My good friend and mentor Chuck Wolf recently recorded a conversation he had with Michol Dalcourt. Chuck is a biomechanist specialist and owns Human Motion Associates. He knows more about movement of the human body than anyone I have met, and is a former professional baseball player. I learned more from Chuck during my 3 month internship with him than I have learned over any other 3 month period of my life. He does an amazing job applying his knowledge and creating drills and exercises that are “simple”, but very effective (many of which I stole and use myself now). You will hear his name a lot in future articles. I do not personally know Michol, but his resume speaks for itself. Chuck always had nothing but the highest compliments for Michol, and you can see why. I have used the ViPR, which he invented, and loved it. Below is part 1 of their 4 part series on strength for athleticism where they discuss why traditional strength (how much you can lift in the weight room) is just a piece of the puzzle. The rest of the series will be posted as it is made available. Enjoy.
Killing Two Birds with One Stone
Posted: September 23, 2012 in General HealthTags: functional core, smart workouts
If you were to take a poll of the general public trying to find the #1 excuse they don’t workout on a daily basis, I would bet the answer would be “Because I don’t have time”. While this is a poor excuse for many reasons, most of us don’t have the luxury of 2 hours set aside every day for us to devote to some type of physical activity. So when we do get to the gym, we want the most bang for our buck. This is also true for most college teams. With hour restrictions and coaches wanting to get as much time in on the field as possible, the time in the weight room gets whittled down.
The good news is there are ways to get a really good workout in with limited time, and still hit a wide range of muscle groups. Let’s look at a few exercises that demonstrate this point:
1. Overhead Step Up- The main point here: Anything you do single leg/arm and anything you do overhead should automatically turn the exercise into a core stability exercise along with the main muscle group you are trying to work. One leg is clearly less stable than two so it causes us to brace more during a rep (although you should be bracing your core during any kind of squat, deadlift, etc). An overhead exercise moves the weight farther away from the center of gravity making us less stable. This causes our shoulders and our core to constantly adjust to the weight moving so we don’t tip over. Shoulders, core, legs. BAM! 3 birds with one stone. If you want to go super crazy try going 1 arm and holding a dumbbell or kettlebell over your head.
2. 1 Arm Farmer Walks- After reading the above exercise, you immediately recognize the 1 arm part and think core, and you would be correct. Make sure your shoulders are level and not tilted down towards the side the weight is on. If done properly, you will feel this in your lateral core. It also is great for grip strength. This is a great exercise for a sport like baseball or lacrosse where grip strength is important, and much more useful than just doing wrist curls. For those of you that have never heard of a farmer walk, it is very simple. You pick up a weight in one hand (probably a DB or plate), hold it by your side without any shoulder tilt, and walk. I like to try for 40 yards of walking for one set and do that 3 or 4 times.
3. Jumping Rope- I wanted to make sure and include something for the cardio lovers out there. I have always liked jumping rope as a warm up as I could feel it get my shoulders and lower legs loose, along with breaking a slight sweat. You are forced to maintain proper posture and it has an explosive element to it. It also forces you to land on your toes which reinforces proper running technique.
4. Push-ups- I’m going to save an in-depth look at push ups for a post of its own, but it’s definitely worth mentioning in this article. If you do a lot of push ups in one day, either your back (poor technique) or stomach (proper technique) will be sore the next day, along with your chest of course.
Workout out smart, and hard, and you can get a solid workout in a limited amount of time. This list is by no means exclusive. If you are strapped for time, find exercises that target multiple muscle groups that you want to work on a given day instead of just sticking with the single joint exercises on the machines.
Simple Periodization for Big Gains
Posted: September 14, 2012 in General HealthTags: health, periodization, strength
I have to give complete credit for this article to Bob Alejo, director of strength and conditioning at NC State. We had a discussion one day this summer about hypertrophy and general strength gains and this is the method he suggested. I am on my last week now and have seen significant gains, especially for my chest. So here it is:
4 weeks of sets of 12-10-8-6
1 week of active rest
4 weeks of 3 sets of 8
Before you scoff at the simplicity, think about it. For the first 4 weeks you are in a hypertrophy rep range, but still hitting somewhat of a strength aspect with the set of 6. You also have 22 reps before you get to your set of 8, so you should be pretty fatigued by that time. When you switch to the 3 sets of 8, there should be a significant jump in the weight you are using because you are now doing the set completely fresh. This jump should be large enough to provide a different stimulus to your muscles.
So for my upper body workouts (I did something different for lower body), I would use this rep scheme on a DB Bench, vertical and horizontal pull, and 1 set of biceps and triceps. I would also add in a push-up (1 and a half push-ups or pause push-ups) of higher set/rep scheme (3×12 or 4×10) for an auxiliary exercise before my single joint movements (bis and tris).
When doing the sets of 12-10-8-6, make sure each weight is challenging, but there is no chance of failure. If you fail a set, it’s really hard to go up in weight and complete all of the reps. Try to pick a weight where the last two reps are tough, but doable.
Also, the active rest week is imperative. It so happened my active rest week fell on the week I was at the beach so I was able to a few workouts on the beach that were completely different from what I was used to. I felt great when I got back in the gym and was ready to get after it. I will go into more detail another time about active rest. To keep it simple, do something like you are used to, just much lighter weight and much less volume.
I am now using dumbbells for sets of 8 on bench press that I might have used for sets of 2-4 previously. I am thrilled with the results because I have always had a pretty weak chest and have tried many different periodization methods to help improve it. I have seen improvements in other methods, but this has by far given me the best results in the shortest amount of time. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.
Our country as a whole has become driven by immediate gratification. This can be most easily seen by looking at our national debt and the percentage of the general public in debt. It can also be seen by looking at the girth of the general public. Over 1/3 (35.7%) of Americans are obese. I would go out on a limb and say most of the obesity is caused by poor eating habits. These poor eating habits occur because we want food now that taste good so we eat whatever junk food is available at the time.
The instant gratification then leads us to want to drop the weight as fast, or faster, than we put it on with minimal effort. This has lead to the multi-million dollar industry of fad diets. It seems every year there is a new diet that everyone is trying. It seems to work well at first, then you plateau, then you get off of it and gain your weight back.
I’m not against particular diets, I’m against the idea of dieting.
So you want to lose weight and keep it off? CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE.
Doing the Atkins or South Beach diet might help you shed some pounds over 8 weeks, but these results are hardly ever maintained. Instead, commit to eating healthy and exercise on a regular basis. This isn’t easy or sexy, and you won’t drop 10 lbs in a week, but it will greatly improve your overall health and help you lose unwanted weight.
Now to define “eating healthy”. The simplest way to think about it is eat like your grandparents. This means real food (not processed), self prepared, complete meals (meat, vegetable, starch). I would also add stay away from high glycemic foods except for immediately before or after a workout.
If you really want to improve your health, jump in 100%. Be patient and stay committed. Being healthy is pretty important.
Some people consider overhead lifting to be taboo in the baseball world. This doesn’t make sense to me at all. If you apply a logical thought process to lifting for any sport, you would want to strengthen the athlete during the most injury prone range of motion (ROM), right?
When a pitcher throws a baseball 90 mph, his arm is moving at 7000°/second. This is by far the fastest movement in sports, and also explains why a pitcher is so likely to hurt his arm. From the time the arm cocks to start moving forward until the ball is released, the pitcher’s hand is over his head. So the pitcher is holding a weighted implement (even though a baseball weighs only 5 oz) and moving his arm at the fastest speed any body part moves in any sport, but we shouldn’t train the pitcher in this position?
Since the ball is only 5 oz, I definitely suggest staying light and fast with the weights (or bands, manual work, etc) as opposed to heavy and slow. Two reasons for this:
1. We want to focus on the stabilizer muscles in the shoulder, mainly the rotator cuff, and a heavier weight tends to activate the larger muscles to protect us from injuring our smaller muscles, and
2. We want to train a pitcher’s body in a very sports specific manor.
I hesitate to lay out boundaries because each athlete is so different, but in general I wouldn’t go over 5 lbs when doing rotator cuff specific work, like internal/external rotation. The rule I use is as you increase ROM, decrease the weight. This is true for any exercise, but especially shoulder work because of how much ROM it naturally has. With the pitchers I work with, we will go as light as 21 oz on certain exercises. Error on the light side until you become proficient in whatever exercise you choose.
The shoulder is very different than any other joint in the body, so don’t train it like every other joint.
We’ve all had those days where we drag though our workout. Every rep is a struggle. The dumbbells feel 5 pounds heavier.
My advice for those days: take an off day.
There is a reason our body feels like that on certain days. It’s telling us that it’s not up to par and needs a break. There could be several reasons for this. You could be overtrained. Maybe you haven’t been sleeping enough, or your eating habits have been terrible over the last couple days and it has finally caught up with you.
Whatever the case may be, working out could actually be detrimental to you at this point. Continuing to push your body when it is in this state weakens the immune system. Make up the day later in the week if you feel up to it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t push yourself every time you workout. If you feel like this 3 times a week, you’re just in terrible shape. Sometimes you need to tough it out, just be smart about it.
This principle can work the other way as well. If you are in a heavier phase of your program and there is a day where you are feeling really good and easily moving the weight, attempt a new max. As nice as it would be if our bodies were in sync with our lifting program and felt amazing for max week, it rarely (if ever) happens. Take advantage of the few days where the stars do align and go for a personal best on whatever you have that day.
We aren’t robots. Listen to your body and make the necessary adjustments. Push yourself when possible, but sometimes less is more.
As September roles around and playoff races start heating up, it seems that inning totals become a hot topic. This year it has been magnified by the Strasburg saga and the parameters the Nationals placed on him at the beginning of the year. I find it more interesting to watch relievers-turned-starters at this time of the year as they have far surpassed their previous season’s workload and maybe their professional workload if they were relievers for a majority of their minor league career. Either way, with arm injuries seeming to be a matter of when, not if, organizations are doing everything possible to ensure their pitchers have the best chance of staying healthy. But are they actually increasing their chance for injury by being too restrictive?
Dr. Glenn Fleisig of the American Sports Medicine Institute is THE leader in baseball research, specifically pitching biomechanics. He weighed in on this issue in an interview with Baseball Prospectus. The second part of the article is an interview with an MLB executive so you get a baseball view on the issue along with the scientific aspect. Let me know your thoughts on pitch count and workload for a pitcher.
No need to beat around the bush, DISTANCE RUNNING IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE FOR PITCHERS. We will start with the logical reasoning and work our way to the science behind this novel concept. This article piggybacks on many of the same concepts as the “Conditioning” for Baseball Position Players article, so it would be helpful to read that one first.
1. Would you rather have your pitcher look like a marathon runner or a sprinter? Especially in the lower body…
I don’t think anyone would want their pitching staff to look malnourished, scrawny, and weak, which are the words that come to mind when I glance at our Finnish friend. His body certainly doesn’t scream power or explosiveness. If you don’t want to have the same physique as someone, then why would you train like them? I still can’t figure out why anyone would think that “endurance” for a pitcher was achieved by doing that same motion continuously at a very slow pace. Last time I watched a baseball game the pitcher did not continually repeat his delivery for 20 minutes straight without ever pausing. Instead, let’s try to look like a sprinter by training like a sprinter.
2. Most of the time, distance running (or any long distance conditioning) is prescribed to pitchers after they finish throwing off a mound, like after a game or bullpen. The thought here is to flush the system of the lactic acid to prevent it from building up and causing soreness. This actually makes some sense: get the blood pumping to remove the waste. The only problem is its completely wrong on two levels. 1. Soreness is not caused by lactic acid. It is caused by delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). DOMS occurs from eccentric (stretching of the muscle) stress causing micro fractures in our muscles. 2. Lactic acid is produced, but is cleared by the our body while we’re still pitching. I was fortunate to be part of the follow up study for Between Inning Recovery Methods for Pitchers. The discovery that I found most interesting was that the blood lactate levels with our group of pitchers was close to pre-activity levels after the game simulation. To summarize, our body flushes itself.
3. Condition within the sports specific energy system. See “Conditioning” for Baseball Position Players.
4. Distance running trains the slow twitch fibers. Two types of muscle fibers exist in our body. Type I fibers (slow twitch) produce energy through aerobic pathways and have slow contractile speeds. Type II fibers are broken down into three subdivisions: type IIa, type IIb, and type IIx. Type IIb and IIx are more anaerobic and explosive, while type IIa is kind of a mix between type I and type IIb and IIx. As of right now, the exercise physiology world believes you are born with a certain number of type I and type II fibers and cannot convert one to the other. The type of physical training you do, however, can change the characteristics of the fiber (mainly type IIa) to behave more like the opposing fiber. So if we train to be explosive, our type I and type IIa fibers become more explosive and less aerobic. TRAIN FAST TO BE FAST!
5. Last but certainly not least, distance running decreases power production and strength. This occurs because of the fiber characteristic changes noted in the paragraph above. A loss of power would, theoretically, result in the loss of velocity. Matt DiLallo explains in his article that it is more important to focus on the velocity aspect (Displacement x Time) of the power equation since force is not a major issue in baseball due to the weight of the baseball and bat.
If you aren’t convinced yet, just google long distance running for pitchers. Every link on the first two pages is against it as well. Hopefully this is one baseball tradition that will change sooner than later.
Earlier this week, I saw this post and loved it. One of my original goals for this site was to present information that may challenge what we have traditionally done. So please keep an open mind while you read this, along with all of the other posts, and not dismiss an idea simply because it goes against what you might have believed your whole life. Make sure to watch the video as well.
There is definitely a time and a place for cardio, especially when trying to obtain the greek god like body. While I have expressed my personal vendetta against distance running, I do try to incorporate some type of cardio into my workouts when I am not in a strength phase. The method I use is called High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT for short. This method has become very popular recently and the research backs it’s hype.
So let me start explaining HIIT by boring you with a quick science lesson that makes me sound smart.
For those of you who don’t have your magnifying glasses handy, the top graph is for light to moderate exercise (steady rate) and the bottom graph is for heavy exercise (HIIT). Steady rate exercise is simply the same movement continuously at the same speed aka jogging. Steady rate is more commonly known as catching your second wind, or the part of the run where your body figures out how to become the most efficient and maintain that level of exercise.
To simplify the graph, focus on the difference in recovery time. In HIIT, steady rate takes a much longer time to occur, or does not happen at all. The constant starting and stopping uses more energy since the stimulus on the body is continuously changing. Consequently, it takes the body longer to return oxygen consumption to resting levels. The result is a larger EPOC, which is primarily fueled by the breakdown of fat for energy. Also, it can keep your resting metabolic rate raised for up to 48 HOURS after your workout. In layman’s terms, you could be burning calories while reading this article. Burn more fat, for a longer period of time, and burn more calories while you sit around. It’s a win-win-win.
Bonus Note: It is critical to consume a 3:1 carb:protein ratio after this (or any anaerobic) workout. Carbs are not the anti-Christ in this situation, conversely they are fuel on the fat burning fire. Muscle cells are very insulin sensitive after working out. If carbs and protein are provided, the insulin will help synthesize muscle protein and muscle glycogen extremely fast. If the fat cells are in a insulin sensitive state, as they would be while you are laying on the couch, insulin will promote storage of carbs as fat.
The downside of HIIT is it sucks. It is really hard if you are pushing yourself. You are also required to sprint, which most of us don’t do on a regular occasion.
Because sprinting is such an explosive movement (hopefully), you must have a proper warm up or pulling a muscle is likely. I would suggest a few minutes of jogging followed by a dynamic warm up like high knees, butt kicks, hamstring kicks, etc.
There are a few ways you can go about HIIT. If you prefer to run outside, figure out the distance (100 yards) you can SPRINT in a given time (15 seconds). Then, I would suggest starting off with a 4:1 work to rest ratio so if you sprint for 15 seconds, rest for 45 seconds.
Personally, I prefer the treadmill. I can control the variables (speed, incline) more easily and I can’t slack. This involves jumping on the treadmill while its moving so please do not kill yourself while trying this. Using an incline has an exponential effect on the amount of calories you burn so I highly suggest using an incline or hill, if running outside.
My HIIT workout is below:
10 sets
15 seconds on: 45 second rest= 1 set
10 mph on 10% incline
I try to increase by .5 mph or .5% incline each time or as I find it getting easier.
What kind of HIIT are you doing? Please post your workout or any questions in the comments section and I will do my best to answer them. Any feedback is appreciated.
Barrett Stover 