Strength in Numbers #78
I cannot believe that it’s been only a year and how far things have come.
We have an app that now has 6 key metrics to indicate when to adjust programs, including an algorithmic way to incorporate measures that matter into individualized arm care training through our SPEAR Training Model.
SPEAR stands for:
STRENGTH
POWER
ENDURANCE
ASYMMETRY,
RANGE OF MOTION.
SPEAR is the pathway we take to remediating throwing arm strength imbalances and deficits for career longevity and sustainable performance and why we constantly say, “Strength Matters Most.”
On top of that, we created the only course available in the sport of baseball that is approved by the major national governing bodies for strength coaching, athletic training, and physical therapy. That includes the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), most State Physical Therapy Associations, and the National Athletic Training Association (NATA).
What is amazing is that you do not need any practical or clinical skills to be an expert in individualizing player development and monitoring fatigue for your athletes.
THE IMPORTANCE OF POTENTIATION
Now to get the most out of your strength qualities before throwing bouts, you need to potentiate, which is why we have our Arm Primer as a quick screen during the warm-up to give the coach and athlete a snapshot of where strength is for that day.
If potentiation is a new term for you, it’s even more important to take the Certified ArmCare Specialist Course. In general, “potentiating” means performing a high-level muscular activation drill or exercise to pump your muscles with calcium. This critical binding ion increases the strength and intensity of muscle contraction.
You can supercharge your muscles when doing fixed isometrics, and we go through the science behind it in our Certified ArmCare Specialist Course. Potentiation is critical to throwing performance, as you need to activate the arm with the right blend of contractile force, speed, and power.
This needs careful attention, and the ArmCare Platform and app can indicate how fatiguing your warm-up process is for your athletes by determining athletes’ post-warm-up strength as a percentage of fresh strength when athletes are in their most recovered state.
If your post-test after activating the arm is not 100 or better, your warm-up is pre-fatiguing the throwing arm and exposing the athlete to injury.
The bottom line, you need to individualize everything because GENERALIZATION = HOSPITALIZATION.
To give you even more context on potentiation, I have enclosed a link to a section from my Wake Forest Bridge Seminar talk where I spoke about the subject and provided a real-world and personal account of how I used a potentiation strategy for amplifying my punch force.
You will quickly see how well it worked to boost my contractile strength, speed, and power for my throwing arm, and I am an old dog learning a new trick.
Excuse the colorful language in the video, but realize how passionate the company and I are about individualizing warm-up routines. Your athletes’ preparation routine is the MOST important aspect of their player development, as you can cause injuries and poor performance by not optimizing warm-up strategies.
Whether you want to incorporate isometrics before or after your band warm-up, it’s up to you, but please use our Arm Primer and our post-exam to determine your athletes’ activation and fatigue levels so they come out hot and maintain it all game long.
In our Certified Pitching Biomechanics Course that is coming out in early 2023, we talk about the 2+2 rule, and you will quickly see the impact a solid activation process has on keeping athletes within a 2 mph range and less than a 2 mph decline of velocity over the course of games and throughout the season.
If you want to be an expert in throwing arm health and performance, this is the last day to purchase our Certified ArmCare Specialist Course at our gift rate of $250.
We are headed into the New Year and don’t want you to miss out on what is to come in the way of the mission to create the most advanced throwing performance community in the world with our ArmCare Elite Membership.
