This post from our Coaches Series was written by Justin James, Assistant Coach at University of California, San Diego. He took over there in January 2017, having coached the previous two seasons at Point Loma Nazarene University. 

I took over the pitching staff at UC San Diego in early January 2017. We would go on to post a 44-19 overall record, runner-up in CCAA Conference Tournament, win the NCAA Division II West Regional, win 4 games in the D2 World Series, and finish as the National Runners-up. The finish matched the best in program history, while the 44 wins were second-most of all time. Our staff produced a final team earned run average of 3.67, 24th in the nation, fourth in the West Region, and third-best in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA).

The staff posted six shutouts, tying the CCAA lead. All four of the complete games and both of the individual shutouts came during the NCAA Championship/Postseason. Kyle Goodbrand moved on and was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays.

In a previous blogpost I wrote, we covered how I was going to implement the pitching plan and the Driveline approach. To say it worked would be an understatement. With that being said, it took trust, also known as buy in, from everyone on staff. Does that always happen? No. However, within the first month of implementation and explaining the “why” while letting the individual pitchers re-organize themselves with guidance and a plan, the improvement took off. Our Driveline approach has given me the most peace of mind in three main areas: Health, development and adjustability.

Health

As we all know, health is a major concern with all athletes but especially pitchers currently. Prior to joining the staff here, we had a few guys banged up with various degrees of elbow discomfort, which is not uncommon with a pitching staff. As the season went on, we lost one of our starters who previously had TJS for a total of a one week period, and we took a very cautious approach since it was only halfway through the year at the time. We eventually had a pitcher with a disk problem that sidelined him all spring, but other than that, we were healthy and durable.

Although there are always many factors in health and injury, our daily Driveline protocols made a profound difference. Several previously injured staff members mentioned several times their arms had never felt better. In fact, they increased their previous workloads, and in some cases doubled their time on the mound. From there it was all about tweaking the intensity, volume, and overall plan to meet each individual’s needs. Durability, strength, and health played a large part in our team’s success, without a doubt. In the post season, our starters averaged 7.13 innings per start with no missed starts, including 4 CGs (2 in WS). Being able to go deep in big-time games against the best offensive clubs in the country was a testament to their daily training.

Pitching needs to be the strongest late in the season and peak at the right time. The chart below shows our improvement and sustained velos of our whole staff and a few individuals who showed significant gains as our season went into June. As you can see, we improved or at least held our ground when it counted most.

Development

Adjustability

Whether at a new new or familiar school, there are going to be many challenges for coaches and players: for example, weather, fatigue, class schedule, road trips, and more. You need to start with a solid foundational plan to work off of in order to make adjustments—sometimes on the fly.

I started off with a 7-day foundational plan that we’ve based everything off of (You can tweak your specific needs and wants from the HTKC sample programs). Our guys by the end of the first month were familiar with the daily routine and didn’t want to go back to the old way of preparing, warming up, cooling down, or recovering. I knew we were in good shape when that was happening. No matter what the situation was, our guys bought into getting their work in no matter where they were or what was going on. Here are a few proud moments as examples. It would have been easy to just wait till tomorrow to get their work in…instead they adjusted on the fly.

Another adjustment had to occur when we were on the road. Since we couldn’t fly with five shoulder tubes or plyo walls, we used 2-4-lb. plyoballs for Shoulder Oscillations. Also, after getting advice from Travis Hergert at NIACC, we purchased three gymnastic mats for portable plyo walls. (These were initially held up by hooks that ripped but fixed with Jaeger Bands!) We simply hooked/constrained the mat over chain link to make sure we got our daily plyos in without destroying the home team’s field or fence. I was, and am, hesitant to ever go against someone else’s windscreen or padded wall without permission, so this gymnastics pad became a part of our road-gear assignments.

Finally, we had to be flexible and adjust our mandatory movement preps. At home, we use three different hurdle warmups for flexibility and mobility. On the road, we can’t travel real hurdles, so we simply bring ten cones that simulate a hurdle and use some cues to insure the movement is done correctly and with the intended full range of motion. Here are a few examples of adjusting on the road…

Our pitching program uses many aspects of the Driveline training approach. It’s a holistic approach to training healthy pitchers—with not one element being more important than another. Our staff trusted that the dynamic warm-up all the way to the cool down after throwing were vital to their success. Even when we didn’t know what the future held, we stayed diligent and consistent.

Looking back on the past six months of the season, it’s obvious that this approach worked for our pitching staff. We stayed healthy, competed at the highest level, developed and improved as the season went on, and more importantly created consistent habits that all pitchers should possess. Our staff felt stronger and more durable than ever before when it counted the most. Relievers bounced back quicker and were more consistent because of it. Our starters were better prepared to go deeper into games that mattered and could execute even after the long season of innings had piled up. They simply all greatly improved themselves because of the daily approach and protocols.  

The post Coaches Series: Review of First Year Implementation appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

We have been using the motusBASEBALL Sensor to great success over the last year, and it has been able to bring biomechanics measurement from the lab to the amatuer coach and player.

Because of our success using the motusBASEBALL Sensor, we felt it would be helpful to provide some more information on how we’ve used the sensor so far.

Is the Motus Accurate?

During the 2016 Saber Seminar, Mike Reinold presented that the motusBASEBALL Sensor has an intra-class correlation (ICC) value of 0.99 for valgus/varus torque vs stress when compared with the American Sports Medicine Institute’s lab in Birmingham, AL. We have since confirmed those findings with Glenn Flesig, head of ASMI biomechanics research.

There is also a validation study comparing the motusBASEBALL Sensor readings to the readings of a marker-based biomechanical laboratory. The study found that the motusBASEBALL readings were within 5% of the marker-based laboratory readings.

So we have evidence that the motusBASEBALL Sensor is valid when compared to different labs. Testing is scheduled for Q4 2017 – Q1-Q2 2018 in the Driveline Research Lab as well. We hypothesize that there will be differences in magnitude at the high end, but that the general trend of valgus stress will hold.

Setting Up the Account

Besides the sensor, you are going to need a phone to run Motus’s app and a sleeve to put the sensor in.

There are two options for setting up profiles to collect readings: a player’s account and a coach’s account. Both operate under the same guidelines, but the coach’s account allows you to track data for multiple athletes.

If you are opening a player account, then you only need to pair with a motusBASEBALL Sensor once.

If you have a coach’s account, you will need to pair a sensor with each new athlete you create. It’s a straightforward process that doesn’t take much more than a minute to set up for each athlete.

Wearing the Sleeve

First off, it’s important that you wear a sleeve that tends more towards fitting too tight rather than too loose.

The motusBASEBALL Sensor is accurate when it’s worn in the right spot and stays there.

A looser sleeve leaves open the possibility that the device may move when an athlete throws. A looser sleeve can cause the sensor to rotate in place or slide down or around the side of the forearm. Any of these issues will cause the readings to fluctuate.

Since the arm moves incredibly fast during pitching, it’s best when we know for sure that the sensor stays in the same spot.

After you find a sleeve of the appropriate size, then you’re going to want to make sure that the sensor is in the correct position.

Remember the sensor is only going to give valid readings when it is positioned and used as intended.

The proper placement for the sleeve is two-finger widths below the medial epicondyle (think funny bone) of the elbow. If a pitcher is standing with his arm stretched out and his palm facing upwards, the sensor should be on the medial side of his forearm.

There is also a short video under the ‘help’ section of the Motus app that explains how to properly put on the sleeve.

Picture from the Motus app, showing proper placement of the motusBASEBALL sensor.

What Do the Readings Mean

The top metric on the app, Stress, has been validated in one lab measuring peak valgus elbow torque and has a 0.99 intra-class correlation to ASMI’s torque measurements. This is the torque (or stress) that occurs on the elbow during a throw. As noted before, we still don’t know the exact relationship between elbow stress and injury risk. 

The Arm Speed metric gives a measurement of angular velocity of the forearm. Because the sensor sits on the forearm, it isn’t a direct correlation to internal rotation or elbow extension measurements you would get from a biomechanics lab.

This means that some athletes who heavily pronate, on 2-seam fastballs or changeups, can read higher arm speed than 4-seam fastballs because of the emphasis of “turning over” the forearm.

The Arm Slot is the measure of the angle of the forearm makes with ground. A direct, sidearm motion would read as zero degrees, a true three-quarters arm slot would read at 45 degrees.

The Shoulder Rotation metric is the maximum angle that the forearm externally rotates during the throw. This is also measured from the ground, so there will be some differences in shoulder rotation between throwing off a mound and throwing off of flat ground.

Arm Slot and Shoulder Rotation are the two metrics that are going to be most sensitive if the sensor rotates in the sleeve because they are both measured in relation to the ground.

Weighted Baseballs, Height and Weight

You are going to want to change the ball weight if you are throwing with weighted balls and the height and weight of each athlete.

Changing the weight of the ball being thrown is done by “tagging” the pitch, which is also used to mark certain pitches for later reference.

If the throws are tagged with an underload or overload ball, it will affect the values from the sensor, so the user must make sure that the tagging is accurate.

A pitcher throwing a baseball under different weighted ball tags.

Changing the height and weight of the athlete, in addition to handedness, is done within the account being used on the app. After selecting the account name on the top of the screen, there are several athlete attributes that can be adjusted.

Imputing an athlete’s height and weight: 6′ 1″ 211

Same athlete, now listed at 6′ 7″ 211

This is going to change the readings because studies have shown that both height and weight have a relationship to arm torque. We have mentioned this before in previous articles, but taller athletes are most likely going to have longer arms when compared to shorter athletes, which is going to cause different readings in a lab.

This is also the main reason why torque and arm-speed measurements in biomechanics labs (valgus torque, internal rotation and elbow extension) change with age. Athletes grow taller and their arms grow longer, which means that elbow torque and arm speeds change. So the Motus app accounts for these differences.

Collecting the Data

When an athlete is wearing the sensor in a training environment, it is a best practice to check in with him every few pitches to make sure the sensor hasn’t moved.

The app will keep a log of the metrics that the sensor provides, but it is unable to calculate the miles per hour of the throw.

If you are looking to collect the velocity of each, or certain, throws, then it is best to have a computer and spreadsheet to track the velocities. We find it easiest to write down the velocity of each throw and the motusBASEBALL Sensor metrics at once. We find this easy to do in Google Docs but it can be done in any spreadsheet.

If you aren’t interested in the velocity of each throw, you can look at the measurements of each by clicking on the chart button under the workload tab. It can be difficult to distinguish which throw matches up with which measurement, but tagging different throws can help with this. The chart can also give you a good idea of the changes that occurred over the course of a bullpen.

If metrics seem to change drastically from throw to throw, this is most likely coming from movement of the sleeve. If the sleeve falls down the arm, all of the readings will change. If the sensor somehow rotates in its slot, then the Arm Slot and Shoulder Rotation measurements will change.

This is why it is so important to monitor the athlete wearing the sleeve to make sure it has the proper placement.

We’ve enjoyed using the motusBASEBALL Sensor in house and we look forward to continuing using it in the future.

This article was co-written by Research Associate Michael O’Connell and Research Intern Kyle Lindley

The post How to Use the Motus Sleeve appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

This summer we wanted to research one of the more commonly implemented ways to practice pitching: flatground work. Flatground work is often seen as a less stressful way to practice not only mechanics but also work on command and offspeed pitches.

We wanted to investigate this while using the motus Sleeve. To do so, we took 25 athletes, recorded 6 flat-ground throws then compared the velocity and stress to those athletes throwing in our live ABs. All athletes were instructed to throw their flatground throws at 70-80% intensity, and live ABs simulated game-like intensity. The 6 flat-ground throws were compared to the 6 fastest fastballs from live ABs.

This gave us a sample that compared a common practice setting (flatgrounds) to a game situation (live ABs).

We expected that velocity and stress would decrease during the flatground throws in a way that mStress would be similar between flatground and live ABs.

We’ve explained how we use the motus Sleeve here and it has been validated with ASMI’s lab, which you can read more about here.

Data

On average, each athlete threw flatgrounds 10 mph slower than on the mound, and the average stress decreased by 3 Newton metres (Nm). Taking velocity into account, with mStress, we can see that flatground throws ranked higher than pitching off the mound.

We’ve further define mStress here, the calculation is (Stress/Velocity*100) and it is intended to normalize the stress with velocity. You can also find the full flatground data set here.

Whether flatgrounds are more, less, or the same stress as live ABs depends on what measurement you prefer. When examining Nm (or Torque on the elbow), flatgrounds are less stressful than throwing off the mound. But, by normalizing the stress for velocity (mStress), then flatgrounds become slightly more stressful than pitching off a mound.

This was an unexpected finding, the assumption by many players and coaches is that the stress on an athlete’s arm would linearly decrease (or increase) with velocity, regardless of velocity. This data, especially the mStress metric, contradicts that belief.

15 of our pitchers had higher elbow torques when throwing during live abs, which means 10 pitchers had higher elbow stress when throwing off of flatground. Not at all what we were expecting.

Taking velocity into account, we saw 20 pitchers had higher mStress on flatground than on the mound.

Our best hypothesis for this would be a lack of movement efficiency on flat ground, athletes should be practicing to have their best movement on the mound, since that is where they compete. This, combined with the evidence that stress doesn’t linearly decrease or increase with velocity, is the main reason why athletes would experience higher stress on flatground throws.

Study Limitations

The majority of this data was collected within a few days of an athlete’s schedule. Because of scheduling issues, two were collected on the same day that the athletes threw live and two were two weeks apart.

Halfway through the data collection, we had to switch radar guns because our original Stalker Pro 2 malfunctioned, so we continued data collection with a Stalker Sport 2. We don’t believe that this change significantly affected the results, and both of these issues are marked in our spreadsheet with the data.

Research on Flatground Throws

The most relevant paper to this study is “Biomechanical Comparison of the Interval Throwing Program and Baseball Pitching.” The study had 29 college baseball players throw off a mound and at various flatground distances, essentially from flatgrounds to long-toss.

The researchers found that throwing from flatground at 18m (roughly 60 feet) resulted in “essentially identical biomechanical loads compared with pitching at full effort from the mound.” This is surprising considering flatground throwing produced significantly decreased velocity (82% of maximum). The researchers in the study suggest that this may indicate lower throwing efficiency from flatground. This may be true, and obviously pitchers are training to be in sync on the mound instead of on flatground.

Both this study and our results suggest that the differences between flatground and mound work are much smaller than believed.

Another study with results similar to ours was on adolescent baseball players. Looking at youth athletes from ages 9-14, the researchers found that pitching on a mound resulted in 33.3 Nm of torque on the elbow while throwing on flatground was 31.4 Nm, a relatively small but significant difference similar to what we saw with our own data.

Youth athletes experience less torque, therefore, there cannot be a direct comparison to our data because we use college athletes. Regardless, it is still an interesting observation.

Coaching Applications

There are a couple notable points that come to mind when looking at this data and how it can help coaches and players approach practice differently.

Intensity of Throwing

Athletes are not great at monitoring their own intent levels. At times, radar guns can be used to give athletes limitations: for example, saying they can’t throw over a certain velocity. We’ve used this in specific rehab settings, but it can also be used for light bullpen and flatground work.

Since the large majority of baseball bullpens and flatgrounds are thrown without a radar gun, we find athletes are often throwing harder than they think. We used a radar gun during our study and still found higher than expected velocities.

This means that if you tell athletes to throw flatgrounds at 70-80% intensity, there is a good chance that they are throwing harder than 70-80%.

Some may assume that 75% intent may be close to 75% velocity but that is highly unlikely. When you write out what the actual percentages of an athlete’s peak velocity, this starts to make more sense. Actual velocity percentages of peak velocity are, most likely, much lower than what people expect.

To help put this in perspective we also made a video comparing various velocities.

Throws from approximately 60 MPH to 85 MPH, increasing at 5 MPH increments.

Throwing at 75% of their actual velocity looks incredibly slow. This gif is a throw at 85.9 and at 65.9, which is between 75-80%  of a ‘max’ velocity of 85.9.

Realistically, pitchers and coaches probably aren’t looking for pitchers to actually throw 75-80% of their max velocity, they are looking to throw at 75-80% effort. Which is perfectly fine, but 75% intent doesn’t mean you are experiencing 75% of the torques on your arm.

The previously mentioned “Biomechanical Comparison of the Interval Throwing Program and Baseball Pitching” also looked at perceived effort of throwing off of a mound and found that athletes not only have difficulty performing at a perceived effort level, but even if velocity has decreased, the torques on the arm may not. (This isn’t a direct comparison because it was only throwing off a mound, but it’s the closest we have currently.)

When pitchers were told to throw at 60% effort from the mound, they generated 75% elbow torque and were throwing at 84% of the velocity of a full-effort pitch. At 80% effort, pitchers were generating 90% elbow torque and 90% of the velocity of a full-effort pitch.

This clearly has some interesting implications for training, mainly that when told to train at a certain effort level, pitchers are most likely to experience greater torque (and throw at high velocities) than believed.

Looking at the numbers in our study, we see that even though we told all of our pitchers to throw at 70-80% intensity, they ended up throwing 89% of their max on average. 

Our athletes threw their flatground throws at a wide range of percentages compared to their mound velocity: from 97% at the high end and 79% at the low end. So even though we recommended a range, only 1 out of our 25 athletes actually threw within that range.

The question then becomes, do we actually want pitchers to throw at certain percentages of their velocity? Or are coaches comfortable continuing to suggest athlete’s throw at a percentage of intent level, with the understanding that they will most likely be throwing harder than expected.

Training Economy

No throw an athlete makes is free, and everything has a training-economy cost. Even though the intention of many flatground practices is to do something nice and easy, what happens in practice doesn’t line up with that intention. Like we covered above, pitchers are often throwing harder than they believe and consequently incurring a higher training cost.

While the cost isn’t as high as pitching in a game, it’s certainly higher than thought. This doesn’t mean that we have to eliminate or drastically change how athletes throw flatgrounds, but since pitchers throwing them are incurring a higher training cost, adjustments should be made in the surrounding schedule for more recovery work.

Coaches and athletes shouldn’t see the flatgrounds as “no cost” when compared to the bullpen.

One piece of information we don’t have that would be helpful is data on a low-intensity bullpen, which we will look into in the future, both with the motus Sleeve and our Biomechanics lab.

Knowing the differences between flatgrounds, low-intensity mound work, and in-game stress levels opens up a more specific and data-driven approach to planning practices and monitoring workloads.

Conclusion

Our data combined with peer-reviewed research suggests that flatground throws are equal or slightly less stressful than pitching off a mound. If you take velocity into account with our own data by the mStress metric, then flatgrounds become more stressful.

This strongly contradicts the widely held belief that flatground work, if thrown at lower velocities, if significantly less stressful than throwing on the mound. For example, if an athlete is throwing at 80% effort on flatground, he should be experiencing 80% of his max stress or less. 

The belief that percentage of effort is equal to percentage of stress is most likely not true, and the data provides us with growing evidence that stress does not increase or decrease linearly with velocity.

More research needs to be done on different practice scenarios (such as low-intent mound work), but it is important to remember that every throw has a cost, and every training program should be wary of that when creating an athlete’s schedule.

This article was written by Research Associate Michael O’Connell, the data was collection by Research Interns Kyle Lindley and Anthony Brady

The post Comparing Flat Ground to Mound Elbow Torques appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

If you’ve read Coaching Hitting Mechanics, you have a good idea of our methods for coaching hitters. Some of the staples are overload and underload training, environmental and physical constraints, variability, and overspeed. Coaching hitters is a field that is typically guided by conventional wisdom and tradition. We, however, have aimed to develop this training system by applying principles of skill development and motor learning. It has generated a lot of intrigue, but a response I get often from coaches is “I like it, but how can I implement this into my team practice?”

So, considering the Fall is starting up, I’m going to write this blog as if I were personally advising a first year coach at a low-budget college in designing their hitting program. 

At Driveline, we have a large budget, with a HitTrax and all the tech and toys we want. But I also began my coaching career at a small NAIA (Menlo College) with virtually no budget, so I know how tough it can be and how creative coaches have to become when designing practice. While having all the tech and the toys is extremely helpful, it is definitely not a necessity. 

Hopefully this blog can serve as a guide or at the very least, give you an idea or two that you can implement into your own practice planning. Thanks for reading!

Culture

Development

We have bi-weekly exit-velocity testing, and it is pretty easy to implement it into a practice setting. Here is the ideal situation: you have access to a HitTrax, Trackman, Rapsodo or FlightScope system that you can use twice a month. If not, there are options. At Menlo, we used a radar gun, but this method has its limitations.

Using a Radar Gun to track Exit Velocity:

In order for the data to be reliable and precise, it must be structured in the following way:

1. Only balls hit within this area on the screen were kept, because the radar gun was pointed down this line.

This is the only way to ensure that the data is relatively accurate

*Because of cosine error, balls hit at various trajectories will not read accurately on the radar gun. See Video:

-A ball hit at a 12 degree launch angle reads 84.3 MPH on the radar gun and 84.3 MPH on the HitTrax.

-A ball hit at a 26 degree launch angle to right field reads at 56.1 MPH on the radar gun, but it is actually 86.5, as measured by HitTrax.

2.  Give each hitter two rounds of 12 and take their best EV.

3. Re-Test in two weeks. And be sure they are using the same type of bat (wood or BBCOR).

This will accomplish a few things:

–Help motivation: Objective feedback is a very powerful tool. The feedback most hitters are used to receiving is the coach’s saying “yeah that looks better!” They’ve been hearing that from every coach in every lesson since they were five. However, when its objective and public, it is very powerful. Furthermore, getting “wins” in training is extremely motivating. When an athlete after two weeks sees that he has gained 3 mph of exit velocity, it validates his hard work, and he will know that the training works. We love talking about how failure and #haters drive us, but what’s often forgotten is that success and progress are very motivating.

–Create Accountability: Players will be more hesitant to slack in the weight room or in training if they know they are retesting every two weeks and that the numbers are important to the coach. Whether coaching high school or college athletes, hitters should not be getting worse over time. They are growing and getting stronger at a rapid rate. Long term, you should be seeing improvements. This holds the trainer (you) and the trainees accountable. If someone isn’t getting better, or is getting worse, you’ll know and can start to look into why: ineffective training? Injury? Lack of sleep/recovery? Diet? etc.

A coach can track this data easily with Google Sheets

I would also encourage that you share the data with the team, and showcase your leaders.

I’d post the top 10, and I would have public all-time record boards. We have a “105 MPH club,” and it gives players, especially younger guys, something to look up to. It was elite company, players are proud to be in it, and it is a big deal when someone gets in.

For High School I’d suggest a 95 MPH Club, and for college, a 100 MPH Club.

You can also have records for other cage games you have. For example: most consecutive line drives between a launch angle of 10-30. (This rewards consistency, and also gives athletes with a lower EV something attainable.) You can use launch angle strings in your cage to help with this.

Some new launch angle guides look better with the AZ sunset pic.twitter.com/aKYL4ozCiq

— ZBI (@Zona_Baseball) December 14, 2016

You can use basic trigonometry to figure out where to put the strings depending on the dimensions of your cage. Consult with your team math whiz. 

Another powerful leaderboard would be “Most Improved,” because it rewards development.

Ours is named the “Unlock Leaderboard,” this board displays improvements made in exit velocity with various implements. As you can see, this board has been dominated by Steve “Dirty Dog” Papps.

Having various leaderboards will give everyone something attainable to strive for. Some hitters will never hit the ball 105 mph, and it’s not their fault. We run faster when we are chasing something, but we run slower once we know we’ll will never catch it. Give everyone something to work towards. Having external goals that are objective and measurable will be great in building a competitive environment.

As far as individual data tracking, I would use Google Sheets as well. You can access it from your phone and create charts very easily.

Using Google Drive, you can create an individual folder for each one of your athletes, and it is very organized and easy to use.

Within Drive, you can create a folder for each athlete. If you aren’t familiar with Drive, here’s a walk through:

Now that each hitter has a folder, you can share it with them and do a number of things. 

Use the sheet for prescription of daily personal drills, notes, and data tracking

Competition

I would aim to create a training environment that encouraged the athletes to push themselves to the limit. Growth rarely occurs within a comfort zone, and that is surely the case when refining skill.

The first song I ever learned on piano was “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” I tried learning “Fur Elise” next. I kept failing, so I just played some more “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Well, I never got any better at piano, and eventually quit. What’s the point? Most hitter’s practice is “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

I’d be sure they knew that in your program, failure in practice is not only inevitable, it is required. Get used to it. I believe it is the best method to achieve mastery in your skill.

This helps develop mental resiliency as well. Baseball players need to learn to fail constructively and publicly because this is part of baseball. They will have great moments in their careers, but the game will also humiliate and humble them over and over. That is the nature of this great game. And it’s much harder to fail in-season when you’ve never failed in practice.  

We are ego-driven, and nobody likes to fail in front of friends and teammates. It requires a bit of vulnerability, and a challenging practice can reveal and develop the maturity of each athlete.

It takes time to establish this aspect of your culture, but as a coach, it is important to embrace failure. Get fired up by hitters’ pushing the boundaries and getting dominated. Be bored and unamused by hitters’ playing it safe. “So you can rake my 40 mph BP, cool.” Soon enough, your hitters will catch on and realize how much fun it is to be challenged. We should get excited when athletes push the boundaries of their performance, and bored when they hover in their comfort zones. One of my prouder moments was when an athlete said “coach this BP is too easy, I’m hitting too well. Can you make it harder?”

A basic model to follow in designing training would be:

Examples:

High Growth/Low Performance: The athletes do not perform well. There is failure, and skills are chiseled and refined. The motor system is challenged, and high growth occurs. Add psychological pressure as well, especially as you get closer to season.

• High Velocity (machine, bp, front toss)
• High variability in pitch type
  • Coach-pitched simulated game
  • Varied speed front toss
• High variability in implement
  • Overload/underload bats
  • Bats of varying lengths
  • Hitting Plyos

High Performance/High Pressure: Task is relatively easy, but there is pressure to succeed. Pressure can come from coaches, teammates and self. Put something on the line. Losing team does field work, conditioning, or whatever. Be creative. I call these “don’t panic” drills. It’s a task that the athlete knows he can complete, but the stakes are high. If you have an athlete who crumbles under pressure, let’s not wait until season to find out.

• Consecutive line drives v front toss or low velocity
• Execution rounds v standard BP
• Competition: Split into teams, 2-0 count, each player gets 1 swing to hit it hard.
• Endless possibilities here; be creative

Low Pressure/High Performance: Taking it easy and feeling good. Goal: build confidence, get loose, flow.

• Standard pre-game BP
• Basic front toss w game bat
• “Feel good” tee work

Structure

I would be sure to be very structured in practice planning. Without a doubt, the biggest complaint I hear from players is that their team’s hitting practice is unstructured. They don’t really know what to do or when. And this usually leads to guys doing nothing. I’d have the plan up, visible, and very clear as to what is going on.

Athletes love routines but also want things to be new and individualized. We solve this issue by having a station that is for “personal drills.”

What would a practice look like?

1. Daily Hitting Warmup:

After a dynamic warmup, take a few minutes to rollout, and use some med balls

Driveline Hitters daily warm-up routine pic.twitter.com/zwBms1KR4h

— Driveline Baseball (@DrivelineBB) March 23, 2017

2. Create Stations:

Here are some drill ideas for hitting stations during practice:

Tee:

• Bat-Speed Development(Overload/Underload)
• Long Bats (36/36, 38/38, and 40/40 bats made my Big Time Baseball Bats)
• Hitting Plyos
• Individual Drills: here are some of our go-to tee drills
  • Walk Through
  • Shuffle Swings
  • Rocker Drill
  • Absorption Drill
  • Step Backs
  • High and Low Tee

Front Toss:

• Bat-Speed Development(Overload/Underload)
• Long Bats (36/36, 38/38, and 40/40 bats made my Big Time Baseball Bats)
• Hitting Plyos
• Velocity: Thrown Overhand
• Offset Front Toss
• Overhand Mixed Pitches
• Hook em, Papi Drill, Walk Through, Around the World, Constraint Drill, Rocker Drill, Step Back Drill

A couple drills here that promote athleticism on the back leg, demonstrated by @LukeBaker9 "Hook em" and "Papi Drill" pic.twitter.com/nik2hlANGX

— Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) July 19, 2017

Menlo commit Dylan Cole doing the Front Toss Walk Through drill. Great for creating flow and rhythm in a robotic swing pic.twitter.com/1fTTT3KWpg

— Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) July 17, 2017

Around the World Drill: hit the ball to RF, CF, LF, LF, CF, RF. Made extra tough here with hitting plyos pic.twitter.com/D16smRaR9N

— Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) July 15, 2017

Constraint drill: hitter starts in landing position and swings w intent. Focus: minimal forward head movement pre swing pic.twitter.com/BiNVpb9tba

— Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) July 6, 2017

Rocker drill: rock forward and instead of rocking backwards over the knee, rock hips inward and feel glute stretch before swinging pic.twitter.com/4C4wBfkkwH

— Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) July 6, 2017

Step back drill: load rear glute, be athletic, rhythmic, activate stretch & fire. Feeling "behind the ball" is a helpful cue w these drills pic.twitter.com/VK7OIlB0eW

— Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) July 6, 2017

*You can add the Overload/Underload bats and Hitting Plyos to any of these drills to add variability and keep the motor system from getting bored*

Full Cage w BP Thrower or Machine:

• Traditional feel good BP
• FB/CB alternating
• Random mixed pitches
• At Bats(3 outs and switch)
• Overload Bats
• Situations:
  • 2-0 count
  • 0-2 count
  • Runner on 3rd IF in
• High Velo BP
  • To calculate perceived velocity: (55 feet/[your distance]) x (your velocity)= perceived velocity.
    • for example, if I’m throwing 60 mph from 38 feet: (55 feet/38 feet) x 60 mph= 86.8 mph

Out of cage:

• Golf Whiffle Balls or Curveball trainers
  • Use PVC pipes of various lengths, steel rod, broomstick, fungo, whatever to add variability/difficulty
• Visualization/dry swings to all zones
• Boxing Bag
• Video Station
  • Youtube compilations of HRs, or clutch hits
  • Yale has a hitting twitter BP station!

3. Recovery

Hitting is a violent motion, and most athletes hit 5-6 days a week. Recovery is extremely important. Here is our recovery routine:

So a practice would consist of:

1. Warmup
2. Hitting Circuit (put athletes in groups and rotate through)
   1. Tee
   2. Front Toss
   3. Long Cage(and/or on field BP)
   4. Out of Cage
3. Recovery

Use this shell of a practice plan and plug in drills from above.

Why?

We’ve talked about the what, so let’s talk about the why. Being able to explain this to your hitters will help generate buy-in.

Why so much variety in drills and implements?

Allowing the human body to accomplish a task within a variety of constraints helps develop the skill. Practicing in a reasonably chaotic environment with a variety of implements encourages an external focus of attention, allowing the athlete to develop feel for how he moves objects through space. If you can swing a 33/30 well off a front toss, but can’t swing a 33/24 without rolling over, are you an elite mover? Can you find the barrel with a 38-inch bat? Can you hit a 88-mph fastball with a 36-ounce bat? Can you hit a golf wiffle ball with a PVC pipe? Can you barrel the ball without a stride? Can you hit an 80-mph fastball from 47 feet? If I throw you fastballs and curveballs in BP, will your swing break down or can you hit balls hard?

As you begin to challenge the motor system to accomplish the task within a variety of constraints and environments, the movement begins to stabilize. The athletes learn to rely on their touch and feel. They can get out of their own way and trust that the bat will go where their eyes go. Their swing will become anitfragile, and will not break down at the slightest change. Simply put, they become great movers. Unfortunately, most training does the exact opposite.

A classic example of the opposite of this happening is when a position player becomes a pitcher. As a position player, the athlete learned to throw from multiple arm slots, under a variety of time constraints, and with various amounts and direction of momentum. He never thought twice about his mechanics; he just focused on the target and let his body self-organize. So when he first got on the mound, he just threw strikes. It’s easy, and he thinks nothing of it. But then he became a pitcher. And now he thinks about his body, his mechanics, starts watching slow-motion video and drawing lines on the screen. He is no longer making crop-hop throws from the outfield, throwing to first base from a backhand scoop, or throwing to first from a bad double-play feed, etc. The motor system is now only throwing as a pitcher, and often he loses the touch and feel that was developed by chaotic execution of the skill of throwing.

As a hitter or hitting coach, I feel its very important to avoid what I call “getting the barrel yips.” Pitchers with the yips have a mechanic fix after every bad pitch. Hitters with the barrel yips do the same. Don’t let it happen. Train the skill by challenging it, and for the most part, let the athlete’s body learn how to move, and get out of its way.

Conclusion

Have a structured daily plan for the team with an individual touch. Allow the athletes to compete with one another in their training by using bi-weekly testing. Encourage challenging practice since it is key for development. When you have a team full of athletes who love to challenge themselves, and are hungry for growth, special things can happen.

The coach should work as the cultivator of skill, creating and structuring an environment and unleashing the athletes within it. The key is in building a skill-development system for your athletes to grow in. Trust me, the athletes will be happy to be in an environment where their coach doesn’t chime in after a bad swing. Intervene and get hands-on when necessary, but for the most part, sit back, watch, and trust your system.

This type of training environment may be different than what you’re used to. It is hard for us coaches to be more hands-off, because we want to help. But often times, doing less is what will help your hitters. In my opinion, hitters are over-coached far more frequently than they are under-coached. And what most hitters need is to be un-coached and allowed to move freely and become athletic again. This constraints led approach is relatively hands-off, and has worked well for us. I encourage you to give it a shot.

I appreciate you reading this, and I hope you’ve gained something to help your guys this year. Good luck !

Jason Ochart

The post Implementing Driveline Hitting into Team Practice appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

This article was written by former Driveline trainer and current Lake Erie Head Coach Cam Castro. Cam details on how to on-board both coaches and pitchers with Driveline’s programming and equipment at the college level (Twitter: @Castro_Turf)

In the spirit of Jason Ochart’s recent post, Implementing Driveline Hitting Into Team Practice, I thought it would be beneficial to outline the same from the throwing side of things. Simply put, how do we as coaches implement Driveline throwing protocols into our fall practices? And how do we do this while coinciding with things like intrasquad scrimmages, outside competition, evaluation and skill instruction?

On-Boarding and Entire Staff

Last fall, in my first year at Lake Erie, I inherited a staff of fifteen athletes—only two of which had any real experience with the training methods I was going to be tasking them with. This year, that staff has grown to eighteen, and we have a large group of returners who are fairly comfortable and confident in the programming. However, we also have a handful of newcomers, all of whom will require a full on-boarding. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to on-board all of your athletes every fall.

Below is a deeper look into the on-boarding our pitchers will go through this fall:

We ensure that the first two weeks of our fall season is entirely devoted to diving into the ins and outs of our program—from foam rolling to rebounders and everything in between. For some athletes this means a refresher and/or reinforcement of drill compliance and fluidity. For others, this means learning just how difficult it is to nail down wrist-weight pivot pickoffs.

It’s also worth noting that no on-boarding is complete without a detailed movement screen for physical deficiencies and a plan on how to correct them. Above all else, it helps you gather the most information possible on your athletes and make programming adjustments as necessary. I encourage you to link up with your athletic training staff and put a movement screening process together, or use this post on athlete screening by Sam Briend as a reference guide.

From On-Boarding to On-Ramping

After we’ve spent adequate time bringing the staff up to speed with the program, we start to get into the meat and potatoes of our fall season. Now, I understand that everyone’s fall schedule is dictated by what we’re allowed to do as coaches; that is, it’s subjective to which levels we coach. (For example, our practice regulations at the NCAA Division II level are different than that of Division III and junior college.) But again, I promise you, regardless of level, you can do this.

For us, we are able to practice up to five days per week. So that means on average we are on the field for team practice for three of those days and typically intrasquading or playing outside competition for the other two.

Below is an example of our first five weeks this fall:

We use those three days in the middle of the week (Hybrid and Recovery Days) to break down movement patterns in constraint drills, ensure that warm-up/throwing prep and recovery circuits are being precisely followed, and optimize throwing programs for each athlete (make individual adjustments). All of that is followed up by Gameday, or Thunder Nuggets, or Fire Emjoi’s, or whatever you want to call it, on the weekends.

Laying Out a Practice Plan

All right, now let’s get down to good part: How do I make time for all this? The short version, I make time!

Our pitchers are never shorted time in practice to complete their daily throwing load, regardless of what we’re aiming to accomplish as a team. This is key: make sure that your athletes never feel rushed to complete their work. Now I understand that as coaches we only get so much time with our athletes and we want to maximize it, but you won’t get this time back. If you cut short or belittle the importance of fluidity in PlyoCare drills, you will regret it later.

To the head coaches reading this, if you’re a believer in Driveline programming, you have to be willing to let your pitchers carve out 60-90 minutes at the start of practice for them to go through a full SMR, throwing prep, throwing load, and recovery circuit. This probably means doing something like starting practice with BP and defensive work for position players so pitchers can get their work in.

To the pitching coaches reading this, find a way and figure it out. A few years back I was in your shoes; I was a pitching coach trying to do a little bit more for our guys. This meant telling all our pitchers that if team practice started at 3:30 p.m., pitchers’ practice started at 2:30 p.m. We always showed up an hour before the position guys and started to get to work on what we wanted to accomplish that day. That way, by the time we were done, so were the position players with their pre-practice routines. This meant we could come together as a team and start attacking the team practice plan.

Making It Work With Intrasquads and Scrimmages

The one constant in every coach’s fall plan is evaluation, rolling the ball out and letting the boys play, intrasquads, outside competition, fall World Series. Understand that what you’re trying to accomplish when on-ramping your athletes is to prepare them for a heavy training load and more dense velocity-based training in the winter months. This can still be done even if you’re playing every weekend in the fall.

That being said, we like to give our athletes some free reign on our gameday in the fall. Below is a list of what is mandatory for each pitcher to complete before competing in a weekend outing and another list of what is optional.

Notice there is no optional recovery work, because you must always do your recovery routine. No exceptions here!

We’ve found this system to work best. By the time we get to that first scrimmage date, we feel like each athlete has a pretty good hold on the programming as a whole, and we not only outline a few things we expect of them but also give them plenty of other “add-on” options.

The end goal with this is that each athlete has the freedom to do whatever he thinks gets him hot and able to be at his best that day. It creates ownership and also helps them learn their bodies and appreciate how vital preparation is. What you may notice here is a guy who is only doing what’s mandatory not performing well will end up doing a little bit of the “optional” work the following week. Funny how that works.

Prepare, Evaluate, and Compete

At the end of the day, there is a little trial and error in a first time fall implementation, but I stand by the fact that no matter how many practice days you have to work with, or what your hours limitation is, this can be done: where there’s a will there’s a way. To us, the fall season is a tool. And its purpose is to prepare, to evaluate, and to compete. Prepare your staff for the winter training months to come, evaluate your staff to see what you have as you build towards the spring, and compete every chance you get. Try the plan I’ve outline above and see for yourself.

The post Coaches Series: Driveline Fall Implementation appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

This summer we saw 250+ pitchers in our gym from May to September. Of those, we have 152 pitchers to compare pre- and post-bullpen velocity and motus sleeve data to see the effects of weighted-ball training.

The first day athletes were in the facility they were asked to throw five fastballs off a mound to get baseline measurements. We have since been able to compare those five fastballs to the five fastest fastballs in a pitcher’s last bullpen session in the facility.

Every pitcher was screened for movement and performance markers during their second day in the facility. They then had personal meetings with our trainers to review what their goals were for their time at Driveline.

Here is the on-board bullpen data compared to the last bullpen an athlete threw in the facility.

This list includes athletes who had their last bullpens in the gym from June 1 through September 1.  The first few athletes included had started training before the beginning of June but had their last bullpen in the middle of June. If an athlete threw multiple bullpens, we used the data from the last bullpen they threw in the facility.

We saw velocity increase as well as elbow stress but, in a way, mStress decreased slightly. Essentially, velocity and elbow stress (or torque) increased proportionally. We saw an overall decrease in arm speed and arm slot, while shoulder rotation increased. If you are looking for more of an explanation, we’ve gone into detail on the motus Sleeve’s metrics in an earlier post.

Here is the bullpen data broken down by length of stay.

Below are the individual mound improvements of all 152 athletes.

We can also see what the relationship was between a pitcher’s peak pulldown velocity and their peak mound velocity.

Below is this years pulldown and mound data compared to last year.

You can find the 2016 summer review and data here.

The 2017 summer data can be found here.

The post Driveline Baseball Review – College Summer Training Results 2017 appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

This is a guest blog post by Steffan Jones decribing how he uses over & underload implements in his training to teach his athletes how to be better cricket bowlers. Steffan can be found at his website cricketstrength.com and on Twitter @SteffanJones105

The pitcher equivalent in cricket is the bowler. Bowlers are allowed a running start and must throw with their arm straight. To ease possible confusion we often refer to bowlers simply as ‘athletes’ in this post.

Making radical changes to a young fast-bowler’s technique too quickly is likely harmful to the bowler’s ability to develop and perform. Coaches (and parents!) who over-intervene and make changes before the bowler’s natural habits and love for the game develop are missing the bigger picture. It’s not about where bowlers are, it’s where they are going and how long they can stay there. Young bowlers are still developing neuromuscular control, and in particular during the “adolescent awkwardness” phase, they find coordinating movement difficult.

While there is no such a thing as one “perfect bowling technique,” there is a perfect technique for every individual. This is where coaches, players, and experts get confused. They mix up the parts that need a degree of variability with the nodes that need to be fixed to provide optimal movement. Identifying these and providing a systematic approach to intervention are the keys to a successful coaching experience.

It’s not about building robots who bowl the same way; it’s about making sure the “attractors”which are the key basic, essential, fixed movements—are stable and reduce the degree of movement in the technical completion of the action. The individuality and idiosyncratic elements are the “fluctuators,”changeable components that have degrees of freedom that do not negatively impact bowling performance. Fluctuators help us adapt to the environment but are specific to individual bowlers. It’s their own method of organizing and adapting to the environment (self-organizing).

Effective coaching is about knowing what actually matters and identifying individual traits that don’t matter. Call them “attractors,” “hard skills,” “fluctuators,” or “soft skills”; understanding each is key to coach intervention.

Coaches should prioritize the hard skills because these are the ones most important to performance. These need to be taught early in the process as they are hard to break if bad habits set in.

Hard skills can be seen as the “sled on a snowy hill” phenomenon. The first rep is like a sled making tracks in fresh snow; after that first rep, it’s hard to make changes and the sled will follow the tracks.

These are the “big three” hard skills, for bowlers, in my opinion:

• Hip shoulder seperation
• Star position (long arm pull)
• Braced front leg

Performing these actions requires key parts of each sequence to fire accurately. While beyond the scope of this article, co-contractions around key joints that eliminate muscle slack, back foot contact, and pre turn—along with various reflexes such as crossed extensor reflex and stumble reflex—all have a direct impact on attaining each of the three hard skills. This is why technique should always come first in the intervention layer. Strength is built to maintain stability and transfer power from these key “attractor” sites that are specific to the skill being performed.

Understanding What to Look For

One of my most successful training concepts, known as “skill-stability,” respects the stages of learning and skill development while overloading the key attractor sits. These positions are influential to the success of the athlete. However the timing of each stage is a careful process that needs to be synergistically planned with the 4 stages of learning.

Overloading Technique to Make a Change that Becomes Unconscious

Improving performance is an art, and understanding how the brain works and how we learn are key. Drills for the sake of drills won’t work. Put those drills into a stressful environment to encourage adaptation, progression, and transfer to game readiness will work.

However, bowlers learn and improve at differing rates, and as coaches we need to respect the stages of motor-skill development and learning. The key to building the non-fragile athlete is to progress through these stages as quickly as possible while mastering each stage. Spending too long at the basic, unskilled level will fail to transfer to performance and ultimately lead to dropout.

You have to overload your technique for it to change. Adaptation craves overload. Just doing 10,000 normal repetitions won’t work—or may work at the novice level, but it won’t as the athlete gets older, has a higher training age, and becomes more skilled. First, boredom will kick in, making motivation to perform reps will low, and also the body will not find the need to adapt and change.

Remember, it’s done thousands of “poor” versions before. You need to stress the key positions. It’s more likely that the changes needed are relatively small, so doing something similar to what you’ve been doing will have little or no effect. Overload skill-stability training is the answer and, as a bowling performance coach, is essential.

Unless a coach overloads the athlete’s technique and encourages adaptation though stress in some form or another, all external queuing intervention methods are worthless—the changes simply won’t stick. The body and the brain have no desire or need to change.

When performing technical intervention work, I overload the action in four different ways.

• Density
• Volume
• Variability
• Intensity (weight or speed)

These methods encourage skill adaptation and skill progression, similar to learning a new language—in which you first learn the alphabet, then a word, then a sentence, then a paragraph, chapter, and finally learn to read a book. Learning to bowl fast (or pitch) is exactly the same. Skill acquisition and constantly encouraging and challenging the status quo will enhance the learning process. Stagnation and repeated technical work at a level that has already been mastered will ultimately lead to intervention failure or, worst still, player dropout.

Stress, Progress, Adapt, Challenge and Repeat

Too often we see coaches trying to change mechanics through the use of visual and audio commands (video and instructing) without first knowing how each athlete learns and processes information. This is based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which describes learners as Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic learners. It differentiates how humans prefer to absorb information.

The reality is that unless the athlete is at such a low level of proficiency, the intervention doesn’t normally stick. Unless the movement is either overloaded through intensity (tempo/weight), volume (reps), or density (time), the athlete will have the same action for life.

Adding stress to the action when young is an ideal intervention method but needs careful planning and understanding. However one could argue that any new intervention method is too advanced for any level. All athletes regardless of skill level learn by the way of one or more of the modes of instruction. It is important to note that most athletes, around 80%, are primarily visual learners. They like to see what they are doing wrong. The coach’s role is to then prescribe the corrective method that will then allow them to subconsciously drill the right sequence. That is the ultimate aim. To allow the athlete to consciously focus on the completion of the skill with maximum intent while a carefully selected exercise does the coaching for them through various constraints. The drill is a subconscious coach.

How to Learn and Progress Through the Stages of Learning

There are four stages of learning and skill acquisition:

• Unskilled (Incompetence) – Unconscious
• Unskilled (Incompetence) – Conscious
• Skilled (Competence) – Conscious
• Skilled (Competence) – Unconscious

If takes every individual different overloading methods to move from one stage to the other. This is why the skill-stability model is tailored to each stage of learning.

Unskilled – Unconscious

The first phase of the skill-stability model is Static Stability. This involves using static holds in three of the basic kinetic sequence drills. There are four positions, but the static holds only use three: Back foot contact, front foot contact, and delivery. The follow through happens as a consequence of what happens earlier in the process and momentum, so static holds aren’t relevant.

This is the foundation phase of motor learning and change. The goal is to build strength through isometric contractions and overload co-contractions around key joints in the sequence. Each attractor site is held for 30-90 seconds to develop an awareness of those positions. What does it feel like to brace the front leg? What does it feel like to have your feet land under your hips? What does it feel like to have your hips square on and both feet pointing forward? At the early stage, the athlete has no idea what it feels like to achieve the key positions, being unaware of it. So, by creating feel, which is one of the main ways to manipulate movement, the athlete gains awareness and progress into stage two, becoming conscious of the positions.

My observations are that beginners (everyone who is trying to change technique is a beginner) attempting to do the skill-stability stage 1 exercises are simply going through the motion. Often they ridicule the exercises as pointless. In my experience, these beginners have been swayed into thinking all problems are solved in the weight room with a barbell. They can’t get the sequence together but still believe they are doing it right. They are highly inefficient at certain aspects of the actions. They are both unaware they are making a mistake and are unable to perform any intervention drill properly.

However, after time and effort, the training effect through time overload and creating feel, both physically and mentally, progresses the athlete through stage 1. Often with feedback from video, the athlete begins to recognize the difference between movement optimization (the underlying correct principles) and movement variability (what they can individually do that doesn’t negatively effect the positions). They self-manage and find their own way.

Unskilled-Conscious

The second phase is called Dynamic stability. Here, movement variability and external chaos are added to encourage adaptation and see organizing. With an added awareness of the key positions, athletes still find it awkward but are now aware of what is needed. Here various techniques are added while still holding the static positions of stage 1. The essential introduction at this stage is the “constraint” element of each drill. The athlete is locked/constrained into the position so as to encourage the subconscious grooving of the base positions while still maintaining conscious awareness of holding the positions.

Band perturbations static holds and force med ball absorption drills (catch and hold) are key ways to practice Dynamic stability.

By adding different stimuli, the athlete becomes more conscious and develops postural awareness that further engrains the positions due to a more challenging and dynamic movement exercise. Medicine balls are introduced at this stage to train the body to absorb force in key positions. After a few sessions and additional practices away from the session, the athlete begins to be aware of the inefficiency in his actions. He becomes conscious of the flaws but hasn’t quite mastered the technique to help improve the sequence. He knows what to do but can’t do it for a number of repetitions. He gets frustrated easily.

This, I feel, is an important stage. The athletes understand it but can’t repeat it. This is where they need to realize that they have to do the drills in their own time away from the structured sessions. Otherwise the new skill will never be automatic and stage 4 is just a distant dream—they are now conscious of being unskilled! Frustration, anger, worry, and boredom kicks in very quickly.

An organism isn’t interested in a stimulus it considers mundane. For effective learning to occur all non-reflexive stimuli must clear the RAS [Reticular Activating System]. This is in simple terms is the ‘ON’ button for the brain and motor learning

Doing the same mundane, non-stimulating drills without progression will never activate the “ON” button. This is why a lot of athletes fall out of favor with technical work. To turn the “ON” button to the “learning mode,” the athlete needs to be engaged and open to learn. This is where the art of coaching comes in, finding ways by adding variability to help athletes progress to the next stage of learning.

The key at this stage is keeping them engaged and motivated. You need to maintain the trust they have in your skills as a coach. Giving them a different stimulus keeps them engaged. The key now as they become aware is to make the next stage skilled, so as they become conscious and aware, they need to see the benefits—otherwise they will drop out. Adding chaos, feel, and by actually exaggerating the flaw, the system begins to know the difference between right and wrong. This is a great stage to really challenge the movement.

Movement can be manipulated in five ways:

1. Manipulating time
2. Creating feel
3. Exaggerating the flaw
4. Stabilize the attractors through overload (see above)
5. Change the goal through external cues and providing knowledge of results

This is the stage where many athletes become very good at drill work, and terminating the intervention process here will develop a “fragile athlete.” They look good with the drill work, but it doesn’t transfer to on-field performance in an unstable sports environment.

This is the stage most athletes get to very quickly. To encourage progression and keep them stimulated, they will then progress onto stage 3 of the overloaded skill-stability model, in which variability becomes the key addition to the program. Up until this stage, volume, intensity, and density have been sufficient overloading mechanisms. We now need more advanced methods to progress from here.

Skilled-Conscious

Stage 3 is where the bowler now becomes aware of the positions. However over thinking and internalizing everything can become an issue at this stage, which is why stage 3 skill stability is about constraining the action and letting the drill do the coaching. This stage is about expressing the force potential developed in key positions into a more specific and ballistic movement. The power and speed phase which will transfer directly to game readiness. It is about using the stability developed in the first phase and the energy absorption and dynamic/chaos stability in the second phase and using it effectively and efficiently up the kinetic chain from proximal to distal. This phase is about learning to transfer energy up the chain and how to create hip and shoulder separation.

The following exercises become ballistic in nature and highly specialized:

• Med ball throws
• Level 4 kinetic chain sequencing and constraints drill
• Grooving weighted-ball work
• Constrains positive disconnection bowling (hip lock drill)
• Velocity weighted-ball bowling

However, constraints still form the structure of the drill work. Learning occurs through the part-whole method of motor teaching. After learning the constrained part of the action, the whole action is performed. Keeping this window of transfer small increases the probability of positive transfer. Superseding a drill work with the full action at a batsman or into targets will encourage learning, forming the basis for the next stage of the skill-stability model in a circuit/complex fashion.

There are two factors that influence transfer:

1. Movement – result similarities – the intention action model.
2. Sensory similarities – specificity of practice effects the sensory feedback. Motor control is based on the link between sensory input and motor output. Movement learning is highly specific to the sensory feedback during the session.

Sensory feedback is key. For example, when drilling there needs to be a focus on dragging the back foot from position three to four. What I tell my bowlers is to pretend to scrape mud off the front of their shoes. The subconscious mind is radically different from the conscious mind and the more immature and silly the cues the better.

Having reiterated that they must keep doing the drills away from the sessions, the athletes begin to consistently repeat the technical sequence. However, at this stage they have to remind themselves and cannot subconsciously perform the drill. They have to tell themselves to pre turn, brace front leg, square the hip, etc. This is the most important stage of learning the new technique. At this stage, they are aware of what they are doing but don’t see it when perform, for example. A lot of players get stuck in this phase because they have to “think”; they have to mentally control the movement. This stage requires patience from both the coach and the athlete. The easy thing to do here is dismiss the drill as being pointless and ineffective, but the key point to remember here is that you’re/they’re getting closer. Keep believing in the process, and the results will come.

From experience, as a coach and as a player, coaches need to be aware that between stage 3 and 4, frustration will occur. This is the stage where athletes begin to doubt and blame external factors outside of their control. They start thinking too much. Evidence suggests once a player reaches the SKILLED-CONSCIOUS stage, thinking actually interferes with skill execution. So this is why the exercise needs to do the coaching for them. Corrective strength and constraint drilling are key to the success of this stage.

Skilled-Unconscious

The final stage of skill acquisition is stage 4. Here, as coaches, we will be able to observe athletes who’ve mastered the skill! When they go through the kinetic chain sequence, they can do it without thinking. This is when as coaches you’ll know you’ve made a technical change and a difference to their game. You have had an impact on that young athlete’s career. At the end of the day, that’s why we coach. It’s to have an impact and make an impression. They trust us to help them.

However this stage is now about manipulating the environment and recreating situations that occur in game situations. This stage is about tactical awareness and maximum performance transfer. Here “tactical periodization” integrated with skill-circuits are planned and performed during this stage of learning. It’s about replicating key moments of the game in training that prepare the athletes for when the situation occurs in competition. Complex training for the PAP effect supersetted with maximum intent during an initial part of the game is performed. Tempo blowing at 70% intensity utilizing fatigue as a great learning tool is also used along with a skill circuit combining isometric drills, ballistic drills, and anaerobic exercises, contrasted at the end of the game when performance is very much dictated by fatigue and is also replicated in training. This stage of learning is highly advanced, and the methods used are based on sports science at the elite level.

Conclusion

As coaches, we need to tailor our sessions to cater for the needs of individuals and where they lie on the stages of learning. Athletes cannot dwell on a drill if they have already mastered it. Holding an individual back merely to make the organization of the session is a habit I’ve seen on a number of occasions in professional sport. Athletes learn at different rates, and we need to move them along as quickly as possible to stage 4, skilled conscious, where transference of training will be more physically, tactically, and mentally determined. Coaches need to design a system of coaching based on the synergistic partnering of skill-stability training and the stages of learning that helps fast bowlers (or pitchers) develop and progress at a rate that is individual to them. Athletes don’t want to be driven by technique, so as coaches we need to be smart in what we prescribe and how long they stay with each exercise.

Don’t drill for the sake of drilling. Don’t go back to the beginning. When you know the alphabet you don’t revisit it if you’re reading Shakespeare.

I fully appreciate that technically drilling a bowling action is both tedious and a long-winded process, both for the player and the coach. Often the coach feels he’s taking the easy option by just standing back and letting the player do the work alone. If prescribed properly, the only coach athletes will ever need is the constraint drill itself. You are now redundant! What we must realize as coaches is that leaving them learn themselves is actually benefitting them more than we appreciate, and just letting them learn by doing is the best thing we can do. However, technical reinforcement work still has to be done. As coaches we need to sit back, manipulate (add constraints), monitor, observe, and guide them when the sequence isn’t correct. Coaches need to be aware of the constraints that occur during skill acquisition. The challenge for coaches is how to integrate the vast amounts of sport science information, difference of opinion, and methods into their training and competition programs to the benefit of their athletes.

The post Training Cricket Bowlers with Over & Underload Implements appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

This post was written by Justin Barber who is the Director of Operations and Player Development for the Indiana Chargers, and Joel Mishler, Chargers Co-Founder and General Manager. The Indiana Chargers are in their 13th year of existence and have had 140 players move on to play college baseball from their program since 2008. In 2018, they will field teams at the 11-18u levels and will run a collegiate summer training program.

The Indiana Chargers have hosted a Driveline event since 2014, a three-day weekend event for local players and coaches (sign up for 2017’s here). Since 2014, they have used Driveline to guide their throwing program and protocols and had great results. And, they track their data. You can view 3+ years of training data here, Indiana Chargers Training Data.

Following are some thoughts from the Indiana Chargers on how they try to make a difference developing players and educating their families in the current travel baseball culture.

Travel baseball is a mess. Over the past decade, travel ball mania and the showcase scene has exploded. While the number of travel teams is at an all-time high, the number of teams and organizations who truly focus on development with arm care at the forefront seems to be at an all-time low.

Having dealt with the structural issues presented by travel ball for the past 13 years, we made an organizational commitment to prioritize player development. Below we’ll take a look at the arm care issues that travel ball presents and the specific choices we made to address them.

Arm care presents one of the biggest challenges the current travel ball climate faces. When it comes to arm care and protecting pitchers, the first place we see people gravitate towards is pitch counts and the role they play in managing overuse or potential abuse of a young arm. While we can all agree that pitch counts are not perfect, this is certainly not a bad place to start.

In late 2014, Major League Baseball and USA Baseball teamed up to create Pitch Smart, “A series of practical, age-appropriate guidelines to help parents, players and coaches avoid overuse injuries and foster long, healthy careers for youth pitchers”. Each state now has its own rules for pitch counts in high school competition.

If you want to learn more, here is the Pitch Smart Pitch Count Limits and Required Rest Recommendations and J.J. Cooper of Baseball America put together an article with the High School Pitch Count Rules By State.

While some tournament companies, most notably Perfect Game, are Pitch Smart compliant, the majority of travel baseball tournaments have no pitching rules or restrictions. Coaches are simply advised to “use good judgement” when it comes to pitch counts and pitch limits.

And while we understand why most tournament venues don’t want to police the Pitch Smart protocols, the lack of accountability leads to the “travel ball nonsense” that we see on a weekly basis.

Quick Story: Travel Ball Nonsense

An opposing 14U pitcher throws 90 pitches Saturday then catches multiple games on Sunday. The opposing shortstop closes Saturday’s game and throws a complete game on Sunday (120 pitches between the two games).

Next weekend, the opposing team’s starting pitcher (the best 14U arm we’ve seen this year) throws a complete game (95 pitches) and we lose 4-3. That’s not the issue. We had faced and beat this same team 2 days earlier and the kid who started threw 65 pitches less than 48 hours before his CG victory on Sunday. In less than 48 hours, at 14U, this kid had thrown 160 pitches.

These types of stories are all too-common to any veteran of the travel ball circuit. The fact that a random kid in the Midwest at 14 is throwing more pitches in 48 hours than professional pitchers in the playoffs is risking injury with an at-risk population just to win a game that, in the grand scheme, means nothing.

“Bullpen Day” Work to Justify Short Rest

A common arm care decision we see at travel ball tournaments is bringing starters back two or three days later. Coaches justify it as a “bullpen day”. Standard pens are generally between 30-45 pitches. But it’s amazing how many “bullpen day” outings in travel ball turn into 4-5 innings and 75+ pitches. You know, “The kid says he’s feeling good and it’s an elimination game!”

Just because day 3 or day 4 is a bullpen day at the pro and college level doesn’t mean a high school arm is prepared to handle that type of workload week in and week out during the summer season.

For example, take a pitcher who starts on Thursday and throws 92 pitches, comes back on “bullpen day” and throws 40 pitches on Sunday. Then, he’s the day one starter and throws another 87 pitches the following Thursday. And the cycle of 130+ pitch weeks repeats.

For 6-8 weeks in the summer, this plays out on travel ball rosters across the United States. Don’t forget, this same pitcher is attending 2-3 mid-week showcases throughout the summer as well. There he will get up on the mound and throw as hard as he can for 12-15 pitches after warming up.

Are we surprised when his velo has dropped a few ticks by the end of the season? Ultimately, who is the responsible party for this athlete’s career?

A Development Framework for Short Rest Work

The questions we ask ourselves when it comes to deciding whether to bring back one of our starting pitchers on short rest is this:

“Have we properly trained our athletes to come back on two or three days rest and pitch competitively in a game setting? Is this what is best for this athlete’s long-term athletic development, even if it’s only for one inning or 20-30 pitches?”  

We find it hard to believe that many programs are adequately preparing their pitchers to handle this high-volume, short-rest workload on the weekends.

We certainly haven’t been able to figure out a way to be confident our pitchers are trained and ready for such a scenario, so we simply don’t consider it as a good option. This costs us some wins late in the weekends.

Since arm care and development is more important to us than winning tournament game 6, we will try to figure out how to win by giving opportunities to other pitchers on our staff.

While high pitch counts and bringing back pitchers on short rest is a prevalent issue, we feel it’s not even the biggest arm care issue in travel baseball today.

The Developmental Issues of Small Roster Sizes

The #1 arm care offender in our opinion is roster sizes. Not only is this an arm care issue, but we believe this to be a detrimental thing for the physical, mental, and competitive development of baseball players as we prepare them for the upper levels of the game.

Look at the overall scope of baseball rosters vs. games played throughout today’s game. Over the course of three days:

Professional baseball – plays three games with 25 man rosters (and another 150 or so minor leaguers at their disposal if they need another arm or two to help with an overtaxed staff). Rosters can also grow to 26 when doubleheaders are scheduled.

College baseball – plays 3-4 games with 35 man rosters

Travel baseball – plays anywhere from 3-8 games with 10-15 man rosters

We’re all ears on hearing why this makes any sense whatsoever!

We had this conversation with several college coaches this summer. We asked them point blank, “If you had to play 5 or 6 games in three days, what would this do to your pitching staff?”

Without hesitation their answers were consistent, “we wouldn’t have enough pitching” or “our staff would be depleted.” These coaches have 3-8 more pitchers than most travel teams have players on their roster.

In travel ball, the majority of kids on the team are 2-way players, and often times, the best pitchers are the best shortstop, catcher, right fielder, etc. Kids pitch and then go right back to play their position the rest of the tournament, or they catch the first 2-3 games, go pitch, and then go catch again to finish off the weekend.

Pitch Smart listed the major risk factors to arm injury, namely (among 12 total):

• Pitching While Fatigued
• Throwing Too Many Pitches and Not Getting Enough Rest
• Pitching on Consecutive Days
• Excessive Throwing when Not Pitching

“Watch for signs of fatigue during a game, during a season, and over the whole year. The American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI) found that adolescent pitchers who undergo elbow or shoulder surgery are 36 times more likely to have routinely pitched with arm fatigue.”

“A pitcher should not also be a catcher for his team as it is the next most throwing-intensive position and results in far more throws than players at other positions. ASMI found that amateurs who played catcher while not pitching were 2.7 times more likely to suffer a major arm injury.”

“Daily, weekly and annual overuse is the greatest risk to a youth pitcher’s health. Numerous studies have shown that pitchers who throw more pitches per game and those who do not adequately rest between appearances are at an elevated risk of injury.”

And yet, an entire decade of travel baseball kids have grown up on teams of 11, playing shortstop right after pitching, being brought back on short rest, and dealing with arm fatigue on a regular basis.

Small roster sizes make it hard for coaches to execute common baseball sense when it comes to what is best for the kid who just pitched yesterday’s game, or the first game of the double-header.  

A common solution: “Well, I’ll just put him at first base, or I’ll stick him in the outfield today since he won’t have to throw much out there.”

Sure. In theory, there aren’t many throws that have to be made from those positions over the course of the game, but what happens when a ball is hit to the gap and they are forced to make high intensity throws starting with their backs to the infield and their momentum going towards the outfield fence with teammates and fans screaming “four-four!”

So, we have identified some problems. Nearly everyone who has spent significant time around travel ball gripes about the same issues. Here is our approach to creating some solutions.

Arm Care: Not Optional

When it comes to arm care, we make sure it gets done. Warmup and recovery work happens on a daily basis whether it is our first game of the week, or game 5 on day three of the tournament. Our coaches are all given a team set of the necessary equipment for our players to execute the Driveline protocols.

Our players know that whether we won or lost, their day is not done when the game is finished. And our coaches reinforce that.

This summer, all pitchers on our 17u roster had a daily arm care plan to execute. Early in the summer, I had to hunt guys down to give them their plan or remind our guys to get their work done before leaving the field; however, as the summer progressed, our team culture transitioned from me telling players what to do, to players knowing what to do, to players asking questions, making adjustments, and developing their routines.

During the last half of the summer, I knew the arm care work was going to get done on a daily basis because our guys had taken ownership of it and had the mindset that this is a part of what we do and who we are as an organization.

Roster Sizes: We Have Bigger Teams and Tell Everyone to Expect to Sit a Little

The main reason most travel teams don’t have big roster sizes is because parents and players don’t want them. Small rosters ensure lots of playing time for athletes and maximizes the number of innings per dollar spent for parents.

We make it clear upfront at our tryouts that our roster sizes will be big. At least, they are big compared to the standard 11-12 man travel ball roster.

Our main reason for the bigger rosters is directly tied into arm care and player development.

Every year there comes a week (often multiple times throughout the season) where a player gets injured and misses significant time, maybe is even out for the rest of the summer. Another player has a 7 on 7 football tournament with his Varsity team, and another has a 10-day mission trip, and another a family vacation that has been on the calendar for months.

Next thing you know, a 12-man roster is struggling to put a team on the field. Even a 14-man roster is now down to 10 players.

Take that situation into games 3 and 4 of the weekend and it becomes next to impossible for the coach to act rationally and in the players’ best interests when it comes to arm care and development.

With all of our teams, we shoot to have 15-16 players. At the high school level, some of our rosters may have 16-18 guys on it, including some pitcher only kids. This is not the case every year with all of our teams, but it is our goal.

In our opinion the only way to make sure our coaches can make decisions that have the best interest of the players in mind, is by having more bodies.

Lineups: Work Backwards from the Pitching Staff

Even with the bigger rosters, it is important our lineups are planned out well in advance. The pitching rotation is the first piece of the puzzle.

In our organization, if a pitcher throws more than 50-60 pitches, he is not eligible to play defensively the next day or in the second game of a double-header. He may be the designated or extra hitter, but he will not play the field even if he is our best player at another position. If at all possible, we try to have our position players pitch later in the weekend to avoid pitching, resting the day after, and then having to go back and play the field for the last 1-3 games of the weekend with a sore or fatigued arm.

Every Monday, our coaches are expected to give us detailed reports that include the lineups from the past weekend and pitch counts for every game. This is something that we started a few years ago, and it has been helpful for us to make sure each team’s lineups reflect our arm care protocols.

The next piece of the puzzle is to fill out the lineups for the first 3-5 games of the tournament. This doesn’t mean it has to be followed perfectly. We all know lineups are fluent day to day based on several factors; however, what this allows our coaches to do is to make sure all players are getting adequate playing time opportunities while maintaining arm care at the forefront.

We do not believe in equal playing time or “pay to play”. In fact, we think the lack of competition for playing time and lack of a competitive mindset are the second and third worst byproducts of small roster sizes and travel baseball!

With that said, no one develops and gets better by sitting on the bench all summer long. In our organization it is common for the majority of our players to sit the bench 1-2 games per weekend, and we think there is tremendous value in having to do so.

Sitting the bench gives players the opportunity to see the game from a different perspective. It gives them a chance to actually listen to what their coach has to say and learn as the game is happening in real time. This is hard to do if you play every game and the coach is always in the 3rd base box when you are in the dugout, and the coach is in the dugout when you are in the field! Sitting the bench presents our players with the opportunity to work on being a great teammate and staying engaged in the game when they could easily checkout.

We aren’t looking for players who enjoy sitting on the bench, but we want guys who understand they are to view it as a learning opportunity to make them better.

Bottom line, we want to prepare our players for college baseball. When they walk into their college programs, and they have to compete for playing time against 19-23 year old men, we want them to know how to handle and desire competition.  

At our tryouts, we take time before any kid steps on the field to discuss this with them and their parents how our organization handles arm care, roster sizes, and lineups. We are looking for parents and players that are not only willing to put up with our philosophy but also buy into it being an upper-level approach. Ultimately, we feel this helps people understand what they are saying “yes” or “no” to if they get an invite from our organization.

Schedule: Design for Development

Travel baseball and tournaments go hand in hand. In this part of the country, youth travel teams typically play anywhere from 10-14 straight weekends of tournament baseball in April-July. At the high school level, most teams play 8-9 straight weeks of tournaments in June-July. Somewhere along the way, we have lost sight of the fact that the number of games played does not directly correlate to player development.

Let’s say your team has a solid weekend, advances deep in bracket play, and plays 7 games over the course of 4 days. And, let’s say you played defensively in 6 of those 7 games. How many chances did you get at shortstop? How many balls were hit to you in the outfield? If you are busy, maybe 4-5 per game? Over the course of those four days, there were 24-30 opportunities to work on and improve your game. Not the recommended amount of reps if you want to become an above average to elite defender and have that part of your game stand out to college coaches or professional scouts!

Our teams certainly play in their fair share of tournaments, but we are making a conscious effort to move towards more scheduled games against quality opponents.

We are proud to be one of the organizations that was in on the ground floor of the Midwest Invite League (MIL) a couple of years ago. This league was created by some other like-minded organizations (Summit City Sluggers & Dayton Classics) who feel like we do, that tournament baseball is not necessarily helping prepare players for success in college baseball. Here’s a snapshot of what our invite league events look like:

• Each team plays 4 games – all games played on a college diamond
• Games are played on Friday-Sunday
• On-field batting practice each day along with a pre-game infield/outfield
• 3-game series vs. the same team – Friday & Saturday
• Series winners play each other & series losers play each other on Sunday

Friday – Single 9-inning game

Saturday – Double-header (two, 7-inning games)

Sunday – Single 9-inning game

While this looks good on paper, the first question brought up by most people is, “Okay, that’s great but will college coaches be there?” The answer is simple. If you have quality teams with good players, college coaches will be there!

The first 17u MIL event two summers ago had 16 schools in attendance over the course of the weekend, with all levels of college baseball represented. This past summer, we hosted an MIL event on the last weekend of July, and there were 4-5 schools there each day.

Smaller roster sizes has created an influx of teams on the travel ball circuit leaving the talent level watered down.

College coaches and scouts do not want to evaluate players competing vs. inferior talent. We have played in several tournaments over the past few years where there have been games with no scouts in attendance and even some entire weekends where we have seen fewer coaches than we do at these MIL events.

The feedback we have received from college coaches who have attended our MIL events has been positive, and they like this format. It’s a great way for them to really hone in on certain guys and see all that they need to see when evaluating a player in one day.

Additional benefits to an invite league format:

• All game times are scheduled. No waiting around to find out when bracket play begins.
• No early morning games – baseball wasn’t meant to be played at 8 am!
• No required hotel stays – anyone else sick of these yet?
• Fri-Sun. schedule means less time off of work for parents, less nights in a hotel, and less expenses for families
• Gives players a really good feel for what a college baseball weekend actually looks like. Getting to the ballpark, taking BP, infield/outfield, then playing a DH can turn a typical day into a 6-7 hour experience on the diamond. Doing this three days in a row turns this format into an experience high school players rarely get, yet college players are expected to handle well.
• Players learn to make adjustments throughout the weekend, or suffer the consequences. If you can’t handle a breaking pitch in game one, guess what you will see the next 12 at bats for the weekend! The tournament format doesn’t typically offer this developmental advantage to players as you rarely face the same team all summer, let alone the same weekend.
• Better control of the talent level of teams participating. When a scout comes to a game, he can hopefully be confident that the talent level of all teams will be better than the talent pool he might see at any given tournament. Not all teams will play great every day or be super talented at these events, but it is certainly our goal in order to better develop our players and to make it worth the time for a college coach to come recruit.
• Players get practice time & reps during on-field BP & infield/outfield!
• Coaches know how many games and innings will be played going into the weekend and can plan accordingly. This makes it easy to follow arm care protocols when lineup decisions are not based on trying to advance in bracket play to get to the next game.

Play Less, Practice and Train More

One of the negatives about travel baseball is the lack of practice/training. Most travel baseball teams do not practice much, if at all, during the summer. Admittedly, once our seasons get rolling, we fall into this category, too.

Let us ask you the following question, “We are in a tournament this week Thursday-Sunday, and next week’s tournament begins on Wednesday, when do you suggest we hold a practice?” Any team is physically and mentally taxed after the Thursday-Sunday tournament. Monday needs to be an off-day for the arms which leaves Tuesday. How much are we really going to get accomplished by holding a Tuesday practice knowing that we are going to be playing Wednesday-Saturday or Sunday? Not to mention we need to travel to get to Wednesday’s game as well.

A couple of years ago, we implemented “development weekends”. What these development weekends are all about is practice! These are built-in off weeks from tournament play. Instead of traveling and playing more games, we will have 1-2 practices with our younger teams and 2-3 practices/training sessions with our high school teams.

Each of our teams had at least one development weekend this past year, but this is something we are going to be more intentional about with all of our teams this upcoming spring and summer. Likely, we will have 2-3 of these development weekends built into all of our team’s schedules. At the high school level, the combination of development weekends, and playing in 2-3 MIL events which allow for us to practice or train on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, will allow us more opportunities for player development to happen throughout the summer and not just during the winter months.

At the end of the day, we believe that travel baseball and player development do not have to be independent of each other. We believe winning, and teaching our players to be winners, is important and is a big part of development; however, for us, winning does not come at the expense of jeopardizing a player’s development or career. If we can keep the focus on long-term athletic development and work at getting better every day, winning will take care of itself.

In no way do we have travel baseball figured out, but, by addressing some of the current issues we see in the travel baseball culture and how we deliberately reorganized our organization’s approach to solve for them, our hope is to create some thoughtful discussion within the baseball community at all levels of the game.

We feel this will require a different approach regarding how travel baseball might look and be more beneficial for all concerned. Even if people disagree, listening and discussing other points of view is the only way we see travel baseball improving as a whole over time for the benefit of the players.

For more information on the Indiana Chargers, visit their website indianachargers.com, or follow them on Twitter @IN_Chargers. You can also contact the Chargers staff at inchargers@gmail.com.

The post How to Run a Development-First Travel Ball Program appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

 Velocity Based Training – or VBT – has slowly been gaining popularity as athletes and coaches look for the most cutting edge methods to train their athletes. With VBT, instead of training for maximal strength, athletes train for maximal speed. In theory, this trains more fast-twitch muscle fibers which translates more directly to the athlete’s sport. We have begun implementing VBT with some of our more advanced athletes, and you can read more about it in our VBT articles: Part 1 and Part 2.

But how do we measure velocity? Sure it’s easy enough to just “feel it out” and do some lighter weights as fast as you can, but how do you know how fast you’re actually moving the bar? Well, there’s the Tendo Unit, which is the gold-standard, but retails for $1600. VBT guru Bryan Mann swears by the GymAware, but that costs $2200.

Fortunately, a wave of much cheaper IMU based sensors are being released, namely the PUSH Band, the Beast Sensor, and the FORM Lifting Collar. Instead of using a cable to measure velocity, these sensors use a series of gyroscopes and accelerometers to determine barspeed, rather than a string attached to the barbell like the Tendo and GymAware. Most importantly, they’re all priced in the $249-$289 range, which offers a much cheaper alternative to the wired units.

But do they work?

We took it upon ourselves to carry out a small in-house study comparing these 3 sensors to the gold-standard of VBT, the Tendo. Our primary measurement was average velocity, which is the primary measurement used in VBT. Each sensor was compared individually to the Tendo, and 20 athletes performed 10 reps of bench press each. We looked at the average absolute difference between the Tendo and the sensor for all the reps, as well as the mean absolute percent error, or MAPE (MAPE is a measure of accuracy, lower percentage is better), in order to compare the sensors.

Results

Let’s not waste any time, here’s the results:

Just by looking at the table, the obvious winner is the PUSH Band. It had the lowest average difference, and the lowest MAPE. Purely based on accuracy, it’s the obvious choice.

It is worth noting that although the overall difference of the sensors is pretty good, there are some trends to point out. The PUSH Band consistently read both negative and positive results, so you wouldn’t necessarily know if any particular rep was slower or faster, but the overall average for the workout was pretty accurate. The Beast Sensor, on the other hand, read almost always slower than the Tendo. Your actual speed would more often than not be 0.2 m/s faster than what the sensor recorded. FORM was similar to the PUSH in that it read both negative and positive results.

But there are a few caveats that I’d like to address.

First of all, yes, the FORM Collar looks pretty bad. There were, however, multiple misreads. For example, I doubt that one of our athletes did a rep at -3.86 m/s. When we eliminate all of these outliers, we wind up with a much more reasonable result.

They still lag a bit behind the PUSH and Beast, but the results are much more competitive. Standard outlier calculations were performed to create this table.

I’d also like to briefly talk about peak velocity, as some methods of training use it as the recorded metric. FORM does not measure peak velocity, so only Beast and PUSH were compared. Here are the results:

Both the average differences and the MAPE were identical to those for average velocity, with the PUSH slightly edging out the Beast Sensor. Beyond peak velocity, power calculations were rather inconsistent in all 3 sensors, and due to its limited use in the VBT training world, I have omitted it.

The final thing I want to discuss is the usability of the different sensors. All three of them are Bluetooth enabled, use a phone app, and were pretty easy to set up and use. PUSH and Beast both have a web portal in addition to the app, while FORM only exists in the app. All 3 apps are pretty easy and intuitive to use, although going back and looking at past sessions was a bit confusing in all of the apps. The portals for PUSH and Beast were much better for looking at past training sessions, offering rep-by-rep tables and all the data you could possibly want. The PUSH Band in particular had a very nice and user-friendly portal (although it costs a small monthly service charge to access it).

Wrapping it Up

The disparity between the Tendo and the IMU-based sensors seems to come from their method of measurement. Maybe the discrepancies are due to the fact that PUSH and Beast are placed on the users forearm/ wrist, and not the bar. Maybe the athlete bounced the bar off their chest and the sensors were prone to jostled. My guess, however, is that the IMU technology is just not yet accurate enough to compete 1-on-1 with the Tendo or other similar VBT devices. That’s not to say these devices will never compete, and I’m sure technology will continue to advance and these types of sensors will get more accurate.

So if I had to pick one, I’d pick either the Tendo or the GymAware. Ok, if I didn’t have $2000 I’d probably pick the PUSH Band. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s pretty close, and definitely gives you a good idea of how fast the bar is moving. It’s easy to use, and the app and the portal were probably the best out of the bunch. Just make sure to account for the fact that velocity readings may not be 100% accurate.

This article was written by Joseph Marsh, Lead Product Engineer at Driveline Baseball.

The post Velocity-Based Training: Device Testing and Review appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

One of the most common goals I hear from the athletes I work with at Driveline Baseball is the desire to improve their hip mobility. Since proper range of motion in the hips is associated with improved performance and decreased risk of injury, this is a great goal to have (4, 5). In my experience, complaints of hip tightness can have an actual, measureable restriction on range of motion, or athletes can have a “normal” range of motion but still experience tightness in their hips.

Searching across the internet produces a variety of results on why hips can become restricted and the fixes for them. However, I want to share the reasons that I’ve found as to why athletes complain of decreased hip mobility. Not every athlete falls into one of these categories, and if they do, it does not mean that there are not other possible factors—listed here or not.

Hip mobility is complex, and at the end of the day, some athletes may need to go seek a healthcare or strength and conditioning professional to help them achieve their goals. That being said, let’s take a look into possible factors contributing to this problem.

Weakesses in the Hip Stabilizers

First, and probably the most easily identified factor is actual weakness in the hips and surrounding muscles. Athletes can have a good squat or deadlift and still be weak in the hips and the adjacent areas. Weakness in the glutes (maximus, medius, and minimus), hamstrings, trunk musculature, hip external rotators, adductors, and flexors can lead to muscular imbalances, creating feelings of tightness in the hips and pelvis.

An easy way to think about this is to consider someone at the gym who always works on his bench and overhead press but neglects his scapular musculature and rotator cuff. In all likelihood, this guy will have very poor shoulder mobility.

Conversely, but still applicable, this can often be the case for those who feel like their hips are tight, but when they get assessed, they actually have a high range of motion—not just in the hips but also in the majority of joints in their bodies. These athletes can demonstrate poor strength and stability in their hip joints. Without good control of a joint, the musculature around the area may start tightening as a protective means to reduce the amount of stress placed on that body part. The more range one actually has, the more strength he may actually need to maintain control and stability of his hips.

Poor Stability of the Lumbar Spine

Another reason the hips can have reduced mobility is decreased stability of the lumbar spine. I’ve discussed in a previous blog post how it is not uncommon for baseball players (and other young athletes) to develop a spondylolysis (a stress fracture, or reaction) at some point in their careers. One of the signs of this, and something that can remain lingering after other signs and symptoms clear up, is hip tightness (2).

Specifically, this can happen in the psoas major, a main hip flexor, which is also part of the core musculature that helps stabilize the spine (3). When the spine is injured, the deep layers of the psoas, which attach directly to the spine, become weak and atrophied. As a result, the superficial layers can take over and become very tight (2). This can happen on one or both sides of the spine. This tightness, if pronounced enough, can affect motion in all directions of the hip. Importantly, this tightness, along with other signs and symptoms of a spondylolysis, can be present in the absence of pain. If an athlete has any worries that he may fall into this category, he should seek the opinion of a healthcare professional.

Poor Positioning of the Pelvis

The third possible factor that can contribute to decreased hip mobility is inefficient positioning of the pelvis. Excessive pelvic tilt is a commonly discussed trait found in many athletes, as well as the general population. There are many thought processes—the Janda Lower Crossed Syndrome, and the Postural Restoration Institute Posterior Exterior Chain (PEC)—that state that tightness in the lumbar extensor muscles and hip flexors essentially outweigh the weakness of the hamstrings, obliques, glutes, diaphragm and lower abdominals and as a result, the pelvis tilts forward anteriorly (1).

Over time this can become the body’s default position. When the pelvis is rotated forward, a couple things can happen. First, the muscles that attach to the pelvis, femur, and spine can be placed into either a more lengthened or more shortened position. This can lead to those muscles not being able to stretch to their full capabilities. In addition, these muscles can also be put at a mechanical disadvantage where they are not able to contract optimally (1).

Second, the acetabulum (the “socket” of the “ball and socket” joint) can shift forward. As a result, the head of the femur (the “ball” part of the joint) will not be centered into the socket. This will lead to the neck of the femur prematurely running into the rim of the socket when the hip is moving through certain ranges (1). This can be accompanied by a feeling of a bony restriction.

As you can see, hip restrictions represent a very complex challenge that often can’t be fully addressed with standard stretching and mobility exercises. Athletes who have been dealing with this issue for a long period of time should consider working with a health or fitness professional to get a good, proper assessment to help them find the underlying causes of their plateaued progress. For many athletes, this could be an important piece for their future health and performance.

This post was written by Terry Phillips (DPT), Driveline’s in-house physical therapist. Terry specializes in manual therapy, orthopedics, sports medicine, and post-surgical rehabilitation.

1. Anderson, James, MPT, PRC. “Myokinematic Restoration: An Integreated Approach to Treatment of Patterned Lumbo-Pelvic-Femoral Pathomechanics.” Kirkland, WA. 17 Oct. 2010. Lecture.
2. Looper, Mark, and Ken Cole. “CORE-tical Control: Linking The Extremities H Through Neuro-Muscular Control.” Olympic Physical Therapy, Kirkland, WA. Lecture.
3. O’Sullivan, P. B. “Lumbar Segmental ‘instability’: Clinical Presentation and Specific Stabilizing Exercise Management.” Manual Therapy. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2000. Web.
4. Robb, Andrew J., Glenn Fleisig, Kevin Wilk, Leonard Macrina, Becky Bolt, and Jason Pajaczkowski. “Passive Ranges of Motion of the Hips and Their Relationship with Pitching Biomechanics and Ball Velocity in Professional Baseball Pitchers.” The American Journal of Sports Medicine 38.12 (2010): 2487-493. Web.
5. 5. Sauer, Eric L., PhD, ATC, FNATA, Kellie C. Huxel Bliven, PhD, ATC, Michael P. Johnson, PT, PhD, OCS, Susan Falsone, PT, MS, SCS, ATC, CSCS, COMT, and Sheri Walters, # DPT, MS, SCS, ATC, CSCS. “Hip and Glenohumeral Rotational Range of Motion in Healthy Professional Baseball Pitchers and Position Players.” The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2014. Sage, 8 Nov. 2013. Web.

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This post was written by Tyler Anderson, then volunteer assistant coach at Saint Louis University and now pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at Lindenwood University. Saint Louis finished 35-22 with the third most wins in a season in program history. 

Heading into my first season at St Louis University, I met with Head Coach Darin Hendrickson during the summer to discuss what his team had done as a pitching staff in previous seasons and what changes or additions we could make. We got on to the topic of weighted balls and if I had any experience implementing them—which I had not. SLU had just come off a season where they had put in a weighted-ball program that yielded mixed results. The coaching staff was on the fence in regards to using them again for the upcoming season.

My previous school had casually used plyo balls for recovery, but that was the extent of their weighted ball use. (I must add, this school has a successful track record in producing pitchers at the collegiate, minor league, and major league level, highlighting that there isn’t only one way to do things!) However, I had done a lot of research on weighted balls and felt that if implemented correctly, a program could be extremely beneficial.

I read countless articles on weighted balls, including Hacking the Kinetic Chain, and reached out to coaches I knew that were using them in their program. One of the first calls I made was to Westmont Pitching Coach (and my former JC pitching coach), Tony Cougoule. I knew Tony had been doing Driveline and a lot of his players spent the summer in Washington at the Driveline facility. I had a ton of questions as to how they did it day to day and what benefits he had seen.

The research and conversations allowed me to compile a plan that encompasses the entire year (fall, winter, and spring). My key takeaways included the following:

Weighted balls

• help condition the arm, reducing soreness and possibility of injury
• improve the potential for an increase in velocity
• allow for more efficient arm path through drill work that does not require outside verbal cues
• train intent—the intent to throw hard, revealing existing velocity  
• assist in reorganizing mechanical patterns to produce a more efficient & durable pitcher.

I was convinced that a weighted-ball program would help us. Obviously as a new coach on an established coaching staff, I was hesitant to leap in, but Coach Hendrickson was supportive and trusted that I had done the work to ensure that we could help our pitchers improve on last year’s results.

Fall: Getting Familiar with the Staff

A critical decision occurred in the fall when we actually decided not to do any weighted balls. The biggest factor in this decision was my unfamiliarity with the staff. I felt that I needed to get to know the guys, their mentality, and their physical capabilities. On top of this, we had a number of pitchers coming off injuries, as well as varying workloads after a season of summer ball. During the first practice, I quickly identified that, as a whole, our pitching staff was physically out of shape.  As with any team, there were  a variety of reasons: some guys were carrying a little too much weight, some guys had not done enough conditioning over the summer, some had injuries, etc.

Implementing the weighted-ball program from day one in the fall would have been a disaster, and I’m glad we spent the fall getting in shape. Conditioning came in the form of strength training, sprints, and medicine ball work at practice. By the end of the fall, I felt that our guys were in considerably better shape, displaying increased levels of mobility and flexibility. Mobility and flexibility are critical elements of a weighted-ball program, so we implemented movement screening to measure advancements of each pitcher prior to commencing the weighted-ball program. We managed each pitcher’s throwing program and innings, which gave us a good base fitness level to start the program.

Winter: On-Ramping Begins

Towards the end of the fall and heading into the winter, we implemented the “On-Ramping Program.”  On-ramping is typically a 6-week program, but we made the decision to cut it in half because of our guys’ fall workload. Our players were enthusiastic and ready to start, buoyed by experiences of a number of pitchers who had done the program in the past. These guys really helped in teaching and assisting their teammates complete the drills correctly. I sought constant feedback, monitoring and documenting any soreness or discomfort.

Early on, we received feedback that some players were challenged by the black ball (2000g/4.4 lb.), reporting that it was too heavy and uncomfortable. I believe it is important to adapt an approach or program to each player’s mental and physical requirements—as I said above, there isn’t only one way to do things. Not wanting to force something onto the staff that they were uncomfortable with, we varied elements of the program to suit individual requirements. In fact, we even held two pitchers out all together during this phase due to their screening results and had them perform corrective drills until they were ready later in the year.

Winter Break: High Velo, High Usage

We were asked our staff to complete the “high usage” and “high velo” plans over their break and at home unsupervised by coaches. This felt risky because we wouldn’t be able to monitor them all the time, but we believed there would be a reward because, if completed correctly, the staff would improve their arm speed and strength.

We moved into the off-season program with no issues and solid feedback from our pitchers. As a coaching staff, the challenge is putting your trust in your players (and realizing that they don’t always need a coach breathing over their shoulder). We had the staff complete two weeks of this element under supervision before leaving for break. We worked extremely hard to educate the team on the “why” of this phase (how it would help them), but even more importantly, we also educated them on what they may experience during the phase, such as tired arm, or a slight drop in velocity as a result of workload. We really stressed the importance of pre and post throwing and stressed that buying-in and correct execution were critical.

Spring: Blend to Season

Players returned from winter break with approximately five weeks before our season opener. During this time, we commenced the blend-to-season program. We modified this element for individual pitchers based on their roles (starter or reliever). I was excited (and relieved) to see the benefits of all the hard work starting to kick in. Our velocity tracking of fall scrimmages and the run-and-gun portion of the program recorded four guys touching 90 mph on occasion. Within the first three weeks after winter break, we captured eleven pitchers touching 90 mph on the mound during bullpens. While the vast majority were not maintaining this velocity across the entire throwing session, it was obvious that the program had led to advancements.  

An interesting observation made by the coaching staff during this period was the increased level of durability across the pitching staff. In years past, we’d usually see guys coming back from break by slowly building up pitch counts while reporting general soreness. We noticed our guys were able to throw more pitches in their bullpens earlier than usual while also responding better the following day with decreased or no arm soreness.

In-Season: Maintaining Gains

The weighted-ball program continued during the season. The program caters to bother starters and relievers, and we allowed players to modify programs to fit their needs (pre- and postgame). At this point, our guys couldn’t even function without doing their foam rolling, lacrosse ball, and weighted-ball programs before picking up a baseball—which was reassuring! As a result of the positive buy-in from the team, we upgraded our facility to include a horse stall right behind our bullpen mounds, allowing our players to do the plyoballs before the game and during game for our relievers if needed.

Review and Changes

When I look back and reflect on our season, I would say that year 1 of the program was a huge success. On the field, we posted a 35-win season (3rd most in school history); we broke the school record for strikeouts with 449; our Friday night starter,  Miller Hogan was drafted as a draft-eligible sophomore in the 32nd round by the Milwaukee Brewers (and will return to school), and our closer broke the school record for saves with 14.

The program contributed to building a culture of hard work and established the importance of taking care of the human body.  Pitchers understood concepts like pre and post self-myofascial release and the use of Jaeger bands. Arm care became something the pitching staff did on their own and not something we had to constantly remind them to do. We had an incredible record of physical health—which I believe was the result of foam rolling, lacrosse ball, band work, and plyoballs before throwing—so pitchers were properly warmed before playing catch and not playing catch to warm up.

The positive-pattern building through the PlyoCare work helped us moved away from verbal cues that were not very effective to begin with. While the program added velocity across the board, it also added health. We did not have one player miss an inning, start, or outing due to an arm injury or soreness. Our guys were able to hold velocity deep into games, and their velocity did not fluctuate from outing to outing.

While the program is depicted as “Just Weighted Balls,” one of our major success stories was not directly attributable to the weighted balls themselves. We had a freshman pitcher who was low to mid 80s on the mound and had clear lead/landing leg issues. When we did the run-and-gun portion of the program, we noticed he was one of the top two or three hardest throwers on our staff. We recognized that he was able to land more effectively and efficiently during this section of the program, which made it much easier to diagnose the major issue in his delivery. We implemented a program of medicine-ball drills and more run and guns, and we were able to fix the stability issues in his front leg. Within four to six weeks he was mid to upper 80s off the mound and ended up playing a significant role for us.

We continue to make changes to the program and are always looking to improve. This year our guys will do weighted balls during the fall because they have been through the program for a full year (we will hold out freshman/transfers depending on movement screening) and we will adjust the program for guys coming off big inning loads from the previous year or summer. The guys that have large inning loads will continue to lift, condition, and do the recovery portion of the program while also long tossing and completing sub-maximal command work. We continue to upgrade our facilities to cater to the program and will add more horse stall mats to our indoor facility allowing us to get more guys through the plyocare work a little quicker.

Since implementing this program at SLU, I took a new position as the Pitching Coach and Recruiting Coordinator at Lindenwood University. This was a great opportunity for me to join a school coming off a 40 win season and a trip to the D2 World Series. It also gave me the opportunity to recruit and be able to expand on the program I implemented at SLU. We currently have 1 week of practice remaining in the fall and then wrapping up with our fall World Series. Our pitching staff has almost completed the on-boarding weighted ball program and as soon as the fall wraps up will move into the offseason program. I have implemented the Driveline weighted ball program similar to what I did at SLU but have made a few changes.

We have added 1-2 command pens per week, one which features 4oz, 5oz and 6oz baseballs. We also have 1 velo pen and as an off day a shadow pen. Throughout the fall we have seen improved command across the staff, a slight increase in velocity in most guys but the greatest result we have had is that everyone has been healthy and the feedback is that their arms feel better than ever.

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There is sometimes disagreement regarding how to change pitching mechanics or if it can be done. Some coaches feel that mechanics are relatively set in stone; others see mechanics as something that can change but with difficulty.

Luckily, more research has been done on this topic. Today let’s review what has recently been published along with some findings of our own.

Pitching mechanics can change for a variety of reasons, but coaching pitching mechanics a near constant occurrence with every pitcher. An understated topic when discussing pitching performance and health is that pitchers are almost constantly in a state of change.

On the one hand, coaches ask their pitchers to be consistent performers while on the other hand, they consistently ask them to change. This is the life of a pitcher at every level.

Quite literally every pitcher is trying to get better, and often that means trying to tweak or change mechanics in order to throw harder, have more command, or throw a better offspeed pitch.

We can see how these changes affect performance, but it’s much harder to see how they change the torque that pitchers are developing.

That is why we use the motus sleeve to collect data on pitchers when they first get to our gym and after they’ve stayed and thrown off the mound.

While we don’t know how small changes in mechanics affect adult pitchers and the torque put on their body, we know they can have drastic performance effects.

Looking at our summer data from 2017, we can see that we saw pitchers generally throw harder and incur more stress on their elbows but in a way that stayed proportionally similar.

Broadly speaking, pitchers produce more torque as they throw harder but there are instances where pitchers can move more efficiently, experiencing faster velocities but also seeing a reduction in elbow torques. But it makes sense that, as a whole, as velocity increases so does elbow torque.

This means discussions about elbow torque (or stress, as it may be referred to) is really about getting as low torque as possible while still throwing at a high velocity.

Even though it’s believed that pitching mechanics are hard to change, we can see evidence above of changes: for instance, arm speed decreased (though the “arm speed” metric on the motus sleeve is not the same as peer review papers, we explained why here), and arm slot and shoulder rotation changed as well.

We are limited in analysis by those metrics, but they are enough to see that some changes occurred while the pitchers were on a weighted ball and strength-training program.

Up until now there has be limited evidence in peer-review papers that pitching mechanics can be changed. However more research has been published recently that demonstrates how mechanics can be changed, showing that they are actually quite fluid.

Youth Athletes 9-14

Notably, while many coaches believe that pitching mechanics are hard or impossible to change, a significant portion of practice time is spent on changing pitching mechanics.

But even when we ask youth pitchers to repeat their mechanics, we can get drastically different results. Below is an overlay of a youth pitcher throwing a fastball and a curveball while being told to repeat his mechanics for both.

Here we can see that even when the goal is repeating the same movement, they are actually quite different.

Youth pitchers experience a wider range of mechanics, and they simply do not have good enough body control to not do so.

We know that youth pitchers are going to be coached into certain positions; sometimes the pitchers will change their mechanics to copy a different pitcher’s mechanics, and mechanics are going to change with fatigue.

Here, we can see some long-term mechanical changes tracked by ASMI: they published a 7-year study when they retested pitchers’ mechanics annually. Athletes were excluded if they were no longer pitching, but they were able to get 35 participants analyzed at least three times.

Now there have been multiple biomechanical studies comparing biomechanical differences among athletes of different ages. However, this study aimed to identify when and possibly how these changes occur over time. The authors hypothesized that joint forces, torques, and angular velocities would increase with age.

One of the particularly interesting findings was a significant increase in normalized elbow varus torque from ages 13-14 and from 14-15. The increases in kinetics (the forces acting on a pitcher’s body) were statistically significant difference for each year, but normalized kinetics saw the biggest increases from ages 13-15. This seems to parallel the biggest physical differences in males during puberty.

“The implication of these previous studies combined with the current data is that kinematic changes are most significant in the first few years of competitive pitching (perhaps 9-13 years of age)”

Many of the changes can also be attributed to more practice (increased reps), increased body awareness, and the fact that athletes are growing the most during this time.

Now these pitchers obviously didn’t receive the same universal coaching, which suggests that for youth athletes there is a wide range of coaching that can cause changes in pitching mechanics.

Another study, specifically with 9 year old pitchers, found that they were able to significantly change their mechanics in 21 days using training techniques from the Texas Baseball Ranch.

Not only does this show the ability young athletes have to change mechanics in a relatively short period of time, compared to the yearly review above, but also it shows that mechanics can be changed outside of the usual verbal cues.

This 21-day study was not completed with a biomechanics lab but instead with cameras in a consistent position.

High School, College, and Professional

ASMI took 46-baseball pitchers who were evaluated at least twice, with an average of 12 months between evaluations, and examined the differences in the reports. The range of the comparisons was 2-48 months.

ASMI gave the pitchers evaluations and defined flaws in there as deviations from the elite range, both too high and too low, that ASMI has established for pitchers that they have in their database.

Overall there were 138 “flaws” detected in the pretest, and 61 (44%) of them were corrected by the second test. The 46 pitchers had 223 biomechanical parameters in the normal range and 41 parameters (18%) developed new flaws by the second evaluation.

So not only can certain pitching mechanics be fixed, but certain movement patterns they perform well can change.

The study also didn’t look at any specific teaching or coaching methodology, which again suggests that mechanics are fluid and change over time at all ages.

Another Reason for Changed Pitching Mechanics

We mentioned before that athletes can primarily change their mechanics because of coaching, imitation, and fatigue, but as pitchers age, a more complicated reason often occurs: injury.

Coming back from an injury, trying to play through one, or having excessive soreness is going to drive a player to change how he moves. It’s no secret that the body is going to want to create a movement path that avoids pain in any way.

As players age, there is an increased chance that they have tried to play through or around some sort of issue.

The biggest take away from knowing this possibility is instituting a solid screening process. We see screening as consisting of two parts: one on movement, and a second on strength and performance.

Some movement issues can be addressed by more mobility work, soft tissue work, or seeing a physical therapist. Other issues can also be strongly related to strength deficiencies. Without screening, athletes and coaches aren’t going to know what direction to go in.

How We Can Track the Changes

So, we understand that players are almost constantly tweaking or changing some part of their mechanics, whether driven by themselves or by a coach. What can we do to track changes?

The first and best option would be using a motus sensor to track the changes on a pitcher’s elbow over time. We think the best way to use the sensor is to track changes over a long period of time. 

The possibility of seeing changes during multiple bullpens over weeks and months is incredibly valuable. You can see the effects of coaching, strength training, mobility work and throwing specific work not only show in velocity but also in torque as well.

We understand that not everyone will have a motus sensor and that, more often than not, video is primarily used to evaluate pitchers.

We don’t use video to compare mechanics; we prefer to use the motus sensor or our biomechanics lab. But we understand the desire to try and measure a pitcher’s mechanics by video. It helps that nearly everyone has a pretty nice camera in their pocket. But coaches should keep in mind that while video can be very useful, it can also be easily misused.

Most importantly, if you are going to compare video of a pitcher from multiple bullpens, the video needs to be taken from the exact same spot.

When videos are being compared from different angles, you end up increasing the possibility of creating issues that aren’t there. Which means a changes you think you see in a pitchers mechanics could be coming from a different camera angle and not a movement change.

This is known as a parallax error, which in baseball, occurs when pitchers and coaches are looking at every small mechanical change they can from different camera locations. Parallax error is also why comparisons of pitchers to MLB pitchers from different angles are generally worthless.

The best way to make sure that the camera is in the same spot is to use a tripod along with an iphone or camera attachment, and mark the ground with pieces of tape where the legs of the tripod should be. This way, you can have the pitcher stand on the same point of the mound and have more reliable video.

Of course, bullpens can and should be tracked for performance metrics as well. (Austin Wasserman has a good blog post on tracking bullpens.) We track the velocities of our mound velocity, and we track velocity, pitch type, and strike percentage when athletes throw live ABs. You can see an example sheet of what we use here.

It’s become increasingly clear that pitching mechanics are not set in stone but are much more fluid than many believed. This is why it’s important for coaches and players to measure and track the changes they make not only for performance but also for health reasons as well.

This article was written by Research Associate Michael O’Connell

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What is central nervous system (CNS) fatigue, and how will it affect the performance of my baseball athletes?

Most athletes know what central nervous system (CNS) fatigue is because at some point or another they have experienced it. Athletes are constantly subjected to the coaching staff’s great ideas, which usually include some version of individual practice, team practice, team weights, and team conditioning. All of these can cause great gains in athletic performance, but without proper programming and periodization, it is possible for athletes to become overtrained and experience CNS fatigue.

Currently, the widely accepted standard is to wait until performance takes a hit and then try to do something about it. However, this is a classic example of too little, too late. For example, consider monitoring and recording a pitcher’s throwing velocity or a hitter’s exit velocity off the bat. When the numbers dip too low, it’s time for a de-load week, but at that point, it is too late and misses the mark by a lot. What do we do about this?

Defining CNS Fatigue

The CNS consists of the brain and the spinal cord. For athletes, that system can become “tired” when it starts to have trouble communicating with the muscles of the body. CNS fatigue doesn’t happen when the muscles become tired, and not when the brain or spinal cord becomes tired, but when the communication between the two wears out. Overtraining can cause decreased performance, but also greatly increases the risk of injury. At the point of overtraining, the body has so effectively adapted to chronic stimulation of a certain variety that it no longer needs to adapt. It is enough to constantly wear athletes down but not enough to cause any actual performance increase.

The way the CNS and the muscles communicate is through neural connections, the neurons synapse with one another by way of neurotransmitters. The four that we will briefly consider are serotonin, noradrenaline, dopamine, and acetylcholine.

• Serotonin correlates with readiness, behavior, sleep, and overall mood.
• Noradrenaline increases in anticipation of exercise or training. Noradrenaline is often talked about in relation to the “fight or flight” response.
• Dopamine is associated with arousal, motivation, muscular coordination, and repeated exercise performance. It is the “feel-good” neurotransmitter.
• Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter required for the generation of muscular force.

Changes in the concentrations of these synaptic neurotransmitters cause central nervous system fatigue. Here are some of the symptoms of what this looks like: First, acute fatigue comes as a result of a training stimulus. Either no effect or an increase in performance is usually noted at this point. If the training stimulus is too high for too long, then a cascade of events can follow. Functional overreaching can cause a temporary decrease or a return to an athletic-performance baseline. This plays an integral role in the training of athletes. The performance professional can manipulate variables to cause a desired adaptation, but beyond this comes nonfunctional overreaching. This is marked by a stagnation or a decrease in athletic performance. The last phase is when overtraining syndrome is present and causes a decrease in athletic performance. It is marked by significantly decreased force production, glycolytic capacity, and is often concomitant with sickness and infection as well as emotional and sleep disturbances.

(Haff, Triplett ’16)

It is (usually) impossible to look at an athlete and say: “You look like you are a little short on acetylcholine and high in cortisol (hormone associated with stress) today. We should adjust your training.” So how exactly can we assess the recovery status of an athlete?  

Monitoring CNS through Exercise

Using methods for monitoring recovery from athletic training and competition can decrease this risk. One method is to use a mechanical analysis of a countermovement jump (CMJ) in order to determine neuromuscular fatigue. In trained athletes, the jump height remains largely unchanged when the athlete is fatigued, but the way the jump is performed changes depending on the recovery status. If the athlete is fatigued, then he changes the pattern of the movement to decrease the duration of the jump and increases the eccentric utilization of the movement. The peak power and jump height, however, remain fairly constant whether fatigued or recovered from exercise. Another way to measure an athlete’s recovery from exercise is by measuring heart-rate variability (HRV).

Monitoring CNS Through HRV

Heart-rate variability (HRV) is the measurement of time between heartbeats rather than simply the number of heartbeats in a given time period. HRV relates directly to the autonomic nervous system activity. The “branches” associated with the autonomic nervous system are the parasympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, and the enteric nervous system.

• The sympathetic nervous system is often nicknamed the “fight-or-flight” nervous system.
• The parasympathetic nervous system is often referred to as the “rest-and-digest” nervous system.
• The enteric nervous system is found in the gut and regulates digestion.

HRV seems to be a good snapshot indicator of which one of these systems is more active: the parasympathetic, rest-and-digest system, or the sympathetic, fight-or-flight system. Generally speaking, the more highly variable the heart rate is, the more stress the athlete is experiencing. A lower HRV indicates that the individual is in a state of rest or has recovered well from training. A practical application of HRV monitoring is to identify the time with which an individual recovers fully from exercise and adjusting training accordingly. 

Nutrition’s Role

Nutrition plays a critical role in preventing CNS fatigue. Proper nutrition around the workout is very important. For most athletes, a carbohydrate and protein drink is recommended before training, and a protein shake is recommended after training to assist in fueling and recovering from exercise. As important as pre- and post-workout nutrition is, it cannot replace proper nutrition and fueling during the rest of the day. It is important for athletes to eat a diet high in protein in order to aid in recovery from intense training. The diet must also have fat and carbohydrates in order to fuel activity. Carbohydrates are used in the body to fuel short bursts of high-intent activity. Fats are used to fuel lower intensity activity over longer periods of time. Carbohydrates primarily fuel an athlete sprinting from home to second, but fats keep him going in the ninth inning after he has been on the field for three hours.

Programming’s Role

Proper programming is essential. Forcing an athlete to throw 120 pitches and do a high-volume weight-training program in one week is a recipe for disaster and diminished performance. 

It is crucial that when the volume of throwing or hitting is high for the volume in the weight room to be reduced. The opposite is also true. More is better is hardly true. In order for athletes to have long and successful careers, they must stay healthy and constantly perform well. This is why these variable are so important to consider.

Recap

Take-Home Points:

1. CNS fatigue is marked by a decrease in performance that cannot strictly be assigned to muscle soreness or tiredness. The technical term is neuromuscular fatigue.
2. Proper programming as not to chronically overtrain your athletes is essential. Program de-loads, active recovery days, balance throwing/hitting intensity, and intensity in the weight room are crucial.
3. Proper nutrition can assist in preventing neuromuscular fatigue. Use carbohydrates and fat to fuel exercise and protein to promote muscle building and recovery from training.
4. Use regular countermovement jumps to monitor for CNS fatigue, but don’t just look at jump height: look at how the jump is performed.
5. Use heart-rate variability to get an idea of how well, or poorly, your athletes are recovering from their training.

References:

Gathercole, Rob, et al. “Alternative Countermovement-Jump Analysis to Quantify Acute Neuromuscular Fatigue.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, vol. 10, no. 1, 2015, pp. 84–92., doi:10.1123/ijspp.2013-0413.

Aubert, Andre E, et al. “Heart Rate Variability in Athletes.” Sports Medicine, vol. 33, no. 12, 2003, pp. 889–919., doi:10.2165/00007256-200333120-00003.

Haff, Greg, and N. Travis Triplett. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Human Kinetics, 2016.

This article was written by Driveline Strength Trainer Gabe Juarez

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We still don’t know a whole lot about spin rate. While we certainly know more about how to use it under certain situations, we don’t know that much on how to develop better spin.

Because of this, we are running smaller experiments to get a better idea of what to test and what to look for.

The idea is that smaller tests lead to bigger samples that lead to better understanding and, in the end, better athlete results.

First, let’s recap the things we do know about spin rate before looking at our own data.

What We Do Know

For four-seam fastballs, it’s pretty straightforward. High-spin fastballs result in more flyballs and swing-and-misses and are more valuable thrown middle up in the zone. Low-spin fastballs result in more ground balls and are more valuable thrown down in the zone. If you have an average spin rate, your best bet is going to be learning a two-seam.

For offspeed pitches, it gets it bit more tricky. We can say that having a high-spin offspeed pitch is generally a good thing. But the useful spin, or spin aligned with the axis of the ball, is of more use than the total spin. Now, the numbers we get from MLB can’t give us the useful spin, but we can get a useful spin reading using a Rapsodo.

So what can the Rapsodo show us about useful spin in offspeed pitches when trying to practice them?

We wanted to replicate different practice situations, throwing curveballs and sliders at low intent off a mound and on flatground, to see if the useful spin would change when compared to pitching at 100% intent.

We are trying to answer the question: What is the best way to practice offspeed pitches to make them better in a game?

In this study we’ll look at total and useful spin before focusing in on the useful spin, or spin-efficiency number. Spin efficiency is the percentage of spin that is lined up with the axis of the ball. While true spin or useful spin is the RPM of spin lined up with the axis of the ball.

Our Data

We used a few athletes and a couple employees on throwing programs to throw offspeed pitches for this study. We had each athlete warm up and throw five offspeed pitches at 100% off a mound, then five offspeed pitches at 75%, followed by five throws at 75% from flatground. We used the Rapsodo, which we’ve previously validated to Trackman readings, to measure ball spin.

We split up the pitches to sliders and curveballs, and here is what we found looking at velocity, total spin, and true (useful spin).

Note: Pitcher 3 throws from a lower arm slot. So his curveball is more of a slurve, where pitchers 1 & 5 throw more over the top. 

While this isn’t enough to make sweeping conclusions, it’s important to look at some of the individual differences. We aren’t sure why these differences occur, but the best guess is that athletes all downregulate their throwing motions in different ways. This alone might be enough evidence to suggest that practicing offspeed pitches is not a “one size fits all” program.

We mentioned in our previous work with Bauer Units that we felt they were best used for fastballs, because the useful spin of offspeed pitches (or spin efficiency on the Rapsodo) probably matters more. That’s because for an offspeed pitch, the spin that is aligned with the pitch axis is going to affect movement. It’s too small of a sample to get a conclusive look at what we’re seeing, but let’s look back at the data but compare total-spin Bauer Units to useful-spin Bauer Units and look at the percentage of spin efficiency.

It’s important to realize that with curveballs you generally want a high-spin efficiency, so a higher true spin. With sliders, you are looking for a low-spin efficiency. This can be confusing, but comparing the true spin of curveballs and sliders will help put this idea into perspective.

The data for both charts can be found here

This is a lot to look at for a small sample size. We can see the drastic differences between the Bauer Units and useful spin of curveballs compared to sliders. Second we can see that some of the differences in spin efficiency can be pretty drastic and individualized.

Remember, the goal of practice is to get better at a skill. We can look at the differences in spin efficiency and think:

If we are practicing offspeed pitches at a different spin efficiency, are we truly practicing to get better at that pitch?

Although we don’t have the current ability to measure release point, we can suggest that the changes we see in useful spin are because the release points or wrist action change slightly. This goes back to the idea that pitchers don’t repeat their mechanics exactly the same for every throw. These slight changes increase when we tell athletes to slow down their mechanics. Each athlete will throw at lower intent in a different way.

Also, we have moved away from most flatground work. We found the differences in elbow stress to be minor compared to the differences in velocity. So even though current research supports the idea that there is little difference between elbow torque of fastballs and offspeed pitches, there are still workload concerns in throwing a lot of flatgrounds.

Plus, there is not a direct transfer between having good mechanics on flatground directly correlating to good mechanics on the mound. 

This isn’t to say that flatgrounds don’t have any place in practice, but they are often overused. We can all remember the teammate who “one more his way-ed” to 10 more sliders on flatground to get the movement right. This isn’t going to be a beneficial use of an athlete’s training economy.

Developing Pitches

Now it’s important to note that we’ve been discussing throwing offspeed at different levels for the purposes of development, which is different from preparing for a game.

If athletes are warming up for a game and have a specific routine, they should continue to experiment with what makes them feel comfortable and the most prepared.

But when you are trying to develop a pitch, this data pushes us to the idea that we should stay away from extensive offspeed-pitch practice at low intent from flatground or the mound.

This is for two reasons, first flatgrounds are more stressful than believed, meaning you are incurring a higher training cost than you are accounting for. Second if the useful spin is different, you probably aren’t practicing throwing a pitch the same way it’ll be thrown in a game.

This requires us to look closer at our own programming, but we are aiming to create more time for athletes to throw in game like scenarios with real time feedback from the technology we provide.

We use both the Rapsodo and high-speed cameras to develop pitches. The Rapsodo gives us feedback on the velocity, spin rate, spin axis and useful spin. While our cameras, mainly Edgertronic, give us a glimpse of how small grip and finger changes affect how the ball comes out of the hand.

Now not everyone is going to be able to use buy an Edertronic, but there are still other cameras that can be helpful. Here is an alternative that we would recommend.

Improvements to this study may include:

• A larger sample size of participants
• A more elite group of pitchers at higher velocities
• A larger sample of throws per athlete
• Reversing the order of the throws from flatground to the mound

This article was written by Research Associate Michael O’Connell

The post Scaling Velocity & Useful Spin in Offspeed Pitches appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

“Should I eat carbs or should I eat fat?”

This question has been a topic of hot debate recently, with very credible arguments on both sides. On one hand, we can consider the “right” answer for the general population, which is to probably take it easy on the sugar. However, when we consider the performance and athletic side of things, it is important to note that eating a diet that contains zero carbohydrates may not be the correct answer.

What Fats are All About

Fat is the most energy-dense macronutrient of the three macronutrients. (Carbohydrate, Fat, Protein.) Carbohydrate and protein each have four calories per gram, whereas fat has nine calories per gram. Fat is the major source of energy when the body is at rest. Fat metabolism is also the predominating source of energy during endurance exercise.

There are many crucial roles that fat plays in the body, some of which include the following:

• Storing energy for later use in the form of adipose tissue
• Aiding in the absorption of fat soluble vitamins, such as A, D, E, and K
• Building of cell membranes
• Consuming essential fatty acids is important because the body cannot produce high enough quantities of them it’s own so they must be consumed in the diet

Fats in the diet also play a role psychologically. Having fat in our food provides some wonderful flavors and textures that we, as humans, really enjoy. Fat also helps give us a feeling of fullness after a meal. Since fat plays so many major roles in the body, it is important to have some in our diet.

What Carbs are All About

Carbohydrates are a major source of energy for activities that are short and intense in nature. Take a pitcher throwing a ball or a hitter sprinting to second base as an example. Without getting into too much detail on energy metabolism and the complex equations that explain it, let’s consider an example. If you ate pancakes for breakfast before the game (or the night before), your muscles have turned them into glucose to be used by the body in order to power the muscle contraction that propels you into a full sprint. (It’s not important to the conversation right now but creatine phosphate also plays a role here.)

Although clearly important for athletic performance, carbohydrates are not essential. We can function just fine without carbohydrates in our diet after getting used to it. That being said, I don’t recommend that any power athlete should restrict carbohydrate intake. The performance decrease is too large for someone who is carbohydrate adapted to make it worth depleting glycogen stores and committing only to getting energy from fats.

To truly optimize athletic performance, a baseball player should eat a diet that has plenty of protein, adequate carbohydrate intake, and enough fat. The combination of all of these macronutrients is enough to keep the body running at its best and will help athletes to train and compete harder.

This article was written by Driveline Strength Trainer Gabe Juarez

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Before we talk about how much protein players should be consuming, let’s talk about what exactly protein is, why it is essential, and what is does for the body. The word “protein” comes from a Greek word meaning “of prime importance.” Proteins are made up of the following elements:

• Carbon
• Hydrogen
• Oxygen
• Nitrogen

Nitrogen in protein accounts for one of the biggest differences between proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Proteins are all made up of 20 different amino acids, known as the building blocks of protein, and the human body can synthesize an estimated 10,000-50,000 proteins from those 20 amino acids.

Think of the alphabet as the amino acids and the words that you form from letters as proteins. Of the 20 amino acids, there are 9 that are considered essential and 11 that are considered nonessential. The body can synthesize the 11 nonessential amino acids in sufficient quantities, so they are not considered a dietary requirement. However, the 9 essential amino acids cannot be produced in the body in sufficient quantities to meet the body’s needs making it important to consume those 9 essential amino acids as part of a regular diet.

In order for bodies to build and repair muscle, it is important to consume all 9 of the essential amino acids to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Consumed proteins are denatured in the stomach. (“To denature” is just a fancy word for digestion.) Denaturation can also happen when proteins are exposed to heat, like when you crack an egg into a hot frying pan and the egg whites change from a clear jelly to a firm white color.

Consuming enough caloric energy is important to stimulate muscle growth and repair. If an athlete is not eating enough calories from fat or carbohydrate, then his body will use amino acids as energy rather than for building muscle.

Complete Versus Incomplete Protein

Incomplete proteins do not contain all 9 essential amino acids. Some examples are those found in plants and grains. Some plants and grains are rich in the amino acids that others lack, so it is possible to form a complete protein source by eating certain incomplete protein combinations. Complete proteins, on the other hand, have sufficient amounts of all 9 essential amino acids. Animal meat like chicken, steak, or fish are all great sources of complete proteins.

Nitrogen Balance

The body needs to be in a positive nitrogen balance in order to build muscle. But, what exactly is a nitrogen balance? There are three nitrogen balance situations that can occur in the body:

1. Positive nitrogen balance: when nitrogen (protein) consumption is greater than excretion. This is where we want to be when gaining muscle or recovering from training.
2. Negative nitrogen balance: when protein consumption is falling short of the needs of the body. This is what we want to avoid because we are losing muscle.
3. Neutral nitrogen balance: when protein intake exactly meets the demands of the body.

Since a neutral nitrogen balance is ideal, how do we get there? The recommended daily allowance for protein for the general population is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. This roughly equals 114 grams for a 200-lb. person. We are not considering the general population, though. In order to determine the protein needs of a baseball player, we need to understand the demands placed on the body of baseball athletes.

Baseball is a ground-based, intermittent-power sport. A baseball swing or a pitcher’s wind-up requires a large burst of energy over a short period of time. In order to be as strong and as powerful as possible, it is crucial to train for power both in practice and in the weight room. In order to fuel muscle to perform and recover, it is recommended that a power athlete consume 1.3-1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. For a 200-lb. athlete, this looks like 118-164 grams of protein. That’s a pretty large window, and which side of that window a baseball player should be on changes based on what phase of training or competition he is in.

In our next discussion, we will examine varying needs in protein intake based on training season. We will also take a look at how to eat that much protein in one day.

This article was written by Driveline Strength Trainer Gabe Juarez

The post Protein Requirements for Athletes appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

In our previous post, we laid the groundwork for understanding how much protein baseball athletes should consume. This time, we will determine the differing needs for macronutrients based on the time of the year and examine how best to consume adequate protein throughout the day. Let’s begin with the yearly plan for baseball players, looking at the season and off-season for professional athletes, college athletes, high school athletes, and gap year athletes.

• Pro: 7-month season and 3-month off-season (plus 2 months’ spring training)
• College: 4-month season and 8-month off-season
• High School: 2-month season and 10-month off-season (May have 3 month summer season as well)
• Gap Year: 12-month off-season

A reasonable belief is that during the season (competitive period), athletes require the most protein. This is not the case. The competitive period is actually when athletes require the least amount of protein. The most protein is required during the off-season, when their training volume is the highest. During the season, it is more important to focus on fueling athletic performance and eating only enough protein to support recovery and maintain the hard-earned muscle from the off-season. Athletes should eat the most protein during the off-season to support lean-muscle gain. Outlined below is the approximate grams of protein needed based on the period of training.

The two categories that are necessary to understand are the competitive period and off-season training period. The competitive period requires 1.3-1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. This is enough to fuel and recover from competition. The off-season training period is when there is less emphasis on sport-specific training and more on strength training and conditioning. During this type of training, it is important for athletes to eat between 1.6-1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. (The table converts pounds to kilograms, so you don’t have to do the math.)

For example, a 190-lb. (86 kg) athlete needs to eat 112-130 grams of protein during the season to maintain lean muscle and to recover from athletic competition. During the off-season, that same athlete needs to eat between 138-155 grams of protein per day to aid in recovery from heavy weight-training sessions. A sample meal plan is given below.

In the previous article, we discussed that there are different amino acids: essential and nonessential. It’s crucial to understand the importance of getting all 9 essential amino acids. Eating protein in the form of animal meat is the safest bet. Animal meats like steak, chicken and fish are packed with 2-3 grams of the amino acid leucine (and all 8 of the other essential amino acids). Leucine is critical for stimulating muscle-protein synthesis, which is how the body builds new lean mass and keeps the existing lean-muscle mass running optimally.

These numbers should be seen as minimums requirements for athletes, who can then adjust based off their response to their diet.

This article was written by Driveline Strength Trainer Gabe Juarez

The post Minimum Protein Needs Based on the Season appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

This post from our Coaches Series was written by Justin James, Assistant Coach at University of California, San Diego. He took over there in January 2017, having coached the previous seven seasons at Point Loma Nazarene University. 

In previous posts, I covered implementing Driveline Protocols to a new staff only 30 days before first pitch, then followed with a Season Recap on how the implementation was a success. In this post I will cover year three of fall ball with my staff using Driveline WBs and Plyos.

As pitching coaches, or any collegiate coach for that matter, we dread the breaks. During summer and Christmas break, per NCAA rules, we are not to monitor or control our staff regardless of safety concerns or how much better they want to get. That said, a solid, detailed plan broken up into “phases” must be easy to follow and easy to test for when your staff gets back from breaks without supervision.

With this in mind, teaching and allowing for self-awareness and accountability is beyond crucial.

Sometimes this leads to small setbacks, but it’s a necessity if you want a year-round pitching plan to actually be followed. Staff must be tested regularly and scheduled with consistency so complacency doesn’t set in with your guys.

Planning for Different Seasons

Before each new “season”(start of fall, end of fall, return from Christmas, near end of season), a testing or baseline must be administered. This is for accountability, motivation, health, and the overall excitement of seeing ups and downs of developing. Keeping a track record of testing numbers is a great way to make sure your pitching program is heading in the right direction, and it’s also a great way to look for improvements with individual pitchers and the staff as a whole.

Once back from break, I always administer a WB testing session in week one, followed by Plyo testing in week two. (This can be flipped or mixed at your discretion.) New members to the staff really enjoy this time because it gives them the competition element to training that was, for the most part, missing during the summer months.  

This helps show gains, pitchers’ work ethic during the “off” months, and helps create their range velo-wise to accomplish recovery, hybrid, and high-output days. Without a baseline, they may not know what their difference is between hybrids and recovery days; this allows for more consistency and in return keeps them safer.

Not all arms are on the same summer or “off season” plan. Some go to summer ball and throw different amounts, and some stay home to train for various reasons. This particular year, we had new guys coming in playing summer ball and returners pitching all the way into August. I decided with these guys to train them differently than the rest of the staff.

I just let the new staff members pitching in summer ball pitch without trying to remotely train them for safety and over-training purposes. However, I provided example videos and articles to help them understand the process they would be doing once September training began; I said watch the videos a few times and read the “Why.” I personally felt more comfortable in this particular approach.

Returners that threw a ton over the summer and calendar year would not pitch off a mound for at least a month once they came back; they would be on a recovery and on-ramping plan until the middle of October. They trained like the offseason guys, were tested several times, and did a variation of the summer plan but not as extensive or intensive because of the short fall time frame and need to face hitters. Notably, these guys already had been in the program and very comfortable with the process, so they were technically in maintenance mode all summer long, so the gap wasn’t too large to implement this plan.

Balancing Strength and Mobility

Strength and movement patterns are extremely vital in the fall. Getting on the same page with your strength guy and knowing each other’s plans is invaluable. That’s where we made huge improvements this year. Our Strength and Conditioning coach, Jon Gregory, has been unbelievable in implementing our plan, and he takes the time to learn what we are doing from the pitching side. We had a few sit-down sessions where we discussed what to look for pattern wise, our daily drills, conditioning, etc. We tried to line up our “recovery” days better on both the throwing and lifting sides. This worked out great. It helped me not over train our guys, which at times I might have. I didn’t have to condition guys like in the past, because I know what I wanted was already being done in the weight room. This fall was the least amount I have ever conditioned my pitching staff, and I feel way better with the overall approach. I would still do my staple conditioning drills but with less volume and more intensity, allowing for more recovery and corrective-style exercises (with limited NCAA hours per week, this helped greatly).  

Our fall consisted of five days per week. Here are some of the results from the beginning of fall and the end of fall plyo-testing numbers:

In-game velocities were recorded and will be compared once the season starts for a more accurate reading, especially from the returners. Notably, many of the returners had gains, but not as massive as some of our new members. This is typical because they have been improving for over a year and gains will take even more work going forward. (This is explained in HTKC.)

Here is what occurred during the fall (the first time facing live hitters/last intra-squad). Sixteen pitchers threw in both first and last intra-squad. Pitchers usually have a small increase with adapting to the fall’s demands, in both throwing and in the weight room. I am pleased with these numbers:

Fall Tweaks/Possible Improvements

All great changes worth anything take time. Sure, some instant results do occur from time to time, because simply cleaning up habits, movement patterns, and behaviors can help someone that was deficient in those areas. I mention that because this fall I made some minor tweaks to the fall program, and it’s too early to see if they were the root cause for the improvement within the staff. Our testing numbers jumped significantly, so everything is recorded to make sure a better plan is put forth every season.

Here are a few obvious changes we’ve done that many of you may already do in some degree or another:

• We forced the “Why” on them and had multiple small meetings to go over what we’re trying to do with each warm-up, plyo, and cool-down protocols. This included reviewing videos provided by HTKC multiple times (each time they picked up something new), our own videos, and staff feedback with each other was very helpful. We also review printouts and readings semiweekly on each drill we do, broken into one-to-two pages at a time. I tried to close the gap between my coaching (cues/explanations) with what I really wanted and, more importantly, what they really understood. The biggest jump in numbers came directly after these sessions.
• We did the least amount of conditioning volume in three years, no eyewash running or movements that were already covered in the weight room. This takes constant communication with your strength team.
• We made zero mechanical changes or suggestions with anyone on staff. I corrected some Plyo stuff but no on-mound fixes—only pitch execution stuff for the first five weeks.
• We did three different warm-ups. Two of the three involved hurdles; all three included corrective exercises, which most, if not all, can be found in HTKC and broken up weekly so you hit everything a few times per week. On pitch day, I gave them the freedom to choose.
• We did command training with underload and overload balls.
• We performed uphill and downhill throws for lead-leg blocking feel.
• We used compression LT throws in PFPs instead of blowing them out twice in the same day; they will hold back someway in both if not careful.
• We did more mound plyos for feel and timing.
• We held the high-inning, yearly workload guys out for mandatory rest. We on-ramped them and went through one phase (three weeks) of R&Gs before getting them back on the mound.

I hope everyone has a great break and end to their fall. I highly recommend re-reading and sharing with your staff some of the new material in the updated HTKC. It’s well done, and it allows you to very easily communicate your intentions to your staff using the resources provided with the book/program.

The post Coaches Series: Year-Round Programming appeared first on Driveline Baseball.

The benefit of science is that it continues to grow and develop. More weighted-ball studies have been published, and more will come out. So what we know about baseball training (weighted ball or not) in three, five, and ten years from now will be far more than what we know now.

One thing that we don’t have a great current understanding of is how heavy-overload balls affect athletes, both in regards to biomechanics and how they may or may not change mechanics over time.

We wanted to start off our research looking into heavy-overload balls by trying to answer two questions:

1. How stressful are plyo velo’s in relation to pitching off a mound?
2. What is the difference between throwing heavy plyo balls at high intent versus low intent?

We decided to look at this with the motus sleeve by comparing our plyo velo to hybrid B and pitching off a mound.

This means we compared throwing our plyoballs from high intent to medium intent to pitching stress.

In case you don’t know, plyo velocities are thrown once a week in the off-season at high intent. These are the same drills that athletes use nearly every day at low intent.

The plyo velocities are meant to replicate in-game stress. Similar to pulldowns, these two high-intent days are intended to push athletes to meet or exceed what they would do in a game.

ASMI had previously compared crow hop throws to pitching with weighted balls. They found that crow hop throws produced slightly higher stresses on the arm, just like we hypothesized.

We wrote an in-depth post on the study itself and then replicated the study comparing pitching 5- oz balls to 5- oz pulldowns. We ended up finding similar results as ASMI.

Before we get to the numbers from our own study, let’s recap a quick history of weighted balls and heavy-overload training.

A Brief History of Weighted Balls

Weighted balls have been around for a long time, with most of the baseball studies looking at over- and underload baseballs near the weight of a baseball.

Below are 11 studies that have looked at performance effects of weighted balls, and they found that weighted balls can have a positive effect on throwing velocity.

As we mentioned previously, there has also been an ASMI study looking at the biomechanical comparison of 4–7-oz balls that found similar stresses between the 4- and 5-oz balls, whereas they found that the 6- and 7-oz balls result in less torque.

We see that we can use 3–7-oz weighted balls for velocity development and the 9- and 11-oz balls to aid in warming-up.

We use our PlyoCare balls (measured in grams) to work on mechanics and use them nearly every day throwing at sub-max intent.

The heavy-ball training originated with Dr. Mike Marshall. Dr. Marshall won the Cy Young as a reliever in 1974 for the LA Dodgers, and he also holds a PhD in exercise physiology. After he retired from baseball, he was motivated to try and figure out how to keep pitchers healthy, and he later moved on to training pitchers.

Now Dr. Marshall uses very heavy balls (6+ pounds) in his training for a few reasons. Some of those reasons are mechanical while others have not fully been studied, such as using overload balls to aid in bone density, ligament, and tendon strength.

We do believe that there are good mechanical reasons for using heavy-weighted balls, but we use less-weighted balls and different exercises than Dr. Marshall did in his training.

We also throw heavy-weighted balls with the expectation that they should come close to replicating the kinetics of throwing a baseball while showing decreased kinematics.

This means that elbow stress should be similar throughout the weighted balls, but the arm speed should be different. So, the overload balls cause slower arm speed, which should be obvious by the lower velocities that occur when throwing overload balls.

Currently we know that over- and underload balls similar in weight to a baseball can be effective at increasing velocity. We’ve also seen evidence (from the ASMI) study that overload balls can result in less torque than 5-oz balls. What isn’t understood is the biomechanical data on heavier overload implements.

Our hypothesis is that the heavy-overload balls result is less than or similar stresses compared to a baseball.

The Drills

We have five constraint drills that we use heavy-overload and underload balls: Reverse Throws, Pivot Pickoffs, Roll-Ins, Rockers, and Walking Windups. Three of these drills are used for velocity training: Roll-Ins, Rockers, and Walking Windups.

For the Roll-In Throws, athletes throw the green and blue plyo ball. For the Rockers and Walking Windups, the athletes throw the blue, red, yellow, and gray plyo balls. Athletes only velo the Rocker and Walking Windup for two throws with each ball.

So this small data set is comparing the two highest velocity throws from a velocity day to the two highest velocity throws from a hybrid B day, or two fastest pitches off a mound.

The First Study: Plyo Velo to Mound Comparison

We were able to get 18 athletes that threw a plyo velo and off the mound. We’re comparing the hardest two throws at each ball weight.

The data for these 18 athletes can be found here. This study was started before tagging was available in grams, so these ball weights were tagged in the closest ounce weight. We don’t believe that this significantly changes the results.

It looks like pitching is most similar to throwing the blue plyo ball. The green ball is more stressful, while the red, yellow, and gray balls are all less stressful than pitching.

These are certainly interesting findings considering a baseball is most similar in weight to a yellow plyo, but both the velocities and stress were much less.

There are two main ways to look at the stress numbers at high intent. One is thinking that everything more stressful than a baseball is bad, so we should stay away from heavier weighted balls; two, we want to train at or similar to game stress.

The second is what we mentioned above. Athletes should have scheduled time in the offseason to match or push past the stress that they would see in games.

We are looking to replicate or go above game stress, and it looks like plyo velocities currently do that.

The Second Study: High-Intent versus Low-Intent Plyo Throws

This second study included the 18 athletes that threw above, plus an additional 7 for a total of 25 athletes. We collected data from one of their plyo-velo days and from one of their hybrid B days (a low-intensity day).

The data can be found here. This study was started before tagging was available in grams, so these ball weights were tagged in the closest ounce weight. We don’t believe that this significantly changes the results.

You can pretty clearly see some big differences between the high- and low-intent throws, which would not support the idea that throwing heavier balls regardless of intensity would result in similar biomechanical loads.

The idea that they would be the same is somewhat confusing considering it’s largely accepted that throwing a baseball at a lower velocity and intent level is “safer” than throwing at max intent. This is easily realized when you listen to arguments about pitching and injuries that ultimately mention that pitchers throw too hard.

The big takeaway from this for athletes: when you aren’t scheduled to throw high intent, don’t throw high intent.

It’s not uncommon for athletes to want to “let a few loose” when they feel good, regardless of what intensity level they are suppose to be throwing at. This data supports the idea that you shouldn’t do that. Low-intent days need to be taken seriously by sticking to throwing at lower intent.

Notes on External Rotation

There are a few things that we have seen in research about external rotation and pitching:

1. More external rotation when throwing is linked to higher velocities (when comparing low- to high-velocity groups)
2. More external rotation when throwing is linked to higher elbow stress 

It is currently generally assumed that the heavier weighted balls increase range of motion in a negative way. But that claim seems more confusing when looking closer as the above numbers.

The motus data above shows that shoulder rotation (motus’s measurement of external rotation) changes, but not in the the straightforward way we are often told.

First, you can see that shoulder rotation changes per throwing drill. There has been research suggesting that different trunk movements and timings can affect arm stress and external rotation. This would align with the idea that constraint drills result in slightly different stresses and forces depending on each drills setup and execution.

Second, you can see that for the high-intent throws, the ball with the most shoulder rotation was the lightest ball in the walking windup drill. Also, shoulder rotation did not seem to move linearly one way or another and varied depending on drill, ball weight, and intent level.

There are also differences between pitching and plyo throws but the motus sleeve measures shoulder rotation from the ground. So comparing throwing off a slope to a flat surface isn’t a great comparison.

The only other study we are aware of that has looked at external rotation with weighted balls was a thesis titled The Effect of Throwing Under- and Over-weight baseballs on the pitching motion.

Now, this paper did not use a standard marker-based system but instead used a velcro strap for markers on the arm, which tends to have a higher margin of error because it can move. It also used a tiny sample of 6 college pitches.

However, that study also saw a variety of changes in external rotation between different ball weights, but the 3 oz underload ball was seen to have the highest ER.

It’s clear that there should be more detailed looks into the biomechanical effects of throwing weighted balls and external rotation.

Underloads Are Less Stress?

Both the high-intent and low-intent throws saw the stress for the underload plyoball to be lower than the stress of the 5-oz ball. ASMI had seen similar stress levels between baseballs and 4-oz balls, and, generally speaking, knowledge of 4- and even 3-oz balls still isn’t very well understood.

ASMI has also looked into throwing underload balls in youth athletes and found that the 4-oz balls resulted in less stress than the 5-oz. This finding was not replicated in the more recent biomechanical comparison of weighted balls that we mentioned above.

This should be a good reminder that research changes as it grows over time and that age differences can be a possible reason for differences in the results of replications.

Conclusion

Research and science are messy. This is also why we avoid saying that one research paper “proves” anything. One paper, or blog post, can’t prove anything. At best, they simply provide evidence for or against different theories.

The data in this article suggests that the blue plyo may be the best ball that replicates pitching stress when thrown at high intent. But the exacts reasons for why that is are unknown.

This data also suggests that throwing plyo balls at low intent is less stressful than throwing plyo balls at high intent.

But the biggest takeaway is that this data should be replicated to see if we find the same results of elbow stress and external rotation.

As we hinted at earlier, reading the methods section of a study is also vitally important. Some differences in measurements can simply be the result in different technology being used. Different kinds or number of biomechanics cameras, different amounts of markers used, or whether wearable tech was used should all be factors in why findings may vary.

This is also why we insist on replication as such a vital (but often missing) piece of sports science. Theories get stronger based on additional evidence provided, and if we don’t replicate certain findings under different technologies (such as throwing plyo balls in a marker-based lab vs. wearing a motus sleeve) or under different participants (high school vs. college vs. pros), we are leaving gaps.

We continue to move forward with research on all weighted balls in our lab, and we look forward to releasing what we find.

This article was written by Research Associate Michael O’Connell. Kyle Lindley and Anthony Brady assisted in the data collection.

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This articles was written by former Driveline trainer and now Head Coach at Lake Erie College, Cam Castro, detailing how to individualize programming to a players needs over the different parts of a season.

Around this time last year, and in my first blog post, I wrote about how we were training our pitchers over winter break and the best way to execute Driveline programming for athletes who don’t have all the necessary equipment at home – the question was, what can we send them home with? And what kind of programming can we build around that?

Prior to winter break though, we tried some new programming assignments. Breaking our athletes down into four different categories/focuses. Some programs shared components of the others, and only one stood alone in its focus. They were:

• Velocity Focus
• Velocity/Command Focus
• Velocity/Pitch Design Focus
• Pitch Design/Command Focus

We wrote these programs to run from one week after our fall season ended up until the week prior to Opening Day, approximately 12 weeks. That includes their four week ‘winter program’, which is very similar to what I outline in Winter Break Training Program for Pitchers.

Velocity Focus

For the most part, it was our freshmen and first year players that were put on the velocity focus. This was to ensure that they got the most out of their offseason time as some of them had very little experience with any kind of ballistic training prior to the fall – they stood to benefit the most from a more dense velocity based program.

This program was based on two velocity days per week, one pulldown and one plyo velo day, for three consecutive weeks followed by a de-load week. Once these guys get back from break, they’ll trade pulldowns for mound velos and plyo velos for plyo mound velo. A similar template as talked about in Blending to the Mound.

These athletes will get eight weeks of velocity work before throwing their first ‘live bullpen’ leading up to Opening Day.

Ideal Athlete for Velocity Focus: Freshman with average fastball velocity below 85 MPH

Velocity and Command Focus

Our Velocity/Command group followed almost the exact template as our velocity group, but the key difference in their programming is what they will be doing post-winter break. After getting back on campus, they will do some baseline command work in conjunction with their mound velos.

We selected these athletes based on velocity development potential but also a need a more command focused program – based either on performance this past fall and/or last spring. After taking their baselines, we’ll introduce a differential component with 6 and 4 oz leather weighted baseballs. All throws are made from the mound, as we have transitioned away from flat ground work especially for command. A good indication of why is found in Comparing Flat Ground to Mound Elbow Torques.

These athletes will get eight weeks of velocity and four weeks of command work before throwing their first ‘live bullpen’ leading up to Opening Day.

Ideal Athlete for Velocity/Command Focus: Sophomore with average fastball velocity below 86 and K:BB Ratio below 2:1

Velocity and Pitch Design Focus

This group has the shortest velocity component of any of the velocity comprised programs, they will only tackle five weeks of velocity work. All of it done pre-winter break, once this groups gets back on campus they are diving entirely into pitch design work.

Using Rapsodo, marked baseballs, and high speed video we’ve taken each athlete and designated a pitch of his that we’d like to either improve, fine tune, or even create. In the heart of the programming post-break they will be taking on two pitch design days per week. This was a group picked more over stimulating the velocity improvements they’ve shown to date while trying to improve their repertoire on the mound. Essentially, okay you are throwing harder now let’s figure out the best way to use your stuff.

These athletes will get five weeks of velocity work and four weeks of pitch design before throwing their first ‘live bullpen’ leading up to Opening Day.

Ideal Athlete for Velocity/Pitch Design Focus: Returner with average peak fastball improvement of 2 mph and lack of quality secondary pitch (most likely a bullpen guy)

Pitch Design and Command Focus

This program was designed with the athletes in mind who have made some nice strides with velocity development and now need to work on being the very best pitcher possible. Stimulate some command development and try to improve a secondary pitch or even develop a third.

These athletes will get three weeks of velocity work and 9 weeks for both pitch design and command before throwing their first ‘live bullpen’ leading up to Opening Day.

Ideal Athlete for Pitch Design/Command Focus: Upperclassman with average peak fastball velocity of 87+ and more than 50 career innings pitched (looking to fill major role on staff)

Now the next question we had to answer after segmenting the staff into one of the previous four focuses, what are they doing over break? What can they do and what kind of equipment do they need? Keep in mind each athlete already has his own set of Jaeger Sports J-Bands.

In addition to one of the four programming focuses, we had to assign each athlete to winter break group:

Group A: Recovery Concentration

• Black/Green PlyoCare Balls
• 7-4 oz. Weighted Balls
• 5 lb. Wrist Weights

Group B: Hybrid Concentration

• Blue, Red, Yellow, Gray PlyoCare Balls
• 11 and 9 oz Weighted Balls
• 10 lbs. Wrist Weights

Here’s an overview of each programming focus and their concentration:

Our goal this year for our offseason training was to look objectively at each of our athletes and determine what would put them in the best position to succeed come spring. For some it’s to push the boundaries of physical development straight through until we open up, and for others it was dial them way back and start to look at the big picture.

I think it is important for us as coaches to understand that we cannot train everything all at once, eventually we must sacrifice development in one area to further that same thing in another. It’s not logical for us to assume we can provide equal development opportunities and write legitimate programming to advance an athlete along all of these categories (Velocity, Pitch Design, Command) but we do feel capable of addressing two of the three (at the most).

Coaches and athletes can ask themselves the same question. What’s missing? Our job is coaches is top help these athletes be successful, determine what’s holding them back from that – isolate it and attack it.

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