Strength in Numbers #74
Over the past few months, we released information on a new way to train.
When you look at traditional training, you often wonder how it transfers to on-field performance. In the world of strength and conditioning, we call this “transfer of training effects.”
The problem is that strength and conditioning has a much lower transfer of training because it is not adjusted to motor preference or baseball movement and, at times, does not reflect the recruitment needs for the sport nor address the muscular imbalances or weaknesses within the athlete.
Here’s a simple example. When you look at pitcher, hitter, or infield/outfield defensive position in fielding a ground ball, what do you see for the lower body?
FROM GENERAL
I asked my strength and conditioning staff this question in 2018, a year when we had the most throwing arm injuries in Major League Baseball. I gave them an anonymous survey to complete their answers. When I looked at their solutions, 95% of the responses saw a hinge pattern, and 5% saw a squat pattern.
Well, the issue was we were squatting and hinging at a 50-50 exercise prescription percentage. So we basically alternated squat days and deadlift days as our primary compound lifts, without any attention to motor preference or baseball movement.
We were stuck in strength and conditioning land (pull from the floor, ass to grass squatting, etc.,) and only after we started programming two hinge days to every squat day did we start to improve performance and reduce injury.
TO SPECIFIC
Things became much better in 2019, as we started appreciating joint angles, quantifying them in the way they load on the mound with simple 2D digitization techniques performed by ArmCare’s very own Jordan Oseguera, our Director of Performance.
With joint angle quantification in hand, we could evaluate squatting and hinging loading positions to reflect the motor preference that the athlete requires on the field. When that happened, we were on a new training path based on biomechanics and strength evaluation. As a result, we had no arm surgeries on our active MLB pitching roster, and we cut our IL days in half.
In our up-and-coming Certified Pitching Biomechanics Course, I will be going into some deep detail regarding this new age of training in blending motion capture and strength testing, which we call Strength and Coordination Training.
We will give you incredible insight so you can lead the industry in creating hyper-specific movement training programs to meet athletes’ raw strength requirements and fortify their movement patterns. It will also lay out our strength and coordination algorithm, a pathway from the lowest hanging fruit to the top of the tree to optimize the throwing delivery and minimize risk.
To kick off our Certified Pitching Biomechanist Course, we will be hosting a private, underground baseball performance summit next weekend as our launch.
Although this private event is for MLB pitching coaches and a few other people with specialized baseball backgrounds, we will quickly get it online for everyone to access.
| Now, consider your training experience, review your training programs, and consider your knowledge of quantified biomechanics and strength analytics. If you want more expertise, I suggest you dive deep into these opportunities. What I love most about conferences is not the presentations but the conversations that have taught me so much afterward. Case in point, I met with Franz Bosch, the forefather of Strength and Coordination Training and author of the famed book Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach. Without being face to face and discussing this phenomenon, I would still be stuck in the past, and so would you. |
