Archive for August, 2009

Information About Youth Baseball Pitchers

Friday, August 28th, 2009

As an trainer who works with a large number of youth baseball players I know the story.  Your son takes pitching lessons and now has amazing delivery on the mound.  He is also apart of sports performance program to increase his relative strength and flexibility.  Here’s the thing…it doesn’t matter your son still has to be on a strict pitch count.  Because if he is not, he is increasing the risk of injury to his elbow or shoulder (scientifically proven!).  Here are a few amazing stats from this article I’m recommending all parents and coaches should read.  Here’s the article.  Here’s the facts according to this article:
In a study by Andrews and Fleisig (1999) 476 youth pitchers between the ages of 9 and 14 were closely examined.  “Over the course of the season, more than half of the pitchers experienced shoulder or elbow pain.  For each increment of 25 pitches thrown after 50 pitches, the percentage of pitchers experiencing pain increased as fatigue set in.  Those who threw curveballs were 52% more likely to feel shoulder pain.  Those who threw sliders were 86% more likely to endure elbow pain.”

bfe23ball5

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Posted in Conditioning, Exercise Demonstrations, Flexibility, Injury Prevention, Program Design, Research, Strength Training | No Comments »

Active Loading of The Eccentric Phase

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Control the eccentric phase of your exercise (the lengthening phase).  This will force you to keep constant tension on your muscles throughout the full range of motion.  If you stick to these tips you will be doing twice work with each of these exercises, instead of allowing gravity to do all the work.  Here are a few examples:

  • Squats – pull yourself down into the squat.  Do not allow yourself to merely collapse due to gravity.  Instead, actively pull your hips/butt down to your squatting depth.
  • Push ups – pull yourself down into the push up.  Actively grip the ground with your hands and row pull yourself into the bottom of the push up.  You should feel like you are doing a row – activate your upper back muscles.
  • Shoulder press – pull the weight down into your body.  Grip the weight tightly and use your lats to pull the weight down from the over head position.

To control the eccentric phase of a lift you need to maintain core stability.  During the squat your core and torso should be stable and solid.  During the push up or shoulder press your core and leg muscle should be active.

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Making it to the big’s

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Congratulations to LA Angels starting pitcher Trevor Bell for his first career major league victory last night.  Check out the press release.  I had the privilege to work with Trevor when we were both with the Cedar Rapids Kernels (LA Angels minor league affiliate).  He is a great kid and has worked extremely hard to get to this point in his career.  One of the other great LA Angels prospects Sean O’Sullivan also got his first career win at the major league level about two months ago.  Sean is another great athlete I got to work with in Cedar Rapids.  When Sean was 12 years old, he was ranked as the number one 12 year old baseball player in America.  He recently pitched a no-hitter in triple A.

Both of these individuals are extremely humble people (even though they were complete studs in high school and both drafted in the first couple rounds) and two of the hardest working players I trained while working with the Angels.  Good job guys!

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NSCA new position statement on youth resistance training

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

The NSCA is the leading authority in the US on sports performance.  They recently came out with a new position statement regarding youth resistance training.  This paper includes more than 250 cited references on this topic.  The paper made many interesting points, and also validated the benefits associated with youth resistance and sports performance training.

Here are few key points I took from this paper that apply directly to the training programs I implement.

Injuries

  • “Current findings from prospective resistance training studies indicate a low risk of injury in children and adolescents who follow age-appropriate training guidelines.”
  • “Research studies indicate that plyometric training can be safe and worthwhile method of conditioning.”
    - Children perform these activities in the play ground every day – hop scotch
  • “There is no evidence to suggest that resistance training will negatively impact growth and maturation during childhood or adolescence”
    - Most injuries are due to “improper lifting techniques, maximal lifts, or lack or qualified adult supervision.”

Effectiveness of Training

  • “A compelling body of scientific evidence indicates that children and adolescents can significantly increase their strength-above and beyond growth and maturation- providing that the resistance training program is of sufficient intensity, volume, and duration.”
  • “Children as young as 5 and 6 years have benefited from regular participation in a resistance training program.”

Reasons for Strength Gains

  • “In children it appears that training-induced strength gains are more related to neural mechanisms than hypertrophic factors.”
    - Youth training (strength, speed, and agility) will enhance coordination and movement patterns.
    - I do not train youth athletes to make them bigger or significantly stronger – instead my goal is make them more coordinated at their sports movements.

Benefits of Strength Training

  • Strength training has been shown to improve “motor performance skills (ie. long jump, vertical jump, sprint speed, and medicine ball toss)” after training with “machines, free weights, body weight strength exercises, and medicine ball.”
    - More statements that justify and solidify the need for sports performance training
  • “Gains in motor performance skills” have improved when youth participate in plyometric training programs.  In fact, “The effects of resistance training and plyometric training may actually be synergistic.”
    - To maximize athletic development, the optimal training techniques should be applied.  It’s important to improve relative strength (strength training) but also improve rate of force development (plyometrics).

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Posted in Injury Prevention, Program Design, Research, Strength Training | 1 Comment »

Hart 10U Gold National Champs!

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Congratulations to the Hart 10U Gold for winning the national championship two weekends ago in Oregon.  I had the privilege to train most the girls on this team.  They work extremely hard, especially for this age group.  Their hard work obviously pays off though.

softball

Check out the article and photo galary.

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Posted in ASAP Teams | 4 Comments »

Evaluating training programs

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

I come across a ton of bogus training programs that only use modality, promise unrealistic results, or do not structure their program based on scientific principles.  Be a smart consumer when choosing a fitness/sports performance program to be apart of.  For example, if you’re an athlete looking to get stronger or improve your speed/quickness it wouldn’t logically make sense to use fancy equipment where you’re in seated, prone (on your stomach), or supine (on your back).

isokinetic

Here is an example of an expensive (I mean $10,000 expensive piece of equipment) machine that is suppose to improve your strength and power while not making you sore.  This machine only does concentric movements – you pull then you push.  I’m going to clue you in on a secret…athletes don’t function this way.  Instead, their movements involve a loading (eccentric muscle action) phase followed by a powerful transformation movement (concentric phase).  Therefore, you are training your body on this piece of equipment in a way that you wouldn’t perform during your sport.  In addition, last time I checked most sports (besides cycling and rowing to name a few) are performed in upright stranding positions where your body has to react to gravity and move in multiple planes of motion.  Again, this expensive, fancy piece of equipment does not allow you to do this.

Here is fitness example about evaluating a training program with some logic before you participate.  Many females come into a training with similar goals such as working on their hips, butt and thighs (at least this is what I have seen over the past 9 years of training).  Many trainers will cater their exercise by doing a variety of different leg lifts in every position – side lying leg lifts, on all fours kicking your butt up in the air with the small pink dumbbell between their knee, and standing cable leg raises, just to name a few.  Want to know a more effective and functional approach to targeting the hips and butt…wait for it…it’s called squats and lunges.  Squat and lunge variations are performed in an upright position (more functional) and recruit more muscles than isolate exercises (more effective).  Anytime you see a trainer doing special isolated exercises or using a fancy piece of equipment that isolates those trouble spots just remember there is usually a more effective and functional approach.

butt“Hello lady, do some squats or lunges and stop wasting your time with this silly exercise!!”

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Posted in Exercise Demonstrations, Fitness Equipment, Program Design, Strength Training | 1 Comment »

Baseball Pitchers

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended an amazing training conference this past weekend.  One of the presentations (by Eric Cressey) was specifically about baseball players and screening for dysfunction in their shoulder.  He started off by citing some interesting studies that show most elite pitchers (professional and college) have “abnormal labrum features”.  His point was that many athletes have structural damage or joint dysfunction but do not have any signs or symptoms so they continue to pitch.

The part of the presentation I wanted to get into though is the idea of screening your baseball athletes (especially pitchers) to find imbalances.  The most obvious imbalance would be the difference in range of motion between the throwing arm (specifically shoulder) and the non-throwing arm.  If you were to measure the internal range of motion of the throwing shoulder and compared it to the non-throwing shoulder, you would come up with a number that represents the Glenohumeral Internal Rotation Deficit (GIRD).  The significance behind this number is that as pitcher you do not want to have a large GIRD in your throwing shoulder.  High school athletes should have a GIRD below 12 degrees and college athletes want to stay below about 15 degrees.

Every time a pitcher throws the baseball, the muscles in the back of the shoulder (specifically rotator cuff) have to decelerate (slow down) the arm after the ball is released.  After an entire pitching performance you could image that the muscles in the back of the shoulder become over-used and stiffen up.  If you’re not actively stretching the rotator cuff muscle and other posterior shoulder muscles it leads to less range of motion in the shoulder (higher GIRD).  Pitchers with a high GIRD are more likely to have shoulder and elbow problems as their pitching career continues.

pitchingObserve how the arm is rotating downward and inward – the muscles of the posterior shoulder are working to deccelerate the arm at the end of this motion.

You are less likely to see huge abnormalities in youth pitchers because many of them are not throwing enough to develop these imbalances in their throwing arm.  Also, many youth athletes are extremely lax in the joints because they are still growing and developing.  I would be more concerned with pitching mechanics for youth baseball players as opposed to a sophisticated training program( like older athletes starting a  7-8 grade and older – include college and pros).

Bottom line – if you screen your pitchers, you can find valuable information to help design a training program (including flexibility and strength training) that may prevent elbow and shoulder injuries down the road.

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Posted in Injury Prevention, Research | No Comments »

Fitness/Strength-Conditioning Conference

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

This last weekend I attended an amazing training conference that covered a variety of fitness and sport specific topics.  When I get a chance to digest all the information in the next few days I will discuss some of the interesting ideas/concepts I learned.  For information about the conference check out  – Functional Training Summit.

Stay tuned for the information.

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Posted in Program Design, Research | No Comments »