1. Immediately Get Some Quality Nutrition.

People who know nutrition for athletes know that the post-workout window is the most important meal of the day. Proper supplementation after strength training and/or competition gives the body the building blocks to stimulate a positive hormonal response and jumpstart reparative processes. In simpler terms, getting good nutrition after competition allows the body to better heal itself and grow stronger for the next game or practice.

Here’s what you should take:

Something with at least 20 grams of protein and 60 grams of carbohydrate, in a form that you can quickly consume immediately following your departure from the game, not necessarily the game itself.

A 3:1 to 4:1 ratio of carbs-to-protein has been found in research to be the most effective at triggering a positive hormonal response, including a spike in insulin which helps restore depleted muscle glycogen (stored energy) and provide the amino acids necessary to rebuild the traumatized muscles and connective tissues.

This can be a supplement, such as Accelerade, Endurox R4, Biotest Surge; a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of chocolate milk; a whey protein shake and a 32oz gatorade. It could be anything – just look at the nutrition labels and make sure you piece together the 3-4:1 ratio of carbs to protein.

2. Arm Exercises.

This is the best time to get your work in for two reasons:

1. You have the maximum rest before your next outing, so no worry about not being fresh for next game
2. The bloodflow stimulated by arm exercises will send blood and nutrients to the exact areas that were just stressed and traumatized, stimulating a healing response.

Do you need more reasons than that? 2 sets of 12 reps at a medium intensity for your anterior shoulder, scap stabilizers, rotator cuff and forearm is what I recommend. Check my pitchers’ homework category for some of these exercises.

3. Stretch.

The best time to stretch? Again – after your outing. The best time after your outing? After you’ve done your exercises, which has filled your muscles and joints with blood, nutrients and warmth. Sleeper stretch, forearm stretches, and other shoulder stretches are examples of some for the upper body, and the hips, quads and hamstrings are the next priority. Hit everything you used in the game (basically your whole body).

4. Condition.

This could be running, jump rope, AirDyne bike, biking, whatever. It’s good to get increased bloodflow to your whole body after pitching; again, because increasing bloodflow is going to help your body repair itself faster. I say shoot for 10-15 minutes.

Sure, you could do more, but I’d prefer you hit it hard interval-style rather than spend 30-40 minutes spinning continuously. Also, pitching makes you tired, buses leave, parents want you to go home, etc. It’s often not feasible to suggest more than 15 minutes when the rest of the exercises and stretching will take 20-30 of their own. Yeah, Nolan Ryan spent 45 minutes on the bike after his starts, but Nolan Ryan also had a big league clubhouse and no one requiring him to be home at a certain hour.

Lactic Acid removal is NOT on the list of things helped by conditioning after a game – lactic acid is a metabolic waste that is almost immediately removed from the body, and lactic acid is not produced in any significant quantity during pitching, which is a very short anaerobic activity. Have you ever “felt the burn” while sprinting 200 meters or more? Of course you have. Have you ever felt the burn during pitching? No. You haven’t – the movement just isn’t long enough in duration to produce any significant lactic acid. And secondly, even if it did, the body removes it within a few seconds of the exercise ceasing. Soreness in pitching is produced by many factors…lactic acid isn’t one of them.

5. Ice, If Desired.

Does icing your arm make you feel better? Then do it. Does not icing make you feel better? Then don’t do it…unless your orthopedic says you should. This is a bigger topic of debate, which I’ve expounded on in This Post.

The Baseball Gods Reward the Pious.  Dan Blewett

This is a snapshot from a research packet showing the muscular activity of throwing a baseball as a percent of MVC, or Max Voluntary Contraction. MVC is a lab measure of conscious force exertion, and these numbers give us an idea of how active our muscles are relative to our conscious maximal force production. As you can see, the subscapularis fires at 115%…a tremendous amount of force for a single muscle.

Cal Dietz and Kevin Kocos recently ran an article on Elitefts.com describing a type of plyometric training that they called antagonistically facilitated shock training. The concept, while not entirely new, is a neat one. By contracting the opposing musculature (antagonist) to begin the movement, the targeted muscles (agonist) are relaxed and space is created between the floor/bar, depending on what exercise is being performed. Upon contact with the floor/bar, there is a strong eccentric contraction in the agonists (e.g. the pecs, delts and triceps) followed by an explosive reversal of the direction of the movement, as the strong concentric contraction kicks in. The article gives variations for the squat and the bench press

Don’t get me wrong, I love both of these variations, especially for athletes like pitchers where being able to relax and explosively contract the right muscles with good timing is crucial. The squat variation is one that can be used anywhere and even loaded up some

The issues I have with the bench press variation are twofold:

1) this is a movement that requires a spotter who actually knows what they’re doing, which would make it very difficult or impossible to do on your own or at most commercial gyms and

2) even if you did have a spotter, throwing barbells typically doesn’t go over too well at many facilities.

Aside from the access issues, I like the pushup pattern a lot more than the bench press for a number of reasons. It is a closed-chain exercise (hands/feet fixed) that offers more functional carryover for most sports than a bench press (aside from powerlifting). When properly performed, it has greater benefits when it comes to training core and shoulder stability, and it is all around more of a total body exercise.

Enter the AFS pushup:

I’ve already explained why I like this exercise over the bench press, but here are a couple reasons I like it better than a standard clapping pushup.

1) This version of the plyometric pushup is always caught in the proper position at the top. Clapping pushups have added, unnecessary hand and arm motion, increasing the risk of landing in a poor position that may put unneeded stress on the wrist and elbows

2) Clapping pushups are typically performed continuously for medium to high reps or until after fatigue has set in. By pausing between pushups and keeping sets short, power output is maximized with each rep.

As with any plyometric variation, these should ideally be done fresh near the beginning of a workout and broken up into a moderate to high number of sets for low reps. Experiment with 8×3, 6×4 and 5×5 to see what set/rep scheme works best for you. Additionally, you may feel like the load of the pushup is too great to achieve proper explosion. Try elevating your hands on a bench or adjust a barbell on the squat rack to the preferred height – everything else stays the same. Good luck and make sure to check out Dietz and Kocos’ original article over at Elitefts.com

But, until then, I’m going to share an amazing little youtube gem. It’s a satire of Doc Ellis’ LSD No-Hitter.

You gotta go piyutch!

I get a lot of traffic to my site from the search engines, specifically Google. It’s pretty interesting how you can see patterns and I can predict what articles will be popular based on their public familiarity. Here’s a snapshot of my top search engine terms and values assigned to them. I think these were quarterly figures, but I really don’t remember – I took this a picture a little while back.

Go to the search engine and try some of these out – you’ll find I’m on the first page of Google for a lot of them, and am one of the top 3 articles in the highest ones.

Also, look at the pattern – big names, like Gatorade G, Craisins, Asea Water (a supplement that people are now starting to hear and become curious about), Muscle Milk, Blackburns, “Talent is Overrated” (a book that Ben Brewster posted a review about) are what drive the most traffic to my site. People search my name a lot, and funny enough, you can butcher it and spell it a thousand ways of wrong and my site still pops up. THEY KNOW…

Fortunately, Google views my writing as relevant for such topics that are oft written about. The Gatorade G Series is Gatorade’s biggest development in the last few decades, and I’m one of the most relevant articles reviewing it, according to Google; I’m thankful for that.

So, I’m not really sure the algorithm they use, but when I post new things they tend to have the ability to gain a high pagerank with search engines, which in turn boosts my views and I think even furthers my pagerank. It’s a sort of circular system, I guess.

Anyway, if you’re a regular reader you might find this interesting. If not, well, go read some other dude’s lame training blog.

Here is a real-life example of a baseball player who has the signs of S.I.C.K scapula, which can leave the shoulder and elbow in ruins if not treated.

Morgan before: (Look at right shoulder – DRASTICALLY lower than his left)

And here is Morgan again, after I showed him this picture and told him that he needed to d0 the full Blackburn circuit 2x per day, every single day. He’s a hard worker, so he did…

Pretty big difference. He isn’t perfectly symmetrical yet, but has gotten pretty close with just an additional 12 minutes of rehab/prehab per day. Blackburns are the one thing I wouldn’t live without as a baseball player. They perform miracles…