Weighted ball training is a hot topic of debate in the baseball world.  The manufacturers, many pitching coaches, performance coaches, and players all swear by them, claiming it’s a proven way to increase velocity.  Detractors pose that there is an increase injury risk associated with throwing weighted balls.  So, what are we to think?  In this article I’m going to sum up the theory and pros & cons of throwing weighted balls as well as offer my own opinion. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a topic on which I need you, my readers, to give me some feedback. Everyone has their own methods and little tricks to keep their arm fresh.  Some guys hurt more than others, but any high level baseball player finds a way to deal with pains, aches and soreness to make it to the next game.

When my arm feels like tired garbage, I first try to flush it with blood. I do this either by:

1. Running
2. Performing lightweight, high rep exercises for that body part
3. Performing some other sort of conditioning like jumprope or light weight training circuits

If I have those weird little pains, extra soreness or aches, I might hit that area real hard with some soft tissue work.  This means I will roll on it with a foam roller, tennis ball or baseball, hit it with a massage tool, rolling pin, or my good ol’ knuckles.  Whatever the implement, I dig to the trouble spot and try to rub out any knots, and promote new bloodflow to the area.

If my elbow or shoulder, for example, gets extra sore or develops a little pain, I will also tend to crush it with extra prehab.  If my forearm hurts on the top part, I will crush my forearm extensors with wrist rolls, wrist extensions, hand openers, etc.  Again, this is trying to get blood and a new stimulus to the troubled area.

....whatever works

I’m only a believer in ice immediately after throwing, or any traumatic exercise for that matter, and I never ice after an hour has passed from my throwing session – this would slow bloodflow and have the opposite effect I’m looking for.  Ice immediately after an injury or strenuous exercise reduces inflammation, but otherwise it just reduces bloodflow.  I occasionally will use a heating pack to increase bloodflow if I’m really achy, but never the same day as the session that caused the ache.

So, it’s your turn…what do you do to keep yourself on the field and feeling good?  I want your secrets for your arm, but any body part will do!

This is a pretty neat drill that my friend Joe Cusimano showed me today. By grabbing the weighted ball (2lb) as your arm comes through in a pitching motion, you increase demand on your rotator cuff, thus strengthening the muscles that decelerate the arm through the zone.  If you aren’t familiar with said decelerators, read my two posts on Throwing Anatomy (Part 1 and Part 2)

Breakfast and dinner are, in my book, tied for second place as the most crucial meals of the day.  The first, of course, is the post-workout meal, which sets the stage for muscle recovery and growth.  Breakfast and dinner are a close second because they can make or break a diet.  So, let’s compare the two meals and find out what you should be doing to maximize your ability to burn fat and build & protect muscle mass.

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Being injured is tough.  It raises questions in oneself such as, is it really healed? Am I going to re-injure it? Am I going to have to endure another rehab stint, or worse yet, another whole surgery?  Is my career going to end if I hurt it one more time?

All of these gnawing questions plaque every ballplayer who undergone rehab or the surgeon’s knife.  Many get over these fears once they return the mound and are assured by their pain-free performances that problems are safely in their past.  Yet, many players never fully get over this mental hurdle and face decreased performance as they hold back, protecting their body from the 100% effort that they fear will result in further injury.

Thing is, this is no way to live, and certainly no way to play.  It takes a lot of reckless abandon to sprint full speed on a hamstring that has been painfully pulled, or really try to hammer a fastball by someone on an elbow ligament that tore from the bone just a year ago.  Even years down the road from an injury these doubts still persist and can hold a player back from his true potential.  So, how do we get past these mental speedbumps and roadblocks?

This is, unfortunately a tough question to answer.  I think for many, it just takes a gradual approach building confidence in the repair bodypart, with sustained pain-free performance that will ease the mind completely.  This is the path the sensitive person would probably prefer, the guy or gal who doesn’t like to push through pain that might not be indicative of any structural damage.

I make mention of structural damage because it’s an important distinction to make in one’s rehab.  Especially after surgery, the repaired bodypart is never like it used to be, and weird, random pains are a daily occurrence, even well down the road. Thing is, they usually don’t mean a damned thing.  Speaking from experience, I had some pain in my forearm that was unrelated to my Tommy John surgery.  They told me just to keep going, because it wasn’t something worth slowing down for.  Talk to anyone who has undergone surgery, and they most likely received the same advice from their surgeon at some point.

So, some people need to see pain-free results to be convinced to allow themselves to put forth a little more potentially-injurious effort, but others just need to feel their back against the wall…

I had this conversation with my friend Zach Clark, who has enjoyed a great pro career in the Orioles system for the past 5 years.  He worries about his arm sometimes, despite being a number of years out from his last major injury.  With a guy like him, who is only a level away from the Major Leagues, he has more reason than others to protect his arm by holding back.  His career has been maintaining on his current effort level, and an injury would seriously compromise his future.  So, he has a lot to lose and not too much to gain (since he has been successful doing what he has been doing) by trying to a little harder.

But, for a guy like me, who is in post-surgical and post-collegiate limbo, I have much less to lose.  The way I see it, if I hold back to protect myself and only throw, say 88, I jeopardize my attractiveness to scouts and pro coaches.  Yet, if I throw without inhibition, I may (or may only perceive to) put my arm at greater risk.  Now, my arm is certifiably fixed, but remember we’re not talking about reality here, only perception.

Either way, for a guy in my situation with his back against the wall, it’s damned if you hold back or (perceptibly) damned if you don’t.  So, I choose to attempt to reinjure myself with each and every pitch.  Sounds reckless, right?  Well yeah, it is, but not more than any other pitch thrown by any other pitcher at full speed…

A pitcher has to have confidence in himself and his arm to throw at his maximum velocity any and every pitch if he needs to.  So, post-surgery or not, the intent needs to be to throw the shit out of the ball every single time.  Throwing the ball with such intent is what separates pitchers labeled “aggressive” and those labeled “nibblers” or “conservative.” And you don’t have to throw 100 miles per hour to throw your pitches aggressively…

So reason with yourself, and make a deal with your arm if need be.  I’ll give you an example of the deal I made with my elbow a few months ago:

Me: Elbow, I’ll make you a deal: I’m going to abuse you, and I’m going to throw each of my pitches from here on out with the intent to destroy you again.

Elbow: Whats in it for me?

Me: I’m going to give you more strengthening exercises than you could ask for, so that if you get hurt again, it’s your own fault.  I’ll ice, massage and treat you better than any of my past girlfriends.  You’re gonna be taken care of, so you better start taking care of me and my career…

Elbow: That sounds like a lot of work.  Do I have a choice?

Me: No. And f you start hurting and complaining to me, I’m gonna get angry and start throwing even harder out of frustration, because I know there’s nothing actually wrong with you, and that you’re structurally sound and plenty strong to withstand at all.

Elbow: So I should just keep my mouth shut, is what you’re saying, because you’re not gonna stop no matter what I do?

Me: Babies often cry for attention, and I’m done babying you.  Cry all you want, no one will be listening.  I’m not gonna pitch scared anymore.  I’m giving you all the strengthening you could possibly need, so it’s just go time, no questions asked.

Elbow: I hate you, Dan.

Me: I hate you, too, but we’ll be friends again someday.

These are one of my favorites. Not only are they a great posterior chain (glutes, hamstring and lower back) exercise, but they really work the core as well. These are a great excuse to hold heavy things in your hands, which will develop excellent grip strength. Lifting the heavy weight on only one side of the body really recruits the obliques to hold your torso upright.  If you go heavy you will feel that pull on your core immediately.  Keep your chest and eyes up, your lower back flat and use your legs to lift.  If you don’t regularly train your grip, it’s almost surely going to be the limiting factor, as your legs can most likely lift more than just one hand can hold. Good Luck!

Guess what?  Sports are political, especially pro sports.  Thing is, not everyone grasps this concept, and this conversation seems to be had by disgruntled players every other week.  Guess what?  I hate this conversation.  If you wanna talk about politics, go cry to someone else. I’ll be in the weight room, or outside running sprints, or out long-tossing.  Keep talking about how other guys get chances you won’t get; I’ll be out making my own path to the finish line.

Sure, we would all love to be that guy who hits .220 in college and gets 3 years to live the dream in the minors because our dad is the lawyer for the Yankees.  But you know what? That guy knows deep down that he didn’t earn it, and no matter how many chicks he gets under the pretense that he is a “pro,” deep down he knows his own athletic impotence.  I’ll know deep down that anything I obtained was earned.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it hurts that you’re an “honest” one, out there doing your best just to get beaten out of a spot by some guy who knows more influential people than you do.  Thing is, though, you don’t deserve it more than a lot of people, you know, people who work harder than you.  You just got lucky by having a good arm, or a good bat, one that you maybe didn’t deserve any more than the promotion that other guy got.

So let’s all stop crying.  I don’t cry about how I’m 5′11, right-handed, 24 years old and missed my last season because of surgery.  I don’t give a shit that I’m gonna get passed up by guys who won’t be as good, but who received more money than I, or who were granted a favor by an executive.  It’s gonna happen, I know it, but I can’t control it.  I control ME.  That’s it, and I make sure I’ve got everything in order.  Even then, whenever I start feeling entitled to something, I check myself, because I am naturally gifted compared to a lot of average joes and I’m pretty sure I didn’t earn my genetics.

You know who has this conversation the most?  The guys who work the least.  The guys who don’t do anything for the first 5 months of the offseason then jump on the bench press with a month to go.  These are also the guys who will quit and blame their loss of passion for the game on the politics.  But the guys who put their heads down, take care of themselves and just WORK,  they understand that they’re leaving it all out on the field or the weight room every day. Sure, they care that they get passed over, but hard work is honorable, and you just can’t hold people down who refuse the life of mediocrity, refuse to blame the world for their failures, and refuse to quit when faced with adversity.

I think I invented this one, but who knows if this hasn’t been done before.  Genius aside, I really liked how this works.  It trains your forearm in resisting a moving weight by activating the muscles that are responsible for radial and ulnar deviation. Ulnar deviation is the last movement of the forearm as a baseball bat flies through the zone, and the motion of the curveball also utilizes this plane of forearm motion. You can also hold the barbell off-center, which makes it much, much more difficult.

This exercise requires a partner, a barbell and some grip strength.  Choose a weight that you can hold without the added motion for 20-40 seconds, and do sets until your grip gets crushed (3-5 sets will do it, depending on the weight and your strength).

I’m fortunate to live by Han Ah Reum, affectionately known as H-Mart, which is an asian supermarket.  I frequented this place all during college mostly for the cheap meat and exotic produce, but found that the greatest gift the store had to offer was the feeble attempts at english translation on their packaging.

Understand that I’m not belittling the asian population, but rather the corporations that don’t find it necessary to proofread their translated packaging by even a single native english speaker.  I would love to offer my editing services to these distant food companies, but alas, there’s no shot in shit they would understand my english email, and no shot in shit I would understand their response.

So without further ado, here are a few products currently on H-Mart’s shelves, all of which made me laugh loudly (In English).

What a coincidence! I was just in the market for a nut bar with more well-being

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Yesterday Ben asked me if I wanted to post some inspirational videos.  I told him I was the wrong man for the job.  You see, I don’t watch sports movies.  I don’t seek out inspirational videos.  I don’t like to be inspired by the doings of others.  I like to just keep on going.

I appreciate others sending me videos of this sort, and I watched one by Will Smith that my friend Tim O’Brien sent me.  I liked what Will said, but the thing is, that stuff just doesn’t get to me anymore.  Waiting to develop into a pro caliber ballplayer has taken significant effort nearly every single day of the last 6 years of my life. Because I have realized that change takes time, and I can’t throw 1000 pitches in a day to perfect things all at once, I have to go to sleep and wait until the next morning arrives, so I can get after it once more.

The video Ben posted yesterday, I won’t even watch it.  My motivation comes from within – the hurt inside me that has been caused by my dreams moving away from me seemingly at the same pace that I claw toward them.

But no matter what, I just wake up and get to it.  I do as much as I can for one day, and then I rest so that it all sets, making me a little better than even that previous morning.

Yet, through all this time of training and waiting, I am inspired by a few other things from within, and I’ll share them with you…

• The day I throw in front of a scout, have it together, and get signed afterward.  I see it clearly in my mind, down to to the venue and the individual pitches.  It’s already happened and will happen; thing is, it just hasn’t yet happened.
• The People I Know Who Believe If Anyone, I can. If I quit, then who else is left to be the example of what can happen when you refuse to quit?  I’d be just like every other mediocre person on this planet.  I have one life to live, and going after things until they get really hard, then quitting, would be a horseshit way to be.  I’m the guy who will keep going and won’t quit, even when everyone else thinks it’s time to hang em up and call it a career.  Other guys in the bigs have done it, and quite frankly, I think I’m stronger willed than even they.  One more day is one more day to improve, so hanging on can only better my chances.
• “The final chapters are yet to be written.” My strength coach, Fred Cantor, said this to me one day in the weight room as I explained to him how my opening day start didn’t go well, despite my preparation and optimism.  I rarely break composure, but I was on the verge of losing it at this point.  He doesn’t show it in the same way as others, but I know he is one of my biggest fans.  What he said was subtle, but it stuck, and I kept it mind as I continued to control my own destiny.
• “A Resolute Man Will Find A Way” This is my favorite phrase ever uttered by a human being, and it was said to me in an email by my favorite philosophy professor, Roye Templeton.  I had written to him telling him about my poor performance and elbow surgery, because the last time we had spoken there was optimism of me being drafted if the season went well.

My senior year in college, at a bar, I was introduced to a senior female athlete who I had seen in the athletics department for 4 years but never spoken to.  She said, “You’re the guy who trains really, really hard.”  I said that it might have been me.

It was one of my most proudest moments.

resolute |ˈrezəˌloōt; -lət|adjectiveadmirably purposeful, determined, and unwavering