Welcome back to finding the edge podcast.
I'm jeroboam joined with Robert Fry and today we have on a
well-known person in the strength and conditioning World
specifically with power development in Bill Miller.
I'm super excited to have Bill on.
I've been falling bill for quite a long time.
And one of the things that makes Bill very unique is that he has
both the capability to be in the weight room and on the skill
side as well. So I really wanted to to have
Bill on to talk about how he trains athletes.
And so today, we explored a lot of stuff to do with strength and
conditioning. And so, we're going to have Bill
back on because we didn't get much to the ecological, or the
motor learning in the skill, acquisition stuff.
But topics, we did Cover today were potentiation and how to
prime the nervous system to be able to produce p-power right
out of the gate. What does it look like to
integrate strength? And With the skill development
as well as fatigue Readiness and workload management.
And we also had Garrett Baker, joined us on the call.
So it was a, it was a full house.
We also had some pitching stuff thrown in there in terms of how
can we use, what Javelin does to improve pitchers.
So it was a great conversation that explored whole bunch of
different facets on the strength and conditioning side, as well
as we just dipped our toes into the skill, acquisition stuff at
the end. And and so we hope you guys
enjoy our conversation today. With Bill Miller, can't wait.
So I've just admired your work from afar and you basically on
the snc side and even seemingly on the skill side.
Happy to have been doing a lot of the stuff that I've been
super interested in a lot of the mixing, you've from what I can
see, you mix, both the essence, see in the skill side really
well, I'd love to kind of hear, kind of a little bit about your
background and how you got into snc and then you're kind of
current situation. We were able to actually walk by
both the line of strength and conditioning coach and skill
coach. Yeah, man.
It's a super fortunate situation.
I'm in where I do. Have that GM.
It has both the white room right next to the batting cages and
everything like that. It's a great situation.
But so I played baseball, I played in college, I tried the
independent ball route didn't really work out, but I guess my
big story in related to S and C is I was a big Westside barbell
guy and I was very big into like anything that I could improve in
the weight room. And I remember looking around
when I was playing with like, Juliet Slammers.
Like I'm the biggest strongest guy out here, but everybody out
here, throws faster than me. Sprint's past the me can hit
balls farther than me, even. And so I'm like, there's
something missing in my training and it, like, after a while.
I talk with a lot of different people about like different ways
to develop speed and mobility and stuff like that.
But the one guy that I have to give a ton of credit to is Chris
Beardsley of strength and conditioning research.
I joined his mentorship program run for years ago, I want to say
and since then like a lot of the training I've done hasn't
necessarily always been like high-velocity stuff, but a lot
of it has been about measuring High Velocity output and making
sure that whatever you're doing and training is always improving
in those areas. So that was a big big turnaround
for me like I sort of like relied so much on heavy strength
training for the longest time and I got big and strong but I
wasn't the best baseball. Player.
And so kind of peeling back that next layer where I am now, I
remember there was a time about five years ago when I was
training, baseball players. I said, the quote, I want to be
there, I want to train the strongest, baseball players in
the country. I said that exact quote to
somebody and looking back on it, like, that's so stupid.
Like, all I care about is training the best or making sure
that the guys that I do train have the best possible Seasons,
they can sew. So that's it.
All I care about is that they become all-conference or
All-American or All-Stars if they're in Pro Bowl, that's it.
And so, like with that sort of mindset lately, that I've had,
I've really tried to make it like, really trying to make it a
focal point that everybody gets in all of their sport specific
work. First, we're always working in
the batting cages. We're always doing are throwing
work and then we go into our Sprint work and are lifting.
And then everything else up to But yeah, to me that's like like
I said, I'm gonna fortunate situation.
I only trained about 25 to 30 athletes total.
So I have a lot of like, control over everyone's routines and
everything like that. But yeah, it's to me, that's the
best way that I feel. I can do it for the athletes I
train. So one of the things that from a
motor learning standpoint, we're a big believer in non-linearity
so we're going to jump back just a minute here and I don't know
if we done proper introductions. I don't know if you've met
everybody here yet. So yeah I want at least throw
that out there. Have you have you met at least
Robert who I know is at least from your neck of the woods and
so you're familiar with Robert? How about how about Garrett
Baker? Yeah, Millions a little bit.
So Okay okay, cool cool. I didn't I wanted to, you know,
make sure that we at least I gave an opportunity for that and
to get overeager here in just like, jump Way Forward.
So but yeah. Do you guys have any Robert or
Garrett? Have anything you want to jump
in on first before I interject? T', they're all you go you look
like you're chomping at the bit here so I mean I got something
to say but yeah it looks like you got something more important
to say. Well I don't know about that but
you might have some good to Robert you should go first.
Then know we'll get to it. Okay.
All right. All right well I mean because
there's so much there's so much good stuff bill that you you
said there and part of this is the whole reason that I wanted
to have you on to is that There's just so many different
avenues that you've touched on. So, for example, the myth of of
just get guys strong, I think when I was first coming up in
essence, e, and like, that was, the biggest thing is like, eyes
could be strong enough and it was all about get guys as strong
as they can. And then I was in several
different weight rooms and I listened to the strength coach,
kind of talk. Especially more about football
players. And just talk about how, like,
your best guys in the weight room aren't Only your best guys
on the field and so that for me, it didn't like, because the
voices on, on social media and like the coaches that I looked
up to preach so much like strength that I kind of like,
didn't really think that much of it until much later when I
started looking more into skill acquisition and how important
that piece was and and also looking at transfer of training
and for me that like, the whole reason that I got into strength
and conditioning was, I thought that was the missing piece.
For me. But I was also a really small
kid at coming in as a freshman at 145 pounds, being 510 and
then leaving college at like 155 pounds after four years of
weightlifting. And so, yeah, that for me yes,
probably a strength is a is an important piece but it's also to
me. It been learning more about like
what does it mean to have specification in your training
and also to have transfer of training?
And the more that I dug into it? The more that I felt like there
was Still this huge gap between what we were doing in the weight
room to getting it to transfer on, on the field.
As far as the skill stuff went? Yeah, man.
And I think where this sort of Gets Lost in Translation is that
okay? If I have a group of 35 kids on
a baseball team and it's almost overwhelming to think how can I
get all 35 of these kids better in one hour today at the local
College, you know what I mean? Like so we only have so many
resources. We We only have so much time and
yes. So if everybody is on basically
the same strength program they're all going to get a
little bit better like that's fine.
But like I said before I'm in a super fortunate environment
where it's like okay I can experiment as much as I want I
have as much leeway as possible. I have control over their entire
training schedule so it's not good enough to just say okay
everybody you got a little bit stronger, this offseason great.
It's hey guys you individual have to have a great season this
year. That's what you I'm in here
before. That's what you pay for.
We are going to make that happen in any way that we can and
training. So that's where I think a lot
more of these Avenues is you talk about for training transfer
really come into play where as I get it, if you're the local
strength coach at you know, the division three school down the
street, you don't really have that type of control over
everything. You don't quite have that be the
type of, I guess that the same situation that I'm in.
So, I have to say it like, right off the bat, I'm very fortunate
in the environment that I do. Do have to work with athletes
for all this stuff, but yeah, man, I do think you know,
there's there is definitely like a myth out there like that, you
have to train with a barn, your back.
You have to do all these heavy movements and stuff.
And to be honest, you don't like, if let's say you had a guy
that's trained for six years in the weight room, they're already
pretty strong and everything like that.
And let's say they're dead, lift this 520 pounds their reverse
lunges. All this great stuff, that's
great. In order to make a dent in that
type of an athlete. It could take a full year just
to add 30 40 pounds to their deadlift in the reverse lunge.
It's like man, then that it's going to take so much time, so
much energy. It's going to take so much time
away from what? Their low-hanging fruit would be
at that time, like that to me, they're low hanging fruit is no
longer strength training. It's everything else that you
could fill their training bucket with.
So if we know that strength training, Lifts and everything
else is going to take a ton of time and energy.
Why would we spend all of that time on that little tiny, one
percent when we could be working more in the batting cage more on
throwing velocity, more on sprinting, more on everything
else, you know what I mean? Absolutely.
I mean, especially as I got more down the rabbit hole of it.
Looking at. Okay.
How can I make this stuff be more Sports specific and
transfer it'll things in Concepts that I'm sure you're
familiar with of dynamic correspondence there is some to
that. I was that one of my mentors was
talking about combination training, how to integrate skill
stuff with weight room, stuff, and that the last kind of place
that I had kind of ended up or one of the places that have
ended up is like Pap, you know, potentiating, the athlete before
they go in. Do their sport work.
And so for me, one of the, one of the things that always
intrigued me was like, how do we integrate strength and
conditioning with the skill work?
Because my background is in strength, and conditioning is
really change the way that I look at training does or
practice design. And that influences how I write
throwing programs, how I even structure hitting session, all
that sort of stuff. And so, I'm kind of curious from
your Experience. Where, where, where have you
kind of? What have you, what do you have
come to in discovered as far as like your process and where
you're currently at? Yeah.
And dude that's your really unlike the Forefront.
I think of everywhere that I think a lot of professional
baseball players coaches and players want to start going.
I actually just talked with a coach named the his name's Pete
from the Red Sox and Pete was talking about how he had a guy
in his minor league system. It's doing like a bunch of like
different drills, like, like lead arm medicine, ball, throws,
and stuff like that, and how he uses that, prior to his actual
swings in batting practice to really like make sure that he's
ready to go. He's got that potentiating
effect. But for me the way I like to
structure it as I do those explosive exercises in that warm
up setting that potentiating warm up.
So maybe it's medicine ball throws prior to an upper body
strength training session or Sprint work and Jumps and
everything like that prior to a lower body, strength training
session. So you do all those, but I like
to make sure you're tracking a number along with it because now
you can track fatigue as well. That's another thing Chris
Beardsley's taught me. Is that fatigue is probably
going to hammer on high-speed movements the most.
So those High Velocity exercises are probably going to be
affected by fatigue, the most. And if that's the case, then
they're going to be great tests for fatigue, and right.
This prior training. And so it works really, really
well just tracking someone's 15 or 20 yard dash.
It works great for potentiation, but then, you can also say,
okay, I know you have to get to a 2.9 in this Sprint before we
start sprinting. Okay.
Hey, you got a two point, eight nine, second right there.
Let's get to you, let's get to your work, whether it's throwing
or hitting whatever it is that day.
Yes, sir. Oh, go ahead, Robert.
I was going to say and to touch. Uh, I I'm great.
I'm glad you actually brought up potentiation because I really
like your tweet from February 18th.
Where you talked about this, it's not just doing do this
movement and then doing another faster movement and then you
talked about, you know, doing those things that help you
perform well and yeah, so like what you mentioned about having
that number behind? It is just so crucial.
And then Going back to another one where you're talking about,
how it's better, rather than long distance, running doing
sprints repeating, and then getting those times and seeing
and having that video and component behind it, where you
have that, you have those times where you can monitor, hey, you
know, in this particular Sprint, I am fatiguing here and this
particular Sprint so on and so forth.
So asking you, how does you know, tracking those Burrs help
you in terms of future training. Man, that's a great point.
It's like, to me it sets up everything.
Like, we always obsess over like, how many sets and Reps,
should we be doing in this training session and stuff like
that? And that's a hard question to
answer in my opinion, until you actually see how that guy's
functioning that day, if they are, you know, gassed by Sprint.
Number four in a session. And I see men, these numbers
suck. We're probably not going to do
anything in the weight room that day.
There would make any sense because they're CNS is already
pretty pride and and everything like that.
Yeah, but if you have a kid who's just every Sprint, they're
getting better and better better.
It's like, okay, I know we have a great training session today
and then you can even take that same concept with velocity Based
training in the weight room. If you have a bar speed sensor,
say the same thing, okay? I know this guy dropped off by
0.2 m/s in his training sessions.
Last week, he was probably very gassed at the end of it.
So now, like you said that's going to set you up.
Tomorrow is probably going to have to be an off day completely
because I know that his numbers or in the tank by the end of
That session. So there is a lot that you can
do with it, but to me, what's probably most important is this
to track something. When that kid walks in the door,
I mean, we've even done like grip strength.
Some guys, like to do it. And that's probably another
thing to touch on is like, every body will probably respond to
training a little different. So when it comes to, like what
can you track for fatigue, you're going to kind of have to
find that thing that the athlete can kind of rely on that.
They liked it. Test that they will show the
largest increase or decrease in performance and if they are
fatigued. So, for example, it's
interesting one guy, we have this thing called the crane
scale that you can just measure force with.
And so, we do like a pal off, hold sometimes.
And we're just, you know, pulling on that in the pal.
Awful position, his goes in the tank if he's if he's gassed and
that only happened maybe three or four times this offseason but
those days are like okay you're not, you're not going to hit
today, we're just going to, you know, do some light work and
then head. Home.
But that's one that he loved to track another guy, loved track
and grip strength, that's fine, but for the most part, I think a
Sprint, or a jumper medicine ball, throw would be your best
bet to see if that kid is set up to put a on perform at a high
level in training. So, when you're tracking the
fatigue or just even Readiness, what have you seen and what's
his significant enough drop off? Like because generally speaking,
when you introduce something new, you're going to see a
little bit of downward Trend in their performance.
And that's kind of normal. So, how do you determine when
you're going to give them a complete off day and then
there's also the other element of well, what is their season
going to be like and do I like how far out are we and then When
does it make sense to give a guy a complete off day, or when does
he actually have to work through it and get the get his body
accustomed to that amount of frequency of training, or
physical activity? And that's another tough one.
I would say, okay, so we have that, that situation where the
guy walks in the gym. Let's say we're doing a medicine
ball. Overhead throw for the radar gun
with a three pound ball. Something light.
No, he can throw it fast and he should be getting E 8 miles an
hour, he's only getting like 35 36.
So, okay, let's get maybe we'll go do some medicine ball, slams.
Maybe we'll go pull on the crane Scout for a couple sets, just
two or three sets. All right.
Now, let's come back. Give you a few minutes, come
back and see what your numbers are looking like, normally.
If that kid isn't really gas from previous session, they
should be able to jump right in and get 38 again.
Like, that's they should be functioning in a high level but
sometimes it doesn't and that's not the case.
So it like after Giving them that second go-around of maybe
five reps or so. That after that, I would shut
it. If they're not really showing
that their numbers are are where they should be.
But then, as far as like, complete off-days go, that's a
tough one. Because there's gonna be so many
different variables man. Like, even if you have a kid in
college, they might be getting up at six in the morning for
practices tomorrow, maybe even earlier.
They might have midterms coming up and all this other stuff.
So to me it's like take as many days as you.
Need and prove to me that you are ready to train today.
Like training is only going to be impactful if the kid is ready
to let it rip. Absolutely.
Give everything that you can and function at a high rate if they
can't do it, I don't know anything that I can put them
through in the weight room. That would really be impactful
for their power development. Other are other things like
Mobility, isometrics and maybe, you know, different things you
can do for arm care and tissue health.
Those types of things are fine, but as far as like, true power
development type things in I I probably wouldn't have them do
anything if they're not functioning well because you
just can't, you can't tap into all the motor units that you
need and you can't tap into it fast enough for it to produce
any other patient. So then for you would you say
that your primary focus on the essence Seaside is power
development for baseball players?
Yeah for 100% because I mean that for me that that was a
shift it's not strength. Like to me it's power
development. Can you can you express strength
quickly? Yeah and and yeah at some level
I mean coaches always strength, coaches, always come back with
well strength is the foundation for power and it's I don't
necessarily disagree with that, but if you, if you don't end up
converting that strength to power and actually training that
you're leaving a lot. Left on the table as far as your
ability to utilize the strength that you've actually developed.
Yeah, and that's, that's one of the things where I was at a
division. One school in a strength coach
there before was just really big on on strength, and he hadn't
done any, like high-velocity stuff with them other than
Olympic lifting. And most of the stuff was, like,
75 percent or above, and I did some isometric stuff with them
and like some speed deadlifts and maybe a Contrast in this kid
felt like he was flying out there in the fall and it's like
because the other strength coach had left so much untapped
potential just sitting on the table.
Like it only took two sessions with him before he felt felt
like he was fast out. Ever been in his life.
I'll be argument when I like, because I've said, very similar
things before the argument that I get as well because we did all
the Olympic lifting and squatting and everything else
that set him up for two sessions and he's ready to go.
It doesn't always work like that with everybody, man.
Like shit. I wish that work like that for
me. But yeah, I mean, it's there's
so much that goes into it and the other thing about like
training at higher speeds training at higher velocities,
what I feel, it really does for athletes is exposes you to the
speeds that you're going to find in your sport.
And so now when you talk about hey you have to go from a
batter's box and Sprint. 90 feet, go do it.
You can turn it on and it's nothing.
It feels second nature to you. It doesn't feel like you're
doing something different, okay? Hey, you have to Sprint, oh, you
got to throw on the brakes and get back real quick.
Okay, I can do that. I did that in my training for
three, four, five months, you know.
Or hey you're you got to jump up and then you got to rotate fast.
Once you hit the ground and throw this kit out, okay, I'm
prepared to handle those types of speeds and certainly like
there's a lot of strength exercises that can help keep you
safe. A from the field no doubt about
it. Eric cressey has made an
unbelievable living proving that but at the same time it's like
if a guy isn't moving well at high speeds, they're not
coordinated at high speeds if they haven't been exposed to
high speeds in their training, I feel like you're leaving a ton
of the table from an injury prevention standpoint too.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean because one of the things
that I look at it more strength and conditioning.
Oftentimes, I'm looking at it from the standpoint of, am I
preparing the tissues in the body to be able to handle and
withstand the forces I'm going to ask of them when it comes to
most often practice actually more so than the games because
often oftentimes practices way more intense than games, I don't
have. I wish I had actual baseball
data, but I've seen football data.
And that is, that was definitely true of like, they're their
spring or they're like preseason sessions were way higher than
their game sessions and that and you would actually see injury
rates where would be really high at the beginning of practice,
the start of fall, practice or spring practice, or whatever, it
is in football. And and when they actually took
the data and showed it to the coaches and they adjusted it.
The number of injuries came way down and just made me think of
my first year coaching at Junior college and we came out for our
first day of practice in the dome and we did a full infield
and how many guys arms were just super sore, after that first
team practice? It was like, maybe we need to
adjust how we do things and that our guys weren't actually
prepared for, for what we were asking of them.
And that that really changed my thinking on how we actually
prepare guys like it because you know, especially with to me,
Junior College High School. Etc guys.
Don't really know what they need to be doing to prepare
themselves for practice. Like they don't think about
these things. And so I look at it as it's our
job as coaches to actually make sure they're prepared for what
we're asking them to do. Because if they come in and they
get hurt then especially if they're one of our top guys,
then we're, we basically shot ourselves in the foot there and
put them behind. And so to me, having these basic
understandings of just Basic strength and conditioning
principles of building work capacity is to me.
One of the things that at least I see as being very beneficial
to strength, having strength, and conditioning, and that's
where I look at. So, for example, you're talking
about four hitters and rotation, rotational power.
For me, one thing that I've changed a little bit on.
It's not that I don't think that, like, throwing mud balls
is bad, but I don't think that It prepares the tissue as well
as Doing something like plate rotations or like how you have
like a dumbbell because if we think about it, when you throw a
med ball, you don't have to decelerate any of that force
that you created. So you can generate a high
amount of force get going fast, but you don't then have to
absorb that Force. Whereas if you're holding a
plate and you rotate it as fast as you can, then you actually
have to do something to dissipate it.
And when we think about hitting we don't, we don't let go of the
bat. If you swing the bat as hard as
you can, all the different sort of joint.
It's and and whatnot in tissues have to have to then absorb all
that force that you created. And so at least to me from an
oblique standpoint, I think doing those plate rotations,
even at High Velocity working back and forth, all of a sudden
there. Now, you're actually challenging
the tissues, you're building that capacity to actually allow
guys to actually have a higher work capacity, to take more high
volume, High intent swings because I think when I was
looking at some of the potentiation, Which they were
saying that early on, you weren't seeing an actual result
to the potentiation with the isometric stuff because the
athlete was fatiguing. So they weren't getting that Pap
effect and but it was but after you know, four weeks or however
many weeks then they weren't fatiguing anymore, and they're
actually able to take advantage of that potentiation effect.
And so, to me, it just kind of points to the fact that the body
needs to Actually be trained to handle what we're asking it to
do. And so, to your point of
fatigue, earlier guys need to, we should be paying attention to
the amount of volume that our guys are taking in practice,
because if we actually want to develop the skill, they need to
be fresher in order to develop it.
If we start doing getting into, like, 50 or 100 reps, how
quality are they at that point? When the tissues are now, become
way more fatigued, if you actually haven't built up that
capacity? Forehand.
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head because now you're talking
the the exact same way that I think which is you want to get
guys strong to handle their sport.
That's what matters we want to get guys.
Strong to be more explosive in there sport.
Those are the only two things that we can really work on in my
opinion, in the strength and conditioning community.
And there's so many things that fall outside of the squat rack.
That would A athletes to do that.
Yeah. Like you said, I do a lot of
like, dumbbell, like a rapid rotational and stop.
I like those rapid torso decel drills.
I have to admit. So, I very fortunate again.
Like, I, I'm in the situation. I'm in.
I have that Proteus machine. And the thing about the Proteus
that really like, like caught me, obviously, like they gave me
a great price and stuff, but the thing that caught my attention
was You can do that exercise and track how fast you are able to
go back and forth and how quickly you could stop it on a
dime and stuff like that. So that's probably one of the
main exercises that I wanted to do on the Proteus.
And so we do it at on right now, but you don't need a fifteen
thousand dollar machine to do that.
You can take a 20-pound dumbbell and get the same training
effect. But like everything else.
I like trying to have put a number on it so you know, I
spent 15 grand. I'm getting numbers.
All in the Power Research, you know how it goes?
Yeah, at the end of the day, you know, no, those are some great
points. The one thing I wanted ask, you
know, to touch on what Garrett was saying earlier.
What you were saying? Now bill was, you know, with
kind of guys trying to be fresher and trying to teach
this, you know, how do you treat rest?
How do you value a rest period? You know, do more guys, do some
guy. As need more rest, you some guys
need less rust. You know, do you go about seeing
a way to quantify that? Or do you go about a way of
saying, hey, you know, how can we allow guys to rest when they
need to rest? Yeah, that's a tough one, too,
because it's probably going to buried it vary between every
kid. So I had see the probe, all guys
that I had this offseason like they had the best schedules.
They I think they came in five, sometimes six days a week and
Grant. Coming in every day and we're
tracking fatigue. So not every day was going to be
a high-intensity session, but I knew I was going to see them
everyday but then some of the high school and college kids, I
only got to see him like, three maybe four times a week at most.
So those, this is where it gets tough because you have a kid
who's paying you money to train, and he's gassed and it's like
shit, dude, you only came in twice this week, like, you're
paying me money for X number of training sessions this month.
I think I've only had to do it once where I told a kid, hey
like we are just going to go through our full training
session today. We're going to keep it super
light and like I gave him some stuff that he could do at home
the next day if he was feeling a little bit fresher.
But yeah that's that's where I think it gets so tough.
It if especially if you're working with a team setting
because all of those kids are coming in at the same time, they
have no, like other choice, they have to come in when it's their
time slot. So in those situations, man, I
can see it being very tough and, very not easy to just tell a
kid. Hey, you're not squatting today,
you're not dead lifting today, but in a perfect world.
Yeah. You should probably not be doing
that. And as far as like, what should
you be doing on those rest days? You know, like some people are
in the mindset of like active recovery days.
I'm not, I hate it to me, like, I tried doing them for the
longest time where I knew I was gas.
That I knew I was supposed to be doing something.
So I'm going to go through these different drills and these
breathing exercises and to me just like, being on my feet and
the mindset of like I'm doing this training session that it
lasts me 45 minutes or so, or an hour that just the the almost
like the mental capacity to go through that was fatiguing, as
weird as it sounds. But yeah, to me there was more
detrimental than not to me the best things that you could be
doing on your off days, are Off of your feet and then maybe at
most like going through like Mobility or deep end range.
Isometrics is something. I'm a big fan of like those
types of movements would be like, that would be where I
would cap it. Okay, so on the isometrics,
like, how do you feel about those?
Because to me, especially if you're going and range and
depending upon the intensity, that's to me, that's that's very
taxing, on the central nervous system.
And so, I mean, I've seen guys, you know, post about doing
isometrics every day, even when they're fatigued like
long-duration, Max intensity. And they just wrote out there,
they're down face. Yeah.
And then their body adapted recovered because Well, this is
this is another say, this is a little another tangent that I
think is related, but like, are you familiar with bondarchuk
system? Not really.
No. Okay.
Because I looked into it and I found it to be super interesting
partially because, you know, the whole premise of his stuff is
transfer of training, at least as I understood it.
But his big thing was not wave, loading volume and volume and
intensity and just keeping that consistent for it.
Training phase and it made sense in the sense that it allowed the
system in the body to actually adapt to that stimulus and get
the the greatest adaptation out of it.
So like if you if you do the same thing day in and day out
your body's going to adapt to it.
Even if even if at the beginning you absolutely get crushed by
it. The system will eventually be
able to catch up because nothing is not a lot is changing in
terms of the volume and intensity, generally speaking.
And so I just wonder if that was kind of maybe the reason why
they were able to ride it out because they were just doing
five minute I sews. And the session was pretty much
the same every single day and then eventually the body just
super compensated and they were able to actually have a benefit
from that. Yeah, to me I always cap like
Max effort isometrics. I usually cap met about, four to
five seconds. That's it.
Yeah man. I've done.
Like the long duration, high intensity isos, those things are
crazy, but what yeah what's weird about him is you get you
definitely feel that Central fatigue but I never really felt
like the next day at least peripherally fatigue.
I never really felt soreness and and that was an interesting
thing and I'll be 100% honest, I have no clue what is going on
there because everything that I've read in research, Shows
that none of this shit should be working.
It's like maybe you'll see some tendon stiffness gains maybe
you'll see some muscle fascicle length gains but to me there's
just not much research out there on it.
So I've talked to Chris Beardsley about it at length and
he's always like I got nothing for you Bill.
I'm sorry. There's just nothing written
about them. So but they are interesting and
like you said, you do have to watch it with those like, when
it's a recovery day, man, take off like Do something else.
We're human beings, we're not robots.
So as much as we want to make it, our job to be great,
baseball players or whatever. It's like you will be a better
baseball player if you are a better human being first, if
you're exposed to a lot of different things in your life,
and that you're enjoying life. Because if your life is
miserable, it will impact your baseball performance auton,
especially because baseball is such a like a mentally grueling
game. As it is.
So to me on those off days, man, like let yourself be off.
That's to me the best way to do it.
Absolutely, you know those those some great points belt.
Another thing I wanted to touch on was in terms of, you know,
not just off days but like the balance between off season
versus in season. How does that?
How does you know, training very in your world when it's off
season versus in season? That's another tough one.
Something that I've been wrestling with in my head
lately, especially because this is the time of year that this is
a big problem. I don't really care to put a bar
on a kids back anymore, like there's some athletes or I think
they just love doing the reverse lunge.
That's fine. We're going to do it all off
season, but the more off seasons and then in Seasons that I've
been through the more I've started to notice, huh?
Like when we really try to keep that reverse, Each lunge regret
Max high in season the less unless it really works like it's
just. So I usually try to take the bar
off kids back, so now we did it last season and it seemed to
work pretty well and I'm planning on doing it again.
But other than that I guess as far as like volume and exercise
selection is concerned. I'll definitely cut down the
volume because there's no real point in trying to push for more
power. Patients like doing 10 sets of
jumps. Probably isn't necessary in the
in season but it might be a necessary in the offseason or to
improve power output. So maybe I would cap it at like
half of that maybe five or six sets of three jumps.
And then as far as like just in general exercise selection, I
would probably push for a little bit more load in those High
Velocity movements. Because I know like one of the
first things to go when I track like force velocity profiles
with guys like so heavy load, medium load and light load
different things. Usually the thing that goes in
season first is the force and do that like force velocity
profile. So I try to do more stuff with
like a five or six pound medicine ball or slightly over
lightly, loaded medicine, or dumbbell jumps and and maybe
even Like work with some resistance printing stuff like
that. I've noticed has been
beneficial. Let's see what else.
So I just wanted to ask a quick question on that yet.
So when you're talking about the foresight, are you talking?
Like, for example, speed strength or strength speed?
They're like on the on the Continuum.
What are you? What do you mean by the
foresight? Are you talking max strength?
It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you're talking
more like speed strength or strength speed there.
It's more like speed strength I guess is where it Fall in the
Spectrum. So the way I do a force velocity
profile, I guess I should have said that is so I'll do like 12
pound medicine ball, throw an eight pound and a four pound
ball throw and each one sort of represents a different side of
the force velocity Spectrum. So if you're really bad at that
12 pound ball, but you're great at the four pump.
Oh, yeah. We'll do a lot.
More Force production work. And if we do touch a medicine
ball, it will be a slightly heavier medicine ball for you.
Whereas Like the opposite is like me or I'm great with that
heavier Ball but I suck with the light one.
So I'm going to do a lot of high-velocity work in my
training. It's a super simple way that
I've found Works in my brain, but yeah, like so by and large a
lot of times guys will lose like that sort of like the speed
strength, like, a fast movement. That's slightly loaded, seems to
work really well in season, but but the more I thought about it,
as I mentioned, I've been wrestling with this concept.
Depth and it's like the cut. The, the comment that I always
get as well. They're already getting all
their reps in their practices and in their games, and it's
like, well, are they, are they really getting the same rep?
The same quality of rep that they were in the offseason where
it's like? Okay, I know if we track your
bat speeds, I know they're all above 70 in all your training
reps. There's so many times in season
and this is fine because guys are trying to figure out how to
hit real pitching. But there's so many times and Is
where those bat speed drop. We're throwing velocities drop
where we're just not putting the same stress on the body as we
were before. So over time that speeds and
velocities Begin to Fall, I feel like because of that so there
does have to be a component at the very least track something
over the course of the season to make sure that you're not losing
that high velocity and of the equation.
So it's a very tough thing. But again, it would always roll.
Back to what I would be doing in that warm up where it's like,
okay we're going to track a high-velocity movement and I
know where your numbers have to be in order for you to train
today. And then if your numbers are
looking good and they're where they should be, I contracted
over the course of the whole season and make sure that you're
maintaining those levels of power development at all like a
high velocity. So that's I guess like the main
thing that I would say if you're tracking where you gained all
offseason, Even then you should be able to maintain your power
development as well, but I guess then the last thing is like, you
know, how do you fit in that sort of that injury prevention
stuff. And I think Garrett you're
talking about it before about how it's a lot of like, tissue
preparation type stuff. And so maybe instead of working
at with a ton of high-velocity Rapid torso, deceleration
drills, maybe we can slow it down a little bit but still
expose those tissues to something that it is stressful
enough to adapt to it. And that's where I think.
Like some eccentric, Smite work really well.
Isometrics can do a pretty good job there as well.
You have to monitor your fatigue though, but I do think that
those could be good movements to add more of in season in, you
know, of volume that would make sense for the athlete.
Well, for me, the way that what you describe the whole reason
why I think you need to add a little bit of load, is that at
some level during the midpoint of the season, your system has
gotten adapted to whatever the volume and intensity that you're
doing stuff at. And then you actually start a
level of detraining because now the stimulus you like the system
is adapted to it. It's no longer responding to it.
And to me when you add that Oh din again of like a little bit
of weight, now you're creating a training stimulus and that that
again helps with your proprioceptive field.
To me this is this is like thinking about the the training
residuals. And like, how long do you hold
onto certain training, residuals?
And what do you need to do to, actually keep those up?
And I think it to me, it's the basic principle that you kind of
touched on of adaptation. So are you Are you have you
adapted to this or you Mel adapted to it?
Or are you starting to D train? And so we need to actually add
some sort of stimulus actually cause some growth and like
things like eccentric. Isometrics these are different
ways to actually stimulate the the system to to create an to
drive a new adaptation. Because that's that's where for
me I think I should be swinging way to bats a little bit to in
season, simply to add that stimulus to allow the bat
because eventually the bat feels may feel like just to like any
old thing and then maybe it starts to feel heavy.
But if you if you continually or consistently introduced a way to
bat in there, then hopefully it feels like you're always able to
manipulate your game bat and be able to feel like that you can
swing that thing super fast. And so to me, that's why I
think, you know something like what you're describing on the
hitting side or even on the baseball side.
And this is why guys, I think especially Bullpen guys but just
any, any pitcher likes throwing with weighted balls, a little
bit as part of their warm-up because it because it does give
the you that effect and I guess I would be curious your take on
this to of how that helps with your proprioception and your
feel when you do stuff like that.
Yeah man I was I was just thinking about how At that idea,
is of just like, I feel an Implement that as a little bit
heavier, than what I'm used to. I'm working against it.
I know how to produce Force against the that's
proprioception. I know how to produce Force
within the confines of this movement.
So, yeah, that to me, that's a genius idea.
The problem is is, you know, in baseball it's like it the higher
the level you go, the more advanced with these Concepts,
you want to get. But then the more resistance
Come across. And it's like, nobody wants to
touch it down, weighted ball and season, unless that's what
they're comfortable with, you know.
So I guess it's the end of the day.
It's like if you have a guy who's very comfortable with
experimenting or very comfortable with just in general
like a weighted that Implement like there's a lot of guys that
you find in pro baseball or even in college that I don't want to
touch those Driveline batsman. They they fuck up my swing bro.
It's like okay like then I Guess we won't touch the those bats,
you know, because at the end of the day, that's they have to
perform well. And I do think that there is
something to that concept of. Like when the bat feels light in
your hands, you have a lot of confidence of a plate.
So, I guess. Whatever training you needed to
do to create that type of confidence would be extremely
valuable. It could just be as something as
similar as hey, make sure your grip strength is high, like
adding a couple things of grip. Over the course of the week make
sure you keep that it could be something that's simple, but it
could be something like you had mentioned a little bit more
advanced with like a slightly weighted Implement his that's to
me. That's how I would approach it.
But there's you're going to come across a lot of resistance,
that's for sure. Well into one of the things that
I heard talking with coach from Avila was he had used some of
the command balls with, with his guys and it worked well for the
guys that didn't have. Um, and but the guys that did
have command, it messed them up, which, which, to me makes sense
when I started thinking about it more and it sounds similar to
what you're describing there with it.
Like using a weighted ball or a way to bat and guys saying that
know this stuff messes up my swing because this this kind of
is a good segue into the into the motor learning stuff and you
because you have this idea of Attunement, guys being highly
sensitive to their implements and when you when you are
attuned using something, Is a little bit heavier or lighter,
you're really sensitive to that and then that actually makes you
less sensitive to the, your game Implement.
Whereas guys who don't have the sensitivity to their game,
Implement may actually benefit from using, you know, something
a little bit heavier, something a little bit lighter because
then it makes makes it more, Salient, or obvious to them.
What is unique and they have more sensitivity to their actual
game Implement. Yeah.
So, I think that's, that's an important piece with this of,
like, to your point. We should be individualizing all
this stuff. But, you know, one of the things
that you were saying about how people find the stuff to be way,
too advanced. It's like these Concepts though
are so incredibly simple. Like we're just talking about
adaptation. Yeah and understanding basic
things of like the said principle specific adaptation to
imposed demands I might have screwed up the ass but there's
there's One. I'm trying to think there's
Progressive overload, like these.
These are like, really, really simple ideas and Concepts and
it's, I don't know in some ways, it's like, if we can, just even
run with some of these very simple ideas.
Like, for example, the capacity thing that I took from
functional range conditioning and dr.
Andrea ospina, like, if if the if the demand or the load
exceeds the capacity, then you're going to get injured.
Like it's kind of a simple thing.
But if your capacity Feeds, the loader, the demand.
You have injury prevention and so To me.
That's these are like very basic concepts.
Yeah. That I try to boil things back
to. And ask the question of like,
okay, what is going to be asked of this athlete?
Like I want to know how many throws my in my middle infielder
or my, to a middle infielder, who is also a pitcher.
Like, how many throws does he have in a season?
Well then my on-ramp, he needs to throw that much where I need
to have him throw more than what he's going to throw.
Once he gets into practice. So that we don't have any issues
as far as You know arm soreness and all that sort of stuff for
going on the DL because his shoulder hurts.
Yeah. Now yeah that's a great point
and I guess as far as like off season versus in season concerns
go like I never want any athlete.
I trained to walk into their season and like feel like it's a
huge spike in workload like it should feel the same that's at
like at best it should feel like this is easy to go through.
Know what I mean? I guess where things get muddy
is when team start to do a lot of like extra conditioning type
stuff, dude, even at the pro level, I've had two guys now.
Head out to spring training, both of them had to do some sort
of, like, a crazy conditioning test.
Like one of them had to do a five lap test around the field.
The other one had to do like, a 300-yard shuttle at the
beginning and end of practice that day and it's just like, oh
my God, like I don't know if I have the will Well, to start
conditioning guys for that, but other than those things like it.
But but even then like those guys, I think they're so well
adapted to training in general, just training at high
intensities that they kind of bounce back pretty quick.
No, they didn't do great in those tests necessarily, but
they were able to, you know, come back, fine the next day.
And, you know, they're playing baseball where as somebody who
is just, you know, kind of has done a little bit of Training
and some mobility and nothing else.
They haven't been running at all.
Like they haven't been sprinting or anything, they probably would
go and do a test like that and be absolutely torched or three
or four days after that that would be my take at least but
yeah. And to kind of build off that to
what Garrett was mentioning earlier and what bill is mr.
Bill is talking about how pro ball guys, who are more, you
know, in a sense adaptable or understanding kind of these
Concepts, whereas Garrett says, you know, the high school guys
that you go players really don't know what's going on being, you
know, around a weight room. What can we do?
You know, in the education world to tell these High School junior
college guys? Here's what we need to work on.
Is there some way that that's possible?
So those guys can have a better, understanding one.
And then two, in the literal sense, like the players want to
be want to be able to do these types of things.
Can we do something to promote that?
Yeah, at something went Garrett, just did like, the couple
minutes ago was great. How he was able to say like,
yes. These concerts might sound
advance and it but in reality, they're very simple.
This is, you know, like this is injury prevention, you can
handle the loads of your sport and so I think having those
types of conversations a lot with athletes sort of makes it
known to them like these are your end goals.
You can handle the demands of your sport or your more powerful
for your sport. We're trying to hammer one of
those two things with this exercise right now. but I think
to when it comes to like, Sort of getting stuff to fit with
that bleats I have found the best thing is hey how'd you like
that exercise like that? Super simple.
Question is probably going to get you more information than
anything that we could talk about here today.
Hey how'd you like that? Okay cool, you liked it.
We're going to keep doing that, you know.
Like maybe we'll do it at this point during the week or maybe
we'll do it three four, five times a week and then you know,
obviously always talking about like the end goal with the This
is where I think you can be in three, four months.
This is where I think you should be by the end of the offseason
stuff like that. I think that's another concept
like that's a sort of spark something in my mind that
doesn't get talked about enough, the concept of progressive
overload and you know most people understand it is just put
more weight on the bar but there's so many more things like
something. I've seen a lot of lately that I
like a lot is I've started to see some people who take, I
think they have like a 45 pound bar.
On their back or maybe they're holding it like dirt your style
and they rotate back and forth and they can stop that.
Barn a dime and I'm like yeah that that's crazy.
I think I might have. So like Trevor Bauer doing it or
something, I'm like that's nuts. Like let me try that and I tried
doing it. I could not stop the bar to save
my life and so I'm like, holy shit like Progressive overload
with that exercise is not necessarily.
I can hold a 45 pound bar and do the exercise.
Its that I can stop that bar on a dime.
So, you know, like when we do these movements, Not just about
do the same load at the same speed.
I want to increase the speed, I want to increase my ability to
control that load in that deceleration fate.
There's so many ways that we should be trying to progress
athletes with. And I think that starts with a
conversation, this is what we're doing today.
I'm glad you like this exercise, but this is where I want you to
be in 3-4 months. And I think that's super
important. The other thing that for me,
when it comes to Progressive overload and I go back to
bondarchuk kind of really highlighted it for me and then
just looking back at other things that say, for example, I
read from Bret Contreras and some of his work was that the
way that you can create the adaptation and to me, one of the
safer ways to create the adaptation with Progressive
overload is to potentially, just keep the volume and the load the
same. Like to me, there's There's, you
greatly reduce the risk of injury, because I think a lot of
people think Progressive overload is exactly how you
stated it. Bill of like each week, you're
adding more weight to the bar and sometimes the system can't
like those jumps, especially if you add five pounds every week
or ten pounds, you know, putting a 5 on either side eventually
that jump when it was like a 5% increase as it gets closer to
your 1rm like that. Becomes, like a really, really
huge increase. Yeah.
And people don't realize that because early on it was like, oh
yeah I can make these big jumps and then all of a sudden the
thing gets really heavy and now you're you're at greater risk of
injury because you're not actually prepared for that your
body isn't and and that's where for me. thinking about
Progressive overload in terms of adaptation like and to this goes
to what I read with, Brett Contreras, have him talking
about power lifters and some who had set World Records, not
lifting above 75% 1rm and to me that just like that just felt so
anti everything that I've heard in a way of like strength
matters and so you need to lift heavy all the time and to me It
is not, it's not light but it's not super heavy either.
To me, anything, 80 or above is is considered heavy.
And so that was just really interesting to me that, oh, you
can, you can actually increase strength working sub maximally.
And I think that conversation isn't always had as much or like
recognized, when we're talking about how to progress somebody
and improve their, their power output or their strength.
Yeah, no doubt and For me, I do a lot of velocity Based training
work and so a lot of it is I want the speed at this load to
be here at the end of the offseason.
That's one of the conversations we like to have.
But yeah man, I think that's that, that's an unbelievably
important concept. There's so many kids that and so
I see it in Javelin a lot. I only trained a few Javelin
throwers but the one thing that a lot of say is, oh yeah, this
guy, he threw 70 me. M 3 years ago, as a freshman and
now he's a senior, any still throw 70, like he hasn't
surpassed it. He's mid-60s now or something
like that. There's so many kids now
thinking about it with baseball that they enter, you know,
college drawing 85 great. That's a good view of to be in
as a freshman if you gained literally a mile per hour per
year, you're knocking on the door to like any ball or
something like that, but so many kids that they Peter out, they
don't really, you know, produce that Tations from their training
and they don't really continue that climb and you know
rightfully so not everybody wants to play professionally.
I get it but man like there's there's a lot of adaptations to
be had out there that are Beyond guess what?
You'll find in the squat rack. Bill.
I'm you brought up Javelin up, being the being alone.
Throwing guy here. I'm a I was really curious on
this. Is there anything that you've
picked up from like the javelin world that like, kind of opened
your eyes, help you train in the baseball world.
I'm super curious that seeing that you've kind of dipped into
it. You start in the baseball,
right? You kind of dipped in the job
when I was super curious, if you've seen anything, that's
helped you in the Baseball World, probably the first thing
that like comes to mind is just in general using kpi's like in
general Evelyn for the longest time.
Like, you know, obviously America we suck.
But you know, like Eastern Europeans and Germans.
They've been throwing medicine balls for distance or like a
rocker, something they've been throwing shit for distance and
they do a lot of jumping tests and I think they'll do like some
sprinting test as well. But like, there's so many people
who do training that, in my opinion, I would never program
the shit that they do. But at the end of the day,
they're finding ways to improve. Output in those types of
exercises where they can chuck a med ball farther or they can
Sprint faster or jump more effectively over hurdles or
something like that. So they're testing things and I
remember learning that from Scott, though, the one javelin
throw a train. I'm like, oh that's such a
genius idea. I don't know why nobody's doing
this in baseball and there are people and there have been
people have been doing it for a long time, obviously, but that
concept was never very popular to me but another interesting
Sting one that I've gotten into a lot over the years is
training, eccentric swith, the rear shoulders on, you know,
just like that, in general, being able to handle that
decelerate, of course, eccentric overload exercises, and eat just
eccentric strength in general is really, really helpful, I think.
And I kind of learned that through Javelin, it just, you
know, in general seeing their training and stuff like that.
But then there's a some other stuff that I might not
necessarily agree. With like, they're huge and
pullovers over there in Germany. And I, we do pullovers as well,
but they do them. I feel like if you ever watched
Johannes better do a pullover, you'll see what I mean.
It's like, alright, alright, bro.
Like, you don't have to do that necessarily that exact same
exercise but there's some wacky shit out there.
But I do think they have a lot of Concepts that are pretty
interesting and probably it one more that that sticks out to me
is the guy who just won this year.
New radish Oprah. He does like this medicine ball
throw where he contorts his body way back and he's standing and
he can touch the ground behind him with the med ball, and throw
this damn thing like 60 feet. And I tried doing it the other
day because I watched a video of him doing it.
He started it from a kneeling position and he could get the
ball back to the ground. I put a bucket that was maybe
like a like a tall baseball bucket and I put it right behind
me. Me and I did it kneeling and I
could not touch the bucket, the top of the, of the bucket.
So I still have like two and a half feet to get to the ground
but I'm just like, huh. That is incredible.
And you know it's something that's like if my spine and my
whole body was free to move the way that is is and to be
forceful through that full range of motion.
Maybe I would be a pretty good throw or two you know.
So there's some constants there that I think are really really
important like me. Red's is training sucks.
I'll be honest. It's just like, he takes his 15
pound weights and just lunges and stuff like that, but if you
ever dig into some of his stuff on YouTube, maybe some of the
stuff he doesn't post about on Instagram or whatever, but he
there is some very cool stuff that he does.
Like he's able to get over like these four foot hurdles and it
looks like he's a bunny rabbit like that's incredible.
That's one of the main things, I think a lot of throwers here,
don't do a lot of. Like, a lot of that the ability
to be a bouncy Strrrike mover. So, yeah, I guess that those
would be the main Concepts that I think would be impactful for
throwers year. Not so why why are you less
enthused about the the pullovers?
I just, I mean because it me looking into Javelin that seems
to be a staple and to the way that they really get their whole
body into the pull over and they don't to me, it doesn't look
like they get too full and range, it's you know what I
mean? It.
Like they're doing like a hot half bicep curl, you know, you
watch guys doing it girls. And it's not getting all the,
all the way to n range. Yeah, to me, I love utilizing
the stretch shortening cycle and, like, getting some bounce.
I'm much more of a fan of it. When we're actually moving
pretty fast. I feel that if it's if I got,
you know, three plates, and I'm just trying to like bounce this
thing back up. I feel it that's more damaging
for the stretch, shortening cycle than it is if I was doing
it with a light load, but I could actually Bang get out and
at least that thing and I think there is a decent amount of
research on that concept for jumping where you had guys who
are jumping with like super heavyweights.
And it wasn't really helpful for their ability to jump in
comparison to band, assisted jumping which really help them
become more bouncy. So they're that that's an
interesting concept there but I don't know I feel like the
pullover is a good exercise that we do it a lot but we'll do it
with like the deepest range that we can get.
You and drive out of it, super fast.
That's the way that I like to do it.
So we'll hook up the bar speed sensor for that one.
I'm not a fan of the way he does it where he has like a spotter
like lifting it for him out of the bottom and he's just kind of
like bouncing the weight up and down, like it's fine.
It's working for him, go ahead, keep doing it.
But I feel that we have been doing a more effective way of
doing pullovers with with the guys that we've been training.
That's my ticket leaf. So then what like, what's your
take on the two biggest exercises for I guess?
Or it may be underutilized exercises.
For guys throwing hard? Good to me?
I would say as far as I understand it you got pullovers
and bench like those two. I think for your big primary
movers who have as I understand how they connect to the to the
humerus or, you know, our integrated around it.
Like those are kind of maybe you're too big primary movers.
Yeah. I mean those are fine.
Obviously those are good, but I would probably say you'd want to
do something faster. Like I would say a medicine
ball. Chest pass for distance would
probably be even better, just because there's so much variance
in how much, like pecs strength really matters versus Peck
speed. You have to have fast pens.
And the problem is, the lats are such a ginormous muscle.
If you ever look at any sort of research on them, like they're
not going to have A lot of those fast like type 2 x fibers and
stuff like that. So they're always going to be
this big donkey of a muscle. So I guess it's fine to train
them with a lot more strength, but I would still make sure
you're training them with a high velocity movement in some
capacity, just to make sure that those tissues are ready to
stretch really fast and then rebound back really, really
fast. So like, I like to do like a
supine throw where we reach back behind the head and Chuck the
shit on the ball. And I'll tell guys, like I want
you to literally reach back. And reverse this thing back as
fast as you possibly can. But yeah, I guess those are two
really good ones, but the one that I would add in, for sure,
is something for the rear shoulder.
I get think that's where a lot of people like, oh, man, my
bench went up this month. Okay, cool.
Yeah, did you do you? Are you rowing more?
Are you stronger in an eccentric?
In any capacity? Probably not.
Because you haven't been training that shit.
So, I think, like, in some capacity, you should be training
for the deceleration. Of a throw as well.
Whether it's with a high-speed movement, something like a rapid
catch type movement, or if it's something that's actually
eccentric overloaded. That's fine too.
What's what's your then? Your take on a, in a way I want
to say, triphasic. But I mean it's to me, it's kind
of the principles of triphasic. I don't know if you're familiar
with any of this stuff. Not too much, to be honest.
I know the concepts and I think they're fine like like I think
but the way that I approach, The Eccentric training is not so
much about just slowly lowering away to me at least at some
point Beyond a novice level. Will that it has to be an
eccentric overload, or at least very close to it.
So what are you delineating there?
When you when you say e Centric, overload versus just slowly
lowering the weight? Because at least, as I
understand triphasic, he liked his extreme version is you're
going 120 percent of your 1rm and your and in this is where it
gets to me like extremely crazy. You don't just do that for The
Eccentric. You do that for the isometric to
do - yeah. Okay that's That's, that's way
different like yeah. You know?
And you well, you produce very different adaptations when you
start to train like that too. But yeah, I would say like, from
what I've always understood, triphasic is at least what I've
seen people doing. Online is like, oh, I have like
maybe 70% of my squat one rep max and I'm slowly lowering it
down. Like the one.
Can I train? Who was at Iowa State.
That's what they did. All the damn time.
And I'm just like, you've had a barn, your back now for Probably
a total of 15 minutes today like if you accumulated all the sets
of all the time and I'm just like, do we really need to have
a bar in your back for that long today and then you got to go and
throw tomorrow. If it's probably not the
smartest idea. But there are some exercises
that I feel like could work well in that type of a scenario.
Maybe. But yeah to me there's the way
that makes the most sense in my head.
When looking at the kinetic sequences, you have these spots
that have to accelerate spot Be super explosive and then spots
that have to decelerate and be able to stabilize on a dime.
And so when breaking it down like that I would say, yeah, I
probably wouldn't care so much about squatting so much as maybe
doing like a like an extreme like we do reverse nordics, a
lot where I'm actually pushing on the athlete, all the way down
and we'll do nordics as well. Nordics are fine, but after a,
while you have to find a way to increase the load there, too.
So, but yeah, those R2 that I would say would be better than
doing an eccentric squat in my, in my opinion.
Ya know, it. The other thing that I touch on
to is for me like the posterior strength of the rotator cuff
because like okay, like I think you can do rose and I think
there's some benefit of doing a heavy eccentric row, but I just
don't know if it if it works. The, the throwing tissue as much
like I know some guys do get sore in their trap and the
rhomboids like back in their scalp there that is a common
trigger point but I almost I wonder though that more at least
for someone like myself, who has struggled with with shoulder
injuries, like to me, it's my cuff and my rotator cuff and
doing heavy eccentric. Stuff for my cuff.
Specifically, I think is highly important but Being the fact
that it's oftentimes injured, like it doesn't take that much
to overload it. And so where I go is I really
like manual resisted stuff, whether it's isometric or
eccentric and I actually think it's the best or done the best
when it's actually you doing the input yourself because you can
you can take yourself right to that threshold, and the feedback
is immediate for you. Whereas having done manual stuff
for other guys. Guys, I've also or seen other
guys do manual stuff to other people.
It's like you have to be really careful as soon as you start
getting there and rage because like guys drop off super fast
and you all of a sudden just throw a ton of force in there.
When a guy is like at the end range in.
Yeah. And you're going to, you're
going to, you're going to really hurt somebody shoulder.
And so to me, that end range is actually really important to
train and the best person who's going to be able to take you
right to the threshold as yourself.
Yeah, no. That's a good point.
I've never really thought about that.
Yeah, it's definitely like, if you are using like, so I do that
with my athletes. It takes a lot of feel, that's
for sure. It probably takes at least a
couple sessions where you really start to get that, that hang of
it with each other. But yeah, either way though, I'm
going to have to get to walk in my dog soon.
In a couple minutes. Fair enough, the top of your
guys heads right now before we head out No.
I mean I didn't even get to any of the E, Cody stuff.
I mean cuz like the thing that impresses me, the most is like
what you're doing with your hitters.
Like the fact that you're throwing live to hitters all
that sort of stuff. And I don't mean whether you
realize it or not like that from a motor learning standpoint and
the philosophy, or the framework that I come from an ecological,
or from a motor learning side of things and it being an
ecological approach like, that is very equal.
Vehicle. And part of having you on, it's
actually get into some of that. But yeah, we got, we got bogged
down in the weeds a little bit with the essence, see stuff?
I do actually want to touch on the about like live hitting and
stuff like that. So when it comes to those live
at bats, like I feel that probably one of the most
important things for hitter is being comfortable, in the box
like that concept of comfortability that concept of
familiarity. A tea with the environment of a
ball being thrown from an arm at you like that's it.
Shouldn't feel like anything was weird is happening.
When you, when you step in the batter's box.
Oh, yes, it's not necessarily the same as facing a real
picture, but the one thing I will say I'm super, super proud
of is every hitter that I train when they went into like their
first live at bats of the Year, we're like, pictures worth.
Going to them and stuff like that indoors, it was always like
every single guy like looked super comfortable up there
whether they got a good base hit or a double or anything or not.
They looked like they were not overmatched up at the plate and
that's that's it. That's a super important concept
to me that when it comes to motor and learning like you have
to get guys to base level first, you have to get them to the
point where it's like, I know what this is.
Environment is I know how to handle the expectations of it,
whether it's fast reaction time or movement left and right.
Like, I know I can do it. I can I can handle it.
Okay, now it's time to keep learning.
Now, it's time to keep progressing, but if that kid is
uncomfortable in the batter's box, the start with you, you've
already lost, they won't learn a damn thing.
And so it takes in my opinion, a lot of those short box live at
bat sometimes for guys to consistently feel that way, How
many, how long is, or how many short box sessions or at bats or
rounds? Do your guys get before they go
into their season? Yeah.
Well a lot. Let's see.
So I did count it with the one kid he had, I think 440 at-bats
is what we kind of approximated over the course of the whole
offseason against me. So every time how many, what was
the timeframe there then? It was it was for months.
Yeah, I was a book, 100 people over 100 each each month there.
So, yeah, so every time we would go, we go about once a week and
we get about 25 at-bats and so yeah.
That was it was it was a lot of work with that one kid but I
would say just about everybody's getting, at least a couple
hundred and I've noticed it it's extremely beneficial for like
the younger kids too. Because for the older guys.
I don't throw hard enough to where it's really challenging to
them. So we move the plate up really
quick and we do funky stuff. But with the younger kids like
that, like I turn a freshman in high school.
This is the exact same pitching that he's facing.
It's like mid-70s and it's kind of straight.
Sometimes it moves, sometimes it doesn't and he is just been
dicking on the ball like this off season now.
So I'm really happy about that. But yeah I mean just like think
about like this if you're an alien who crash-landed on Earth
and you're just going to study baseball players And look at the
things that what do all great based baseball players?
Do like, what are the common factors?
And like, obviously, they rotate fast and they can handle all
these demands of their Sport and stuff like that.
We talked about, but probably the one thing that they've all
done. A lot of is that they played the
game of baseball more than everybody else.
Like Justin Verlander probably has thrown more pitches than
anybody on the planet, like or very close to it, you know, or
like Ichiro Suzuki has probably accumulate more at-bats in his
life than Buddy, you know, ever. So it's like these, you know,
these young Dominican kids that are coming in and we all turn
the world on fire and stuff like that.
Like they played baseball a lot at a high level since they're
like 14 years old, like they've seen fast pitching, they've seen
crazy good players and what the expectation is and stuff like
that. So talk about comfortability,
they're comfortable with it at that environment because that's
what they've been in. But they've also done it a lot
and that I think matters too. I couldn't agree more.
I love it Baker. You got anything?
Yeah, yeah didn't. Yeah, I was curious.
So I mean you could go maybe with some of the funky stuff
you're talking about but I saw you had like a three part series
on adjustability and hitting and any time I see a guy in the snc
world talk about that I find it really fascinating.
So is there anything I guess one it could be the funky stuff
we're talking about or to like anything.
You may be doing more on the weight roomy side that's
increasing that. So I haven't seen these Series
so I don't know. And I said, what's in them?
No those are Doing. Yeah, you won't find too much
about the essence esight, in there.
Other than kind of, like a concept that we talked about
earlier about, like, bat speed actually for the one guy that
are interviewed, it was huge for him.
Like he needs High bat speed in order to feel adjustable up late
because he feels that if he doesn't have that bat speed, he
can't let his best swing rip and he can't basically like what
talks about he likes to be able to do is have the confidence to
hook an outside pitch and hit it out.
Those bull side and like the which is funny because it's the
exact opposite comment of what another guy interviewed talked
about with adjustability. Like he's like I need to take
that pitch inaudible approach. It, that's fine too.
But probably the biggest thing that I came to the conclusion of
with adjustability is have confidence in your approach.
If you do that and you obviously like match plaintiff pitch for a
long time and you're coming through fast, if you do those
two things. You're probably going to be
pretty damn good but the moment that doubt starts to creep in,
whatever your approach is whether it's stay inside the
ball or pull everything or whatever it is.
If you doubt your approach, shit's going to go bad for you
like real quick and both of them talked about that like if I'm
not comfortable with what I'm doing it up at the box, it's not
going to go well. So that was that's the main
concept of the series. So I think that's really cool.
I think that's one thing we're seeing with our hitters right
now. Is that they Are sometimes going
to the dish and weren't challenged enough in the cages
at times to have to have that Comfort ability that you're kind
of talking about. And it just may be easier rounds
or do, maybe you're doing some funky stuff.
Challenging, the capabilities of the Swing, but they're not
actually being challenged in any form a game like setting not
picking up the information. Like you're providing like
you're providing a really rich information information Rich
environment for your guys. So like I punched one applaud
you for that. And I when I saw just ability
and hitting Guy from this and sees how I was.
I was stoked like that. That's not you don't see that
very common. Well think that's often combine.
That's cool. All right, well, I think I gotta
go take the dog out. He's in the crate right now.
She's been in the oh, no. Yeah, you definitely should go
get her and take her for a walk. I'm sure she wants to get out
and and move around. Yeah, for sure I play Retreat to
but to kind of wrap, are there any couple of things, any
resources that you would recommend, and they don't have
to be baseball related or strength, and conditioning
related. I guess I'll pump my books.
I have two books, throw fast and swing fast.
I want to write a book about sprinting as well called Sprint
bass, but you know it's like got to find time to write again
covid. Relate because I could write
whenever I wanted basically but now things get busy again.
So I'll start learning stuff about sprinting maybe in the
next few years maybe sit down and read a book if I have time.
Sounds good. And then, where can people find
you if they want to connect with you and and all that sort of
thing on Instagram, Bill Miller, training and Twitter at Bill
Mills. I've answered EMS all the time,
like, is long as it's not a bot or someone trying to sell me
cryptocurrency or something. I will, I will answer.
So I'll do my best to help with training in any way I can and
understand that. Like, and I know you guys get
this, but I think a lot of people on social media don't
like, they see my persona, Is this like super serious guy like
it's all nuts and bolts the training and it's like, I hate
about that. I'm super open.
I'm always down to be wrong. Like I'm fine with it.
Should I learn stuff from you today?
And it's just like, that's what it's about.
It's not about trying to be right today.
It's about trying to be all right.
Tomorrow, you know, try to be better and try to learn a lot.
And so yeah, any time anybody has comments or wants to tell
me, I soccer, whatever have at it, I'll be down to talk.
Oh sweet. Well, we appreciate that.
As far as like that, I have the same kind of mentality of,
always trying to learn from everybody and even sometimes
your greatest critics can actually be, you can learn
something from them. If you can get past, the ad
hominem attacks that come with that, and so, yeah, appreciate
you taking the time to come chat with us.
For sure, guys. Have a great night and I'll talk
to you all. So very soon.
Talk to you soon Bell. It was great.
Talking to you. Let me be the first to say that.
You were great. Not terrible.
All right, sounds great guys. I'll talk to you.