Archive for July, 2009
July 22nd, 2009 | 
Author: Above all, I am trying to write about what I know, and I know how to squeeze more velocity out of an unexceptional arm.
How do I know this? Because I have an unexceptional arm, and I’ve done a lot of squeezing. I learned how to get the absolute best out of it, and for me, I believe the best is yet to come.
As a high school senior I pitched at 78-81. As a college sophomore I pitched at 85-89. By Junior year (before my elbow went) I was sitting at 89-92.
Thing is, I’m not special. I just had good coaching, a great strength and conditioning coach, and a terrible, desperate desire to throw harder and develop into a good pitcher, one worthy of a chance at pro ball. Read the rest of this entry »
You may have heard of the Y-T-W-L circuit, which develops scapular stability by strengthening the shoulders and upper back. Scapular stability is of the utmost importance for overhead throwing athletes like pitchers. Talk to someone with healthy shoulders, and they probably have been using the YTWL.
Yet despite it’s popularity, the YTWL circuit is often done improperly, and actually contains some movement patterns that aren’t useful: specifically, the W.
My shoulder routine has consisted of the YTWL for a few years, coupled with an additional standing shoulder/rotator cuff circuit. However, for the YTWL, it is time for a upgrade, and that is why I have made the switch to the YTLP.
My friend Nick Tumminello at Performance University has been evaluating the YTWL for a while now, and has done a series of videos on how to perform his newly developed L-Y-T-P circuit perfectly, many of which are featured below. Read some of his other great training articles on this page.
Nick has made a lot of changes to the circuit, which I am going to highlight in this article. The biggest is a call to eliminate the W pattern, which he swaps for the (P)ivot Prone. Rest assured, adopting the new circuit is going to give you stronger shoulders and more scapular stability than you’ve ever had before, even if you’ve already been doing the YTWL.
Steroids get a bad rap in sports, and rightfully so. After all, they give athletes an edge over their competition, and can subsequently take jobs away from “clean” athletes who are physically overmatched by “dirty” athletes.
Yet, a fundamental reason we spectators watch athletics is to witness, and vicariously share in and celebrate, the limits and athletic prowess of the human body.
This is one reason the Olympics has forever been successful, despite the fact that it often features sports that are obscure to the masses for the better part of 4 years.
Thing is, increases in human performance are beginning to taper down as we reach our genetic potential. Back in the 1900s one could break a world record in the 100m dash by a half second. Now, world records are lowered only by the hundredth, maybe a tenth if we are lucky.
Where is the fun in that? We can no longer go out and see something we haven’t (basically) seen before. If not for the actual stopwatches, no one would know the speed difference between Usain Bolt or Carl Lewis if not running against each other, because the speed difference that translates to even a huge 1/2 second difference in the 100m is likely not perceivable by the human eye.
And sure, sports have incredible value beyond just the limits of a singular performance, but thats not what is at issue here. I’m talking about the single physical events: the sprint, the distance of the homer, the throw, the swim. These are objective, relevant and salient without mention of other competitors.
Thus, I would like to make an appeal for the greatness of steroids on the grounds that they allow us to continue to explore the limits of the human body, knowing that our natural genetic potential for athletic feats will one day, if not already, be tapped without them. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently had a run-in during a game, in which I threw behind (I missed) a batter who had gotten a hit off of me earlier and then ran his mouth about how easy I was to hit. A brawl nearly ensued, but he didn’t feel safe coming all the way out to me. Understandable. Read the rest of this entry »
Most good things in life can arise from something bad. So is the case with Tommy John surgery. TJ is unique among major arm surgeries in that it potentially provides a greater than 100% recovery. Getting to 100% or above, however, is a matter of capitalizing on the time off, and making the most of a bad situation.
So here I’ve compiled a list of the top 5 good things one can get out of a little elbow-slicing action… Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been familiar with foam rolling and myofascial release for a few years now, starting when I was told I had a lot of inflexibility that needed to go away. If you’re unfamiliar with myofascial release, check out this article. It’s from wikipedia, but it gives a pretty thorough overview. Basically, though, you maneuver yourself over a foam roller, which compresses the tissues beneath, allowing for connective tissue (fascia) restrictions to loosen. This includes trigger points, which gives a lot of people chronic pain.
I hadn’t done much of it recently, but felt motivated to get back into it. And having experienced good things with it in the past, I made some time after a workout.
I figured I would write a post of milestones of post-surgical activities, as that is a pretty common question people have. I asked other guys all the time when they could do this or that, so here you go. Some of these I can’t remember exactly, so bear with me.
Out of sling: 2 days
Stopped taking painkillers: 1 day
Started forearm rehab: 1 week
Full Range of motion: 3 weeks Read the rest of this entry »
Pitchers and baseball players in general have an interesting sport to prepare for. Team sports like soccer, lacrosse (if you consider it a real sport), hockey, basketball all require a good amount of stamina, as they require nearly constant motion. The needs in those sports is somewhere in between anaerobic and aerobic. Baseball and football are different from the others, and similar to each other as both are played in short, high-intensity bursts followed by rest intervals between plays.
Interesting thing is, though, that pitchers have historically been part-time distance runners, doing tremendous amounts of sustained running between outings. The validation for this practice was that pitchers needed strong and enduring legs to go deep into games.
While it’s true that during a 7-inning outing a pitcher will be pitching over the better portion of two hours, he isn’t doing it in one sustained effort.
Rather, any pitching performance is broken down into half-inning intervals of pitching and rest, which is further broken down into shorter intervals between each batter, and then even shorter intervals between each pitch.
Training is supposed to make the athlete better prepared for game situations. If we want a pitcher to best prepare himself for his act of pitching, then it doesn’t make sense to perform sustained cardio work between starts. Rather, pitchers should be condition like they play: by working in intervals. Read the rest of this entry »