Latest / The Layback Podcast / Ryan Yoshida, PT, DPT, CSCS, Founder of Armored Heat (Ep. 50)

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Ryan Yoshida, PT, DPT, CSCS, Founder of Armored Heat (Ep. 50) · The Layback Podcast

• 0:00
  What's up everyone? Welcome back to The Layback
• 0:02
  Podcast. Joining us today is the founder,
• 0:05
  owner, operator of Armored Heat, Ryan Yoshida.
• 0:09
  Ryan has an extensive background in the baseball world, but it is
• 0:13
  not on me to share every step he's taken in this.
• 0:17
  So as we do in classic fashion, I'm going to punt right over to
• 0:20
  him so he can give us a little more info about his bio.
• 0:24
  Thanks Ryan for coming on. Really appreciate the time
• 0:26
  today. Yeah, I know.
• 0:27
  Thanks for having me kind of give you the the story of of my
• 0:30
  life. I grew up in a city called
• 0:34
  Visalia, CA, kind of middle of nowhere between Fresno and
• 0:37
  Bakersfield. And I think like everyone else
• 0:40
  in our world grew up playing baseball.
• 0:42
  And then at a certain time you run out of talent.
• 0:45
  And then that's kind of where it went from there went down to
• 0:48
  Southern California. I went to Azusa Pacific for
• 0:50
  college and studied kinesiology, exercise science, super
• 0:55
  passionate about about that at the time and then went through
• 0:58
  there. I wasn't like a lot of the
• 0:59
  people that I think are going turn into physical therapist
• 1:02
  where they knew from the very get go, like I got hurt at a
• 1:05
  young age. I knew I wanted to be a PTO.
• 1:07
  From there it was more of like, OK, I knew I wanted to be
• 1:09
  involved in really it was football or baseball in some
• 1:13
  capacity and I didn't know if it was going to be on the strength
• 1:15
  conditioning side, on the sports medicine side, never been a
• 1:17
  really big planner and, and it stood true Then as it went down,
• 1:21
  went through, did the extra science were out, loved it was
• 1:24
  learning a lot. And so that was great.
• 1:26
  And then reached into that and just seeing different avenues.
• 1:29
  I'm like, OK, well, none of these really seem like the exact
• 1:33
  direction I want to go. I really like the like intricate
• 1:37
  and, and tough cases of problem solving.
• 1:39
  And I, and I thought that the injury side of the sports
• 1:43
  medicine side had a lot to offer there.
• 1:45
  So from there, kind of talking with a lot of people that that I
• 1:48
  knew, I kind of, I made the decision, OK, I think physical
• 1:50
  therapy is the route I'm going to go.
• 1:52
  So then from there I said, OK, where, where am I going to go?
• 1:55
  And at that time, there's a program called Cal State
• 1:57
  Northridge, also in the LA area. And I knew at that time they had
• 2:02
  an internship with the Dodgers and I didn't know much about, I
• 2:06
  knew they had it at some point in spring training.
• 2:09
  And so I'm like, OK, well, that's going to be my number
• 2:11
  one. Then I didn't do a whole lot of
• 2:12
  research about it from there. And so luckily got in, I don't
• 2:16
  know why they accepted me, but got in there and then started
• 2:19
  going through that program. And I think it's probably a
• 2:22
  little too early, but they do the interviews for that spring
• 2:25
  training clinic. It's called your clinical
• 2:27
  rotation. So how PT school works is you go
• 2:30
  through it's three years of schooling, it's usually a lot of
• 2:32
  the didactic work upfront and then towards the end is the
• 2:35
  clinical rotations. And so how it worked is they had
• 2:38
  a clinical rotation agreement with the Dodgers for that final
• 2:42
  clinical rotation. So the very end, right before
• 2:44
  you graduate, the first year I interview and it was with Stan
• 2:47
  Conti who was the head athletic trainer at the time with the
• 2:50
  Dodgers. Obviously knew the name.
• 2:53
  Again at this point, didn't do it enough research on it all,
• 2:55
  but went into the interview probably never been so
• 2:58
  unprepared or shouldn't have been in the room at the time.
• 3:01
  It's like a face to face and he's a very intimidating guy.
• 3:04
  So I'm like, what did I get into?
• 3:05
  About 5 minutes into it, we go back and forth and really is a
• 3:09
  lot of him talking and, and kind of explaining everything.
• 3:12
  And it got to a point and he was like, OK, so when it comes to an
• 3:15
  oblique injury in a pitcher, what's the average return to
• 3:18
  play in PT school? That time you're learning?
• 3:20
  First year I'm learning arm bone connects to the shoulder bone.
• 3:24
  And it was very early on. And so I'm like thinking back a
• 3:28
  month, about a month probably. And then it's like 28 days and
• 3:32
  like, OK, very specific, but I was pretty close.
• 3:34
  So I was happy with that and went through.
• 3:36
  And then he's like, yeah, I did a bunch of research on the
• 3:39
  oblique injuries. Probably the number one
• 3:40
  researcher on. I'm like, well, crap, I probably
• 3:42
  should have researched that on the front end.
• 3:44
  But it's kind of funny. It's like whoever's interviewing
• 3:46
  you, you should probably do some research on the front.
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  And I'm like, yeah, note taken ended up getting selected for
• 3:51
  that. So I was awesome.
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  So I was excited for it. And I think that kind of led me
• 3:55
  to going through PT school. I knew that's exactly what I
• 3:57
  wanted to do. I went to PT and baseball.
• 4:00
  So I think I kind of slacked off on some of the classes that
• 4:03
  weren't related to that. But then I also went above and
• 4:05
  beyond on stuff that was related to to baseball in the sports
• 4:08
  medicine world, going into an outside research, volunteering
• 4:11
  at the training room there with the baseball team just to get
• 4:14
  some reps and see what it's like in the training room.
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  So that was great. And then they kind of had a
• 4:19
  track where you you go through your clinical rotations and they
• 4:22
  kind of set you up for the best route of success with the
• 4:25
  daughters. So you go through like curling
• 4:27
  job, which is where Doctor Ella Trash works out of.
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  So learned a ton there. Got to learn from a lot of
• 4:32
  people. Judy Seto, she was kind of
• 4:35
  Kobe's PT at the time. She was a great mentor of mine
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  and went through there. And then finally came the time
• 4:41
  where it's like, OK, it's my third year, I'm ready to go to
• 4:44
  this clinical rotation. Downside was Stan Conte was no
• 4:47
  longer with the team. And so I knew a head athletic
• 4:50
  trainer had come in. And so at that time, I like, I
• 4:52
  had no idea, are we going to go through with this?
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  Are we not? And then thankfully, Neil Ramp
• 4:57
  wasn't the the new athletic trainer at the time.
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  He calls me. I think it's probably a week
• 5:00
  before he's like, hey, can you still come out and make it?
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  I'm like, yeah, I'm there. That ended up going well, The
• 5:05
  win out there, this was in 2017, went out for spring training.
• 5:08
  It was eight weeks. You're kind of just doing a lot
• 5:10
  of the runt work that happens in spring training.
• 5:12
  You're not doing much that involves your expertise as much
• 5:14
  and more of a sponge learning. And then hey, waters need to get
• 5:17
  done, boom, tubs need to get filled.
• 5:18
  So I was just trying to be the best person that could have that
• 5:21
  at the time. The best tub filler imaginable.
• 5:23
  Oh yeah, I was money the first time I was driving.
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  You have about 12 Gatorade coolers on the back of a golf
• 5:31
  cart. It's pitch black in the morning.
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  Take the first corner real hot. Just dump yard sale.
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  Besides, you haven't planned down to like the minute.
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  So like, oh shit, we're going to have to get this all figured
• 5:42
  out. Other than that, I was pretty
• 5:43
  good Gatorade, cooler maker and tough filler.
• 5:45
  But all jokes aside, it was a great time here.
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  I was surrounded by some of the best sports medicine staff, some
• 5:51
  of the best strength conditioning coaches and great
• 5:55
  as great as the organization was like you're everybody's pretty
• 5:58
  cohesive in terms of being able to learn from each other,
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  whether it's on field, R&D, strength conditioning, sports
• 6:03
  medicine. So it was great.
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  So I was able to really, really be a sponge.
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  I know I'm repeating myself that that's kind of was my role at
• 6:09
  that time. And then went through the 8
• 6:11
  weeks, loved it, did a lot of the stuff that in turns do that
• 6:15
  is the entertainment factor for the players.
• 6:18
  So that was fun to go through. And then eight weeks ended and
• 6:21
  that's typically when the clinic rotation ended because the team
• 6:24
  went back to LA. Northridge to school I was at
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  was maybe 4, it depends on traffic, but was not a far drive
• 6:31
  from the stadium. And so I asked the head athletic
• 6:34
  trainer Neil at the time like, hey, can I?
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  I'm loving it. I'm learning a lot at that
• 6:38
  point. I'm starting to provide more and
• 6:40
  more value in my opinion at the time, realizing I really wasn't.
• 6:44
  But can I keep showing up? It's like, yeah, I keep showing
• 6:47
  up, keep coming. So that whole year is when the
• 6:50
  team was home, I would go to classes in the morning and jet
• 6:54
  over the stadium for a home games work that do everything I
• 6:57
  could to help out there, then head back.
• 6:59
  So there wasn't a lot of sleeping, but it was a blast.
• 7:02
  Got to do it that way throughout the course of that season, I
• 7:05
  think that now I could read the room a little.
• 7:07
  So they're they would leave rehabs back and there were a
• 7:10
  couple guys that were kind of floating off into retirement,
• 7:12
  but they're still rehabbing. And so I was able to work with
• 7:16
  them and be the guy that stayed back with those guys and help
• 7:19
  out a little bit. So I was able to do that all
• 7:21
  throughout the the rest of that 2017 season, which was a really
• 7:24
  cool season, almost a great season, but was a great season
• 7:28
  almost as. Almost a perfect season.
• 7:30
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so did that and then
• 7:34
  that season ended and so I was like OK, well I know what I want
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  to do now. It's like, OK, how can we make
• 7:39
  this happen? So there I think there was
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  probably 3PT jobs that were posted at the time open in
• 7:44
  baseball, minor league roles. That's typically the entry
• 7:46
  level. So applied for all three of
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  them. Obviously didn't get them like
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  understandably so. Like, yeah, you literally just
• 7:53
  got out of school. You have no experience of
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  working in any capacity on your own.
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  And. And yeah, like I said, I just
• 7:59
  graduated, so I, I completely understand, but didn't get any
• 8:02
  of those three jobs. And then got a call from Ron
• 8:07
  Porterfield, who was like the director of player health at the
• 8:10
  time, and Neil, and they're like, hey, I think we're going
• 8:13
  to create a role, minor league physical therapist.
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  And they're like, is that a role that you'd be interested in?
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  You'd have to relocate to Arizona.
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  And I was like, yeah, I'm in. I love it.
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  They could have said when I'm paying you and we'd be out here
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  and drag my wife out here. So that's kind of how the whole
• 8:29
  story started. I know it's not the most common
• 8:31
  way to get into pro ball, but that was kind of the story.
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  And I was thankful to be around a lot of great people and I
• 8:36
  think be in the right spot, the right time.
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  And also I think worked my tail off on doing whatever need to be
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  done. But then started off in 2018 in
• 8:43
  that role as the minor league physical therapist, learning on
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  the fly, screwing up. I think a lot of stuff that now
• 8:50
  looking back at, I'm like, what the heck was I doing?
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  But I think getting that amount of volume, I think that's the
• 8:55
  great thing about that role as you get so much volume.
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  There's so many minor league players, so many rehabs go
• 9:00
  through. So you get a ton of volume.
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  So you're able to learn really fast.
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  Did that role for a couple of years, then transition into what
• 9:05
  was like the title was minor league performance rehab
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  coordinator, essentially overseeing minor league rehabs
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  and then finished off my time there.
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  I think the title was assistant Major League rehab coordinator,
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  still was based out of Arizona, but mainly kind of oversaw the
• 9:19
  the long term rehabs for the Major League team that was out
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  here. And that was my final role.
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  Forgot to see a lot of it, work around a lot of great people and
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  learn a lot, which was really cool.
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  And so that's the story of the end of there and then I guess
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  transitioning into armored HEAT now.
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  Sorry, getting long winded with this.
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  But no worries, this is your podcast, you're allowed to talk
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  as much as you want. Seeing the all these meetings
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  and seeing the lay of the land in baseball, I'm like, damn,
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  there's so much stuff at the pitching side of things moving
• 9:47
  forward at such a rapid pace. The strength conditioning was
• 9:50
  moving forward at a really rapid pace.
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  The R&D meetings are coming up. I'm like, wow, that's mine was
• 9:54
  blown. And then he'd come back in the
• 9:57
  training room and we get to the arm care portion of things and
• 10:00
  guys are doing the same. I think this is league wide.
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  It wasn't specific to anything in my in in our organization,
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  but guys are in the same programs over and over again and
• 10:09
  easily with some combination of YSTSISIRER either bands, annuals
• 10:15
  or weights. And that was kind of the gist of
• 10:18
  what guys are doing. There wasn't a ton of
• 10:20
  progression or variation to the program until guys would get
• 10:23
  injured and in the rehab process.
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  And that's when we would really kind of make a more dynamic and
• 10:28
  progressing arm care program. So that was something that I was
• 10:31
  always really passionate about because that long term rehabs
• 10:33
  were were more of my role there. And so I saw the returns that
• 10:38
  you were getting on guys that you got to put this on them for
• 10:40
  a full year. And it's like, why are we not
• 10:42
  doing this with guys regardless on if they're healthy or
• 10:45
  injured? So that was kind of where the
• 10:47
  the idea for armored heat, it wasn't called armored heat at
• 10:50
  the time. That's where the idea came of
• 10:51
  like making this widespread happened.
• 10:53
  Just I didn't do much about it action wise for a while until
• 10:57
  2021 is when I started. It was more like guys were going
• 11:00
  into different orgs. I'm like, hey, when you kept
• 11:03
  making those progressed arm care programs, I liked it.
• 11:06
  Can you send me some video examples?
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  And then kind of got tired of doing that.
• 11:10
  It's like there's got to be a better way.
• 11:11
  And so that's that kind of pushed me over the edge like,
• 11:13
  OK, I'm going to start this. So with the app based direction
• 11:16
  to the point where it is now, it's all running through an app
• 11:19
  with video and written instruction.
• 11:22
  And then it grew 21 it was really slow on the armor heat
• 11:24
  side of things. 22 it really started growing a lot on the
• 11:29
  college team side of things, which is a really cool fit for
• 11:31
  it. And that's when it made the most
• 11:33
  sense after that 22 season to leave the Dodgers and then move
• 11:37
  on to armor heat full time. So it's been about two years of
• 11:39
  doing this full time and and it's been great.
• 11:41
  Great in terms of like getting to do something.
• 11:43
  I don't like doing the same thing over and over again.
• 11:45
  So getting new problems to solve every every day is great.
• 11:48
  And then from the family side of things, we got a four year old
• 11:50
  and a 2 year old. So it's also great from that
• 11:52
  perspective. Well, that's quite the journey.
• 11:55
  I guess we'll just finish up everything here.
• 11:57
  We can call it quits. Great job today.
• 12:00
  No, but seriously, thanks for taking us through the the whole
• 12:03
  journey to get to this point. And there's a few things I want
• 12:06
  to bring up. One was a joke.
• 12:07
  I wanted to make a quick question about growing up in
• 12:11
  Visalia. Did you think the Rawhide were
• 12:13
  like the single greatest team to ever be assembled when you were
• 12:16
  a little kid? They were, and they were the
• 12:18
  Oaks at the time. Oh, OK, I would.
• 12:21
  Go to just about every single game and there's I don't even
• 12:24
  know if it's a widespread game. It's called cutball.
• 12:26
  It's like wiffle ball, but you roll like one of the dollar soda
• 12:29
  cups up into a ball and and you're just hitting it with your
• 12:32
  hands. One of the probably top three
• 12:34
  cutball player in in a recreation park at the time for
• 12:38
  the Visalia Oaks. It was big time.
• 12:41
  Oh, can you say though, wait, I go to a ton of those games.
• 12:42
  It was a blast. Yeah, I had to ask because
• 12:45
  actually I think you're the first person I've ever spoken to
• 12:48
  that is from Visalia and I didn't even know you were from
• 12:51
  there. So that's that's big.
• 12:52
  Just just had to had to work that in there.
• 12:54
  But no, the the other piece is now the creation of armored heat
• 12:59
  has me thinking I might have a bone to pick with you.
• 13:03
  And that is everything that you saw going well on the rehab side
• 13:09
  should have been implemented on the healthy, active roster side
• 13:14
  of things. So we can blame you as an
• 13:16
  industry for the rumor in the false myth that everybody who
• 13:20
  gets hurt or comes back from Tommy John throws harder because
• 13:24
  they were just doing the things that they should have been doing
• 13:27
  when they were healthy anyways. This is your fault.
• 13:28
  That's what you're telling me. Yeah, yeah, I think I'll take
• 13:31
  blame for that. But no, I think there's a tone
• 13:35
  of truth. It's not and it's not,
• 13:36
  obviously. I think a small percentage of it
• 13:38
  is on the arm care, the physical therapist lens of things.
• 13:42
  Also, you should see some of these guys in the gym because
• 13:45
  the the schedule is so structured and early on, lifting
• 13:48
  plays such a small role in it, Like these guys are lifting
• 13:51
  harder than they've ever lifted. They're able to focus on a lot
• 13:53
  of things that season's busy, you're not able to do during the
• 13:56
  course of the season and nor is it your priority.
• 13:58
  So I think there's tons of factors that go into it, but
• 14:01
  yeah, obviously those benefits do come from something.
• 14:03
  I think it's the hard work put in by by the athletes at the end
• 14:06
  of the day. I apologize for throwing that
• 14:10
  light hearted jab in there, but I but I felt like I needed to
• 14:13
  because that is something that I think was an untapped area for
• 14:17
  so long of just like stepping back and saying, wait, when we
• 14:21
  have long term development periods, we can actually create
• 14:25
  systems for an individual to get better, not just feel good today
• 14:31
  or feel good tomorrow, but how can we advance their career?
• 14:35
  So I'm assuming with you and kind of that long term rehab
• 14:40
  role, a lot of your position was involved with creating long term
• 14:47
  plans for not just how can we get this guy feeling good today,
• 14:52
  but how can we make him better when he steps back on the field?
• 14:56
  Is that safe to say? Yeah.
• 14:57
  Yeah, I think that's very accurate.
• 15:00
  OK. So what would those kind of
• 15:03
  plans look like? So I know we're not as much on
• 15:06
  the Armored HEAT side of things, but it sounds like that's a lot
• 15:09
  of where Armored Heat came from is creating a simple daily plan
• 15:13
  that guys can implement in their training just to kind of build
• 15:18
  the foundation for a healthy arm shoulder, all the above.
• 15:24
  So what what does that program creation look like for you?
• 15:27
  Maybe where do you start? What are non negotiables in
• 15:31
  there? I'd love for you to just take it
• 15:32
  away again. Yeah.
• 15:33
  And I guess the starting point at that point was like, OK,
• 15:37
  well, was what that that could happen at the time, it was the
• 15:41
  bands, the manuals and the weights in the pretty repetitive
• 15:43
  program. So then I'm looking at that lens
• 15:45
  like, how can we make this better?
• 15:47
  I think it boiled down to two main things that I really wanted
• 15:50
  to improve or I thought would move the needle for for arm care
• 15:53
  and baseball. And one was we kind of touched
• 15:55
  on it, but I thought there needed to be progression and
• 15:57
  variation to the program. Think looking at it mechanically
• 16:01
  it it becomes pretty obvious, like if you're giving the same
• 16:03
  exact load or, or stress to a tissue over and over again,
• 16:06
  you're probably going to improve at the start and then you're
• 16:08
  going to hit the plateau because you're not increasing the load
• 16:11
  or the demand. And so that was one thing I
• 16:13
  wanted to build in was constant progression to the program.
• 16:17
  And then the second thing of it was arm care.
• 16:19
  I know now it's become a bastardized term, but really if
• 16:21
  you break it down, like there's a strengthening component of it,
• 16:24
  there's a mobility component of it, and then I think it's all
• 16:27
  kind of mixed in to have a recovery component of it.
• 16:30
  And there wasn't a ton of guidance to athletes on when do
• 16:34
  I add in each piece based off my throwing.
• 16:37
  And so it was usually like, hey, on pitch day, I do my arm care
• 16:40
  and then that's it until next pitch day.
• 16:42
  It's like, well, there's some stuff we can do kind of between
• 16:45
  there to really move the needle as well.
• 16:46
  And I guess First off, taking a step back, like how I knew from
• 16:50
  the very get go, I wanted Armored Heat to be designed
• 16:52
  through exactly what my expertise is in a very niche
• 16:56
  program that can be added on to the strength conditioning work
• 16:59
  and applied to their pitching. Since it does have the
• 17:01
  strengthening components, the mobility components and then the
• 17:04
  recovery components, how do we match those up with the
• 17:06
  throwing? So we tried to make it as plug
• 17:08
  and play as possible. I wanted them to be able to,
• 17:11
  hey, they come out of game. I'm really big proponent of
• 17:14
  workload consolidation, keeping the high workloads high and the
• 17:17
  low workloads true recovery days.
• 17:18
  So I think that's a really important part where the growth
• 17:20
  happens. And so come out of the game and
• 17:22
  then you can do your what's called our full armor program,
• 17:25
  which is our big strengthening piece of the program.
• 17:27
  They can marry those together so that you're consolidating those
• 17:30
  workloads. I think the big yeah, there's
• 17:32
  some downside there because you're in a fatigue state doing
• 17:35
  it. But the downside of that is far
• 17:37
  less than now having to move that tool would be a recovery
• 17:39
  day through that land. It's like, OK, now your recovery
• 17:42
  day of throwing, you just pitched yesterday.
• 17:43
  You're just probably going to get out there, play light catch,
• 17:46
  get the body moving, get your arm going.
• 17:48
  Now from our perspective, they can do what we call the recovery
• 17:50
  mobility program. And that's a day there's zero
• 17:54
  muscular workload there because I truly believe, like we talked
• 17:57
  about this keeping those recovery days to recovery days.
• 18:00
  But today you can work on like there's a ton of soft tissue
• 18:03
  work that they can work on between starts or on these light
• 18:06
  throat days. There's some over the course of
• 18:08
  a season, some guys will end up losing some T spine mobility.
• 18:10
  So it's a great time to really touch on that.
• 18:13
  And then just other, other musculature that may be sore or
• 18:16
  or barking a little from that start.
• 18:18
  It's a good, that's the best time to really plug that piece
• 18:21
  of it in. And then the part that I'm
• 18:23
  probably most passionate about in the arm is the scapula.
• 18:26
  And I think the mechanics of the scapula so much, we have to keep
• 18:30
  moving so much room, we have to keep improving it in baseball.
• 18:33
  But to that point, it's like the medium or their moderate
• 18:35
  throwing workload day. There's a day we have called the
• 18:38
  scapular emphasis program. And so they're able to select
• 18:40
  that on like a medium throw day and really get sniper specific
• 18:43
  with low and mid trap those muscles between the shoulder
• 18:46
  blades as you know, and then straightest anterior coming up
• 18:48
  to the front to the rib cage. So it's kind of it's all drawn
• 18:51
  out. We also have a pre throw
• 18:52
  activation on the front end of things.
• 18:54
  That's definitely not a standalone program.
• 18:57
  I really like guys, Hey, go through your total body, warm up
• 19:00
  your prep work. Then you can hit your pre throw
• 19:03
  activation with armored heat, then do your plyos, then go
• 19:05
  throw. And I just I think it's a really
• 19:07
  good staircase approach to to get them ready to go on the
• 19:09
  front end. But in terms of like a bird's
• 19:12
  eye snapshot, that's that's how it's all laid out.
• 19:14
  Got anything from there? Yeah, that, that was awesome.
• 19:17
  And the 1st place I want to go from there, you talked about
• 19:22
  guys can lose T spine rotation in season.
• 19:26
  I would love if you could highlight maybe some of the
• 19:28
  things that baseball players, especially pitchers, are
• 19:32
  apartment to lose during the season or maybe become
• 19:37
  susceptible to overtime just because of the repetitive motion
• 19:41
  of our sport. Great question.
• 19:43
  And I think there's maybe two different answers is because
• 19:45
  there's two rationales. Like one, there's something
• 19:48
  where you have the demands of throwing every day going to get
• 19:51
  higher intensities that ends to a lot of adaptations if not kind
• 19:55
  of taken care of on the front end.
• 19:57
  And then also something especially more and more common
• 19:59
  like the college and minor league level.
• 20:01
  But travel is something that also goes into things and being
• 20:04
  in a seated position or sleeping in weird positions.
• 20:07
  Like you also get some some sort of adaptations for sitting on a
• 20:09
  bus for. 12 hours and having to go out and pitch the next day.
• 20:12
  So you see things like a really common one, the one that I
• 20:15
  think, because I see it the the most in full, like Full
• 20:19
  disclosure, I'm the part where I really nerd out and I'm
• 20:22
  passionate about is the T spine to to scap to shoulder that
• 20:26
  complex of movements. I know you're you're definitely
• 20:28
  your your bread and butter's the form elbow.
• 20:30
  I know it. But the part that I nerd out
• 20:32
  just that I think it's such a cool how it works in the throat
• 20:35
  that the T spine to scap to shoulder complex is awesome.
• 20:38
  And so touching on that. It's like something the most
• 20:40
  most common one that that you see in that is PEC minor
• 20:44
  becoming short and stiff during the course of a season, multiple
• 20:48
  seasons for some guys. It's not something that's like,
• 20:49
  hey, one season they get a reset button because if you're not
• 20:52
  taking care of it or if you're not hitting it on the front end
• 20:55
  or on the maintenance side, I think it's something that can
• 20:57
  move the needle a little bit one year and then it just keeps kind
• 20:59
  of shortening and, and really what's happening there is.
• 21:03
  It's the. Scapula PEC miners on the front
• 21:06
  of the scapula, pulling down and forward on it, and then you have
• 21:09
  the low trap that's pulling back and towards the spine in the
• 21:12
  back. So it's really just a tug of war
• 21:14
  there that you're managing throughout the course of a
• 21:16
  season and what ends up happening because it does end up
• 21:19
  playing the acceleratory role out of laid back as that PEC
• 21:22
  minor starts to shorten and stiffen up as the season goes on
• 21:26
  after you get multiple starts under your belt.
• 21:28
  So it's something that as sports medicine professionals were
• 21:31
  constantly working on to to play for the tie really throughout
• 21:35
  the course of a season. And so that's probably the the
• 21:38
  biggest one that I see that is consistent across a lot of
• 21:43
  different athletes is you're managing that PEC minor length a
• 21:46
  ton. And I think there's a there's a
• 21:48
  ton of different negative outcomes that can come from it,
• 21:51
  both on the performance side of things.
• 21:53
  If your scap's not able to tilt backwards, you're losing lay
• 21:55
  back range of motion good for the name of the podcast here,
• 21:58
  but you're losing that. So that has it the negative
• 22:00
  performance outputs. And then also on the shoulder
• 22:02
  health side of things, don't go tongue too much of A rabbit
• 22:05
  hole, but there's a the negative effects there.
• 22:07
  Hey, this is all about the rabbit holes.
• 22:09
  There's a reason we brought you on to get in on this specific
• 22:13
  topic. Now you bring up the, I guess,
• 22:17
  secondary negative outcomes that we don't think of in the
• 22:21
  baseball world, right? We talked about the adaptation
• 22:23
  that can come from getting tight of throwing, just constantly
• 22:26
  stressing the shoulder elbow as we throw.
• 22:28
  But also long travel. College kids are in class all
• 22:32
  day, high school kids are in class all day.
• 22:35
  So is that problem also exacerbated just from the kind
• 22:39
  of like forward shoulder posture, chest flexion that
• 22:43
  athletes or student athletes I guess are stuck in constantly?
• 22:47
  Yeah, yeah. I think it's just a thing where
• 22:49
  I don't think it's one or the other.
• 22:50
  I think it's two different factors, but they're both kind
• 22:53
  of pulled in the same direction. So it magnifies that amount of
• 22:56
  pool. And then and then because it is
• 22:58
  a tug of war, it just emphasizes how much that you better be
• 23:01
  hammering the hell out of the the loan trap in the backside of
• 23:04
  things because you got some extra horsepower, you got a pool
• 23:06
  to to keep up with it. And then yeah, to go down that
• 23:09
  rabbit hole, unlike the the old PEC minor shortening, it's like,
• 23:13
  So then some of the negative outcomes that can come from is
• 23:15
  you get to that lay back that when you breakdown what lay back
• 23:18
  is into like the components of it, you have the T spine
• 23:22
  extending backwards, you have the scapula posterior tilting
• 23:26
  backwards on that rib cage, and then you have the shoulder
• 23:29
  external rotating. Finally, that's the the last
• 23:31
  piece. So in terms of stability, like
• 23:34
  the T spine's going to be the most rigid and then that
• 23:36
  scapular joint with all the musculature becomes the second
• 23:39
  most stiff and able to absorb load and in the shoulder very,
• 23:42
  very good at range of motion. It has so many degrees of
• 23:44
  freedom, great at range, but the least stable of the joints for
• 23:47
  sure. And So what can happen is, and
• 23:50
  it doesn't matter if it's your T spine getting really stiff and
• 23:53
  not having the extension or if it's that at that point we
• 23:55
  talked about of the scapula not being able to tilt back.
• 23:58
  But if any of that formula, if one of those first two pieces
• 24:01
  gets decreased, like you get really stiff in the T spine,
• 24:04
  that PEC minor gets super tight and you can't post your tip
• 24:06
  back. Now you're going to have to make
• 24:08
  up extra range of motion at the shoulder joint.
• 24:10
  And So what happens a lot is you're trying to make up extra
• 24:12
  range and find extra range. And it can it can end in a lot
• 24:15
  of different outcomes. A very common one being they
• 24:17
  find extra range, but with an anterior glide of the humeral
• 24:20
  head, which that can set guys up for a biceps tendonitis.
• 24:24
  I know there's a lot of different structures that they
• 24:26
  typically fall under that bucket in terms of diagnosis or an
• 24:29
  internal impingement in the back, like that pinch in the
• 24:32
  back of the shoulder when they clip into lay back.
• 24:34
  Both of those are typically caused by that humeral head
• 24:37
  gliding forward. Easy way to test like is this
• 24:39
  really what's going on? You give it a posterior glide,
• 24:41
  push it backwards forcefully and prank them back into it.
• 24:44
  Oh, I don't feel pinch. Well, then that's kind of
• 24:46
  showing us exactly what caused it in the first place.
• 24:48
  So there's that on the downside of this PEC minor aspect or
• 24:52
  adaptation we talked about, and then something that I've really
• 24:55
  been nerding out. I know you talked about somebody
• 24:57
  you got passionate about recently, so this is something
• 25:00
  that you have all the credit to. Doctor Robbie Bowers, he's the
• 25:03
  Braves sports medicine physician.
• 25:06
  I think he's really at the leading edge of TOS diagnosis.
• 25:10
  So I knew very little about this going into it.
• 25:13
  Luckily didn't have to deal with too many cases of it, but it's
• 25:15
  something where I had to do some consulting gigs and in it.
• 25:19
  And so I reached out to him because I thought he was doing a
• 25:21
  really good job of, of working on the diagnostics of it.
• 25:23
  But to put it all in a nutshell is what he's finding is
• 25:26
  typically before when someone had TOS or symptoms like TOS
• 25:30
  that they would take out first rib and scalene.
• 25:32
  And that was kind of the end all be all for it.
• 25:34
  And there wasn't a lot of quality diagnostics on the front
• 25:37
  end of things, speaking generally.
• 25:40
  And what he's been doing is a lot of diagnostic injections.
• 25:43
  He's in a diagnostic injection and, and numbing up like because
• 25:46
  there's when the nerves come out of the neck and down the arm,
• 25:49
  they go through the scaling triangle, which that can be a, a
• 25:52
  portion where the nerves get smashed and you have, and
• 25:55
  creates those symptoms or they after they pass through there,
• 25:57
  they go underneath the PEC minor.
• 25:59
  So if it's a very stiff PEC minor going into lay back
• 26:01
  creates even more tension to there.
• 26:03
  Or when you get the lay back, it can be getting squished by that
• 26:06
  PEC minor smashing it down. And So what he does is he does a
• 26:09
  diagnostic ejection separately, separate times into the PEC
• 26:12
  minor region and then also into the scaling region.
• 26:15
  And then have them go through immediately after it.
• 26:18
  Then that way you could really have a better idea on, OK, we
• 26:21
  don't need to do this, this catch all procedure.
• 26:23
  If we know exactly one of them, we once we inject it, it goes
• 26:26
  completely to 0 in terms of symptoms.
• 26:28
  It just gives a lot more guidance in terms of what you're
• 26:31
  going to attack there. But yeah, went down another huge
• 26:34
  rabbit hole there. This is awesome.
• 26:37
  No, I, I feel like a kid in a candy store right now with all
• 26:40
  of this. I do want to kind of stay on the
• 26:43
  topic of things that you notice during season adaptations or
• 26:47
  something like that. So are there maybe positive
• 26:51
  adaptations that occur during season or maybe other things
• 26:55
  that athletes should be keeping in mind?
• 26:58
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's tons of positive
• 27:01
  adaptations that happen throughout the season.
• 27:04
  And I think it all comes off of like the ability to adapt to the
• 27:07
  stress. And then once you've adapted to
• 27:09
  that stress on the front end and it's like, OK, you have these
• 27:11
  adaptations in place. The structures are now able to
• 27:13
  withstand these loads and you can kind of apply that arm wide,
• 27:16
  body wide in terms of being able to use that, that theory.
• 27:20
  But easy examples, as you come in every spring training,
• 27:24
  there's a couple different injuries or sorenesses that are
• 27:27
  really common to spring training and that's because these
• 27:29
  adaptations aren't in place. The basic 1 is like muscular
• 27:33
  soreness to a lot of guys like belly of bicep soreness.
• 27:36
  Super common early in spring training.
• 27:38
  No adaptations been there in terms of elbow deceleration
• 27:41
  throughout the offseason. As much as you try to throw and
• 27:44
  build UPS like there's no way to to simulate game activity
• 27:49
  posterior shoulder, you kind of get the same thing kind of to
• 27:51
  our point, like adapting to the traction forces.
• 27:54
  A lot of times guys will get like dead arm or a heavy arm
• 27:57
  with like maybe some neurological type feelings.
• 27:59
  A lot of that in many cases is just the, the arm hasn't been
• 28:02
  used to that much traction over and over again.
• 28:05
  And so that takes an adaptation period.
• 28:07
  But those are all things that early on they're not adapted to.
• 28:11
  And then as you get through usually the first couple months
• 28:13
  of the season, those become adaptations that are that are
• 28:17
  kind of in place same thing. It kind of works across the
• 28:19
  board with with different soft tissue structures or passive
• 28:22
  structures. So now let's step this back to
• 28:26
  the programming piece. You know these things are
• 28:29
  occurring. What are things that you can
• 28:31
  implement, whether it's in the Armored Heat program or you just
• 28:35
  putting on your PT cap again and working with an athlete, what
• 28:39
  are ways that they can combat these different, I guess,
• 28:44
  potential circumstances? Yeah.
• 28:46
  And I think I would be giving, I don't say giving the arm care
• 28:50
  side of things too much credit, but to say that arm care plays
• 28:53
  the biggest role in preventing this, I think I would be doing a
• 28:56
  disservice to everybody. Like I think the biggest piece
• 29:00
  of this is one, the throwing build, because how well can you
• 29:03
  prepare the body for that on the front end before getting this,
• 29:06
  which is really hard to do. Throwing is the best way to best
• 29:09
  prepare that. So I think a lot of guys and
• 29:12
  it's just changing. It's progressing a lot in the
• 29:14
  last couple of years. But throwing enough and with
• 29:17
  enough intensity leading into spring training, I think that's
• 29:21
  by far in a way, the number one factor that's going to at least
• 29:25
  make that that spike less of a spike.
• 29:28
  Like it's going to be there regardless.
• 29:29
  You can't, we can't, we can't simulate these games, the game
• 29:32
  environment. But the the more you can press
• 29:34
  the ceiling on the front end, I think you put you in a better
• 29:37
  spot to now bridge the gap between what you're going to
• 29:40
  experience in spring training versus what you've done at the
• 29:42
  end of your offseason. But to get to that point in a
• 29:45
  proper manner now you got to work backwards on the rest of
• 29:48
  the build up. Like there's going to be a give
• 29:50
  and take to everything. It's either you're going to have
• 29:52
  a really quick ramp, not ideal, or maybe some guys back back
• 29:56
  when I first started, which wasn't all that long ago, but
• 29:59
  guys weren't picking up a ball till December, January in some
• 30:02
  cases at all. And so if you want to make a
• 30:04
  proper ramp to these high intensities in the spring
• 30:06
  training, maybe it's best, hey, are we taking less, less time
• 30:10
  off of throwing completely? There's tons of opinions on
• 30:14
  here. Mind changes every day.
• 30:17
  But yeah, but there's a give and take.
• 30:18
  Obviously, if you want to get these intensities in a safe
• 30:20
  manner, the ramp would need to be longer.
• 30:22
  And then there's the downside of that as well, potential downside
• 30:25
  of that. I think you bring up a good
• 30:27
  point regarding the throwing component there because yes, it
• 30:33
  would be naive to think that doing 3 by 10, IT's wise is
• 30:39
  going to come anywhere close to simulating the forces that
• 30:43
  throwing is going to put on the arm, shoulder, back, just
• 30:47
  everything that gets involved. And well, eventually that's the
• 30:51
  task that we need to accomplish. So thinking that you can achieve
• 30:55
  that in some other capacity is exactly what I said earlier,
• 31:00
  Naive. That's just not how these things
• 31:03
  are going to play out. Now, do you want to jump back to
• 31:07
  kind of what you talked about with Doctor Robbie Bowers?
• 31:10
  Are there other innovations that you are seeing when it either
• 31:15
  comes to care or diagnostics that maybe they're not new in
• 31:20
  2025, but maybe are a little more fresh on the scene that
• 31:26
  didn't exist when you were first getting started in the industry?
• 31:29
  Yeah, yeah. And yeah, there's a couple
• 31:31
  things that come to mind initially.
• 31:33
  And then also something that it's probably all the things I
• 31:37
  miss of working in like the organization manner.
• 31:40
  And that in that position was fun.
• 31:42
  I missed the crap talking. That was always fun to banter.
• 31:45
  You missed that. You missed the competitiveness
• 31:47
  that happens on on the day-to-day basis.
• 31:49
  But then three, it's like, and especially with the old guy was
• 31:52
  lucky enough to be with like the year, everyone was kind of at
• 31:54
  the cutting edge of things in in many regards.
• 31:57
  So I felt like I was always disabled to see like, hey,
• 32:00
  what's coming down the road? What's coming down the road?
• 32:02
  And then I can kind of learn about it as much as I can have
• 32:05
  found that as much as I try and dig into it kind of from the
• 32:09
  outside in the private sector world, it's much harder to have
• 32:12
  a, a great pulse on it to that point.
• 32:15
  Like I tried to start this whole mastermind group with all the
• 32:17
  PTS in baseball more so a lot of it was I thought it was really
• 32:21
  needed. And then also selfishly, I can
• 32:22
  kind of get a pulse on that and kind of hear what's going around
• 32:25
  because I, I love that stuff. I love digging up new stuff and
• 32:27
  then trying it out. And half the time, my God, this
• 32:30
  works great. Or I I think this is eye wash,
• 32:33
  but to your point, and neither of them am I very well versed
• 32:37
  in, but just kind of working in a little bit on the consulting
• 32:40
  side of things and talking with a lot of the players and, and
• 32:43
  staff members as well of like what are the, I guess the newer
• 32:48
  type things that guys are really liking it and and flocking to
• 32:51
  one of them is and there's a lot of brands that do it, but it's
• 32:54
  like direct current stimulation. Whether it's there's another
• 32:58
  unit called the newbie, there's different versions ARP almost
• 33:01
  all the guys who work with them flocking to that.
• 33:03
  They loved it to the point of me talking about armor.
• 33:06
  He like I love to like really just stay in my land of
• 33:08
  expertise. We had him with the Dodgers.
• 33:10
  There was a guy Greg that he was money with the newbie.
• 33:13
  He was so well versed in it. So I never really got high level
• 33:16
  in it. I just say go see him.
• 33:18
  He's he's the best at it. So I can't speak to too much of
• 33:20
  exactly what it's doing or or or the manners of it, but I know
• 33:24
  that tons of guys are flocking to it.
• 33:27
  But I think it's becoming a a big wave into what guys are
• 33:30
  doing in terms of the sports medicine world.
• 33:32
  And then, yeah, the other thing that came to mind that seeing a
• 33:35
  lot more and you're kind of blinded from this when you're
• 33:39
  working for the team because they don't really run into the
• 33:41
  team. But guys are going in and
• 33:43
  starving offseason and getting maybe like prophylactic stem
• 33:47
  cell injections or other types of ortho biologics.
• 33:50
  Again, this is not in my wheelhouse much, but I know it's
• 33:53
  something that has been from when I first started or maybe I
• 33:56
  just wasn't aware of it. But to where we are now, it's
• 33:59
  like it seems like a far more common place in in the baseball
• 34:02
  world. Yeah, the latter I would say, I
• 34:07
  guess is certainly becoming more commonplace where guys are just
• 34:10
  trying to do things like Yep, seasons over, got to get the
• 34:12
  body back to 100%, however it is that I can do that.
• 34:15
  So we'll go get an injection like you said, biologics and
• 34:19
  then bringing up ARP wave or newbie those different things.
• 34:23
  Yeah, 100%. I I think maybe I saw those
• 34:26
  things here and there, like maybe like somebody I follow on
• 34:30
  Instagram here and there might like show it be like, yo, what
• 34:33
  is that thing or like, why is that?
• 34:35
  Why is that STEM unit so expensive?
• 34:38
  Like different things like that. And then my brain was too small
• 34:43
  to fathom that it's a different wave or it works differently.
• 34:48
  Yeah. So that all that stuff is new
• 34:49
  and exciting to me. I had to ask you much like you
• 34:52
  said, you were creating the mastermind group so you could
• 34:55
  selfishly use it to learn and grow more.
• 34:58
  A lot of the this kind of stuff is selfish.
• 35:00
  For me, it was like, oh, yeah, I can write that down.
• 35:02
  Let me go research that stuff a little bit.
• 35:04
  So maybe, maybe let's take a let's take a stab at the
• 35:07
  mastermind group for a second. What are a couple things that
• 35:11
  you were able to take away from it that maybe you knew nothing
• 35:14
  about or knew very little about on the front end of creating it?
• 35:20
  Yeah, Yeah. So it was great and.
• 35:21
  We did it for spot. No, it might have been four
• 35:24
  months or so. I've got a lot of different PTS
• 35:27
  around baseball and it was cool to get a lot of different.
• 35:29
  I learned a ton. Like you're getting so many
• 35:31
  people's lenses, lenses of vision, like, oh, I never
• 35:35
  thought about it that way. We've since just recently.
• 35:37
  It was like, OK, I think it's time to kind of put it into
• 35:40
  this. Just I thought it was incredibly
• 35:42
  valuable. But when we started, it's like
• 35:44
  didn't realize how you're I'm running a company as my full
• 35:47
  time thing. The other two guys that are
• 35:49
  helping out, two of the guys they were have to go to spring
• 35:51
  training. Now they're obviously working
• 35:53
  about 14 hours a day for the next 100 days.
• 35:55
  And then Dylan with Driveline, like he's got a very busy
• 35:59
  schedule. So it was awesome.
• 36:00
  I think just bandwidth wise, it was something that didn't work
• 36:03
  out great. But to bring it full circle back
• 36:06
  to you guys, probably the biggest thing I took away was
• 36:08
  Dylan newcomer, who's the PT up at Driveline.
• 36:11
  He's kind of got his own little facility in there, but he's
• 36:13
  working on a Driveline and other places.
• 36:15
  He did a presentation on essentially stuff that he's done
• 36:19
  with you guys and it was new to me.
• 36:21
  So it's been super interesting. I've been digging in more and
• 36:24
  more about it and, and it would boil down to like the tendon
• 36:27
  health versus tendon stiffness protocols, which I know you guys
• 36:30
  are kind of all done together. So that's been something that I
• 36:33
  think is super intriguing because learning from a lot of
• 36:37
  older school athletic trainers and just, there's always a
• 36:40
  saying it's like shoulder injuries are easier to prevent
• 36:44
  and harder to rehab. Elbow injuries are harder to
• 36:48
  prevent but easier to rehab. And I think that has as much as
• 36:52
  it was just the saying it rung true in my career.
• 36:55
  And what I saw, I think up until recently, like you're starting
• 36:59
  to learn a lot more like what you guys are doing is obviously
• 37:02
  moving the needle on the elbow side of things in terms of being
• 37:05
  able to offload a lot of that, that stress and shield the
• 37:08
  ligament. And then not to mention, like
• 37:10
  the surgery's becoming more and more common at early ages, the
• 37:13
  TJS and then now second Tommy Johns, they're not having quite
• 37:17
  that success rate as first Tommy Johns.
• 37:19
  So hitting it kind of from both ends.
• 37:21
  But I really think that it's something where you could be
• 37:23
  seen in the next however many years, like, OK, maybe that's
• 37:26
  saying can go by the wayside. So we can do a much better job
• 37:28
  on the preventative side. But in terms of learning, my
• 37:31
  expertise has always been T spine to scat the shoulder.
• 37:35
  Obviously I've worked with a lot of them, but it's never, it's
• 37:37
  not what I'm most passionate about.
• 37:39
  So to learn from Dylan and and what you guys have done on all
• 37:43
  these protocols, I'm just, I just got to a point where I'm
• 37:45
  trying to dial it. OK, So when during A5 day
• 37:47
  rotation, when you could you dial in each of these offseason,
• 37:50
  you obviously start the tendon stiffness protocol earlier.
• 37:53
  So there's a lot I was chewing on from, but it was there's a
• 37:56
  lot to take away from it. That's awesome.
• 37:59
  Well, I really appreciate that. Definitely wasn't intending for
• 38:03
  that to come out as self-serving, but I'll take it.
• 38:06
  I feel honored that that was one of your biggest takeaways from
• 38:09
  the group. I didn't butcher any of it.
• 38:10
  No, I did. Hey.
• 38:11
  Everybody has to have their own interpretation.
• 38:14
  I, I guess it's that kind of like teaching phrase or how, how
• 38:17
  well does someone really understand something until they
• 38:20
  can recite it back or I guess put it in their own words rather
• 38:24
  than recite it. So knowing the words that meant
• 38:27
  something to you and knowing that it came from a third party,
• 38:31
  not straight from us, that it came from Dylan, and then that's
• 38:35
  what meant the most to you or how you understand it.
• 38:37
  I I think it's awesome. It means that the word is
• 38:40
  getting out. And I'm sure now I apologize for
• 38:45
  a really crappy Segway, but going back to armored heat word
• 38:50
  getting out, how things spread. Let's take a step back from the
• 38:54
  arm care side of things for a minute and talk about like the
• 38:57
  cool kind of business stuff that maybe you didn't expect.
• 39:01
  I would love if you could just recount for a moment what it was
• 39:04
  like to see armored heat spread and maybe through individuals
• 39:10
  that you had no real contact with.
• 39:12
  And just out of nowhere you got a call or an e-mail being like,
• 39:15
  yo, we want to do this. Yeah, Yeah, there's.
• 39:17
  Definitely been some cool moments and I think they're
• 39:19
  becoming more and more common and that's less and less cool.
• 39:22
  But some of the some of the early ones that I can think, I
• 39:28
  think kind of just how everything spread initially was
• 39:30
  like, well, the people I knew whether they really want to do
• 39:33
  it or not, like, yeah, we'll get an account.
• 39:34
  So we'll, we'll start doing armored heat.
• 39:36
  And then so it spread in our circle more the pro level.
• 39:39
  But then it like a lot of college guys started getting it
• 39:42
  on their own. And then it reached the point
• 39:44
  this was a really cool turning point.
• 39:46
  It actually changed the business completely.
• 39:47
  It was, I don't remember the exact date, probably end of 21
• 39:52
  or, or started 22, if I had to guess.
• 39:56
  The first coach called, not the first coach we ever talked to,
• 39:59
  but a coach, the first coach called asking for, hey, can you
• 40:02
  send me all the info on your team package?
• 40:04
  And to that point, I'd just been, I didn't know what the
• 40:06
  hell I was doing on the business side of things like, yeah, just
• 40:08
  individuals monthly and annual. And then I'm like, oh, yeah,
• 40:11
  yeah, yeah, here. Once we get off, I'll send you
• 40:13
  an e-mail with our team package and all the details on it.
• 40:16
  And then so I'm like, OK, I got off the phone, I got shit.
• 40:18
  I got to make a team package now.
• 40:21
  And so started. It like that and then I think it
• 40:24
  was like maybe a couple days later, second coach called
• 40:26
  asking the same as that question like, Oh yeah, I actually do
• 40:28
  have one this time. That was really cool to see.
• 40:31
  And that's been the biggest growth of the business has been
• 40:34
  mainly in the college realm of things for the team side.
• 40:38
  Obviously I believe so much in the program, but it just served
• 40:40
  such a huge purpose in freeing up bandwidth of pitching
• 40:45
  coaches, athletic trainers and strength coaches because it's
• 40:48
  been great. You see it and I think every
• 40:51
  level of college base like they have a different need or use for
• 40:54
  it. Like some of these smaller D3
• 40:55
  schools. Like it honestly becomes an
• 40:57
  extra coach for them where they can go, all the players are
• 40:59
  going on and they're getting their their arm care done
• 41:01
  through armored heat with maybe two or three coaches is all they
• 41:04
  have and no athletic trainer on site.
• 41:06
  Or to the point where there's big D1 schools that they have
• 41:11
  huge medical Staffs and strength conditioning Staffs.
• 41:13
  But it just ends up being like, Hey, this is going to be our
• 41:15
  structure bones of what we're doing for arm care.
• 41:18
  But hey, we're going to we can layer on this individualized
• 41:21
  layer. And so it's to the point now
• 41:23
  we're getting enough and what of it and, and seeing it enough
• 41:26
  times, like that's how it's really functioning in my
• 41:28
  opinion. Best is it's that 8090% of what
• 41:32
  guys are doing for the arm care. And then the team side of things
• 41:34
  layers on any individualized features they have for each guy
• 41:37
  since they know a guy better than I'll ever know a guy from
• 41:40
  afar. And then, yeah, to the point
• 41:42
  other things that popped up is like, yeah, you start to get,
• 41:45
  you start to get big leaguers reach out like big All Star
• 41:48
  pictures, like, hey, I saw so. And so I trained with him in the
• 41:52
  offseason and he really loves your program.
• 41:55
  And so then that person starts it.
• 41:57
  And that's been probably the biggest version of growth we've
• 42:00
  had around baseball has just been guys telling other guys,
• 42:04
  which has been cool for us. And then it's cool because when
• 42:07
  you're working for the team, you're watching the games like
• 42:08
  you're very invested in it. And then I got to a point where
• 42:11
  you're less invested except the the players that you're close
• 42:13
  with. And then now it's getting to the
• 42:15
  point where you're more invested, but on an individual
• 42:17
  base. Like I'll turn a game and watch
• 42:18
  one of the armor heat guys go pitch and or turn on a college
• 42:21
  game because one of our teams. So you it's something else to
• 42:23
  get invested in. So that's really cool aspect of
• 42:26
  it. Oh yeah, I can.
• 42:28
  Echo that fully. I, I love hearing your story and
• 42:31
  of course you guys are a little bit ahead of us.
• 42:33
  It's really fun now for me, I, I guess Speaking of our own
• 42:37
  relationship when we're talking with a club or something like
• 42:42
  that or college teams like, hey, we also are looking to add
• 42:47
  armored heat at the same time. Is that something that we can do
• 42:51
  at the same time as Flexpro grip?
• 42:53
  Like how do those things pair? And it feels really good to be
• 42:56
  able to be like, well, if you want me to, I can call up Ryan
• 42:59
  and we can make sure the protocols match on the same
• 43:01
  days. They're like, oh, you know,
• 43:02
  those guys like, yeah, like we, we can hop on.
• 43:06
  It's great. So yeah, I, I just love hearing
• 43:09
  the like, how cool is it story in a sense, like even getting
• 43:13
  beyond like the science and like why we're on today.
• 43:15
  I just needed to know like how good it felt and it sounds like
• 43:19
  it feels awesome constantly. It's your baby.
• 43:22
  But now, now going back getting into the weeds with what you're
• 43:27
  doing from an actual programming perspective, I would love to
• 43:30
  know what has kind of stayed the same since you got started with
• 43:34
  this and what's changing maybe What are you cycling out?
• 43:38
  What are your staples? Yeah, that's a good question.
• 43:42
  And, and a lot of it has just been, Hey, listen to the
• 43:44
  athletes and, and the coaches and like, what would help
• 43:46
  improve the program? And so hearing their side of
• 43:49
  things and then me being able to turn the knobs in my head that,
• 43:52
  OK, well, what does that equal on our side?
• 43:54
  And we kind of change it that way.
• 43:56
  And then in additionally, it's like, what new?
• 43:57
  And what am I learning that's new?
• 43:59
  That's like, oh, this is really cool.
• 44:00
  I should start implementing this in in armored heat as well.
• 44:03
  And so it all culminates into that, But it's changed so much.
• 44:06
  I mean, it started I was it was a just an iPhone, iPhone before
• 44:11
  iPhone video was good iPhone video of Ben, the other guy in
• 44:14
  armored heat that that I hired. That's that helped me from the
• 44:16
  get go. It was an iPhone video of him
• 44:19
  running through stuff, blurry video.
• 44:21
  There's maybe there wasn't a whole lot of movements in there
• 44:23
  to where now it's grown into like a 300 and something
• 44:28
  exercise movement library, maybe 400 and something now.
• 44:32
  But in terms of things we added throughout the way it's those
• 44:35
  three, the three post throw programs have stayed consistent.
• 44:40
  The way we attack those have progressed.
• 44:42
  I think there's a lot more, like I said, there's a lot more and I
• 44:45
  think better movements were easy to hit those.
• 44:47
  So there's been pretty constant. Initially we never had a pre
• 44:51
  throw activation side until athletes and coaches like, yeah,
• 44:54
  this is great for post throw. What do I do pre throw and I got
• 44:58
  tired of texting back essentially what the pre throw
• 45:01
  activation program is over and over and like, hey, you should
• 45:03
  try this. And so just essentially made the
• 45:05
  program there as a pre throw activation site so that now they
• 45:07
  got something on the front of the things to get them ready to
• 45:09
  go and then something for the back end of things to to handle
• 45:12
  their arm care. So that was an addition we made
• 45:14
  and then next was an idiot move on.
• 45:18
  My part is like early on there was there was a, a package
• 45:22
  called like dribbles, which are quick oscillations between two
• 45:25
  thicker bands. I love the movement.
• 45:27
  I thought was great, especially on the prep side of things.
• 45:29
  The downside is they need to optimally do they need a squat
• 45:32
  rack and some of those thick like rogue style bands fall.
• 45:36
  Everyone was loving it. They have very controlled
• 45:39
  setting. And then very quickly to the
• 45:40
  season, I'm going to bunch of texts from coaches like, hey,
• 45:43
  these dribbles are not very doable in our bullpen or down
• 45:46
  the foul island. No shit, I should have saw this
• 45:49
  coming a mile. And so we had now instead of we
• 45:53
  had initially just a big water filled stability ball.
• 45:55
  And now we have a mini one for our teams that we can strap to
• 45:58
  the palm of the hand and they can get a a similar effect.
• 46:01
  Not the exact same, but at least it makes the program a lot more
• 46:05
  mobile and able to be done at the field, which I think has
• 46:07
  been a huge component of of teams being able to use it at
• 46:10
  home and on the road and then are there.
• 46:13
  Any exercises or movements that you've completely scrapped that
• 46:17
  maybe earlier in your practice you thought like, this is this
• 46:21
  is big time, this needs to be in there.
• 46:23
  And just as you've grown, you realize maybe it's not the
• 46:26
  greatest bang for your buck, or it's just not as important.
• 46:30
  Yeah, one thing I. Scrapped the first thing that
• 46:32
  comes to mind and it's right up your alley.
• 46:33
  I am a huge proponent. And forearm now finger as well
• 46:36
  strengthening they be, they are part of the forum, but forearm
• 46:40
  strengthening in general. And so early on in the program,
• 46:43
  like the volume for forearm work was really high.
• 46:47
  And the issue with that is when you're like more mass scaling
• 46:52
  something or there's a lot of different athletes using it,
• 46:54
  it's really hard to know. Like some athletes in the weight
• 46:57
  room are just going in and hammering the hell out of
• 46:59
  forearms and doing so much volume and a lot of load.
• 47:03
  And there are certain guys that are not doing nearly enough in
• 47:06
  the weight room. And because armored, he's
• 47:08
  designed to be paired up with what they're doing in there.
• 47:11
  It's like having very high load of forms there and then also
• 47:13
  doing a bunch of forearms with armored HEAT initially where it
• 47:17
  was something I didn't feel comfortable with.
• 47:19
  I'm like, there is definitely downside if it's seen some of
• 47:22
  these athletes work in the gym and I know like how much some of
• 47:25
  them are doing. And then the volume that was in
• 47:26
  armor heat in terms of form as well.
• 47:28
  And So what I did is I turned down the volume on that, which
• 47:31
  also has its negative effects because that other group of
• 47:35
  they're not doing enough in the weight room.
• 47:38
  And then now the armor heat volume in forms is lower than I
• 47:42
  would say that specific athlete would need.
• 47:45
  I think that's the downside. But it was it was a downside
• 47:47
  where I was willing to accept the trade off because it wasn't
• 47:49
  like it was the causative issue as it wasn't in the in the
• 47:53
  previous role. But I think that's a great kind
• 47:56
  of rationale to how much synergy there is between what we're
• 48:00
  doing is that's that's the perfect, I think all that you
• 48:05
  guys fit in right there. And so it works out really
• 48:07
  great. But I'd say that's the biggest
• 48:09
  thing that changes like scoping it to athletes, athlete, if I'm
• 48:14
  working on one-on-one base, it's very easy.
• 48:16
  I can turn down the dial on one guy, turn up the dial on one guy
• 48:18
  because I just watched them work out or I was working on someone,
• 48:21
  I saw what they were doing or I know them very well and so I can
• 48:25
  easily dial that forward and back.
• 48:26
  But doing it through the app, that was a learning curve for
• 48:29
  me. And so I thought, and I still
• 48:31
  think that's the right decision. And so it's the direction that
• 48:33
  we went and then maybe. Continuing that theme a little
• 48:37
  bit, you've hinted at it a few times, the importance of athlete
• 48:42
  feedback or coaches communicating with you given
• 48:47
  your programming for a team. Individualization can get a
• 48:51
  little tougher, but I'm going to now phrase this question a
• 48:55
  little bit differently. Maybe how important to you is
• 49:00
  program or exercise individualization versus just
• 49:04
  intensity individualization or application or timing or
• 49:09
  something like that? Because they, I do think
• 49:11
  individualization is kind of a cliche term in a sense now that
• 49:16
  everybody needs their own hyper specific program, but there's
• 49:21
  tons of ways that we can individualize.
• 49:23
  You and I right now could go to the weight room, do the exact
• 49:26
  same lifts, but have a completely individualized
• 49:30
  approach if one of us is trying to attack hypertrophy and the
• 49:35
  other one of us is trying to really emphasize power.
• 49:39
  So I just want to open the floor for you on this.
• 49:41
  You obviously have a ton of experience here, so please go
• 49:44
  right ahead. Yeah, No 100.
• 49:46
  Percent couldn't agree more. And to your point, there's a lot
• 49:49
  of different versions or ways you can individualize something.
• 49:53
  And from the armor heat perspective in terms of dosage
• 49:57
  on what day when you're applying the dosage, I think we do a
• 50:00
  great job on really awesome job. I think that's what's moved the
• 50:03
  needle a lot for arm care is because you're able to match up
• 50:05
  those those workloads together. And then when it comes to
• 50:09
  exercise prescriptions like individualize what movements, I
• 50:13
  think this is this thing could be like a double edged sword.
• 50:16
  It it depends on on a rehab situation, which is not what
• 50:19
  we're doing. I think there's a lot more
• 50:20
  importance to it when it comes to healthy athletes.
• 50:23
  My opinion on it is that the more, the more an open versus
• 50:29
  closed task is, is not as great as I'm making it, but the more
• 50:33
  open the task is, the more important that exercise
• 50:37
  selection can be. And the more closed task, the
• 50:40
  least options loop and options they have the least important.
• 50:43
  This exercise selection, it's like on mound, there are a bunch
• 50:46
  of different ways that guy's going to weather hip hands use,
• 50:50
  not my expertise, but going to knee flexion and on the back
• 50:53
  leg, there's lots of different ways they can accomplish that.
• 50:55
  So that's specificity is very important to individualize what
• 50:58
  they're doing in the weight room for that.
• 51:00
  In the weight room, yeah, there's a lot of ways a guy's
• 51:02
  got to kind of accomplish any movement.
• 51:04
  And so I think there's still a good amount of importance there
• 51:08
  when it comes to the arm and what we do.
• 51:09
  It's like no matter how guys throw, you look at vocab or slow
• 51:13
  down, a guy throwing straight over the top or a guy throwing
• 51:17
  submarine, it's like the trunk bin is really what's controlling
• 51:20
  all these arm sucks. What the arm is doing across
• 51:24
  athletes is very, very, very similar.
• 51:26
  That lower body trunk are going to do their work.
• 51:28
  Then the arms going to get whipped into layback and it's
• 51:30
  going to be a game of how well can we accept that layback and
• 51:34
  how well can we propel out of that layback.
• 51:37
  And so I think to that point is like there's not a lot of
• 51:39
  movement options from that spine distal moving there.
• 51:43
  So I think the specific exercise selection is less important than
• 51:48
  the dosage and the dosage of when and how much.
• 51:51
  I don't know if I verbalize that as well as I was thinking about
• 51:54
  it, but that's my thought process on it.
• 51:56
  I do really like the. Approach.
• 51:58
  So now I guess let's get specific on it again.
• 52:01
  I know you've highlighted it earlier, but you talked about
• 52:04
  where this becomes really important with individual
• 52:09
  athlete programming is now I want to make sure I'm saying
• 52:12
  this correctly. Is it their ability to select
• 52:16
  which program they're doing on a specific day?
• 52:18
  So does that come down to athlete education or is there an
• 52:22
  encouraged approach from your side?
• 52:26
  Yeah, yeah. So we give our recommendations
• 52:28
  on it and yeah, all they do is they select on demand button.
• 52:30
  All four of those programs come up.
• 52:32
  There's a whole instructional video from the get going like
• 52:34
  your heavy day do the full armor, your recovery day to
• 52:36
  recovery mobility, your medium day, just scap emphasis.
• 52:39
  And so we give our recommendations and how I
• 52:42
  typically recommended is the full armor, the strengthening 1
• 52:46
  is after the pitch day and then bullpen day.
• 52:49
  For a starter. Those tend to be the two highest
• 52:50
  workloads of throwing. Recovery mobility days are the
• 52:53
  days just after that. And then in season, it's kind of
• 52:55
  like plug in like the scap emphasis program.
• 52:58
  Okay, well, if it's gonna come on the day before your star,
• 53:01
  like definitely turn the dial down on on the volume on what
• 53:05
  you're doing. Last thing you wanna do is
• 53:06
  fatigue guy before he goes in and pitches.
• 53:09
  So it's gotta be dynamic from from that standpoint, but we
• 53:13
  give our recommendations. End of the day, it's just a tool
• 53:16
  for these teams and athletes to use how they see fit, whether
• 53:19
  they're taking our recommendations exactly.
• 53:21
  There's a lot of the big league guys like they swear by lifting
• 53:24
  upper body and doing their heavy arm care on day one after the
• 53:28
  pitch day. And so they're using it that
• 53:29
  way. Who am I to saying not to do
• 53:31
  that way? It's been a very successful
• 53:33
  career. They're doing it right.
• 53:34
  So I think there's multiple ways to do it, but really how I
• 53:37
  really I wanted to create armored HEAT was yes, we gave
• 53:40
  give our recommendations, but it's a tool for you to plug into
• 53:43
  your processes that already work, plug it in and go from
• 53:46
  there. Thanks for that.
• 53:48
  And now I want to move a little bit into an in season type
• 53:53
  discussion, whether it's any level we can pick and choose any
• 53:57
  level we want. I'd love if you could shed some
• 54:00
  light on especially the reliever scenario where those guys are
• 54:06
  constantly just trying to get back to the green.
• 54:10
  It's like they live in the red. So any extra work that they do
• 54:15
  seems like it's coming at such a great cost because if they are
• 54:18
  ever unavailable, they just screwed themselves and screwed
• 54:22
  their team. So how do you think arm care,
• 54:27
  performance training, throwing, literally anything that goes
• 54:31
  into the, I guess, bucket of what should be positive
• 54:36
  adaptations when it becomes negative?
• 54:40
  How do you juggle that? What have you seen given your
• 54:44
  role with the Dodgers or now really as a consultant helping
• 54:49
  so many guys in these situations?
• 54:51
  You hit the nail on. The head, like there's no
• 54:53
  perfect way. I think you start off with that.
• 54:55
  There's no perfect way to dose any of these supplementary
• 54:58
  programs onto a reliever or at lower levels or I guess even at
• 55:03
  the highest level. The two way guys those are, are
• 55:05
  the kind of bucket of two buckets of guys that are really
• 55:08
  hard to prescribe these workloads to.
• 55:12
  And So what we've kind of backed into, and I, my current thought
• 55:15
  this, if you ask me, three years, not even three years a
• 55:17
  year from now, in my opinion, may have changed on it.
• 55:20
  But what I found to be the best is with relievers in this is
• 55:24
  going to be level dependent. But the, the principal is just
• 55:27
  working off of guaranteed off days on when they're going to do
• 55:30
  that full armor program. Because that's the one from our
• 55:32
  perspective that like we would be, we would not want them to do
• 55:36
  at all the day before they pitch.
• 55:38
  And so how, how that kind of looks and at each level is like
• 55:41
  high school, college, I guess college schedule is easy.
• 55:43
  It's like Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then maybe a Tuesday
• 55:47
  midweek game. So Sunday they're guaranteed an
• 55:49
  off day the next day and then Tuesday they're guaranteed and
• 55:53
  off day the next day. And so those end up being two
• 55:56
  really good days to prescribe that to the relievers regardless
• 55:59
  of when they throw. Because a guy throws Friday, he
• 56:02
  does full armor. Friday, well guess what, he may
• 56:03
  be have to be hot for Saturday. Well, we just did him a big
• 56:06
  disservice if we told him to do it on Friday and then Saturday
• 56:09
  he's got to be hot. And so we found that regardless
• 56:11
  of when they pitch, working off, those off days for that exact
• 56:15
  category would be Sunday, Tuesday for that guy.
• 56:17
  And then you can kind of reverse engineer the rest of the program
• 56:20
  from there. And it gets even more
• 56:22
  complicated when you get to the big league level because you're
• 56:24
  not less guaranteed off days. So then it's kind of working
• 56:27
  off. Yeah, maybe you get that one off
• 56:28
  day a week. You can use that one.
• 56:30
  Obviously don't do it on off day.
• 56:31
  That needs to be your true recovery day.
• 56:34
  And then there's the give and take of a lot of guys.
• 56:36
  You have a little bit of feel or you can read the room.
• 56:38
  You just went back-to-back. They're not going to throw you 3
• 56:40
  straights. So you know you're going to be
• 56:41
  down the next day or you win two plus and that's not something
• 56:44
  you normally do. You're going to be down the next
• 56:46
  day. So you can use that too as an
• 56:48
  indicator on a guaranteed off day.
• 56:49
  Doesn't have to be like a team off day.
• 56:51
  But yeah, there's no perfect way.
• 56:53
  A lot of times late in the season, if I'm talking with
• 56:55
  them, it's like, hey, I'm still grinding to bounce back in with
• 56:58
  these office like a goal of the end of the season is not did you
• 57:01
  complete the full prescription of your program?
• 57:03
  No, it's to be ready to throw. So maybe you're turning down the
• 57:06
  dial. So maybe the volume's going up
• 57:08
  on what they're doing on mound. So maybe you're turning down the
• 57:11
  dial in the weight room and turning down the dial and on the
• 57:13
  arm care side of things as well. But that's that's where my
• 57:16
  current opinion is on that there's.
• 57:20
  A couple things I want to interject there and just make
• 57:23
  sure we cover them. I assume although it isn't as
• 57:26
  much your lane, you would feel very similarly with going beyond
• 57:31
  just how you program Harvard Heat and suggest that that's
• 57:34
  probably how you should incorporate your strength
• 57:37
  training in season or your Sprint work or something like
• 57:41
  that. Just with the theory that
• 57:43
  consolidation of workload is kind of going to be our best
• 57:47
  friend here. Is that safe to say?
• 57:49
  Yeah, I think that's. Where my thoughts lie, I think
• 57:53
  across the board and have for quite a bit now.
• 57:56
  It's just that you see the value of the recovery day is really
• 58:00
  where this growth is happening. And so it's a big disservice if
• 58:04
  you're now making your start day, your big workload on mound
• 58:09
  and then you're making day one, your big workload in the gym for
• 58:13
  your upper body lift and then day three or making a really big
• 58:16
  arm care workload or maybe maybe throwing a pen as well that day.
• 58:20
  It's like then you're kind of fighting the battle of never
• 58:23
  having those true recovery days. So due to the fact that I how
• 58:27
  much I value the the recovery of in the biological recovery
• 58:30
  process, yes, that's definitely the direction I would go again,
• 58:34
  not in that's not my lane, the strength conditioning side of
• 58:36
  things, but that's a lot of the best strength and conditioning
• 58:39
  coach that I've worked with. That's that's kind of a lot of
• 58:41
  their thought processes as well. Echoing the way.
• 58:44
  My brain works, which makes me feel good because you're a heck
• 58:48
  of a lot smarter than us. So I, I feel like, yes, we're
• 58:50
  winning here. I love this, so thank you.
• 58:53
  Now the next piece of that, you mentioned kind of that volume
• 58:59
  fight as well. If an athlete is still trying to
• 59:02
  get their work in, where do you think the sacrifice can come
• 59:07
  where they still get the biggest bang for their buck?
• 59:10
  Is it sacrificing on intensity or is it in total time spent
• 59:17
  doing something? Because you hear that all the
• 59:19
  time, like, oh, I'm in season, I don't want to go as hard.
• 59:22
  Is that a mistake? By I feel like this is more on
• 59:26
  the high school athletes side, maybe for the college athlete
• 59:29
  that might not have inexperienced strength coach at
• 59:32
  hand that can walk them through these things.
• 59:34
  Versus obviously when you're in pro ball, you've got a very
• 59:38
  knowledgeable individual at your side that can talk you through
• 59:41
  proper programming. But you mentioned, for example,
• 59:44
  with armored heat, OK, you might want to do, for example, like
• 59:49
  three of the seven exercises that we have program.
• 59:53
  But I'm assuming you would say do those three of the seven to
• 59:56
  the best of your ability as hard as you can and just cut it on a
• 59:59
  volume side. But I want to step back.
• 1:00:01
  I don't want to put words in your mouth.
• 1:00:03
  Do you have any major thoughts on this?
• 1:00:07
  Yeah. No major thoughts on it, but
• 1:00:10
  yeah, I think that that's exactly what my thought process
• 1:00:12
  is. Basically still touch top end
• 1:00:13
  intensity, which on our end of things are top end intensity
• 1:00:16
  isn't what it is in the gym or Sprint work and stuff like that.
• 1:00:19
  But I still think the same principle applies maybe to a
• 1:00:22
  less importance like hitting your top speed obviously every
• 1:00:26
  week or or how many days. The research is saying now like
• 1:00:28
  that is very important. Hitting your top top end of what
• 1:00:31
  you're doing on armored heat. Again, trying to have the big
• 1:00:33
  picture of you probably less of a importance than than that.
• 1:00:37
  But yeah, in general principle thinking wise, that's exactly
• 1:00:40
  where my thoughts would lie. And another thing that comes to
• 1:00:43
  mind when you talk about that is like, like something that I've
• 1:00:46
  seen done that that mechanically makes a ton of sense is I don't
• 1:00:51
  know if you're familiar with blood flow restriction training
• 1:00:54
  the way where if you don't want the mechanical stresses to be
• 1:00:58
  super high on, on that muscle tissue, but you want the
• 1:01:01
  hormonal benefits of like a high workload, that's kind of a way
• 1:01:06
  where you can go best of both worlds.
• 1:01:07
  I'm like, Hey, we're not loading the tissues a whole lot, but
• 1:01:10
  because we're trapping all the waste products in the arm and
• 1:01:12
  getting that that hormonal stimulus, you're able to still
• 1:01:15
  get a lot of the the hormonal benefits of going real hard
• 1:01:18
  without really again, stressing those, those tissues too much.
• 1:01:23
  So now on the hyper. Specific end of questions.
• 1:01:26
  Have you had or seen anyone go through one of your armored HEAT
• 1:01:32
  protocols with blood flow restriction?
• 1:01:35
  Yeah, yeah. A lot of, I think a lot of
• 1:01:37
  people do it and it's funny, I think it was maybe 2 weeks ago,
• 1:01:42
  there's three days in a row where people had said, yeah, I
• 1:01:44
  started doing this with the Fr and those usually the people
• 1:01:47
  prescribing it from the sports medicine side of things.
• 1:01:49
  But the one that came to mind is went over to, I'm not familiar
• 1:01:52
  with push performance and next era.
• 1:01:54
  The guys are, yeah, they're awesome out in Phoenix, great
• 1:01:57
  place to train in the offseason, but went over there and Nick,
• 1:01:59
  their PT, he was like, yeah, the guys all use it.
• 1:02:02
  It's great because we're obviously busy.
• 1:02:04
  So it takes that part completely off our plate.
• 1:02:06
  We trust the pro. We know the program's great.
• 1:02:08
  He's like, but I did add Mike's was like I wanted to get BFR in
• 1:02:11
  and whether than us kind of double dip in on some of these
• 1:02:14
  movements. I just have them do it with the
• 1:02:16
  Armor D program or at least select exercise from it and I'm
• 1:02:19
  like, that's perfect. That's exactly what I had in
• 1:02:21
  mind when I draw it up. Hey, take this bandwidth off,
• 1:02:24
  but you can do what what you like with it.
• 1:02:27
  Well, yeah. That was more me just being
• 1:02:29
  selfish and wanting to know because I think I think that's,
• 1:02:33
  that's cool. Like that's pushing the industry
• 1:02:34
  forward. It's putting our heads together.
• 1:02:37
  Like like you said, we know we can get these benefits and other
• 1:02:40
  areas, the hormonal benefits and yeah, take full advantage of a
• 1:02:45
  smaller time crunch potentially. But that I think unless you're
• 1:02:52
  willing to give me another hour and a half, probably ends my
• 1:02:56
  questioning because I, I fear probably 6 more rabbit holes on
• 1:03:01
  my horizon if I don't cut myself off here.
• 1:03:04
  But with that, I want to kind of open the floor for you.
• 1:03:08
  If there's anything else that you feel you want to talk about,
• 1:03:11
  any questions you want to ask for an area that we maybe
• 1:03:15
  haven't talked about yet that you find exciting, Yeah, let me
• 1:03:18
  think about. That for a second, right?
• 1:03:20
  Yeah, that's probably the. Toughest question I've asked,
• 1:03:22
  right? Yeah, when it has to be my.
• 1:03:23
  Idea to come to the topic then I suck at it if it's not me going
• 1:03:27
  on a rant for it of some to some extent.
• 1:03:31
  I think something that would selfishly be interesting for me
• 1:03:34
  is like with flex grip pro, how you see kind of that.
• 1:03:39
  I know we talked about the contrast between offseason and
• 1:03:42
  on season, like if you could ideally structure out year for a
• 1:03:47
  full year, like what's the best, What puts these athletes in the
• 1:03:49
  best spot for success? So when you go to like like that
• 1:03:52
  tissue or the tendon stiffness protocol, I know there's
• 1:03:56
  obviously that runway they need to start seeing adaptations.
• 1:03:59
  So like when do you see these guys, if they're first
• 1:04:01
  implementing it, when's the best time to implement it in an
• 1:04:03
  offseason? How much before they are
• 1:04:06
  throwing off a mountain and then getting live with guys?
• 1:04:08
  And then just how do you mix and match?
• 1:04:10
  Because I have my, my thoughts on this and this is where I went
• 1:04:13
  down the big rabbit hole and thought and deep thinking.
• 1:04:15
  I'm like in a five day, six days, seven day routine.
• 1:04:18
  Where do you dose in like a tendon stiffness protocol versus
• 1:04:21
  tendon health, which I won't put words in your mouth, but it
• 1:04:23
  seems like something that you could do on a daily basis in, in
• 1:04:26
  my opinion, yes. OK.
• 1:04:29
  So there's obviously a ton there and I'm going to try to avoid
• 1:04:34
  getting overly specific of like the single most detailed program
• 1:04:38
  imaginable. But we we can talk about the
• 1:04:42
  general theories or of how we approach these things.
• 1:04:45
  So as you said, this is kind of going to be more the perfect
• 1:04:49
  scenario. Now, how many athletes get
• 1:04:51
  started in the perfect scenario? Not that many.
• 1:04:55
  Of course, this can be implemented in season if
• 1:04:57
  somebody picks it up for the first time.
• 1:04:59
  We just have to handle those athletes with kid gloves, maybe
• 1:05:02
  treat them as if they're rehabbing and kind of slow
• 1:05:05
  things down a little bit just to do no harm, right?
• 1:05:08
  Of course, this is where all these things start, and I know
• 1:05:11
  it's the same thing. On your side is number one, do
• 1:05:13
  no harm. Make sure that the main thing
• 1:05:16
  stays the main thing, and that's to get these guys healthy, keep
• 1:05:20
  them healthy, and then after that perform.
• 1:05:24
  So keeping that in mind, I think it's very important.
• 1:05:27
  But in the perfect world, if big league season ends in September,
• 1:05:32
  October, whatever it is, a guy can take his couple weeks off
• 1:05:36
  before he starts training again. But what the tendon research
• 1:05:40
  would say is it takes between about 10 and 12 weeks to gain
• 1:05:46
  the full mechanical adaptations that we can really hope for from
• 1:05:51
  high levels of loading. So for us, what that means is
• 1:05:56
  about 3 days of high intensity training per week at or above
• 1:06:02
  70% of an individual's maximum voluntary contraction of a
• 1:06:08
  muscle tendon unit. So that's really fancy words to
• 1:06:11
  say. We just want someone training at
• 1:06:14
  or above 70% of their one Rep Max three days a week in the
• 1:06:19
  muscle tendon units that we care about most.
• 1:06:22
  Now why we care about that 70%? Again, when we train at or above
• 1:06:27
  that level, we are actually working to increase the Young's
• 1:06:32
  modulus or the stiffness of a muscle tendon unit.
• 1:06:35
  And again, quickly saying the research would say that the
• 1:06:39
  major gains are coming up in that once we get past the eight
• 1:06:43
  week mark, mostly in the 11:50 week, but that doesn't mean we
• 1:06:46
  won't see strength gains sooner. Strength gains we can see right
• 1:06:51
  away, especially neuromuscular strength gains.
• 1:06:55
  That's extremely common. You think about the first time
• 1:06:58
  you ever lifted in your life, the first time you got under a
• 1:07:01
  bar, that 135 on bench press or squat went up 50 lbs real fast.
• 1:07:09
  We see similar things on Flexpro Grip, mostly because it's a new
• 1:07:15
  movement that athletes aren't used to.
• 1:07:18
  And it's not that that strength isn't real, it's just more of a
• 1:07:21
  neuromuscular adaptation than it is anything else.
• 1:07:25
  But we, we want that kind of 10/12 week period in an
• 1:07:29
  offseason to build up really to be the healthiest or most
• 1:07:34
  fatigue resistant we can be so that that's kind of the golden
• 1:07:39
  on ramp. We know it's not perfect, but
• 1:07:41
  that's the golden on ramp. The beauty is we can also begin
• 1:07:45
  to dose in other qualities during that period.
• 1:07:50
  It's not like we need to stick to one adaptation goal.
• 1:07:54
  We can also start to sprinkle in some rate of force development
• 1:07:58
  type work or more contractility speed of those muscle tendon
• 1:08:03
  units. So depending on what our
• 1:08:05
  timeline is and how far we need to go with an athlete, as in how
• 1:08:10
  strong do they start versus how strong do we need to get them to
• 1:08:15
  be, We'll kind of determine where we'll sprinkle in some
• 1:08:19
  rate of force development work. And that can be done either
• 1:08:22
  before I think it's a little bit better doing it before the more
• 1:08:26
  strength base work just so we're not completely fatiguing out,
• 1:08:30
  not moving as slow. Take advantage of a fully quote
• 1:08:34
  UN quote energized muscle. I don't really know what the, I
• 1:08:38
  guess perfect sciency word would be there to explain a muscle
• 1:08:43
  while it can function at its highest capability, but I think
• 1:08:47
  stacking those two on the same day is great.
• 1:08:49
  Going back to your principle of consolidating workload, now as
• 1:08:53
  we transition into season, often what we will do is begin to step
• 1:08:59
  away from one Rep maxing. Some guys were totally OK with
• 1:09:03
  them one Rep maxing in season if they like it, but some people
• 1:09:07
  don't. And that's totally OK because we
• 1:09:09
  know the research says that as long as we're at or above that
• 1:09:12
  70% level, we're still tapping into that stimulus that we are
• 1:09:17
  really chasing. So in season, for starters, what
• 1:09:21
  we'll normally do is try to get 2 high intensity sessions per
• 1:09:25
  week. And then what you said with more
• 1:09:27
  the tendon health side of things, that's more of our long
• 1:09:30
  hold protocols straight out of the work of Keith Barr, Long low
• 1:09:35
  intensity isometrics. We'll tell guys they can do
• 1:09:39
  those every single day of the week if they so feel like it
• 1:09:42
  because the research would say that it only takes six hours to
• 1:09:46
  recover from that kind of work. So if it's the first thing they
• 1:09:49
  do every morning, great, they're going to be full go again by the
• 1:09:54
  time they pick up a ball and even have to think about getting
• 1:09:57
  loose for the game. So some of it is athlete
• 1:10:00
  dependent. That's selfishly why I asked
• 1:10:03
  about roles, a little bit of how you program for bullpen guys.
• 1:10:08
  Because what we tell those guys is if you can get one day per
• 1:10:12
  week of a high intensity session, awesome.
• 1:10:15
  We know you're going to maintain whatever stimulus we got in the
• 1:10:17
  offseason. If you can get a second, hell
• 1:10:20
  yeah, We got house money now we're winning.
• 1:10:23
  I'm really excited about that. But with the with those bullpen
• 1:10:27
  guys in season. I'm OK if they just.
• 1:10:31
  Want to live on the long hold protocols just so we know that
• 1:10:36
  at a base level, the tendon is functioning about as healthy as
• 1:10:40
  it can. Understanding we might lose a
• 1:10:43
  little bit of a strength stimulus, but at least we're
• 1:10:46
  functioning at full capacity. So I can continue to nerd out
• 1:10:50
  about all of this stuff and dig into every single one of these
• 1:10:54
  potential use cases. But I think really a big
• 1:10:58
  breakthrough for us has been understanding the health
• 1:11:02
  component of rate of force development, not just the
• 1:11:05
  performance piece. We, we talked so much early on
• 1:11:09
  about using rate of force development to generate more
• 1:11:13
  spin on a ball or help an athlete generate more movement.
• 1:11:17
  But there's also a massive health component to that of
• 1:11:20
  making sure that the muscle tendon units that we care most
• 1:11:23
  about can contract within the time we needed to to handle that
• 1:11:29
  impulse set lay back or as you talked about that RAP, rapid
• 1:11:33
  movement going back to that rapid acceleration forward.
• 1:11:36
  It happens in an instant. So if we can't contract at the
• 1:11:39
  right time, we're not going to be able to support the UCL.
• 1:11:43
  So dosing that in before the season, I think is massive.
• 1:11:46
  One piece that I didn't highlight, and as you said
• 1:11:49
  earlier, I'm following suit. I'm going down the rabbit hole
• 1:11:52
  and not shutting up, but I'm taking my time because our name
• 1:11:56
  is on the podcast. So I feel like I have the right
• 1:11:58
  to do this. But where we'll get a little
• 1:12:01
  more position specific in a sense, like starter versus
• 1:12:05
  reliever, we might dose in some what we call endurance days
• 1:12:10
  prior to spring training really kicking off where endurance for
• 1:12:14
  us is more of like a pyometric endurance.
• 1:12:18
  Like maybe you've heard of these stories of like a Trevor Bauer
• 1:12:22
  seeing how many maximum vertical jumps he can do and how long it
• 1:12:28
  takes him to fall out of 95% of his jump height or 90% of his
• 1:12:33
  jump height. We do a similar thing from our
• 1:12:35
  side of what is your one Rep Max?
• 1:12:39
  How many times can you repeat it?
• 1:12:41
  How long can you sustain it? Just given the nature of
• 1:12:46
  throwing a baseball, every single pitch that is made is A1
• 1:12:50
  Rep Max. So we would love to see how long
• 1:12:54
  an athlete can sustain maximum voluntary contraction of the
• 1:12:59
  muscles that matter most. So hopefully that covered what
• 1:13:03
  you were looking for. I know I want a lot of different
• 1:13:05
  ways with it, but much like all this stuff, it's just how deep
• 1:13:09
  do you want to dive? It's not how much do you want to
• 1:13:12
  cover. No, that's awesome and.
• 1:13:14
  That last point I think has been becoming more magnified last
• 1:13:17
  couple years with the pitch clock shortening that time
• 1:13:20
  between pitches. So huge importance there.
• 1:13:23
  Super interesting. Big time yes.
• 1:13:25
  But then I don't know how many enemies I want to create.
• 1:13:28
  But then you have certain people that say there's been no
• 1:13:31
  evidence to say that the pitch clock has impacted injuries
• 1:13:34
  whatsoever. So to that, I just shake my
• 1:13:37
  head. But hey, I appreciate the
• 1:13:39
  question. I appreciate the time today.
• 1:13:42
  This has really been awesome, Ryan.
• 1:13:44
  And what a way to celebrate episode number 50.
• 1:13:47
  I appreciate you joining us for it.
• 1:13:50
  Perfect. Well, I.
• 1:13:50
  Appreciate it. This is actually the first
• 1:13:52
  podcast I've done, so no way. That's so cool.
• 1:13:55
  Well, I'm glad to have you on for it.
• 1:13:57
  I can't believe that. I assume you're probably getting
• 1:14:00
  asked to do these. At least that's what I'm going
• 1:14:02
  to tell myself. And you were just saving your
• 1:14:04
  first one for this opportunity, right?
• 1:14:06
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:07
  To a point it's like, why am I not just going to this?
• 1:14:09
  Like I don't want to kick everyone out of the house to do
• 1:14:11
  it. And then like this would make a
• 1:14:13
  lot of sense to do this and then kind of get armor heat out there
• 1:14:16
  a little more. And they're fun for me, so I
• 1:14:18
  appreciate that a ton. Man, I'll, I won't mention all
• 1:14:22
  the money that I paid you to say that exact phrase that you saved
• 1:14:25
  your first podcast for this one. I will keep that under wraps.
• 1:14:29
  I don't think anybody will see the wink if they're listening to
• 1:14:32
  this on audio. But Ryan, thanks a ton.
• 1:14:35
  This was great. And to all the listeners out
• 1:14:37
  there, thanks for laying back with us.