Hopefully you caught yesterday's post on The Best Things I've Seen in the world of pitching. If not, that okay. I forgive you. Either way, enjoy all this great content on training.
WARMING UP
We all know that warming up is important to improving performance and reducing the likelihood of injury. And while we may not understand all the amazing things a good warmup can do, Mike Robertson is here with a great post on optimizing a warmup.
WORK CAPACITY
As much as I don’t believe in running pitchers into the ground, I do believe that they need aerobic fitness. The ability to throw 100 quality pitches per week is predicated on work capacity and the ability to recover. This article speaks to building work capacity early and sport specific qualities later in an athlete’s career. And while you may be a more advanced athlete, that doesn’t mean that an easy jog or a 30 minute continuous mobility circuit will kill you.
SHOULDER EXTERNAL ROTATION
I won’t spoil this, but Ben Brewster does a great job of really explaining shoulder external rotation, what it is, and how it can impact your pitching.
ELBOW EXTENSION
Eric Cressey really understands the anatomy of the arm and puts out tons of free, understandable, and amazing content. This video goes into depth on the joints of the elbow and gives a specific cue to help better utilize a forearm extensor stretch.
LATERAL REACTIVE STRENGTH INDEX
I just started following the guys at Rockland Peak Performance and they seem to be doing some cool things. One of the things I find most interesting is their Lateral Reactive Strength Index which can test how explosive an athlete is in the frontal plane. This allows the coach an opportunity to individualize programming based on performance.
THE PERCEPTION OF PAIN
One of the things that truly fascinates me is pain. What is pain? What causes it? Is it learned? Situational? Too many people have too much technically ‘wrong’ with them yet feel no pain for it to be a simple thing. The guys up at The Baseball Development Group wrote a really great article about how they can often eliminate pain from a baseball pitcher by putting a softball in his hand. Is it the size? The texture? Or do they simply not associate throwing a softball with medial elbow pain? I don’t know. But it’s cool.
A TWITTER RANT FOR THE AGES
Eugene Bleeker of 108 Performance posted an epic twitter thread. In it he talks about the need for different types of teaching methods. He stresses the importance of understanding movement and individualizing the teaching of movement patterns. I don’t want to ruin it. It’s so good. Check it out for yourself.
ON THE NEED TO ALLOW TIME TO ADAPT TO STRESSORS
This short video and short description speaks to the idea that no stressor is inherently harmful. Instead, adding too much too quickly to unprepared tissue is what causes injury. “The poison and the antidote lie within the dosage.”
Because I don’t know anyone who is.
Have a great day! And stay tuned for tomorrow's post on The Best Things I've Seen in the world of hititing.