[SPEAKER_01]: Hello everybody, JJ Cooper and Dr. Nick Seria.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are having another of what I would call the, this is based tech in baseball, but also training in baseball.

[SPEAKER_01]: We do these podcast stuff pretty regularly.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love talking about this kind of stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you may recognize, for a variety of reasons, you may recognize the name of Dr. Nick Seria, but one of them may be that you may have read some of the pieces that he's done at baseball, America.

[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Nick is the founder, the creator of VLOU, a training facility in New York.

[SPEAKER_01]: But much more than that, I would say.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's also kind of one of the thinkers in this space as well who's developing things who's also looking at this kind of in the big picture.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not going to I want to do you just as right, which is it's like the other part about this is you've put in the work that is Dr Nick that is not an honorary title, Nick if you would kind of lay out for people like why we're going to talk to that should start by saying we're going to talk today about pitching development training.

[SPEAKER_01]: players.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're really talking about this kind of the path from your 10, your 12, you want to do this to, okay, the goal is is that you're going to have success at the amateur level.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to have success then in probes ball.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you're going to have a long and productive big league career.

[SPEAKER_01]: We know that's not going to happen for everyone, but that's the goal.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to talk about maybe some misconceptions, some things we've learned about this about how to get there.

[SPEAKER_01]: But before we do that, I do want to lay out for people.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you say, like, okay, so why should I be listening to this?

[SPEAKER_01]: You've put in the work.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is not something where you're saying, I've got some theories.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've done the work, you've got the credentials.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you would just kind of explain the people how you came to this and kind of, you know, your background, your educational background and all as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: and training backwards.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first off, thanks for having me on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so how I got here is basically trying to solve problems, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I started out being a college baseball player.

[SPEAKER_00]: I graduated from my undergraduate in 2008.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, when I was playing baseball, I realized, okay, I wasn't really getting on the field right away and my biggest limiting factor.

[SPEAKER_00]: was my ability to produce force and be strong enough to compete, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I fell in love with the weight room and then ended up changing my major and got a degree in kinesiology.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm now working at a training facility.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm training all different types of athletes, but obviously a specialty in baseball.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm realizing that a lot of my guys are capable of going, you know, getting bigger faster stronger.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was getting really

[SPEAKER_00]: able to help all of them translate that to the field.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I realized that was missing a component here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I went back and got my masters in kinesiology as well with a focus in motor development.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that I can understand how skill acquisition played a role in this performance element.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then, as I was moving on in my training career, I realized, well, a lot of my guys are getting bigger faster stronger, they're able to really perform when, you know, there's no lights on and practice and everything, but they're still this.

[SPEAKER_00]: limiting peace and that's when I went and got my doctorate in performance psychology because I was trying to get an understanding of how do I hit this triad for an athlete and get them to improve all elements of their performance arm.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, I have classical training and all of that, but as anybody in this field knows or.

[SPEAKER_00]: or in basic landfill that you have, education is great, but if it's not pursued further by testing and retesting, against a lot of the people you end up working with, then you're really not really not taking that education you had in transferring it into knowledge, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's really where I feel like what we have done now, that has been the biggest learning curve for me,

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the things that you wrote that really interested me that kind of that, hey, I want to talk to you about this is you wrote a piece that's up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll link it in the show notes here, but at Baseball America in January, because the recruiting landscape, which you've seen for quite a while, obviously we see it here at Baseball America a lot, has changed pretty dramatically in Baseball in recent years.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the key things that's changed is in a world of

[SPEAKER_01]: basically much more transfers, you know, like free transfers, and NIL.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I would just describe it as the COVID component help kind of lead this way, which was an aging of the game for a while, right, where you had the six-year senior, you had the players who you had teams who really kind of realized I would say in that like, oh,

[SPEAKER_01]: I had coaches who put it to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like my players may not be as purely talented as you're 18 to 19 year olds, but my 23 year olds are full grown men, and they can their advantages to that, that just physical maturation does.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've seen a shift.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is much harder, I would say, we've seen a shift for one of those, there were recruiting changes that were changed as far as when you could contact players in all that, the high school level.

[SPEAKER_01]: But much more so than that, I would say that coincided with this era of okay, if I need a short stop for next year, or I need a starting picture.

[SPEAKER_01]: The transfer portal is often teams realized to be a much more productive way to do that than, hey, what recruit am I going to bring in to do that?

[SPEAKER_01]: But you laid out how, okay, that sounds terrible if you're a high school athlete in subways.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're a pitcher and you take kind of a a different approach to this,

[SPEAKER_01]: It may actually be beneficial in the long term.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that that was a fascinating insight.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you were kind of explained to people, why is that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why is it that the fact that you may not be getting that powerful offer that you dreamed about when you were a high school junior could actually end up being a good thing in the long term for a player's long term career?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I think the easiest way to explain why that might be the case is like, when you're fresh out of college, right, in the workforce, you don't get your dream job day one, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Cause you have in, you've only grasped some of the knowledge, you now need to get the experience, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think what we did with baseball is we turned it into,

[SPEAKER_00]: Capitalism, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: A coach wants to go out and he's going to get the guy that has the most experience for the role that he needs filled at that moment in time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And why I think that this is not necessarily detrimental for young athletes is because now we can elongate the development time period.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look, when you're talking about these powerful or even mid-major D1s,

[SPEAKER_00]: the development that goes on at these schools is not what people think it is because how could it be?

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to perform every single day, day in and day out.

[SPEAKER_00]: The focus needs to be on performance, not necessarily on development.

[SPEAKER_00]: you can't have that robust of a coaching staff that can focus on all of those elements every single time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know there's a lot of them that want to and probably have the funds to but they're at the current moment, the model doesn't fit that need.

[SPEAKER_00]: They can just go and get

[SPEAKER_00]: the average age of a division one baseball player has risen by almost two years.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like 1.9 years, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And why I think that should open some people's eyes is it's telling you that they're not recruiting as many freshmen.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all you have to do is look at basketball where the numbers are tighter, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You have less guys on a team and they're just recruiting, they're not recruiting

[SPEAKER_00]: because there's no need.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're just going to take these more experience guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's go into why is this beneficial now for a high school picture?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think if there are some rule changes that could come down the pipeline.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know there's talks of going the opposite direction of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: But

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the ways that you could do this is if you did afford the Jukeau angle to be free years of eligibility, you could allow a high school pitcher to now develop for another two years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you could really turn a lot of these Jukeau programs into real developmental

[SPEAKER_00]: Masterpieces, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: That could be their sole focus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is to develop this athlete, get them on to the next level.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what's even more.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's forget about just baseball.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're asking a 17, 18 year old to make a decision about their career for the rest of their life.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not, they're not mature enough to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that I was mature enough when I started in my current career to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I think you afford is you afford them two years to get their core classes out of the way,

[SPEAKER_00]: they can make a really logical decision when they're gonna transfer to now a four year school and they're gonna get two years of eligibility at this four year school to learn what a higher level of baseball fuels light and they can develop there at that time in the game, the game aspect now.

[SPEAKER_00]: It the game's gonna be way faster for these guys every high school pitcher and we have tons of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: thinks that they are overly prepared for the college level.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they get there and they realize, oh my god, this is moving 10 times faster than I thought it could be.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're just, they're just overmatched.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when we look at, let's now, so you got, so you got the education route, right, which is going to be better, you got the developmental route.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's take the injury route.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, oh, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you look at the amount, so when you take UCL surgeries, right, in totality on a year, over half of them are on kids between the ages of 15 and 19.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over half in the year are our ages that are basically in high school.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason is is because right now from a recruitable perspective, I don't care what anybody says, you know, we can we can get the people that come out and they argue, oh, it's it's location over this or it's it's it's you know, movement strategies over that look there are three focuses that a picture has right.

[SPEAKER_00]: they have to cut down the decision window of a hitter, they have to make the hitter have more decisions, that's like develop their arsenal, and then they have to make those decisions harder.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are there three things that they have to accomplish.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I just focus on the second two without the first one and the decision window is long enough, it doesn't matter how good the other QR.

[SPEAKER_00]: they're going to eventually catch it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the decision window has to be at a certain point, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying everybody has to throw 95, but this 85 to 90 realm you got to be somewhere in there right now in this recruiting landscape.

[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, the biggest risk we have is by putting that pressure on a young immature body.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their skeletal muscle is not equipped to handle that kind of stress and that kind of magnitude.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them are, that's why they survive.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when you see freshmen at these powerful levels, they're there because of a survivor bias.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were able to survive the injury

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just think this entire transition that we could see happen at the collegiate level could make it that we see significantly less injuries at the high school level.

[SPEAKER_01]: To go to your point, I did a study on this recently.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is like last year.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is Division 125.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you look at, you say like, this is what pictures throw in Division 110.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, at every single game, every single team.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is from your LSU's down to your smallest D1 out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it's something where that's incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to find the graphic while we're talking,

[SPEAKER_01]: The other part of this that really does jump out is, yes, command control, I'm not saying the things are important, but to kind of go to your point, you have to develop velocity as I like how you described it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It does not, if you throw 82, it does not matter.

[SPEAKER_01]: How well, because for one thing, you cannot locate.

[SPEAKER_01]: An 82 mile-hour picture can't throw in the zone, because if you throw just in the zone,

[SPEAKER_01]: you get rocked, and it is literally linear.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I if you literally take college pictures and you say, what is your average fast ball velocity?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll find this graphic while we're working here, talking here.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's literally linear, like as a linear relationship that basically the harder you throw, the lower your ERA is, the softer you throw, the higher is, and that is controlled for that spot.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not like I select in sliced and dice, drink like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just literally saying, what is your average fastball velocity and then taking your performance and then summing them all up for everyone in individual and college baseball?

[SPEAKER_01]: So to have success, you have to develop velocity.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the key thing is is, I love how you talk about the 15 to 19 year olds.

[SPEAKER_01]: The frightening thing here is is, but ideally,

[SPEAKER_01]: don't want to come to that velocity too soon, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: 100%.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the later you can develop it, the, what, what several studies have looked at, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is if I have a Tommy John surgery past the age of 20, right, if my first one is past the age of 20, the likelihood of me making it to the major leagues is like, I think I have an 85% greater chance than those who are having, who are also in the minors, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: and have had that surgery prior to the age of 20.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a staggering percentage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what it's telling you is the later in your career that, not that you ever want to sustain the injury, but the later in your career that you sustain this injury,

[SPEAKER_00]: the better it is for your career.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I just think you can go to so many different factors here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, okay, so why is the velocity actually dangerous?

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we take out certain aspects, you know, what causes it?

[SPEAKER_00]: But it all boils down to.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're dealing with a

[SPEAKER_00]: an immature skeletal system.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're dealing with an immature movement pattern and we're dealing with immature stress guarding.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the stress that we see applied to the elbow from a certain number of pitches is drastically higher when we're dealing with a high school athlete and when we compare those same number of pitches to a professional athlete.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason is is because the professional athlete

[SPEAKER_00]: the compensatory actions around that and they have movement strategies that match the way they are trying to throw.

[SPEAKER_00]: If that makes sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, but, okay, the example I love to use.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I see amateur pictures, elite level, like potential drafted out of high school pictures, you often see headwecks, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: You see a picture, to describe a headweck someone doesn't know, they're basically, they're kind of almost like using their neck, they're head to help their arm come through, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: You do not see headwecks,

[SPEAKER_01]: at the major league level almost without fail.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you would say like, okay, is that because there's a survivor bias and you can't get to the majors with the headwack?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, there's a lot of guys who have headwacks

[SPEAKER_01]: who as they get stronger, as their horror gets stronger as you said, the compensatory, you all of a sudden you're able to handle that velocity in a way because you are now more physically mature.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I do think absolutely like you said, like when you look at the studies and you've linked to them in the PC road for us, when you say like, well, why is there a half of success rate if you have Tommy John's surgery earlier?

[SPEAKER_01]: effectively, in some ways, you can get the keys to a Ferrari before you have the skill to drive a Ferrari.

[SPEAKER_01]: There it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And 100%.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you throw 95, throw 91 at an age where your body is just not developed yet, it's, well, for one, like, let's say, you've done something's right, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because to throw 91 requires you're probably mechanically, it's hard to get to

[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to get to 91 miles an hour, especially if you're not physically developed and not be doing some things right so I don't want to make it sound like you're throwing with horrendous against them because the body has to get there right so you're doing some pretty good things with how you're probably how you're using your lower half and all this but if you're not strong enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: to then basically, you know, whether it's at the start of your delivery, but especially at the end, if you're not to me, if you're not able to bring that all to a, have it the strength to bring that all to an end with, you know, without recoil without some of these kind of compensatory mechanisms that I think a lot of young pictures use, the headwack and all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where you're really kind of up in the

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, like you said, you're ligament, you're seeing the force that's being put on your ligament is much higher proportionally than when the full grown adult who throws that it so so basically your point that you kind of make here is is that I feel like is okay, so to tie this back to how recruiting has changed.

[SPEAKER_01]: the mindset like it's not a bad thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we look at some of the best pictures, we look at Paul schemes, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Paul schemes was not an absolutely elite pitching prospect coming out of high school, especially when he was a high school junior.

[SPEAKER_01]: Derek Schoubel was not, and the best pictures right now, the best examples we can point to are pictures who

[SPEAKER_01]: kind of the development was a little bit later and, you know, in the kind of like their path, their direction.

[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, Paul schemes, you know, neither of those started at a power four school.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, those schemes ended up there, but he started it air force, you know, like school was never at a power four school.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you kind of, if it's an amateur is a parent, if you kind of change that mindset that

[SPEAKER_01]: that maybe it's perfectly okay to not say like, okay, we have to get to our endpoint as a high school junior with our commitment.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's our goal.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's our endpoint for our goal for when we're 19, 2021.

[SPEAKER_01]: It opens up kind of a much longer and a much more maybe safer development path, doesn't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: a thousand percent and you know there's a point here too that we haven't talked about yet which is um there's a concept or not a concept it's a it's a stage that an athlete goes through that's called peak height velocity um it's the largest growth spurt that an athlete is going to experience in their life right and during that time period um their entire movement strategies are completely thrown off because their limbs are growing at a rate faster than their tendons and ligaments can support

[SPEAKER_00]: if any of the listeners have young athletes, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I bet you, if they're young males and they're playing nonstop and a multitude of sports, they're probably struggling with severs, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're heels hurt because their heel court is not growing at the same rate that the tibia and fibula are growing at, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the body is just stretching itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what ends up happening during these time periods is these are our most dangerous athletes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And really what we see here, JJ, is that we get injuries between the ages of 12 and 15 that lead to the Tommy John surgery at 16, 17 and 18.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason is is because we know that the greatest risk of future injury is a previous one.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the biggest factor leading to a future injury.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the goal is to stay healthy between the ages of 10 to 15.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that will really help us from the ages of 15 to 18.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where we see obviously that largest bulk of these UCL injuries.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the objective should,

[SPEAKER_00]: it should be.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need introduction to the weight room during these time periods.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to have athletes have a multitude of exposures and not singular exposures, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It would be really funny, I think, for you guys to see how some of our athletes end up training sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: There,

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll have days where they're doing hurdles or they're trying to dunk a basketball or they're catching football passes, especially our pitcher only guys who are getting one very static type of exposure to movement.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the more exposures we can provide them, the more variability we can provide, the less likelihood that we have this imminent stress on just one singular joint at all times.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think another part that's useful there that you just kind of laid out is is like, you say, trying to keep them healthy to 15.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that when you get to 1518, you're not, you know, you're not.

[SPEAKER_01]: I remember talking to an orthopedist who does Tommy John surgeries, and one of the ways they described it to me said, when they do ACL repairs, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: ACL repairs that knee ligament, the knee ligament that usually is a year long recovery and you see a ton of ACL injuries.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those injuries, very often when you get inside the knee, it looks like someone took a pair of scissors to the ligament and just cut it, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: It just snapped.

[SPEAKER_01]: And basically what this worth the P-distuse, waste part about this tonight, I am described it as, that was one catastrophic event.

[SPEAKER_01]: That ACL ligament, that anterior cruciate ligament, I'm saying ACL ligament, anterior cruciate ligament, ligament.

[SPEAKER_01]: That anterior cruciate ligament was fine and then that player tried to make a move of some sort exceeded the stress level that the ligament could handle and then snap, okay, and all of a sudden and you will hear the athlete off and say, I've heard and felt a pop, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: said in Tommy john surgeries in well not just Tommy john the any kind of owner collateral ligament repair right that's the ligament in the elbow that we're talking about with pictures that is the thing that is the kind of limiting factor of the the the health of a picture used to be shoulders thankfully we've gotten better about those ligament is a little harder to train

[SPEAKER_01]: said the number of times where it has that similar breakage pattern that you see in the knee ligament is exceptionally small.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's numbers on one hand, where it's like, oh, this was, and at least the point you try to make was is those are the number of times where a picture has a fully healthy

[SPEAKER_01]: elbow ligament, older collateral ligament, and then the next moment, it pops on a pitch, and that picture is now out.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that it's never happened, but it just doesn't, as a mat, like you have to understand most of the time what happens is the same reason that when you see like, oh, they're having a second opinion on this.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times again, you know, this better than I do, but like I've tried to study this a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times when you say like, okay, your elbow hurts, your sore, you go in and you get the the imaging of it and it's a tough call because it's afraid it has a clear tear, but in many cases, it hasn't snapped completely, but there's now an instability in it and it's like, okay, can we.

[SPEAKER_01]: repair that, is it small enough that you can try to train to, you know, maybe do other things or is it now it's time to have a full replacement or, you know, full, whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: The point of all that is is elbow injuries are wear injuries.

[SPEAKER_01]: elbow injuries are something that is, as you just said, it's something where you may blow out your ligament at 17 and we hope you don't, but if you do,

[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't that you had that moment on that start where that happened, it may have been going back for five, six, seven years that it's been building to this, has it not?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's really tough for a lot of families, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: When something catastrophic and that is catastrophic, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's catastrophic to a player, it's, you know, listen, they're not, it's not life threatening.

[SPEAKER_00]: right, but it is, it is career threatening, it is joy threatening, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So these are catastrophic to the families.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think whenever something like that happens, a family naturally is looking for a reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think oftentimes they're trying to relate it back to a singular moment, just like you talked about.

[SPEAKER_00]: And

[SPEAKER_00]: that is virtually never the scenario when it comes to an elbow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And more than likely, when you talk to somebody and you found out that they've had Tommy John Surgery, hey, did you ever deal with elbow with shoulder issues earlier in your career?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, I had literally shoulder and I had literally elbow and you know, I had a stress fracture in my elbow

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all of these things start coming up and you're like, okay, well, so we've we've put band aids on this throughout this whole time and now we're trying to get through there and I can tell you this too, like it even matters what doctor you see right, so if you're seeing a doctor who regularly sees throwers, they're going to have and give more room for freeing in their diagnosis, then let's say a doctor who's never seen really throwers and they're just looking at it from while this is what the imaging says.

[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of that comes into play, and it really does matter, but the truth we told, you know, the key is creating this ability around it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You said before, it's harder.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can't really train a ligament.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no tensile factors in the ligament, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't.

[SPEAKER_00]: we think enlarging of the ligament is a positive adaptation due to stress, but we're not totally sure of that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we just know that the ligament enlarges due to throwing, and we're, you know, I guess assuming that that is in a response to the stress that's being provided there,

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's no way to train that ligament to get stronger.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can only develop the musculature around it and the things that can offload it to try and get that slightly better.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the key thing that we're talking about.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of what I want to get into a kind of the second part of this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is the key part of all of this with that is is that the ligament, like you said, like there's very limited blood flow, this is not something, this is something, the other challenge of this is, once a ligament is damaged,

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of work and a lot of effort that has been put in to trying to figure out ways to repair, like help encourage healing of ligaments.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is nothing though, like again, I'm not a doctor, but it is for everything one doctor, I'll talk to.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is nothing like talking about a muscle, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: When you talk about a muscle and you're talking about that you start here and you have the capacity to like utterly transform the capacity, the ability of that muscle to handle load stress, all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: With a ligament, you kind of start here and you kind of stay there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like it is something where like you said,

[SPEAKER_01]: avoid putting stress on the elbow when you talk about the compensatory factors earlier and all that like that an adult that a more fully developed pitcher can do that really comes back to the muscles and

[SPEAKER_01]: basically training the rest of the body to try to limit as much as you can, the stress that is being put through that document, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just actually reviewed a study the other day where they're making a connection from metrics off of a counter movement jump and it's relation to Tommy John.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the weaker these metrics were in the counter movement jump,

[SPEAKER_00]: experiencing a timeage on surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's, listen, it's, it's, it's a pretty good study, but it's, it's basically delineating that we need a certain level of power output.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that power output is likely relative to your body weight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, and we can go into a lot of how we look at all of those metrics.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I can tell you just flat out that it matters.

[SPEAKER_00]: It matters a lot, and it doesn't just matter

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what we want to get into.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to dive into this more about training and all and trying to essentially keep pictures both performing and healthier after this quick break.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're back.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is where I want to kind of go into the second part of this, which is y'all have come up with the precision training model.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just going to basically pass the puck over to you and say, okay, take explain to us what you're looking, because you already kind of alluded to some of the things here, which is

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of this comes down to how bodies move and training to, again, the athlete, right, it's both, it is both about developing mass strength, but not only that, but it's also about how the bodies, how training the body, how to move better to be able to

[SPEAKER_01]: The body's actually, I love how, you know, again, you know, people who have studied, can he's all just like you, you know, explained, the body's great at figuring out how to do something.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you give it the, basically, the toolbox to do so, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: The body doesn't try to throw in an inefficient manner.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you can give it the pathways, the neural pathways are working well, the strength is there.

[SPEAKER_01]: All these other parts, it compensates well for even things that are going wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: It can figure out ways around them sometimes.

[SPEAKER_01]: But how, so what is the precision training model?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the precision training model is a tool that we use to evaluate and continuously evaluate our athletes as well as our approaches with that athlete, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The model has the capacity to predict the velocity that an athlete is throwing with a, it's a 0.916 correlation, so it's,

[SPEAKER_00]: Very, that's pretty, that's the thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've never done it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I got those kind of correlations, I'd be like, look, it's good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Admittedly, I was very shocked when my guys brought it to me and made them retested several times.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing what they've developed and how we can use it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's basically broken up into four different criteria, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we have energy potential, energy production,

[SPEAKER_00]: energy transference and energy interference, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're looking at the body in how it's transmitting and energy essentially, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So

[SPEAKER_00]: energy potential we're looking at the height to weigh and we're taking factors in based on age at that point in time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then energy production is literally what it sounds like.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's how much energy do they produce.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're using force plates to really give us all of that information.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a key component there on the energy production.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is the point you

[SPEAKER_00]: the athlete should not fit into the training.

[SPEAKER_00]: The training should be modeled to the athlete.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It should be adaptable to the type of mover the athlete is the type of force producer they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we've been able to figure out over time has been 3,000 evaluations over the last seven years is that there are basically five types of

[SPEAKER_00]: energy producers, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You have a balanced mover, you have a power driven mover, you have a force driven mover, and then you have power reliant and force reliant.

[SPEAKER_00]: And those are guys that are on the extreme outliers, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not exactly ideal to be out there, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You're two reliant on one end of the system.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have a single pro-athlete that lives in one of those.

[SPEAKER_01]: So then you get to find those differences, though, because if someone's just listening to this and like we said, like a power rely on it, what is that different from was it?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it basically, so we take a calculation of how they produce force, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And we take it from several different measures on the force plate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're trying to,

[SPEAKER_00]: like come to terms with is how much of their total force output is made up from a power driven action.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they become a power driven mover, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then if it's, if it's balanced, it's about halfway.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the, I can give you the exact measures, but I don't know that that would do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to give you some understanding, like, what do you mean by power mover versus, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we, but then what we also do is we take in subjective information, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of camps out there that have a lot of subjective ways of measuring athletes, right, morphology, right, they'll look at different movement patterns, the way in which they athletically move, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: All of these are very subjective, but we use those to confirm the numbers we're seeing.

[SPEAKER_00]: on the force plate measures, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So one of them we're looking at is going to be an isomethiapole, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is one of the tests that we look at.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we know is our force driven guys tend to dominate that movement pattern.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our power guys do okay, but they're not going to blow that out of the water, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you look at morphology, you can tell what somebody is going to be by looking at them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, from there, we then go to look at, you know, the almighty that everybody likes to talk about is mechanics.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we start to bring mechanics into the equation as well here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we have several different measures that we take in terms of annealing throw different med ball throws.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then our energy interference is anything that's interrupting the energy from transmitting all the way out the hand, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're testing shoulder strength, we're testing mobility in the forearm, we're testing mobility in the shoulder and then we calculate a score off of that that then provides us whether or not there is energy.

[SPEAKER_00]: any interference leading to us not having a high total energy score.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we take their total energy score after we take off four of those, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: We put them into an equation, it pops out of score.

[SPEAKER_00]: That score versus their current throwing, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is there potential in some ways?

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then gives us our energy delta.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if they have a positive energy delta, it means that they're current.

[SPEAKER_00]: energy score is higher than their current throwing velocity.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means that we can get higher on this score.

[SPEAKER_00]: If they have a negative, which is often what we see with most high school athletes, it means that they are currently throwing harder than their energy output is saying they should.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that is like, let's go back to what you were talking about earlier.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, earlier when we're talking about the danger of your throwing hard at an age where your body

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not yet fully able to handle it potentially, in some ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's a great example, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So when we take high school athletes and they switch to a very short in-season, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You're talking about the high school season, it's like two and a half months, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you take a pro athlete, a high school athlete on average for us, even with nutritional guidance, will tend to fluctuate 10 to 15 pounds during an in-season in that two and a half months.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is simply from lack of weight room exposure, lack of consistent dieting, but then you'll have a pro athlete and no fluctuate five, five pounds during that time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're also pushing the envelope in order to get the performance that we need on this system, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The body, you said before, the body is very good at learning something.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is, but it's also even better,

[SPEAKER_00]: at staying in homeostasis.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it really, really tries to keep you there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to do as much as it can to minimize the energy output.

[SPEAKER_00]: It allows for a given task.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what ends up happening is that when the athlete isn't lifting as much or they're not giving that stimulus, the body doesn't retain that power output.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't retain the weight on the on the system anymore,

[SPEAKER_00]: in terms of the exposures you're providing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So all of this goes in to say, yes, is it dangerous to have high velocity at young ages?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is dangerous.

[SPEAKER_00]: But without it, you won't have a career past high school.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so basically what you're talking about here is, okay,

[SPEAKER_01]: you're looking to find, okay, can we get you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, obviously you do this, you test them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then if you find, hey, everything's looking right, like there's more of a losty that we can develop, ideal.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're like, but we can also feel, in that case, you can feel more comfortable about the injury risk as well, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because then you're looking at a player and athlete who is not exceeding kind of their core of what they are right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other side is where you are like, okay, we've got to bring this.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're throwing here.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've got to bring your body to catch up to that because what you're not, you're not there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're kind of you're kind of red lining the engine in the, you know, again, to go back to another analogy.

[SPEAKER_00]: 100% and here's what's great.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really difficult for we get quite a few and anybody who trains high school athletes.

[SPEAKER_00]: knows that when an athlete walks in a door and says, hey, yeah, my, I can throw 90 or 91 miles an hour.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's an elite high school athlete, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's really difficult for them to hear like, hey, we're at a real, like, tight rope here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And without having credible data to say, look,

[SPEAKER_00]: The the reason we invented this, I don't want to waste time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to help just 85% of my athletes get marginally better.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to know exactly what lever I have to pull on to get the biggest bang for my buck because I'll be honest with you and off season with a high school athlete, if they play a fall sport, I don't get them to the end of November, which means really December.

[SPEAKER_00]: right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And now once I hit January, I have to start stressing them a lot from the throwing side, which means I have to pull back the stress that I'm providing in the weight room, which means I've really had about six weeks to stress them in the weight room and that's not enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't have a lot of time and you have to know exactly where you need to focus in that time period.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if it is force production, then you know how to program for them because now you have the profile of the type of mover they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have exactly what areas they need to strengthen the most in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now when we add in the forspite mountains to this, you'll know exactly

[SPEAKER_00]: for some of our guys, right, we'll get that'll come in.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had recently a New York kid come in.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was throwing, you know, 91 miles an hour and he had a force production of, I think, like a 74 for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't this like incredible force production,

[SPEAKER_00]: output yeah 74.8 and it was saying that he could only throw 78.7 miles an hour at the current moment and we were like something's off here because the kid throws rock if you will how is this possible right well when we talking to them and we're putting them through our screen and we're seeing like yeah listen I haven't had a whole lot of exposure to the weight room

[SPEAKER_00]: right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just really not comfortable in there and any type of training that I've really done has been like calisthenic based and so on and so forth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they were also their energy potential was also low because they were light, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it becomes a very clear message that we can provide them.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you have a very, you have a, you know exactly what you're going to say.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: What we're not focused on any of our focus has got to be on getting you stronger.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to, you know, so he left, he left this season throwing 94 miles an hour and we spent the first six and a half to seven weeks, not throwing.

[SPEAKER_00]: He got one day of throwing exposure because our objective was to weight gain and introduce him to the weight room.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was incredible to see that transformation and to see them buy in because we were able to show them that their energy transfer in score, they through 91, their energy transfer in score was in 89.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's not the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's really close to what you're throwing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But your energy production score was a 74.8 and your energy potential score was an 82.3.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are our lowest hanging through, oh, and your energy interference was a 74.5

[SPEAKER_00]: So we had three levers that we could pull on right away, none of which had anything to do with thrilling.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, so, okay, the interference part of this is, and that's where I would imagine also that the motion capture comes in as well, which is, well, because you've got to figure out, okay, so,

[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned shoulder there.

[SPEAKER_01]: What are you with an amateur athlete with an amateur pitcher?

[SPEAKER_01]: What are the most common kind of issues where they're not getting all the way through the power?

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, again, the basically transferring power from the starting point all the way out to basically releasing it on your fingers on the baseball.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, it is all about

[SPEAKER_01]: Essentially winding up, again, maybe my analogy is terrible, but winding it up and then basically releasing that energy coiling and then releasing it in a way that transfers all the way through, you know, legs everything up through basically those fingertips.

[SPEAKER_00]: The, so typically what we see is most that most athletes that come to us and they're going to be an amateur athlete.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's, you know, in the high school or collegiate realm, their shoulders are weak.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they, we use a muscle dynamometer to test this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they're weak into external rotation.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're miserably weak into internal rotation.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a big imbalance between the two.

[SPEAKER_00]: and frankly, they have really poor upward rotation, which just means basically getting their arm up overhead, the really poor at doing that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the general consensus from the typical training realm in today's world is like, oh, we need to have a targeted shoulder strengthening program put on this athlete.

[SPEAKER_00]: True to the matter is, the athlete is likely globally weak.

[SPEAKER_00]: and we just need to train them in these planes of motion and they will get significantly stronger without needing to specifically target this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know our industry loves data and we love love specialization and everything and the fact of the matter is the weight room is not rocket science.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just needs to be applied correctly to the individual.

[SPEAKER_00]: And most of the kids

[SPEAKER_00]: are weak.

[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't been provided enough exposures to developing true strength.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that different when you flip the from the 16 17 year old athlete to the 21 22 23 year old athlete is then it becomes a little bit more of like okay there is a specific like

[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, you get into it again, well, I would describe as your band strength right you are at 22 you should just be without any effort almost if you're an athlete just by existing you're like maturing you're going to be stronger, but is it change a little bit as far as they go from globally week to they have.

[SPEAKER_01]: certain areas, certain issues that they need to attack or is it state the same?

[SPEAKER_00]: So the profiling that we talked about before becomes even more important when you're dealing with the higher level athlete, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because you don't want to waste any time training them in the wrong direction.

[SPEAKER_00]: On top of that, the number one thing we're trying to figure out with every pro athlete is how little can I train and still sustain my top level of force production.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we are in a constant race over the off season to try and get minimal dose effect.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's our objective with pro athletes.

[SPEAKER_00]: How little, because during the season, they're going to train maybe twice a week?

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if they're a reliever, forget it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You may not be able to.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm convinced, I can just interject on this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am convinced, I have talked to big league closers about this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I do not understand, I've wrote about this 10 years ago now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I understand everyone wants to keep everyone healthy.

[SPEAKER_01]: But,

[SPEAKER_01]: the first time that you go back to back should not be as a majorly reliever.

[SPEAKER_01]: That should be something that you learn and this majorly close or told me said the biggest problem I ran into was figuring out how to get in my lifts.

[SPEAKER_01]: I got up to the big leagues and now I'm no longer on a I pitch every third day schedule, which when it was on a one every three day schedule, it was very possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, this is the day I'm going to lift.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm on.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I'm going to pitch tonight.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I'm going to pitch again tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_01]: How do I stay at this level?

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's something.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that is one of the most challenging components for a professional reliever, especially at the big league level is how do you maintain everything you need to maintain on an utterly unpredictable schedule?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so our our guys have a tough task ahead of them when when you know their guys are at that level and and even in you know triple A and AA right especially our relievers when when our coaches are working with them and it is it is literally a daily conversation of like hey are you live tonight like are you live?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you sure you're going to go?

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're not going to go, we had a day off yesterday, and if you really don't think you're going to go, then maybe we should catch this primer in.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they're constantly working back and forth and trying to navigate how best is their body respond, and we'll test this with a lot of our pro guys before they leave.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll put them in back-to-back situations if they're a reliever or we'll give them scenarios where like, hey, we're not going to train this week and we're going to see how you respond in your bullpen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because you've got to try and figure out how because we don't want to be figuring that out while they need to perform.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the objective is to try and solve those problems in advance of their current season because, you know, listen, the high school kids are significantly easier.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and it is, they need, when you are younger, you need way more stimulus than you think.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you need, and then that doesn't mean you have to have an hour and a half workout.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could have a 20 minute workout, but there needs to be some heavy load in there, and it needs to be applied correctly, and that probably needs to be done two to three times a week, even while you're in season.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that could be, and that needs to be intimately crafted around your throwing schedule.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you're a position guy, a little different, we work with some of the exposures, but as you get older, those those stimulus needs to be less and less and less.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to figure out how little can I do in order to maintain this level?

[SPEAKER_01]: because you said like is also the components of how you're doing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you think of the high school workload as opposed to the pro workload, it's not even said they call it the grind for a reason.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is a grind and it is something where especially nowadays like.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's something that's transformed in my time at Baseball America is, I mean, for one, we have so much more data, so much more understanding.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I started Baseball America, we thought that I think the general consensus was velocity is something you either had or not, and command and control was what you could really develop.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, now it's like, oh,

[SPEAKER_01]: be better.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you can have velocity.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's on undisputable fact now.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what I would also say though is is we're now in the world like you said, the off season is no longer about, well, I go sell insurance and then I show up at spring training.

[SPEAKER_01]: Go, okay, let's give me an shape.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll be ready to go on opening day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's about

[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, you do your work in the off season as a pitcher to kind of like you said kind of maintain and you hope to start at a level where for one you're ready that ramp up is not going to be as much of an injury risk.

[SPEAKER_01]: figures crossed, but also maintaining your stuff through the season, it's more about maintenance at that point, really.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like that it is, it's just harder to add in season, that it is in the off season where you don't have the pressure of performance tying into this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, 200 percent, and it's, you know, the first year, guys, you know, the first year,

[SPEAKER_00]: they come home right away, gung ho, ready rock, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And every year that a guy is in it, the longer and longer, there's more rest that they're going to take after that season, right, which is great.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they should.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the more experience the guy becomes, the more in tune they are with their body and what they need in order to be prepared to play at the level they

[SPEAKER_00]: need to play at.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I think what's amazing about this precision model is that we can evaluate our guys, like these evaluations on our programs happen twice a week.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it's happening without them even being aware of it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're just, they're used to coming in, jumping on the forest plates, doing a poll, going, testing, arm care, and moving on to their next thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it gives us the ability for their numbers to populate on our dashboard, and for us to see like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're getting out of whack here on one of these.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need a little bit more stimulus here.

[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't working the way we wanted it to be working.

[SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, this up forords,

[SPEAKER_00]: are throwing coaches, significantly more time to focus on the location on the development of the arsenal, on being more unique, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It gives them more time to do that because we have taken the guesswork out of all the other pieces.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's again, it's been a fascinating discussion.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nick, we'll put in the show notes as well, but if someone wants to learn more about all this, and I'll let it work so that they check it out.

[SPEAKER_01]: uh... on instagram at at below university uh... you can find me at at coach underscore cereal uh... or they can go to below university dot com so check that out will have to know how that the show notes as well i've really enjoyed talking about this is this is kind of stuff that i love geeking out of and especially i love how much there is now that just did not exist right like literally not like

[SPEAKER_01]: I was at Baseball America for quite a while before I ever heard the words force plates Edless.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't, like again, like it is something where if people say, well, why is velocity keep climbing in the games?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, well, one, I love how you set it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's three components to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the key part of the three components of pitching, like shorting the decision window,

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the, that makes everything else play better.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you hear someone say, this guy's 98 mile in our fastball, isn't, doesn't move all that great.

[SPEAKER_01]: His slider's not all that great now.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, that all may be true, but a 98 mile in our fastball makes everything tougher because they gotta react to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to have, I don't care how little movement it has.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you throw a 90 mile an hour slider, which by the way is something that did not exist 20 years ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you throw a 90 mile an hour slider, and it moves like, you know, like a bullet slider that has, it's like, it all you're having to do there really is, as I feel like is, is add a moment of indecision into an already very difficult,

[SPEAKER_01]: time frame up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to decide my swing you're not.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what is this pitch and where is it going?

[SPEAKER_01]: The hitters job is a brutal brutal job, brutal, brutal, brutal, fun, glad we don't train them.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is Dr. Nixira.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm JJ Cooper.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us on this latest version of the text last training in baseball on the baseball America podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Check out more at the baseball America podcast feed and also on our YouTube channel and obviously also as well at baseball america.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us.

[SPEAKER_01]: See you everybody.