do everything you want to do to prepare yourself in
30:42
your brain to succeed, but I also want you to be able to
30:47
pivot and go, hey, let's see if I can get ready to throw in 10
30:51
minutes today. There's like it's a light catch
30:54
play day. Like I want you to take 10
30:55
minutes and get ready to throw. Throw a variability in there
30:59
down, man. I don't want you to do the same
31:02
warm up every day. I want you to mix it up.
31:06
I want you to heck walk out of the car and just be like walk in
31:10
the building and go. I'm going to just get ready to
31:12
throw right now. I'm going to, I'm going to
31:14
challenge myself to see how I feel.
31:17
So I like that idea where you can just kind of like this is
31:20
something that I want you to do, but like I'm going to challenge
31:23
you to do it and make it seem like it's your idea.
31:27
Do you think there is a way that you or other strength coaches,
31:32
support staff can support athletes physically to take on
31:37
this task? Is there a certain thing that
31:40
they can do in their training? Part of the motivation, while I
31:42
buy you time to think through this, is I personally think
31:49
they're pretty cool. But then I, I will run into the
31:53
occasional video and it'll piss me off where a coach or someone
31:57
will talk about how like, oh, no, warm up they got on the
32:00
mound and RIP 94 mph because they used to throw 97 back in
32:04
the day. And like, that's, that's
32:06
amazing. Like super good for you.
32:08
Like now, is that a great example that you should be
32:10
setting for every athlete? Probably not.
32:13
But also that is amazing that an individual has whatever, I guess
32:21
whatever it is, whatever that like it factor would be
32:25
available to them. The elasticity, the
32:27
explosiveness, like, I don't know, I wake up in the morning
32:31
and I feel like it's hard to move sometimes and I'm only 32
32:34
years old, but the body is just ready to go right away.
32:38
Do you think there is anything that you can do in the weight
32:42
room or from a physical preparedness standpoint to help
32:47
athletes be able to be ready to go at a moment's notice?
32:51
Definitely. I don't think it's an exact like
32:55
do this check mark, you're good like saying like guys, if you're
33:01
really strong and you feel really good, you have a probably
33:06
a higher chance of being able to do something like that where
33:09
it's just like I'm good. I'm just like the muscles super
33:13
robust, the muscles super strong.
33:15
You more than likely can produce force and moment's notice, but
33:19
it's also not going to work like that for I would say like, I
33:22
don't know 6070% of guys where it's just like, no, I need more
33:26
time. It's like because like I've
33:28
messed with some guys in here and like the kid that we were
33:32
talking about earlier where it's like he's 18 months into his
33:35
throwing program and he's shuffling 78 and it's like, I've
33:39
been thrown a baseball all day. I worked out in the morning and
33:43
I picked up a baseball and just started ripping it because like
33:46
I wanted to give him some of that like fire where it's like
33:51
this old washed up guy just threw 5 miles an hour harder
33:56
than me without even doing anything.
33:58
It's like, would I tell any athlete here to do that?
34:02
No, my career is over. I can do dumb stuff.
34:04
But I will say that that well-rounded athlete, like you
34:10
said, robust, has a good work capacity, is strong.
34:14
I think his body responds faster.
34:18
Two, I have to get loose. I have to get ready to go.
34:21
Like I can do this in 2 minutes just because those systems are
34:25
ready to fire at a moment's notice rather than somebody who
34:28
it's like I really got to, I got to prime this.
34:31
I got to make that. I got to make myself ready
34:34
rather than I walk in the room and I'm ready.
34:37
I find it to be a very, very interesting area of study and I
34:43
don't think it necessarily needs to be anything that becomes
34:47
clinical at any point. But I would tell you that's
34:50
something that I've been trying to explore on my own as I do my
34:54
own workouts and as I age a little bit.
34:56
I'm limited on time and I don't want to spend time warming up
35:02
for extended periods. Now, it was different when I
35:06
played college baseball and I was afforded 15 minutes to do a
35:12
dynamic warm up before I ever had to pick up anything else.
35:16
But now I go out in my backyard, I want to do a couple of arm
35:19
swings and be like, well, I'll grab the dumbbells and I'll
35:21
start benching or I'll start rowing right away.
35:23
My body will figure it out. I I'm with you that there is
35:28
something to it. And I would like to think kind
35:31
of just like anything else, the more you expose yourself to kind
35:36
of the shocks, the less it becomes a shock over time.
35:39
Definitely. And it's like going off that
35:42
point, like if I just constantly expose myself to this, it's will
35:46
I adapt or will I break? And so that's where it's like, I
35:50
think doing it like every once in a while is a good thing for
35:54
the majority of guys. I'd be like, let's not like,
35:59
like we're playing. You have a career ahead of you.
36:02
I don't want you to be a test dummy for yourself.
36:05
I'll, I'll try to guide you in the best way I can.
36:09
Maybe I'll be your test dummy, But it's it's that happy medium
36:13
of is the reward worth the risk? And it's because like you as a
36:21
coach, I as a coach, if you were like, hey, 5 minutes, it's a
36:24
high day. We're thumping in 5 minutes.
36:27
Can you do it? And then someone just blows out
36:30
and you're just like. That was the most idiotic thing
36:32
I've ever done in my. Life.
36:33
Yeah. This is stupid.
36:34
Yeah, great. But then on the other side of
36:37
that, I think what you are prepping an athlete for you, you
36:43
can structure this and communicate it in a very, I
36:47
think very instructional and impactful manner where you can
36:53
say, hey guy who is my Saturday starter or hey guy who only
36:58
starts games for us. We're going to get in a
37:01
conference tournament or we're going to have to go play for a
37:04
national championship and you can't start a game and you've
37:08
never thrown out of the bullpen and I might need you to be ready
37:13
in two batters to come face one guy because you are a best
37:18
chance to win the conference or win a national championship.
37:21
You can expose the athlete to lower intensity bouts of this
37:26
kind of scenario. So if that situation comes way
37:30
down the line and it is the stars aligning, the athlete has
37:35
been prepared for it and it is no longer a complete shock to
37:38
the system. Now it might be a higher
37:40
intensity setting than anything they've experienced before, but
37:44
at least it's something the athlete has experienced.
37:46
To me, it's the same thing with having guys go back-to-back,
37:49
high intensity throwing days. You can start that early in the
37:53
year. Or for that matter, I think a
37:56
great way to do it is if you know you're going to go this
37:59
route with a starter, a guy who never goes back-to-back, even if
38:03
it isn't facing hitters back-to-back days, it's getting
38:07
guys comfortable throwing the day after they start or the day
38:10
after they appear. And then slowly throwing becomes
38:14
a bullpen. And slowly the bullpen maybe
38:16
becomes facing a hitter. Then it becomes a midweek
38:21
back-to-back or a meaningless Friday, Saturday game non
38:25
conference. Next thing you know, you're deep
38:28
into the conference playoffs or you're in October playoff
38:32
baseball push at the professional level and it's
38:35
really easy to go back-to-back at that point.
38:38
It's something you've been prepared for.
38:40
Yep, I love that and I I wish that was more the case where
38:45
it's just like, let's just micro dose in some like very small
38:50
percentage scenarios. So when it happens, you can do
38:53
it at a moment, drop a hat. And because it's very rare that
38:59
the stars align and it goes, OK, you've been, you've been my
39:04
Friday guy for like 7 weeks. You're our best arm.
39:09
Our bullpen is the worst thing in college baseball.
39:12
We have a kid who's in our bullpen who can't go
39:14
back-to-back. But it's good.
39:18
We're going to make a switch and now say your closer is now your
39:24
Friday guy and our Friday guys now are closer.
39:27
This is a real world experience. That we did in college.
39:31
That's insane and. You know, it's funny, one is
39:34
played in the big leagues and the other one is in AAA.
39:38
My gosh. So they were both very good at
39:41
baseball players, right? And it was one our closer.
39:45
He could not go back-to-back. And it was just like, you know
39:48
what we're going to we're going to see what happens.
39:51
Super talented arm. Oh my gosh.
39:52
And it was just, we're going to try it.
39:55
And when I tell you, I've never seen somebody go from the
39:58
starting role to the bullpen and dominate the way that this kid
40:05
did. He on a weekend he went and he's
40:08
he's different. He's like 6-5 to 40.
40:12
He was. Like he's playing that level of
40:13
baseball, you know he's. Different.
40:15
He's a big boy, but when he went from the Friday role to the
40:20
bullpen, he was a guy who could go.
40:22
He would go like two on Friday, 3 on Saturday, 2:00 on Sunday.
40:28
And it's like you weren't, he was never exposed to this
40:32
because it was like he transferred in from junior
40:35
college and you were the Friday guy.
40:37
You're the Friday guy again. Now you're on your third year of
40:40
being the Friday guy. And so we're going to make a
40:41
switch. But when I tell you this, this
40:44
guy's capacity was just through the roof.
40:46
Like his long toss sessions were just insane.
40:50
And I think a lot of that is where your ability to just
40:55
respond, recover, I'm back, I'm good to go because I don't think
41:00
I've ever heard of someone like. He went into the bullpen through
41:03
more times on a weekend through Harper.
41:05
Here's a here's a potentially weird one for you.
41:07
Maybe this is something you do and I've been out of the weight
41:10
room too long, but do you think this is something that should be
41:13
exposed in the weight room as well?
41:16
For example, maybe not necessarily having a guy do A1
41:19
Rep Max back-to-back days on a deadlift or a squad, or even a
41:22
bench press, but repeating a movement multiple days in a row.
41:27
OK, I like that. I personally have experimented
41:32
with that where it's like I was crunched for time.
41:36
So I said, you know, I'm just going to do like 4 total body
41:39
days and shorten them up. And so at first it's a, it's a
41:43
gauntlet, but you definitely can as, as the body always does, it
41:49
will adapt and respond. Now like you said, like testing,
41:55
testing big movements and back-to-back settings.
41:58
I think you could do it. I think that would, and I don't
42:01
think it would be the craziest thing.
42:02
Like if you think about like Olympic lifters, like they do
42:05
like 4 movements, it feels like clean snatch jerk.
42:11
Yeah, yeah, we're just hammering the same things.
42:16
And so it's, I think it's not the craziest thing to say.
42:19
I guess we we already asked athletes to Sprint on
42:22
back-to-back days. It's weird how we don't think
42:24
about it as much. Granted, we, we've gotten a
42:26
little better as an industry monitoring that kind of stuff,
42:29
but we've talked about pendulum swinging and to an extent, I
42:34
would say the workload. The workload world has gone so
42:38
far into the management side that sometimes we're scared to
42:42
let athletes do certain things. But of course that that's not
42:45
the mission of workload. The mission of workload is to
42:47
enable athletes to perform at their best.
42:50
Thus we need to prepare them for these sort of things so we can
42:54
set them free. But if we're if we're allowing
42:56
athletes to Sprint, look at the college baseball setting first.
43:01
So as fast as they can on a Tuesday or Wednesday every
43:04
single week, and then as fast as they can again on Friday,
43:07
Saturday and Sunday every week. OK, Like you can't tell an
43:11
athlete or you can't tell the opposite team when you hit a
43:13
ball in the gap. Whoa, let's pause for a minute.
43:16
I sprinted hard yesterday. So guys, guys, we have a 70%
43:21
limit on my Sprint speed. So outfield, please, 70% limit
43:25
as you chase down that ball in the gap.
43:27
That's just now how it works. But if we're asking athletes to
43:30
spring as fast as they can multiple days in a row and do it
43:33
over the course of a season, it would make sense to me that we
43:36
should probably expose the athlete to similar things in the
43:41
weight room because that's just bridging the gap.
43:43
That's creating the greater, I guess, spectrum of skill
43:48
application or I guess like expression of force that we
43:53
ultimately want. I don't know, maybe I'm off base
43:55
with that, but it seems to make sense to me.
43:57
I don't, I don't think that's very often.
43:59
I think that makes sense. The thing with the industry that
44:02
most people would probably go down is how do you monitor the
44:07
stress in a way that it doesn't just destroy somebody.
44:12
Like you said, they've done it with sprinting.
44:15
There are people who've done it with throwing.
44:17
Like I think it would take some time, but it definitely could
44:20
happen. This had to be a Soviet or
44:23
Russian thing. So I guess Soviet before it was
44:26
Russian to train squats literally every single day no
44:32
matter what, yeah. Bulgarian method they like Max
44:35
out like every day. Yeah, there you go.
44:38
I knew you knew that better than I would.
44:41
I just had to throw a country out there and you could apply a
44:45
proper 1 I think. They were in the Soviet side.
44:47
It's all the same. Yeah, they were.
44:48
They were part of the USSR at one point now, yet before we
44:53
find ourselves in any geopolitical drama, I don't know
44:57
if we can allow you to say it's all the same without saying that
45:00
is a good joke. True, not all saying there are
45:05
lines in the sand. Yes, it is not open.
45:10
I don't know, we found ourselves down quite a little rabbit hole
45:13
there and I, I do like where we went.
45:15
What is kind of funny is there's still an open-ended question
45:19
that you haven't addressed yet. And this might be a funky one
45:22
for you. Way back at the beginning, I
45:24
asked you to address both the advantages you feel you have
45:27
from going in the real world as well as the disadvantages.
45:31
So now we're after we, after all that stem from the advantages.
45:36
I am going to ask you to call back in.
45:39
I guess challenge yourself a little bit.
45:41
Maybe the better way to phrase this, do you have any
45:44
apprehensions or things that you feel like you are potentially
45:49
ill prepared for going into PT school?
45:53
That's probably the better way rather than saying
45:55
disadvantagement. The first thing that comes to
45:57
mind is obviously just being back in the classroom, but I was
46:02
graciously granted the ability that during undergrad I missed a
46:05
few classes that would put me in line for physical therapy
46:08
school. So I had to take some
46:11
prerequisites leading up to it. And if I would not have done
46:16
that, I would say 100% it was just being in the classroom and
46:20
like remembering what it's like to learn from a professor.
46:24
But because of that, I think I've really like perfect storm
46:29
kind of thing. Had to take a couple classes to
46:32
where it's like you're going to be going into school, not burnt
46:36
out from learning, but like it's kind of like reinvigorated, like
46:41
the spark of it. The one disadvantaged.
46:43
I was a guy who in undergrad, not a big study guy.
46:48
I was very on the wave of if I don't know this now, looking
46:54
over it for an hour is not going to help me.
46:57
And I know for a fact that's going to have to change.
46:59
Well, if it means anything, and hopefully this offers
47:03
reassurance in the proper direction as opposed to the
47:06
improper direction. But a couple weeks ago on the
47:09
podcast, I asked Brian Hunter a very, very similar question from
47:14
going straight out of college to playing in the Reds organization
47:19
to then going back to PT school after retiring from professional
47:23
baseball. And he said one of the greatest
47:28
perspectives he had. I, I don't even know if we could
47:31
share it as an advantage, but it was that at the end of the day,
47:35
the grade doesn't matter a ton. It's just, do you know, the
47:40
information and can you apply it?
47:42
So for him, he said it, it helped him reconcile with what
47:48
was actually important in school.
47:50
Like, yes, he wanted to do well and he's a smart guy, so he did
47:54
do well, but he didn't need to kick himself in the ass at 2:00
48:00
AM burning the midnight oil when he has a wife and he's starting
48:03
a family and he's doing all these things to get a 100% on an
48:08
exam. If he knew he was going to do
48:11
well enough because he understood the information
48:14
enough to apply it, technically he did his job.
48:18
Now, doing really well is cool, but I thought that was very
48:21
valuable. It's not to say that we're just
48:23
striving for mediocrity and just striving to pass, but at the end
48:27
of the day, the last person you're graduating class is still
48:31
a physical therapist. That's very true.
48:33
But I think that's an important perspective where it's like
48:37
because he didn't say just skate by, he's like, I know this, I
48:42
know the information. There might be some things that
48:45
slip through the crack that will not allow me to get 100%, but I
48:51
know the information, right? And that that I think is the
48:55
important piece because it's like everybody's been to school
48:58
with guys who were just like, or gals.
49:01
They were, I'm going to learn this for the four weeks I need
49:05
it. I'm going to take that exam.
49:07
I'm going to do really well on it.
49:10
And then if you ask me two weeks from that point about something,
49:14
I've no idea. Right.
49:15
It's not real learning, it's memorization.
49:18
Yes. And that's where I think there's
49:21
a big flaw and we can get back into education, the education
49:23
piece. And it's like where grades are
49:25
just like, I'm just gonna memorize it and then it's gone
49:28
forever. No, that's a massive problem.
49:31
And truthfully, I I believe that is why I did so much better in
49:35
college than I did in high school because I actually got to
49:38
decide what I wanted to study. And I remember having that
49:42
conversation even with teachers in school.
49:45
I would do unbelievably well in certain classes and then others.
49:49
I literally did the bare minimum to not skate by, but it's like
49:54
I'm not going to put in extra work to get the 100%.
49:58
Like I know this information well enough to get AB and that's
50:01
fine with me because I am not going to need this class or
50:04
information ever again in my life.
50:07
So then when a teacher or a guidance counselor or someone
50:10
would come up and have the conversation of say, how can you
50:13
have as in all these classes and BS and all these classes, were
50:20
you doing well in the hard ones or it was like, well, to me,
50:22
it's not hard, It's just what I'm interested in.
50:25
So I'll buy by all means, I will go all in on that.
50:28
If you want me to do better in the other classes, let me choose
50:31
stuff I actually care about. Definitely.
50:34
I've always been that way. I I it's probably a little bit
50:37
of a personal flaw that I will only really put effort into
50:40
things that mean something to me, but it maybe to a detriment,
50:46
it caused a wall, I don't know. I think it's how you're really
50:49
good at something. So there that might be another.
50:55
We go back to advantage where it's like I'm going back with a
50:58
purpose and it's like that's something that I have a lot of
51:02
passion for. So that'll really help me
51:05
obviously, but. Now, do you think that will
51:10
'cause any unintended negative consequences for you that you're
51:16
so passionate about baseball rehab specifically or athletic
51:22
rehab? Now, of course, like, I don't
51:24
know anything there is to know about you, but is there going to
51:28
be something that's like, I just don't know if this is the most
51:31
important thing to me? And do you think that might pose
51:34
an issue while you're working through school?
51:36
Maybe a little bit, but like I get a big kick out of
51:42
specifically like that helping feeling like you could see like
51:48
progression. It's like cuz I in my brain, I
51:51
don't care if you are the greatest player on the planet or
51:55
the worst player on your like high school team.
51:58
If you show me that like I'm going to buy in to what you're
52:02
doing, to what you're telling me, and I hope to see progress
52:08
like that's a that's a huge just kicker for me where it's just
52:10
like this is awesome. So like to your point, like
52:13
athletic rehab, like having to like in school, I'm going to
52:16
have to do like gin gin pop probably work with a lot of like
52:19
elderly and it's like, is that something I want to do for the
52:22
rest of my life? Probably not.
52:24
But when I was observing, I got had the pleasure of observing in
52:28
a skilled nursing facility where a lot of people were, we had a
52:32
lot of like stroke patients. And it's like that offers like
52:36
an unbelievable perspective for like how blessed you truly are
52:40
to have your health because you can see in a moment's notice it
52:44
taken away from you. And so for me, that's like, I
52:48
almost like that more like I wouldn't, I don't think I would
52:52
want to do it everyday. But like that one off, like you
52:56
see it and you're just like, yeah, it's that means something
53:00
like that means something to somebody.
53:02
Like, way more than maybe throwing a ball mile an hour
53:06
harder and like the big picture. Yeah, I know it doesn't seem
53:11
like it to the 16 year old kid or the 21 year old minor leaguer
53:16
or whatever at that point, but no, I I totally hear what you're
53:20
saying there. There's one thing to tie your
53:23
identity into a game, and then there's another to be able to
53:26
live life happily and healthily. And if you can actually help
53:32
someone do that, that's probably pretty rewarding.
53:35
Definitely. So there's there's the piece
53:37
where it's like, I could be bored, but also like really like
53:43
be rewarded for it as well. Re anchor yourself in the bigger
53:46
picture. Correct, because in I think that
53:50
sports in general, we we lose sight of life to A to a sense
53:56
like. Well, it's our wonderful escape.
53:58
That's why we all love this thing so much.
54:00
We forget about everything else that goes on.
54:02
This is very true. Even on those days we were like,
54:05
this is the worst day of my life and I, I can't believe I gave up
54:09
six home runs in a day. But it's just like, hey, it's
54:14
just a game. Sure, be sitting at a desk from
54:17
9:00 to 5:00. That's.
54:19
True. At least I think it does
54:22
personally. Yes, of course that 100%.
54:25
I don't. Yeah, there might be some people
54:28
who would argue that, but that was like, college for me is
54:31
like, you know, this isn't going the way I want it to, but these
54:36
are dudes that I will be friends with for the rest of my life.
54:40
And there's some perspective in that where it's just like, one,
54:44
it's the old Moneyball line. One day we will all be told you
54:47
can't play the young man's game. Whether that's 18 or whether
54:50
that's 40, it happens. And it's like, there's that
54:53
perspective. Just like this is a lasting and
54:56
an opportunity. You might as well have as much
54:59
fun with it as you can. Whether that's making millions
55:01
of dollars or whether that's making friends, it's all the
55:06
same. At this point, Tom, it's always
55:09
a funky question on the podcast. Do you feel there's anything
55:12
that we've missed or that you still want to get off your
55:14
chest? We've been recording for about
55:16
an hour now, and we've obviously gone down a pretty specific but
55:20
wide rabbit hole at all at the same time.
55:23
And so I don't know if you feel like there's something that we
55:26
miss that you really wanna discuss.
55:28
Yeah, I have to ask, what is hurling?
55:31
My gosh. OK, so it.
55:33
Looks. Sick that up.
55:34
I'm guessing you picked that up from my Instagram, my personal
55:37
Instagram or something. Yes.
55:38
All right, I have to hurling. Yeah, I'll tell a quick little
55:41
story here. So hurling.
55:44
I am far from the best historian on the sport but supposedly it's
55:50
like a 3000 year old sport founded in Ireland.
55:55
I don't know how or why but it is the national sport of
55:59
Ireland. For anyone that doesn't want to
56:03
look it up and just wants to believe everything that comes
56:06
out of my mouth. It is more or less a combination
56:09
of field hockey, lacrosse, and then those are the two that I
56:15
give people in passing. I say it's field hockey and
56:18
lacrosse had a baby. But then there are some baseball
56:20
tendencies in there and you kind of move around the field as if
56:23
you're playing soccer. So the the sport is played with
56:27
a flat wooden club and you advance it down the field either
56:32
by making like little volleyball style, like hand pat passes to
56:38
this little softer than a baseball, but similar like kind
56:42
of rawhide material. I I would describe it as a
56:46
lacrosse ball wrapped in rawhide.
56:49
That's that's more like it's not exactly, it's a little bit
56:52
softer, but. That's so bad.
56:56
Yeah, it doesn't feel great, but I do think getting hit with a
57:00
baseball does hurt more. Yeah, I've worn, I've worn a
57:03
shot in hurling and I've also worn 97 and getting hit by 97
57:09
still and convinced hurt hurts more than any slitter is the
57:13
formal name for a hurling ball. It hurts more than any slitter
57:17
I've been hit by now. I've not been hit by anyone that
57:21
really plays the sport at an incredibly high level
57:23
professionally. But we we shall see nonetheless.
57:27
Hurling is this unbelievably fast field sport that you get
57:32
the ball down the field by making little hand passes or
57:35
passing the ball with your stick to one of your teammates.
57:38
There is a soccer goal as well as kind of football uprights or
57:43
goal posts if you beat the goalie with a shot.
57:46
So if you score past the goalie, it's three points.
57:49
If you hit it through the uprights, it's one point.
57:52
So the game is played by hitting the ball with the stick either
57:56
to your team mates or through the goal or through the
57:58
uprights, and you're just sprinting around the field.
58:01
Your equipment is the stick and the kind of like hockey mask
58:07
that you wear, the hockey helmet.
58:08
And yeah, that, that's pretty much it.
58:11
I got sucked into it because I left the coaching world of
58:13
baseball. I was just doing Flexpro Grip
58:15
and I was spending too much money at the golf cart at the
58:18
golf course and I needed some other way to be competitive
58:22
somewhere. And for whatever reason down
58:25
here in Savannah, GA, it was way too hard to get into the pickup
58:31
soccer circuit. I found like the, I don't want
58:34
to say like the official Soccer League, but one of the pickup
58:38
circuits that I found wanted to know my, my prior playing
58:42
history, what my preferred position is, and I basically had
58:47
to fill out like a player resume.
58:49
I was like, this is way too serious.
58:50
I'm not doing this. And then lo and behold, three
58:54
years later, something that I was just looking for to be a
58:57
like fun competitive outlet. Now I'm going to play in the
59:02
Gaelic Athletic Association World Games this summer in
59:05
Ireland. So of course, like I was like,
59:08
pick up soccer's too serious here in Savannah.
59:10
I would never do that. And now I'm playing her at the
59:13
most serious level I can possibly play it in the United
59:16
States. That's sick though.
59:18
I had to ask because I'm I'm watching these videos and I'm
59:22
like this looks cool. It's really fun now.
59:25
This is the part that I really struggle with mentally and this
59:29
is my own kind of struggle I'm dealing with currently.
59:34
It is a sport that I've put a grand total of three years into
59:39
now. Of course, all the training I
59:41
did in my life to be the best baseball player I could possibly
59:45
be has benefited me. There's no question about that.
59:49
But for whatever reason, because of how much I cared about
59:53
baseball and how intentional all my work was for baseball, I
59:57
never really conceptualized that that work could apply to
1:00:03
something else. So it bothers me now that
1:00:06
granted, there's kind of levels to this.
1:00:09
But I'm more or less in playing hurling at a higher level than I
1:00:14
ever played baseball at. And I'm three years into the
1:00:17
sport. I practice it twice a week.
1:00:20
And baseball, I committed 3 plus hours to six to seven days a
1:00:25
week for 17 to 20 years of my life, right?
1:00:29
So now, now thinking about like that's a big mental struggle.
1:00:32
Then the other piece to this is you can look around or because
1:00:37
of maybe the perspective that I have, I'm looking at
1:00:40
professional baseball and I'm like, OK, that's cool that I've
1:00:44
gotten OK at this sport in a few years of playing it.
1:00:48
And then I see Jackson Merrill, like, OK, give Jackson Merrill
1:00:51
six months and he would probably be the best player in the United
1:00:54
States of America. Or go ask Alex Bregman.
1:00:58
Or Dylan Cruz. Or I mean, imagine putting.
1:01:03
Ellie de la. Cruz in this sport, it's, yeah,
1:01:06
exactly. Every single guy.
1:01:09
And it bothers me that it's like, oh, wow.
1:01:12
Like I guess relatively to the people I play against, I'm
1:01:16
decent at this. But then I could go look at
1:01:19
these people that I've met or worked alongside or watched in
1:01:25
my love of baseball. Like I know if they had three to
1:01:30
six months, they would be legitimately the best this sport
1:01:34
has ever seen. That's the old the old argument
1:01:37
Americans have for soccer. Yeah, well, if we didn't play
1:01:40
football or have all these other sports, it would be so
1:01:43
unbelievable at it. And it's like, maybe that's how
1:01:46
I like to look at maybe. I mean, definitely maybe, but
1:01:49
then for me, when I see the skills that have transferred for
1:01:52
me thus far, granted I am still, so I I'm still so far from
1:01:57
playing at the highest level that exists in Ireland and
1:02:00
that's not something that I understand.
1:02:02
Like I will never, ever come close to that skill level.
1:02:06
There's levels to this shit, just like with anything.
1:02:08
It's the classic Brian Scalabrini quote that I am
1:02:12
closer to Kobe Bryant and LeBron James than any of you are to me.
1:02:18
And it is not even comparable. Like the 12th player on an NBA
1:02:22
roster is way closer to the greatest NBA player of all time
1:02:27
to someone that never played basketball after high school.
1:02:31
Or. Even after college for that
1:02:33
matter, like there's there's no question.
1:02:35
And that that's kind of how this sport is.
1:02:37
I understand I am nowhere close to the people that play this at
1:02:41
an unbelievably high level, the highest level in Ireland.
1:02:44
However, what really bothers me is that at least for what is
1:02:48
offered in the United States, I have reached.
1:02:52
I've reached a very high level and I have put comparatively
1:02:58
very little work into it. Knowing that the skill transfer
1:03:03
of baseball in being someone that doesn't have shitty
1:03:08
cardiovascular ability. Like if you legitimately have
1:03:12
good cardiovascular ability and played middle infield or center
1:03:16
field, I think you're just on the right track to potentially
1:03:20
being a hurling. Prodigy if your hands work and
1:03:23
you can run. Yeah, yeah, legitimately.
1:03:25
And then it helps even more if you're relatively ambidextrous.
1:03:28
Now this is this is a weird fact of the sport.
1:03:31
Now they they hit the ball or they grip with like a crossover
1:03:35
grip. So righties will have the right
1:03:37
hand on the bottom of the hurl and the left hand above the
1:03:40
right right hand. So then it like it's very risky
1:03:45
shot. I throw right-handed but in
1:03:48
baseball I hit lefty. So my dominant side I is my left
1:03:54
side. However, what that enabled me to
1:03:57
do in the world of hurling is have in skilled weak side from
1:04:03
the start and then my quote UN quote dominant side, which is my
1:04:08
personal weak side. It has been what has progressed
1:04:12
over time. So now I more or less play the
1:04:15
sport ambidextrously and most people assume that I am
1:04:19
right-handed because of the way that I grip the hurl.
1:04:23
So I can be well into a match or a tournament until someone
1:04:27
realizes like oh, this guy's left-handed.
1:04:30
Like that's like we should probably stop the left side and
1:04:33
not the right side where I'm used to.
1:04:36
I'm used to everyone trying to shut down my right side.
1:04:38
And it's like, oh, OK, well, this is simple.
1:04:41
And I'm just right back to the dominant side because I look, I
1:04:45
look traditional, but I play the opposite.
1:04:48
So it's I don't know that's hurling for you.
1:04:50
Yeah. Thanks for the question.
1:04:53
I had to ask because I was like, I like that.
1:04:55
I just like guys who played a sport for a long time and it's
1:05:00
like I'm just going to go find something else to do.
1:05:02
That's exactly what it was. Yeah, cuz mine is my.
1:05:06
My thing right now is I just. I'm trying to run as fast as I
1:05:09
can. Oh yeah.
1:05:11
And it's like, I just want to be above 225 and run in the four
1:05:16
sixes for 40 and it's like that's all I care about.
1:05:21
So sick. I want that too.
1:05:24
I just hope I don't tear my hamstring.
1:05:25
That's hamstring Achilles where Any knock on wood now?
1:05:30
My desk is wood. I got you.
1:05:31
Where it's just like, I don't care about anything else.
1:05:35
I just want, I just want to do this.
1:05:38
And you start talking about a warm up and that's kind of where
1:05:42
I am as well, where it's just like, damn, not taking 15
1:05:46
minutes to warm up, not doing it.
1:05:49
So I just like again, hope for the best.
1:05:53
I'm just going to give myself 3 minutes.
1:05:55
Maybe I'll like jog, jog, jog, do some pogos, hit maybe a split
1:05:59
stance ISO, and then we're in applying metrics and we're
1:06:03
sprinting. It's just like that's red.
1:06:06
Some of the best advice that I received on that was a guy named
1:06:09
Matt Tomitz, who now currently works with 1080.
1:06:12
Sprint was formerly a strength coach with the Northwestern
1:06:16
Wildcats, but he was a big proponent of let's waste his
1:06:21
little time warming up as possible.
1:06:23
So everything he did was he, he flipped the mindset of focusing
1:06:29
on exercises as a warm up to then prep to actually do the
1:06:33
task was just how can I scale exercises so we just get
1:06:38
progressively more output as we go.
1:06:40
And I'm sure with you, this can open up a whole new lane of
1:06:43
discussion. And I'm worried that I'm about
1:06:45
to start another hour. No, I won't.
1:06:48
I won't take it that far, but I like that.
1:06:51
No, I, I'm a super big fan of it and I would say that's something
1:06:55
that I, I guess I've tried to apply now that time really is of
1:06:59
the essence for me and I need to get things done quickly.
1:07:02
It's the old like if you were to walk into a weight room and you
1:07:05
were going to squat, what am I going to do to squat the most
1:07:08
way? It's like, OK, you're going to
1:07:09
start squatting and then just maybe I'm going to jump.
1:07:14
Maybe I'm going to, but it's going to be I'm going to in the
1:07:17
pattern. I'm going to start graining the
1:07:19
pattern to then add weight, add load and I guess we're
1:07:23
sprinting. It's add intensity, yeah, scale
1:07:27
that, add. Intensity and then I think you
1:07:30
talked about it the other day on your on your Instagram, if I'm
1:07:35
not mistaken. I hope this was you.
1:07:37
You can either start going faster or you can Sprint longer,
1:07:41
you can go a longer distance, and that's basically how you're
1:07:44
making it more intense. Yeah, that's yeah, that was me
1:07:47
ADS cuz sweet, sweet all winter was miserable here.
1:07:52
So I just like had to do strictly a cell work.
1:07:55
I'm doing like loaded sprints, sled push, maybe like my three
1:08:00
steps start 10 yards splits, but it's just like you get past 15
1:08:06
yards and I'm running into a wall.
1:08:08
Yep. So it's like I've just now
1:08:11
started progressing out and I think we're like 3-4 weeks and
1:08:15
again, like real Sprint work and the weather's been nice and it's
1:08:18
like, all right, we're going to get out to 40 yards next week.
1:08:21
We'll probably do that for two. And then I want to progress to
1:08:24
60. We'll just skip 50.
1:08:26
No, no one cares about your 50 yard time.
1:08:28
No stupid 40s and 60s. And then we're going to go from
1:08:32
there. Heck yeah.
1:08:34
Well Tom, at this point, unfortunately I am running up
1:08:37
against to a wall of time so I am going to have to let you go.
1:08:41
But before I do, how can people get in touch with you or follow
1:08:45
along with your sprinting? Progression, all right.
1:08:48
Instagram is the way for me. That's about all I use, and that
1:08:53
is Tom under score B under score SPT.
1:08:59
There you have it, I'll. Probably follow you back, so
1:09:00
that's another one. There you go, that's the carrot
1:09:03
dangling for everyone. He will likely follow you back.
1:09:06
And hopefully I will inspire you to try and run faster or that's.
1:09:11
Right. That's kind of doing those.
1:09:13
I'm doing those lunch switches because of you.
1:09:15
So I'm I'm in this with you. They're good.
1:09:18
They're hard. What do you get?
1:09:19
A barbell. Yeah, I I have one, but it's
1:09:23
rusty and it's bent, so I, I don't know.
1:09:25
It's I got to clean it. I got to figure it out.
1:09:28
I don't know. We'll see, Ben.
1:09:29
I made my own. Buffalo Bar, that's pretty sick.
1:09:33
So that maybe maybe that's a future series.
1:09:35
We can do DIY workout equipment with Tom Brosnahan.
1:09:39
But yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll write that down and we'll
1:09:43
revisit that as a dog Days of Summer podcast potentially or
1:09:47
next spring when I'm fighting for gas cuz everyone's in the
1:09:50
middle of the year. But Tom, this was a pleasure.
1:09:55
It's great to talk today and I guess explore some topics that
1:09:58
we don't normally talk about on here.
1:10:00
So I appreciate you giving me the runway to talk about hurling
1:10:04
a little bit, which is a completely different world for
1:10:06
me, which normally doesn't collide with flex pro grip, but
1:10:09
I got to do it today. That's.
1:10:10
Fun. It is.
1:10:12
This was awesome. Yes.
1:10:14
Well, until next time, man, I'm excited to talk more in the
1:10:17
future. And of course, to everyone out
1:10:19
there, thanks for laying back with us.