– [Paul] Hey guys. Welcome back to another edition of Baseball Dads Podcast and on this episode, pretty pumped because we have a guy named Chris Gissell as our guest today and Chris has an incredible baseball resume that we’ll talk about, but more importantly, I’m kind of a fan of his. I follow what he does on social media. He’s got an incredible way of talking about the game, talking about the state of the game and educating young pitchers, so he is a pitcher that’s been there and been on the elite level but what I really respect about him is how he’s taken that passion and really dedicated himself to working with kids, working with kids in the right way, keeping things in perspective, teaching, obviously, the Xs and Os in the game but it’s just a very cool way he does. He runs a program called BaseballDudes.com. You can check it out there but it’s just a very positive and encouraging thing and it’s something that I’ve really admired and I’ve watched for a little while, so Chris, thanks for making the time today and welcome to the show. – [Chris] Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to talking more about all this good stuff. – [Paul] Yeah, so let’s give us the two minute rundown. Tell us about your career, baseball background, all that kind of stuff. – [Chris] Well, graduated at a local high school here in Vancouver, Washington in ’96. Got drafted that year. Went on to play, very fortunate to do it for 14 years. From there was interviewing for some local scouting positions and ended up getting a minor league coaching job with the Angels, did that for a few years, and now very fortunate to get to work with local families here. And I think we’re in year four of that now, about to start our fourth year of our player development program. So we’re very fortunate, couldn’t really ask for anything more. I still get to be involved in the game, and I still get to throw the baseball every day and play catch. There are different phases to our programs, you know? For most of the year we’re inside working with kids. Other part we get to go outside for a couple months. Bottom line it comes down to the kids and that’s what it’s all about, you know? Whether it’s helping the kids or helping their parents work through things. Or what I’m really enjoying is also working with our local coaches, and helping them learn different ways, find better ways of helping their kids, too. – [Paul] Yeah, so we were talking a little bit before we hit record. We were talking about some of the things that are going on in the game. So I’m always curious to get someone’s opinion it’s kind of been up and down through the game. You’ve been at the highest level. You know what it takes to get there. What are you seeing as things that are maybe, that are going on in the game that you think we could be better at? – [Chris] Well, obviously, being a former pitcher and a majority, probably 95% of the kids I work with and the families are families of pitchers. So pay close attention to that. Again, I played for 14 years. Over that time, well over, probably 1,500 innings pitched, as a starter for most of it. Went back and forth, starting and relieving. And just understanding the arm and what it takes, and what it feels like. What it feels like to go out there and throw 100 pitches, and how the body feels the next day, and on day two, and day three, and day four. And then longevity. What does it take for a pitcher to be strong on day one of the season, and then on the last game of the season to still be just as strong? I think those are a lot of things that I see that when it comes to our youth pitchers, and kind of the way the game is played now with it not really being a season of 40 to 60 games spread out over months, but it being more of bombarding, or an overload of games on one weekend, and then a couple weeks off, and then another overload of games. So kind of what that does to the arm, and when there’s kind of a lack of preparation in between. And we all know, anybody who pays attention to the youth world, knows that injuries have skyrocketed. So– – Right, yep. – [Chris] You know, obviously, a huge question is why? What’s going on? And all this started around the year 2000. Which, and again I’m not, I don’t bash or anything in tournament baseball, but kind of the way things are done, it’s just it’s not good for the arms. And around that same time is when we started seeing arms breaking. And there’s also other factors, you know. Older players, we train different now. We throw so much harder, and it’s, the body is only meant to do so much. And I think when you kind of reach those extraordinary levels of the output on the arm, that things are going to break. That’s just, anybody who’s doing anything to max that hurt over, and over, and over at extreme levels, something’s going to happen, you know? So that’s, that’s also part of it. But the overload that we see on these young kids. Things are slowly, slowly breaking. Until one day, maybe three years from now somebody’s arm says, that’s it, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. We tend to think that it’s he broke it on this day because of he was doing this, or he threw that pitch at that moment– – [Paul] Cold out. I’ve heard it was cold out that day. – [Chris] Yeah, and all those things may factor in to what the arm was, the shape it was in at that moment, but it’s the years and years of stuff that happened before then. And this is all what we’re learning. That there’s a kid I’m working with right now, who he is a junior. Yeah, he’s a junior. Big old tall kid, lefty, has a really good delivery. And I’m watching him throw and I’m like, how did this kid break? I mean, he’s got, fundamentally he’s doing everything right in his delivery. And when I get with talking with him and dad, he would pitch and throw 70 or 80 pitches, and then a game later that same day, he’d be playing first base. And then the next day he’s out there playing a position. His arm would get overload, or do what it needs to do, and then it would get into recovery mode, and all of a sudden a few hours later he’s cranking on it again. There’s that, when you’re young you feel invincible. And as parents we’re ignorant to it. Most coaches are ignorant to it. You just don’t realize what that arm is going through. When honestly, that kid, if he threw 80 pitches at 10:00 on Saturday, he’s done for the rest of the day after that. And the next day if he’s going to play a position it’s very limited. But that’s just our current culture and society, and the way we’re doing it. We are really oblivious to it, or we don’t pay attention to it, or we know it and we just don’t care. There’s a lot of factors in it. But the way the game is played now is so different compared to when you or I were growing up. We may have thrown too many pitches, but we didn’t do any more throwing the rest of the day. And the next day it was our bodies had maybe not optimal, but we had recovery time, whereas now there really is no recovery time. – [Paul] Yeah. Yeah, I think you made a great point about tournament baseball, because I do a lot of that, too. I’m against tournament baseball. I’m not against it. I kind of look at it like donuts, you know? Like, I’m not against donuts, but I’m against eating a dozen donuts, you know? That’s it just make you sick, right? It’s not good for anybody. And so, I think that’s everything has its place, and has moderation. But there, you just made some great points there. What advice would you give to a dad who is in that moment where he has to decide, I’m going to go into this world, or I’m going to maybe hold my son back a little bit. That’s what a lot of our dads struggle with. I probably get that question at least a few times a day, in email or over the phone. You’ve been there, right? Now, can you turn his back to the kid, and talk to that dad who maybe has a nine, 10, 11, 12, or 13, 14 year old kid who, I’ve got to make the decision, you know? My kid’s going to come into this world or I’m going to mold it a little bit differently. What would you say to them? – [Chris] Yeah, well, I actually just had this conversation a couple days ago with a father of a 10 year old, almost 11 year old, and what we see now is parents talk amongst parents, coaches, and programs, you know, it’s, it’s almost like we’re salesmen, you know? – [Paul] Yeah. – [Chris] You need to do this. If your goal is this, this is what you need to do. And then he’s being told that if he doesn’t get into it now, that a couple of years from now, so around when the kid is 12, it’ll probably be too late. For me, I hear that and again, just working with how many families we do, and hearing all the stuff we hear, and seeing that the kids’ confidence levels when they walk into the tunnel, it’s, it is really, a kid is going to be as good as he’s going to be, you know? Whether he’s playing 50 games a year, or 20 games a year, or 80 games a year. His talent, it kind of is what it is. And if a kid plays little league baseball from nine to 12, he is still going to have the same talent as a 13 year old as he would if he played travel, or tournament ball, or whatever, elite baseball, whatever you call it, from nine to 12. He may have developed a little bit quicker, but the talent is still, that’s what’s in you, if that makes sense. It’s almost like what you’re born with. And in my opinion, you’re not going to be behind. You’re not going to miss out. If a kid has talent and he has passion, he’s going to work, he’s going to learn, he’s going to get better. Sure, if he’s facing kids that are throwing 70 every day as opposed to 50 every day, he’s going to be more prepared to hit 70. But that’s not saying that you take both those kids when they get to high school, that one isn’t going to be more prepared than the other. And I think, and again, I’m a believer and I’ve seen it all, and I’ve seen kids who became professionals that only played little league and Babe Ruth, but they still became professionals. There’s, it is a sense in our world now that if you don’t go that so-called elite route, that you’re just, your talent won’t pan out. And I, again, for me and all the kids I’ve worked with and it’s, I don’t necessarily believe that. I’ve seen too many kids that are great high school players that didn’t go to showcases, or spend thousands of dollars playing in the elite program. – [Paul] Right. And it’s tough, right? Because I almost feel like sometimes we’ve shifted the definition of what making it is. And like where I think we grew up and making it was college, or professional, or beyond that. And I almost feel like making it now is, are you on that right team that goes on the best trips, and does the right things? It almost feels like it’s shifted, where they’ve brought the major league kind of, or the professional college experience down to that level. Do you feel that a little bit? – [Chris] Yeah, and I think a lot of it has to do with youth baseball being ran more like a business now. So with that business becomes higher fees, tournaments are now charging more fees. You get two to three different uniforms. There’s all this stuff. You even saw that article in the Times where, kids that are being flown from out of state, in to play. So it’s way more of a business now, and which program is the so-called elite program. It’s definitely different in that sense. And it’s like you have half the world that can’t afford that. Or they don’t necessarily believe in it. And then the other half that looks almost down on that other half. Or that we’re doing this so we’re guaranteed to be better. I mean, there’s really no guarantee in any of this. It’s definitely shifted. And again, it’s, but, and it’s not for everybody. Some families really enjoy the travel. They really, really enjoy it. That’s their family time. You can’t knock that. You can’t knock that at all. And then there are some families that will dive into that world, and then the next world they will realize that that was just too much and they’ll back out. And again, you have to, it’s a live and learn thing. And obviously, we try to help families learn, maybe before, from what other people have experienced. I always encourage families like, hey, before you make this decision, go find families that have been doing it. And don’t just talk to those families that have the really talented kids, that coaches love, and the coach has played every inning. Find the families that, for some reason, left that program. – [Paul] Yep. – [Chris] Pick their brains, and make your decision based off of that. The term drink the Kool Aid. Be careful of following that small group that everybody loves the taste of that Kool Aid. Find the people that have started turning it away. Feel why. Find out the whys now. It’s tough, man. It’s really tough. – [Paul] It is very tough. And it’s also very tough, a question I get a lot from parents is what do you do with a kid who just lives, sleeps, breathes baseball, and just wants to play it all the time? I say it’s a tough situation because, wow, you want to encourage this enthusiasm, right? But my kids are enthusiastic about cupcakes, and Swedish Fish, and Cheez-Its and M&Ms. If I let them decide how much of that to eat, they would eat it all. They wouldn’t eat anything else, right? Just like we were, when we were kids. We’d do the same thing. And I also worry about the, even the families that do love travel. I often feel that sometimes it puts that pressure on the kid now, that this is where the family’s connecting, and they love the travel, and if the kid decides, hey, I don’t want to play baseball anymore, does that, does it now affect the family? Does that now, is there inherent pressure there to keep that up, because it is what is the family, or fun time for the family? I worry about that sometimes. – [Chris] Yeah. – [Paul] Oh, go ahead, I’m sorry. – [Chris] I was going to say, the overuse, you know, the burnout piece is, it’s real. And I mean, the same thing comes with there will be families that want to start working on the pitching in November. And I’m like, let’s slow down before we start scheduling all these training sessions. When is his season gonna start? How long is his next season going to go? You know, if we start working out now in November, we could be practicing pitching for five months before he ever gets into a game, and that’s not good for anybody. That’s not good for him mentally. He’ll start getting bored. That’s not good for his body. You know, he’s kind of, he’s getting up to max maybe a little bit too soon, and then come the middle of the summertime, that burnout will hit him. That burnout will hit him physically and mentally. And then even you guys, as parents, that mental burnout will hit. There was a mom I was talking with a couple years ago, who’s sitting with me in what was it, May or June? And you can tell she’s drained. And we start talking and they, whatever team she was on, it was literally seven days a week. And I’m just like, it’s a game. You guys, you’re going to need to make some adjustments as a family after this season’s over. Because you shouldn’t feel like this about baseball. You shouldn’t feel like it’s a job. – [Paul] Yeah. – [Chris] Your kid is not even a teenager yet. – [Paul] Yeah, again, it’s… I think it’s the hardest thing to do, between, you know, like, is trying to figure out where do you, where do you stop? You know, what’s a healthy dose, I guess? What’s a healthy dose where it doesn’t get to be too much? I wish there was some kind of a formula that we could share that could say, hey, if this is happening, but the signs of burnout, and the signs of even fatigue, and the early signs of injury usually are there, and I don’t know how have you done, I’ve usually struggled in helping parents pick them up early enough to make a difference. But once it kind of hits, then parents can pinpoint back and say, oh, that’s where, now looking back, that’s where it probably started to fall apart a little bit. – [Chris] Yeah, being in the world that I’m in where we don’t have teams, we don’t have, we don’t travel around our area playing games. So the families that we work with, they come to us for help on whatever that scale is. And you will see it. You will see them wanting to start so soon, and then we’re still seeing you in a month where I understand why there’s burnout. I want to go back real quick to what you said about the kid that has passion, the kid that loves it, and he eats and breathes, sleeps and breathes baseball. Those are coaches’ dreams, because you know that when they’re away from you they’re doing something to get better. And to be honest, you have to have that. To be extraordinary in this game that’s a piece that you have to have. Very rarely will you see someone who has unbelievable God-given talent, and they never have to work at it, and they just become a big leaguer. It’s happened. It’s happened. Don’t get me wrong. There’s guys I’ve played with that it was like, they didn’t pick up a bat until spring training, and they ended up playing in the big leagues. – [Paul] It’s like John Kruk. You ever hear of John Kruk? They asked him– – Yeah. – [Paul] What he did during the season, and he said box like bars. And then they go, what do you do during the off season? He says, we drink beer and play cards. – [Chris] So that’s one in a billion that has that ability. So you have to have that love for it, and the talent to be great. And on the flip side, how many times have we seen or heard stories of kids in whatever the sport is, that they end up getting a college scholarship. And all of a sudden they say, they tell mom and dad that I don’t wanna go. I’m done. I’m done playing. I’m tired. That’s a real issue, too. It’s almost like sometimes you have to force those kids to, hey you have to be a salesman. And help them understand. Hey, we just need to slow down a little bit. In your book you talked about what the ultimate goal is. If the ultimate goal is to be this, let’s talk about what we need to do to get ready for that. And part of that is giving our, little things in our body a rest. And while we’re having that rest, we do other things to prepare. So, it’s almost, you have to sell the kid on what his goal is. You have to sell him on how do we achieve that goal? And then that comes from selling the parents on that too. Which is more than half the battle. – [Paul] Yeah, we had a guest on a podcast we just did recently, Kevin Duy, who runs Sports Dad Hub. He had a great, something that woke me up, where he said, I want my kids to miss the sport a little bit. And the minute he said that, my dad used to mow the lawns at Little League and stuff like that. I can remember the build up to opening day. And town opening day. Just as the spring starts to turn, you smell the grass, and you really can’t wait to get back out there and play the game. I had never thought of that in this new age that we’re in. Do we ever give kids that feeling of man, baseball’s gonna start soon. It’s awesome. And I felt that every year of my life until, growing up, every year playing youth baseball. And I think it’s an important thing for those kids to miss that a little bit. – [Chris] I see that more with the Little League kids I work with than I do with the kids that are full-blown playing 60, 70 games a year. I see more of that excitement from those kids. And it’s again, it’s, a coach has done a great job, parents have done a great job if, when the season is over, the kids are excited to play next season. – Right. – That’s our one goal, is the kids to get better, for them to keep loving the game, and to keep that excitement for the next time. – [Paul] Yeah, yeah. Well let’s switch gears here. You have a great blog post that I wanna direct people to, that I think anybody who’s pitching a baseball should read. And it’s at Baseballdudes.com/save-our-arms. Reach our main page and through the navigation here. You have this list of things here that it’s just a great guide. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it, and we see a lot of stuff that is just as clear and concise as this. So, I’m pretty sure, I know your intentions behind it, but let’s talk a little bit about some of your recommendations here. What do you think are the big ones that a pitcher, and a father who’s guiding that pitcher needs to be aware of? – [Chris] Well, if I put it on that page, I don’t have it in front of me. If I put it on that page, obviously I think it’s a big one. And as I’ve been going through this, and I just put that page up maybe a year ago. And we have pitch count guidelines on there, and to be honest, the numbers you see on that chart that I put together, they are super conservative. There’s so many variables that go into kinda deciding how many pitches can I give this kid today? Going back to what he’s done recently, what’s our plan for the future? There’s so many variables. But that’s just kind of a guideline, mainly for coaches who just don’t have the experience. I think one of the biggest ones, and I’ve really kind of figure out the importance of it, was one I referred to a few minutes ago about when a kid pitches a high number of pitches, how to handle that arm after that. And setting that kid down for the rest of the day is so important. But we see a kid that will throw 80 pitches and then gets stuck out in center field. Then all of a sudden an hour later, or 45 minutes later, a half hour later, after that kid’s arm has gone into recovery mode, he has to crank loose and let one rip to the infield. Which is– – Right, awful. – [Chris] Awful for the arm. And this happens all the time. It happens, it’s crazy how much it happens that that kid gets taken, gets put from the mound to a position. If he threw an inning or two and the pitch count was low, we’re fine, it’s not a big deal. But when you get up to those high pitch count numbers, and especially when you have kids who possess a fast arm, they have ability to throw hard, it’s even more strain that is being put on the arm. So for me, that’s a biggie. Another biggie for me is when you find programs or teams that only play in tournaments. And they don’t have games in between. Say they have a tournament 4th of July weekend, and they don’t play another one until two weekends later. And in between, in between there’s very few practices, there’s limited to no bullpen throwings, there’s no practice games. There’s no games. So there’s nothing that’s keeping these arms conditioned for whatever they threw, and whatever they want to throw. And being a pitcher, all it takes is three to four, maybe five days of little to no throwing, where you start to lose stamina. You lose arm strength. Everything kind of starts going south quick. And we’ve gone so far as to when we have kids come in, we will throw simulated games. They will throw a bullpen, they will get up there and throw 15 batters. – [Paul] I would say they have to do that– – [Chris] From the mound. Or, 15 pitches. I’ll have the other, his partner will hop up there and he’ll throw his 15 pitches. And we’ll go back and forth and do, maybe 45 to 60 pitches worth of innings, if that makes sense. Just to keep their arms ready for the next weekend. – [Paul] Yeah. I gotta ask– – That’s just it, it isn’t done, it’s almost like ignored. So for me, that’s a big deal. What were you gonna say? – [Paul] Well, I say how do I, my kid’s pitching in this tournament, and this now is the time when all this stuff comes up, right? Well he pitched in a tournament in September. The next one’s not until October. How do I keep him fresh for a month? How do I, honestly, I would say keep it, pretend like you’re playing, just throw your– – [Chris] Simulated games. – [Paul] Yeah, throw some simulated games. And at least you have the ability to set the pitch count, so at least you know that. And you can set the intervals, and the rest between sets. And you can work on some conditioning, so it’s not all game intensity-type pitches. But that was kinda my advice, right? It used to be real easy. You play a high school team, you play a legion season, and then maybe you play in the fall. And if you played in the fall, it was every weekend, right? So there was some rhythm to it. And how do you keep it on fresh for a month, or three weeks? And remember, it’s, I worry that not only are they not pitching, but they get thrown right into high-pressure situations when they do come back. – [Chris] Or, you say high-pressure, and because all these tournaments they’re treated like it’s a World Series. We look at these World Series and we see Wade Davis, a closer, going in and throwing 50 something pitches. That’s the World Series. They– – Right, once a year. Once a year. – During the season, he would do that, he would never throw more than one inning. – Right. – [Chris] That’s just kind how closers are handled these days. But that’s how the Cubs handle it in the World Series. But here in youth baseball, we see every single tournament treated like it’s the World Series. So you see kids being pushed to numbers that they’re not ready for. You see ’em being pushed to throw multiple times what they should never be doing in the first place. And it’s all for one thing. It’s for that glory of, to stand up there at the end. – [Paul] It’s about the trophy, yeah. – [Chris] Be able to take a picture with one thing in the air. So, it’s– – You know, it’s interesting to me, too. – Tough to watch. – I’m sorry, go ahead. – Go ahead. – [Paul]I’m sorry. When you think about those situations that adults are put in, in a World Series, or something where everything is kind of on the line, the youth plays a lot of baseball. And a pitcher, you’ve watched a lot of baseball. Not playing the field everyday, you’ve had the opportunity to observe a lot of baseball. Probably more than anyone maybe listening to this podcast would have ever played. Most games are kind of won or lost, right? Rule of 54, right? That you’re gonna lose 54, and win 54, there’s not much you can do with those, right? It’s the ones, it’s the 54 in the middle that make the difference. And so, I’ve always felt that the manager, in a long baseball season, even a high school season, 25, 30 games, the manager, or the head coach doesn’t really come into play much in most games. It’s kinda like basketball and football, right? They just, yeah you can make a pitching change, you can steal, hit and run. It doesn’t come down to a lot of, not every game has the pressure-filled situation built into it. And so I feel that when you watch regular season baseball, it just happens, right? In the playoffs, the managers almost become like these characters, right? Where it is about match ups. And you see, Girardi didn’t challenge we’ll say, a pitch, or was it? Whatever it was, right? And he probably would have lost his job if he didn’t win that series. And I almost feel like this tournament baseball creates an environment for these coaches, where they’re almost part, they’re more part of the game than a regular season. Where most games kind of play out. What do you think of that? – [Chris] Well, watching the playoffs, I love it. It’s the best baseball in the world, it’s the best teams, the best players. You see, these post-game interviews that we’re seeing. The questions the reporters are asking, they pick apart every single decision. Every decision that’s made. And when it comes down to it, and when I was playing, and I would see, hear about managers getting fired, and this and that. The coaches very often, become a scape goat in those situations. The team failed because of the coach’s decisions. Whereas if that, if one or two key players on that team would have produced more frequently, or more consistently, this discussion wouldn’t happening. So you see that in these MLB playoffs. And if the players, if they go out there and they do what they’re capable of, he’s not having to answer those questions. A reviewable call, it is what it is. Let’s talk about scenes in the game. But it’s… As players, you get to that level, it’s, you go out there and do your job. And it seems that more often than not, it’s when they’re failing it’s because of their hitting coach’s lack of approach. Or, because of that approach, or the manager’s choice of putting, not bringing Wade Davis in. Or, bringing him in. I honestly, when I heard what Madden was saying about Wade Davis, because of he didn’t bring him in because he was only available for one inning that day. I’m like, that’s, I’m thinking here we are, at the most important time of the year, and we’re one of the best managers in the world is still conscious of one of his star pitcher’s arm health. – Yeah. – In the whole world out there, our youth world, very rarely, and it does happen, but very rarely is that the first thing that’s on a coach’s mind. Is who do I have available today? Who can pitch? Who can’t pitch, right? And if they can pitch, how many can I give ’em, because of what they’ve been throwing? It’s tough. If you were gonna play these games like they’re big league games, and treat them like you would treat big leaguers. You wouldn’t go out and throw these kids the way you’re throwing big leaguers. They’re never gonna be used like that. You will never see a professional arm throw 80 pitches in one day. And then come back the very next day and pitch in two different games. It’s just not gonna happen. But– – Well, and the other reason too, is ’cause that guy’s agent would be, forget about, yeah, the agent would be blowing up the phone. So, whether they’re protecting him for whatever reason they’re protecting him for, there’s someone there protecting him. Money, or whatever the reason. But there is someone there protecting him. – [Chris] Yeah. It’s gonna come down to the health of the player. And longevity, and what, where we want this kid to be able to play this game for a long time. This day right now, he’s not gonna remember it. He’s not gonna remember whether this game is won or lost when he’s a higher, in late years of high school. He’s not gonna remember these youth days. He’s not going to. – [Paul] Well, I wanna direct people to your site, Baseballdudes.com. In a minute I’ll ask you for some final words of wisdom, but check out what Chris does. And here’s a few reasons why. Again, I started as a fan of his. I think we met over just Facebook messaging. This is the first time we’ve talked. But just from what he’s posted is that number one, he’s a family man first. So I respect that. You could just tell by what he posts, and what he does, and where his intentions are. He’s a guy that you wanna follow in that respect, just ’cause I think he’s a great example as a parent. And as a dad, and husband, and leader. So I really respect that. And his views on the game are great. They’re just great. I don’t follow many people. I tend not to be such a social media guy. But he’s one of the guys that I follow. And I really enjoy reading what he puts out. Because I think there’s this theme through it, that he, like I said, he’s a family guy, he cares about other people’s kids, probably the same way he cares about his own kids, I feel. And we need these guys in baseball. We need guys that that do this. Especially guys who’ve had the success that he’s had in his career. So just first, thank you for that. Thank you for being a great leader, and for being a voice in baseball that I think is needed. So, go to Baseballdudes.com, check him out there. There’s links on there. All of the things we talked about. The save the arm, and where you can follow him on social and stuff like that. Chris, what final words of wisdom do you have for those who are listening? – [Chris] For me, one that you said being a family man, and I have three children myself. And again, working with the families I do. The relationship that we have with our kids is, that’s, as parents, that’s our treasure. When it comes down to it, bottom line, that’s, hopefully for everybody, that’s what matters most. And I urge everybody to make sure that we’re always aware of that, and that our kids are kids. And that our family is our family. And don’t ever let sports and a kid’s performance out there on the field or the court, maybe their work ethic, we’re not really happy with their work ethic, but we gotta understand that our relationship with our kids is what matters most. And don’t ever let sports and a kid’s athletic ability, or their performance get in the way of that. I’ve seen it happen too many times. Which hasn’t been many, but it’s still too many. I’ve seen too many times where a relationship is fractured over sports. And that for me, is one of the toughest things to see. Again, just knowing, I was very fortunate to get to play the game as long as I did. I understand that doesn’t happen for many. But it doesn’t happen for everybody. And we all need to understand that. Whether we’re teaching the game, or we’re watching it. We never forget how hard the game is, and that we’re still people, and that kid is still a person. And when it comes down to it, that win or that loss, it’s not the end. Whether we’re great, or whether we’re not so great. It’s just not the end. It isn’t. So understand those relationships are the most important thing. – [Paul] Yeah, that message, I can’t say it any better. That’s really why we do that podcast. So, I think that’s a perfect place to put this one on the runway. So guys, check out Baseballdudes.com. Follow Chris on social. I think you’ll really enjoy everything he does. So, Chris, thanks so much for being on today. Appreciate it, man. – [Chris] Yeah, it’s been my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity to share.

– [Paul] Hey everybody welcome back to another edition of Baseball Dad’s podcast. So today our guest is Phil Rosengren, and Phil is a buddy of mine, we became friends a couple of years ago, and he runs a website called betterpitching.com. And we are thrilled to publish one of his programs Curveball Mastery, which is a great program, We’re gonna talk a little bit about that today, and were gonna talk about some other things that are going on in the game of baseball, so Phil thanks for coming on, thanks for making the time today, appreciate it. – [Phil] Absolutely Paul, no thank you, it’s an honor to be on the podcast, you’ve got a great community, I’ve been a fan of what you’ve been doing on the baseball side for years now, so like I said an honor to be part of it, and I look forward to it. – [Paul] Cool, so let’s do a one minute snapshot, let’s talk about, I know your background as a professional pitcher, and now a pitching instructor, working with all kinds of pitchers in Connecticut, why don’t you give us a snapshot of all things Phil. – [Phil] A one minute snapshot, kinda tough to do, some it up, but bottom line, talking about better pitching what I’m doing that side. So I have been in baseball since I was a kid, and I’m 40 years old right now, so I played in college at North Western University, after that played seven years in the minors, and when that came to an end, sorta towards the tail end of that, I got involved with working with young pitchers, and that sort of what better pitching grew out of, so I’m based in Connecticut, do most of my training and in Danbury, Connecticut right now, working with guys locally, but also with Better Pitching expanding online, working with a lot more guys around the country. But talking to baseball dads, that’s really what it’s about for me, is that connection between you and your son, and with the way that youth sports is going right now. I think what you’re doing with the Five, Six, Seven Dad book, and everything you been doing on that end is something I have a tremendous amount of respect for. – [Paul] Thank you, I appreciate that, you have got this incredible course that we publish called Curveball Mastery, so when we look to publish something, we wanna publish the best, that we think is out there. And we think your curveball program is pretty awesome, we think it’s the best that’s out there. So this is a hot topic for every, I don’t know if maybe it’s a question that’s asked of developing pitchers, or when pitchers get to a level where, okay, I just can’t throw my fastball by anybody, or I never could, and now I realize I need to do something else, every dad is asked, when do we throw a curve ball, when does it say how do you know, what are your thoughts on that? – [Phil] Yeah that’s a great question, it definitely is something that comes up a lot, and I think every kid wants to have that nasty curveball they can throw. And like you said I think dad’s kind get to that point, in coaches where this guy is not quite able to get it by guys, but he has that other pitch that can get guys off his fastball, maybe that will make the difference, I mean it’s true to some extent, if you’ve got a great curveball, that will make your fastball that much better, that being said, and I think we’re on the same page with this, is that there may not be one set age where a guy is magically ready to start throwing a curveball, but rule number one no matter what is always develop your fastball. So that’s always what I start, and until you master your fastball and get that as good as it can possibly be, I won’t even start touching curveball with the young pitcher. Typically for me it might be in that kind of 13, 12, 13, 14 year age group, but like I say every pitcher’s different, so you might have an 11-year-old kid who’s just got everything else locked down, I’m okay showing him the right way to throw it, because that for me is the key that there is a lot of misinformation out there, and they’re probably gonna start messing around with it anyway, or have someone show it to them that might not be the right way to throw it, kinda turning the doorknob, method that gets thrown around out there, which is really not how you wanna do it, so I’d rather show them the right way to do it, so they’re at least setting that foundation, so that when, as they develop when they get to that 15, 16, 17 high school age, that can be a real good pitch for them, and a weapon for them that’s going to make them that much better, make their fastball that much better, and give them an opportunity if it’s something they’re looking to do to pitch beyond and get to that next level. – [Paul] So what are some of the things that a dad should be looking for to say maybe my son is not right. What are some things that if a dad is out playing catch with his kid, or they’re playing a game today, and we could give some tips to point to, and say if he’s not doing this, or he’s not this growth, he’s probably not ready, what would some of those things be? – [Phil] I mean a lot of it has to do with your foundation, so their ability to repeat their motion, now you can’t of course repeat your motion a hundred percent the same every time, even if you look at guys at the big league level, you’ll see slight differences, but at the youth level you’ll see a lot more variation, so if they don’t have the necessary balance, dynamic balance, balance while moving in their delivery, where they can consistently repeat their motion, where they can be fairly consistent with their command of their fastball, they’re probably not ready. So that’s typically where I’d start, now if the kid can do all those things, he’s probably to at least see it, or to see the proper way to start throwing, and just develop that. But that shouldn’t be their priority, especially it depends what age we’re talking about, so kids eight, nine years old, focus on your fastball, develop your fastball, develop your delivery, have fun playing catch with your dad out back, but that’s not really what we’re talking about. – [Paul] I often think that the tricky part of this is, that we have a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old or 11-year-old, who maybe is doing all those things, because their body is four foot 10, and they’re not developed, and they haven’t gone through, and all of a sudden now they’re 12, and they’re six inches taller, and they’re, and now there’s this period of adjustment, they almost have to relearn pitching, so how are we instructing pitchers in the transition, like an 11-year-old’s dad might say, Yeah, my kids got lockdown mechanics, and he throws strikes, but now let’s start with the curveball, but a year from now he’s a different kid. – [Phil] Yeah, your center of gravity is moving away from the ground, so you’re getting further and further away from the ground, it gets tougher to control that, the kid, it’s happening in months, a period of months, when all of a sudden I’m further away from the ground than I used to be, how do I control that, and what I used to do doesn’t work anymore, and I definitely went through that when I was a kid, I’m 6’5″, and when I was a young pitcher, I was constantly growing rapidly, and your bones and your frame gets bigger than your body is really developed yet to handle, so that foundation of strength, mobility, balance, stability, that’s all integral for that. So it’s a tricky process managing that, but you wanna make sure that at each stage, they’re not losing, let’s say they were at that 10, 11-year-old age and they had that the lockdown mechanics, and they were steady and consistent with everything as they’re developing, you wanna make sure you’re maintaining that, doing what you need to do to still have that in place. – [Paul] So I wanna ask another question, but I have my thoughts on this too, how many pitchers do you meet that have lockdown mechanics? – [Phil] That’s a very good point. – [Paul] So I think we should define lockdown mechanics, so out of 10 pitchers you see, how many do you think have what you would call lockdown mechanics? – [Phil] It depends, very few, especially when they’re initially coming to you, usually it’s for a reason that they don’t have that, right, so that’s sort of the goal, to help them get to that point, if it’s a kid who’s like on the cusp of college, that’s probably the times when I see guys, all right his mechanics are already sound, we can kinda start working on that next level, you know the fine tuning and the mastery of the art of pitching, but that’s usually we’re talking about a 17, 18-year-old at that point. – [Paul] Would you take away a curveball, so let’s say you had a 13 or 14-year-old kid, yeah he had he goes through a growth spurt, and he’s 15, would you take away his curveball, or maybe push pause on it for a little bit until– – [Phil] I guess you could potentially do that, it can be a great weapon to again, the thing that I think people, the reason that people often are hesitant about curveballs or scared of curveballs, is because they think it’s gonna increase the risk of injury. It’s not a black and white thing where you can definitely say, you’re not risk-free from injury at any point as a pitcher, the act of throwing a baseball and pitching the baseball repeatedly carries with it a certain level of risk, but a number of studies have come out showing that the curveball doesn’t put any more risk on your arm than a fastball, and that fastball ultimately is always gonna be the highest risk pitch, because you’re throwing it at max velocity max intensity, I don’t care how good your mechanics are, it’s putting stress on your arm, so that’s why taking care of your arm, your conditioning, having a solid throwing program, and good mechanics are all key, if you throw the curveball properly it’s not any more stressful than a fastball, so if that’s the main concern, really managing that pitchers workload, and making sure they’re not pitching too much competitively at a young age should really be the focus. Having that curveball can actually be something that reduces their pitch count, if you’re able to get strikeouts quicker, instead of you’re facing aa batter and they’re just firing pitches off left and right because they’re on your fastball, if you have that curveball in your back pocket, and you can boom, either get a swing and miss, buckle them, or make your fastball that much better, then you can blow by them up in the zone, it can actually make your pitching more efficient, so every case is unique. – [Paul] I’ve never heard that described like that, that’s why I love doing these podcasts, I was once asked a few weeks ago, why do you have other people coaching on your podcast, this is exactly the reason why, because I’ve never heard that describe, two things ready in this podcast, and I’ve been doing this 24, 25 years, that your center of gravity is getting further away from the ground, I’ve never heard that, that does make perfect sense right, are we putting our kids in more danger by not giving away out of those high-pitched totals, that’s brilliant. – [Phil] I learned a ton from you over the years, and every coach I think that I’ve met that knows their stuff, is always looking to learn, and the fact that you’re doing this and talking to different coaches is a great thing, I know I’ve learned something from every coach I’ve ever had along the way, and players I’ve played with along the way. So that is I think just a mindset that everyone, whether you’re a parent of a young pitcher, or a coach yourself that you wanna have that type of mindset where you’re always looking to grow and get better. – [Paul] Yeah that’s brilliant man, to me that almost, I almost feel like now, you hear things like this when you have conversations with guys, who are, I’m saying if you wanna learn how to make a cheese steak, you learn from someone who is making, you go to those places in Philly that are making 1000 cheese steaks a day, they know all the tricks, right, of how to do this, and you know, when you can hear something from a coach who is dealing with lots and lots of pitchers, and really thinks about the game, you can learn something that will really change you, and to me that was just like an instant change, because now I’m starting to think, is it better for us to put more time into, more time into developing those pitches, and is that maybe balance out whatever the risk is? – [Phil] The thing too is, it’s something you can develop just playing catch, it’s just learning how to throw it the right way, your mechanics should be the same on every pitch, so it’s adding on to it a different rest position, different hand position, and getting the feel for how it should feel leaving your fingers, and that you can do just playing catch at low stress. The other thing too is that I wanna be careful about, I don’t wanna give the impression that I’m saying kids should all go out and throw upon of curveballs. It’s all clear, you see these kids in Little League World Series throwing 50, 60 percent curveballs, that’s not what I think is the best for your long-term development either. Establishing that fastball should be priority, if the goal is to develop to your full potential. – [Paul] To me it’s just a real, it’s something that we should really look at, as far as what’s the bigger issue, all the studies show the more pitches kids throw, the more they get hurt, it’s just everyone comes out with that. – [Phil] That’s a normal thing. – [Paul] Yeah, there’s no study that doesn’t say that, we can argue okay how often are they pitching, how many pitches per inning, how much time, we can argue all those things, but they all come out the same right, there’s one thing they all agree on. So let’s shift gears a little bit, let’s talk about, I think we’ve done some good education on the safety of it, and when to throw out stuff like that, let’s talk about breaking off some deuces man, what goes into throwing a good curveball? – [Phil] It’s one of those things that it’s much easier to show, the grip and the hand position, wrist position, all of that, but really once you get that good angle set, that’s the key to it, is that the fastball is throwing your fingers behind the ball, the curveball is throwing your fingers on the side of the ball, and getting over it with your middle finger, being able to get good tension on that grip through ball release, and you get that tighter spin. So it’s kind of visualizing the shape of the, that’s kind of the first level for me, is you want to have a good understanding of what you want this pitch to do, what is a good curveball look like, watch guys watch Clayton Kershaw, watch Justin Verlander right now, watch what that pitch does, and have a good visual of what you’re trying to accomplish with it, because I think some kids they think curveball, and they’re just trying to spin it, and thinking it’s gonna move sideways, or developing these kind of slurvy loopy type pitches, you wanna be that hammer that comes out and then boom, drops off the table. And I think it was, I don’t know if it was Bert Blyleven or someone, who apparently, he credited his development of his curveball, he had one of the better curveball breaking balls in the game, to listening to Dodgers games when he was a kid, and hearing the announcer describe Sandy Koufax’s curveball to him, and he went out back and tried to recreate that shape of that pitch, and that’s how he developed his. So it’s really having that understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish, and then playing catch, and like I say kind of getting over the ball, getting that end over end spin. There’s something I talk in the program too called axis of rotation, and reverse spin, so your fastball and your curveball should be coming roughly out of the same slot, fastball, if you release it true forcing fastball has a reverse spin, backspin, and your curveball basically has the absolute reverse spin on that same axis, but because it’s going end over end basically into the wind. If you’ve ever, there’s another concept I talk about is running into the wind, if you’re running into the wind you feel that pressure on your face, if you’ve got the wind at your back, you feel how nice and easy it is, and you can run an extra five miles an hour. With that curveball if you’re throwing it right, and you’ve got that end over end spin, you got the top part of the ball has more air pressure, and that’s gonna push it down, ’cause it’s going into the wind basically. So once you have an understanding of that, the axis of rotation, getting that good tight spin, you’ll understand how you can throw this together to have that movement, and then it’s just kind of playing catch with it, getting feedback of what that pitch does, and you throw a good one, like all right, that’s what I’m trying to do, let me see if I can repeat that, and working to get a feel for it. – [Paul] Yes you said two things I think I wanna highlight, number one you talked about tension, being able to maintain that grip, and having that tension into release point. So the guys who are listening– – [Phil] That’s another thing too, for little kids if their hands are not big enough, they’re probably not gonna be able to get that tension, that good grip. – [Paul] And they’re not strong enough, right they’re just not strong at all, so when you hear the word tension, that has nothing to do with mechanics, that’s nothing that we can teach in a lesson, that’s something that you have to develop and build over time. And then the second thing, which is I love and agree with, is a great curveball looks like a fastball coming out of your hand, I forget the exact quote, but it was about change ups, a bad changeup that looks like a fastball, is better than a good changeup that looks like a change. So I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me tell the story, but I had six pitchers that I was training, that were all high school pitchers, so they were playing the field and pitching to, and they were up against a kid that was throwing in the 90s in the county finals, and we had a week to prepare, and all we saw, was that when he would throw a 90, you could see it coming, it was on his face, it was in his body, it was in his language, he came at you, and when he threw his curveball, he softened, and his head moved out to the side, and his release point was, he tried to get on top of that curveball. And that kid’s only loss of the year that year because they just didn’t swing at the curveball, because he couldn’t throw it for strikes, and it couldn’t look like a curveball. – [Phil] Yes absolutely. – [Paul] So what about placement, I think that sometimes in a lesson, we sometimes change the measurement of success, that when a kids throws in a lesson, they throw these pretty strikes, they look great right, but if you’re watching Verlander or Kershaw, you’re the curveball expert, these guys aren’t, I mean they are throwing some curveball for strikes, but that’s not where their money’s made right? – [Phil] Yeah I think I was Pedro Martinez I heard saying, you get ahead with strikes, you get them out with balls. So you wanna be able to have good enough command of all of your pitches, were when you are ahead in the count, then you can get them to chase, and swing at those pitches that might look like a strike, and then away from the barrel of the bat out of the zone. In terms of the stages of development, that’s usually down the road, so when you’re just learning and developing that pitch, first you just wanna be able to command it, be able to throw it for a strike. And even if I’m working with a kid in a bull pen session, that’s usually how will start off, let’s work on your curveball, be able to establish that you can throw that pitch for a strike, get it over for a strike right down the middle, boom, once you do that, alright, now let’s try to throw the nasty one, that starting off thigh high and then drops down to the toes out of the zone, but there are a variety of different ways, different types of curveball basically, so you could have your get ahead curveball, that guys just sit on fastball first pitch and you know it, and you can maybe not be your best sharpest curveball, but you started off at their shoulder and it drops in over the plate, you’ve got your back door, it can be kind of a freeze pitch, because like you said it looks like fastball out of your hand, but it starts off on a different plane, so if you’re gonna drop it in for a strike, you could start it off high, and the guy just gives up on it, so he straightens up, and says “Alright there goes the fastball up in the zone.” And then boom, it drops over for a strike, and you’ve got your swing and miss down in the zone. And if you watch some of the games in the World Series you’ll see this, so one of the things I tell kids is just watch good pitching this time of year, you can learn a lot by how these guys with the best arsenals of pitches, how they go about their business and how they use these pitches. For me that was something I developed probably in college, at the high school level, I had a good four seam fastball that I could throw up, and a curveball I could drop down, and as long as they look enough the same, you can be successful at that level with that. When I was in the pros, I remember, this was kind of at the very tail end of my career, but I had that curveball where I just had that great feel for it, I could throw it where I wanted to most of the time, but my first game with the Bridgeport bluefish, which is an independent league team, and others like the Newark Bears in Long Island, the Long Island Ducks, but it’s kind of a veterans league, so there’s a lot of guys who hang around that who were in the big leagues at one time in their career, and they’re looking to just get their shot to get back in, at the time Rickey Henderson was still in the league. One of my favorite players when I was a kid growing up, and I came into the game at the end of the game, my first game with the Bluefish actually, and I remember we’re up a couple of runs, two out, runner on second base, and up walks Rickey, and I’m like I can’t believe I’m standing on a mound now facing this guy, that when I was a kid, I was a big Yankee fan growing up, so like that’s Rickey Henderson up there, but I had this vision in my mind from when I watched him on TV, and him buckling on curveballs a couple of times, where he would kind of like crouch, where he’d get in his stance wide and real hunched over, and occasionally you’ll see him, if you start a curveball up at his shoulder, he’ll straighten right up, and then boom watch that pitch go over the plate, I got to a full count, and that kind of kicked in in the back of my mind, what if I throw a curveball right here? And it ended up buckling him with the curveball to end the game. – [Paul] Nice, nice. – [Phil] It was one of those moments, Rickey was like “Did that guy just strike me out?” And then the manager came up to me at the end of the game and said, “You know if nothing else you can always say you struck out a Hall of Famer.” Good point. – [Paul] Yeah that’s a great point. You know I loved Rickey Henderson when he was playing in those leagues right, here was this guy who was in the Hall of Fame, why was he still playing baseball, and he was like, “I love to play baseball.” – [Phil] Yeah, he took it serious, he was out there, he could play even when he was whatever he was 45 or 50 years old at that point. – [Paul] Yeah but isn’t that the thing, I thought that was the greatest quote, I heard Ringo Starr one time, somebody somewhere asked the question, why are you at 75 years old still touring, and he was like, “What you want me to do?” – [Phil] Exactly. – [Paul] I don’t know how to do anything else, what you wanna go sit at home? I think that’s, I love the way you think about that pitch. Let’s switch gears a little bit, and let’s talk about kind of the state of baseball, ’cause I know you have some passionate beliefs about that, I always like to ask this question if I’m a dad, I’ve got a 14 or 15-year-old kid, and I’m sitting down across from you at Starbucks, and say I’m really confused about everything that is going on in baseball today, tournaments and travel teams and showcases and elites and all these other things, what do I need to know, what do you know that I need to know Phil? – [Phil] I think you kind of wanna start with what’s the end goal, what’s your vision and your plan and what do you wanna get out of your baseball experience, and if it’s just to be the best high school player I can be, and then I’m gonna move on to do something else in college, that’s a different scenario than a kid who I’ve loved baseball since I was a kid, and you’re at that elite level already, and you’re thinking about I wanna go on and pitch in college, I wanna pitch in the pros and get in the big leagues, that’s a different mindset and a different approach, so number one you just wanna be realistic about that, I was a late bloomer, so probably 13 or 14 years old people wouldn’t have guessed that I would have gone on and, you know I’ve been fortunate to play in college and professionally, but it starts with just asking questions and learning more about that kid situation I guess is what I would say. – [Paul] So you’re talking about here is you have almost a diagnostic process to find out what’s important for the kid. What questions do you think a dad should ask of a coach, because we encourage them to really question coaches about, different things especially if their kid is gonna be playing in a team, and if it’s a big commitment, what are some things that a dad should maybe ask of a coach? – [Phil] I think the state of baseball, the problem is that it’s beginning even younger and younger, they’re starting these elite teams at eight years old now, where it’s just tournaments every weekend, and they’re playing competitive games, and are they practicing or playing catch during the week you don’t really know, but then they’ve got nine games in three days on the weekend, and the coaches, and I fully believe that all coaches, they’re doing it for the most part, are doing it with the best intentions, and they’re doing what they believe is the best for their players, but it’s very easy to get caught up in, I’ve got to have a winning program, players wanna play for a winning team, parents who are paying me money they wanna win, and in the heat of the moment, when you’re on the fence of oh I know Johnny pitched Friday, and threw five innings, but he didn’t meet the pitch limit rules or whatever, and it’s Sunday, I’m gonna use him again, because we got a chance to win this game, and Johnny’s not gonna say no, and the parent either doesn’t feel it’s his place to step up and say something, or maybe just doesn’t know what’s the safe range for him to be in in terms of pitches, how much stress does he have on his arm, what’s that potentially doing to him, so you can get into that scenario, where it’s not what’s in the best interest of that athlete’s long-term development. So in terms of what are you gonna ask the coach, I would definitely try to get feedback and that coach directly, in that kind of conversation, where what’s your approach with managing pitchers, how many other pitchers you have on the team, are there scenarios where your guys have pitched back-to-back games, and then how do you handle that kind of stuff, and also just seek out, other parents who maybe have been through that same program, and can give you some feedback on their own experiences. – [Paul] Yeah I think that’s super important, because I don’t know if you know Chris Gisele from Baseball Dudes, he’s a great dude, we had him on a few weeks ago, and he was talking about guys that are in his universe and he is educated, that went out and pitched kids back-to-back days, and then the kids went out and played center field after that, and we’re working on a few things here too that definitely I’m gonna ask you when you are ready, Phil, to be a part of that is gonna hopefully educate dads about exactly what are bad combinations, like pitching back-to-back days, pitching and then playing shortstop, or going in and throwing 120 pitches, and then going in to catch the last two innings. – [Phil] Right which happens, all that stuff happens on a regular basis. I think that’s awesome that you’re doing that, because the think that’s really where we’re at with youth baseball, and even with the high school level with the elite, and the tournament ball that’s going on, it’s just the education needs to be there, so that people have a better understanding of what is reasonable, and what is not reasonable, and if you’re putting a young developing athlete whose maybe going through puberty, and their bone plates haven’t firmed up yet, and are not fully developed, and you’re asking them to do what you would never ask a professional major league pitcher to do, outside of potentially game seven of the World Series, but you’re asking them to do that on a regular basis, in 10U, 14U Travelball tournament, does that make sense? And I know they’re doing it just because they’re strapped, and there are limitations, and because of the structure of these tournaments, they don’t know what the alternative is, well we got a have somebody playing shortstop, if we wanna win this game, we don’t want our best player doing this. But one of my favorite coaches is John Wooden, not a baseball guy, but one of the winningest coaches of all time, and had some of the best teams there in that dynasty run he had, one of the things his players always say if he never talked to us about winning being the end goal, it was always just about being the best that you can be, and it was about developing them, so that was really the focus that he had, was that if I develop each one of my players into the best player that they can possibly be, being the best version of themselves out there on the court that they can possibly be, the end result is that we’re gonna win games, and if you get everyone to buy into that approach, you’re gonna be an awesome team, and it’s easy I think to lose sight of that in this tournament ball culture where the focus is on winning, where you kind of lose sight of is this really in the best interest of this athlete’s long-term development, and that’s one of the things I love about what you’re doing with the Five, Six, Seven Dad stuff, and with this group is, what are we doing in this timeframe, that these young athletes are developing, and how can baseball be a vehicle, and something that sets them up for success when their play days are done, because they’re gonna be done some day, and are we helping them develop into men that can go on into the world in a positive productive way. – [Paul] Yes absolutely, absolutely, so for the last little segment here, I wanna switch gears again, because we had your friend Joss Henon on, and he talked about how you guys work together, so we definitely, it’s a thing especially if pitching coaches are listening, or dads are listening of who you kind of need in your stable, to really get your son to maximize whatever his potential is, and Josh talked about working hand-in-hand with you, which is something that we preach, you need to have these fitness health and medical professionals they can do really a lot for us, is there some thoughts you have about that relationship, or can give us some idea of how it works with you and Josh? – [Phil] Absolutely I mean working with Josh has been one of the best things that I’ve done with the young pitchers I work with, that’s been the most benefit to them and helped them get better results, because the pitching side of it is just one piece of the puzzle, the mechanics side of it, the pitch development side of it, you can do everything you can from that point, but if you don’t have the necessary mobility, strength and whatever you need physically, to handle the mechanics that I think might be optimal for you, they’re not gonna work, it’s gonna fall apart, so you have to develop that foundation of strength, and I think if you’re a guy who has a son who wants to be a pitcher at the next level, I mean really develop to their maximum, that has to be a big piece of the puzzle, is just their physical and athletic development. So in addition to just playing other sports and developing the coordination that you can from those sort of things, hooking up with a guy like Josh, a great strength coach who understands the demands of pitching, which are very unique, and different than the way you might train another high-level athlete, football, basketball you name it. You want someone that understands that, and it isn’t just gonna give your guy a football program. Working hand-in-hand with that, he’s able to tell me look this guy’s got a hip mobility deficiency, and he’s not gonna be able to move the way you might be suggesting until we get this corrected, here are a couple of things you can add in during his warmup, before you guys start working on your pitching, that kind of stuff has been invaluable. – [Paul] Yeah like we were talking about was Josh, these guys can help us, or help the pitchers actually to do the stuff we’re trying to get them to do, and eliminate the things that are stopping them, which I’m sure you and I would both agree is out of our skill set, it’s just not in our area of expertise to help them fix a hip or fix an ankle, sometimes we can learn enough to be dangerous about it, but you really need to have that education and that experience to be able to look at this and run it through the assessment tools and say yes this is a problem, here’s what we need to do to fix it, it’s gonna take this long, so I would encourage the coaches to just really, I’m like a broken record on this, to have those relationships. So Phil why don’t we give everybody, how do they all get in touch with you, you offer a lot of camps and instructions, and you also offer virtual coaching for people that are all over. We have sent some people of our clients to you, and I’ll just say the feedback has been great, we just recently had one of our players, I believe he traveled out to you, correct? – [Phil] Yeah. – [Paul] He traveled out to you and came back, and was thanking me profusely for sending him to you, so how do we get in touch with you, and kind of tell us everything that you’ve got going on. – [Phil] Yes sure, I mean the main hub is betterpitching.com, so people can always find me there, and everything that Better Pitching is about there, different programs I’ve got whether you’re local to the New York, Connecticut area, or online programs that are available through that, or remote coaching situations, that’s probably the first place I’d point people, they can go there they can get a free guidebook, sort of my philosophy on pitch mechanics, another place might be on Facebook, so Better Pitching on Facebook, you’ll find my Facebook page there, and those are really the two main ways that I get in touch with people, so if you’re interested and like what you see there, you can certainly sign up to get on the email list, that’s probably the way I communicate the most, and then Facebook better pitching for the other way. – [Paul] So for the dads that are listening, let me just give a little plug for having a virtual coach. It’s kind of a unique situation, how can a pitching coach help you from a distance? There certainly are limitations to it there’s no doubt about that, but technology is moving very quickly, and those limitations are becoming less and less, so let me tell you why I think it’s good for you to reach out to someone like Phil to help you virtually. Is because I think a lot of people come to me and say a couple of things, they say we have this coach that’s a part of our program, and we’re not getting the results that we want from him. And we kind of can’t leave, there’s the politics of the situation, that sometimes happen, and say you know we kind of can’t leave. And so in that situation it helps for you to be able to not anonymously, but work with someone who can give you an outside opinion, the other thing too is that I hear from dads, is a lot of times the opinions they get they know are biased based on their situation, so different coaches will tell you different things based on maybe what is also in the best interest of the coach or that team or the Academy, not necessarily always in the best interest of your kid. That’s not always the case, it’s rare, but it does happen, so to have again a third party person that you can go to to give you advice is invaluable. The last thing I hear is that we go to XYZ Academy or we play it XYZ high school, and they go to ABC instruction academy, and we can’t be seen going into, I’m running out of letters, we can’t be seen going into the other baseball Academy, or we can’t be seen going another coach. And unfortunately yeah it’s bad but that’s the reality, but that’s why you can use a coach like Phil, who has no horse in the race, and can give you honest assessment, can give you instruction based on what’s best for you, not always what maybe the best for that situation that you’re in, so I would encourage you to check that out, because I talk to a lot of people, it’s a very valuable resource, that we’re blessed to live in this age that we can have that, so please check out everything that Phil’s got, I can’t endorse him enough, we spent some time together, he’s come out to a couple of our business events, and we’re always, like I said we’re sending people to him, and we’re working with them, and we publish his Curveball Mastery, so we really love Phil and we can’t endorse him enough, so Phil any final words of wisdom for the dads? – [Phil] No, you’ve covered a lot here, and it’s really been an honor to be on the show, I think one of the best things about baseball is that connection that it helps you to develop with your son, and when I think about baseball, its Field Of Dreams, it’s that father and son connection, playing catch with your son. I know it’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy off elite travelball, and getting to the next level and that college recruiting process can be a bear, but just try not to lose sight of that and try to enjoy the time you’ve got with them while you do, and any part that I can play in helping them accomplish whatever dreams they have for themselves, it’s kind of my honor to do that, so thanks again for having me on, and I love what you’re doing with this and everything that you’re doing on the baseball side. – [Paul] Alright well Phil, thank you very much for tuning in, and guys check out everything that Phil’s got, and we’ll see everybody on the next show.

– [Paul] Hey folks, welcome back to another edition of Baseball Dads Podcast. So today we’re doing another interview and I’m excited for this episode only because we have a great guest. His name is Dr. Josh Heenan and we’ve met before in the past so we have a mutual friend, a greatcoach Phil Rosengren and Phil had shared one of his blog posts that if you are an athlete that is developing, or pitcher that’s developing. In that I mean you’re in high school or you’re moving up, he had a blog post on qualities needed to throw 90 miles per hour. And I read everything that Phil puts out, he’s such a good guy, and I clicked on this and I was like, “Man, this is great, this is such a great post, “especially if you are in that phase.” And it just inspired me to invite Josh on the show. We’ll put you to all of this information as we go on, but Josh first of all welcome, welcome to the show, thank you for making the time today. – [Josh] Hey, thank you Paul, I’m really glad that Phil connected us. – [Phil] Yeah, yeah, so let’s give the one minute background of everything, tell us all things Dr. Josh Heenan. – [Josh] So I am a doctor of integrated medicine, board certified doctor of integrated medicine, which is not a medical doctor. Has a more similar scope to achiropractor PT, so got some manual skills in there. But really I consider myself an educated meathead. I’m a strength coach at heart, that’s really where we say our bread and butter with our athletes. I’ve been the past 10 years or son in the private sector, have our first guy crack the majors, we’ve had him for eight years. Troy Scrudinaire with the Angels, which is a great thing to have. It’s nice to have guys that are in the majors training with us, but really having a guy come through our program right at the beginning of college all the way through minors and all that is big. And I spent five years since a head strength coach for Sacred Heart University, small D1 school in Fairfield, Connecticut and that’s my spiel. – [Paul] Yeah, awesome. So I always like to start off with this qu– Let me back up first, one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on the show is I want to discuss this 90 mile per hour formula that he’s come up with that I think is so great, but also too is that I think when we have Mike Lynels on the show and other guys that are kind of in your universe, you give us such a unique perspective of what goes on with a pitcher. I think you guys kind of see all the things that go wrong when you’re working with pitchers and you’re also a big part of the corrective process. I think game coaches and stuff, we kind of get them bogged down sometimes in that stuff, we can lose sight of it. That’s the first thing, but I just wanted to mention. So let’s say, I always like to start with this question, let’s say we’re sitting at Starbucks and we’re having coffee and I’ve got a 15, 16, 17 year old kid who’s developing, showing some potential and I’m trying my best as a dad to give him the best opportunity, what do I need to know? – [Josh] Yeah my big thing is first you’ve got to keep the goal to goal. So if your kid is someone that you really believe and you believe they can reach that next level, whether it’s college ball or professional, then you’ve got to give them those opportunities to actually be realistic with those expectations, but we want to build well-rounded athletes. So if you move well and then you add some strength to that, really good things happen. We’ve had probably getting close to 100 professional athletes through our doors and through our program over the years and the one thing that is run through with every single one of them is they were multi-sport studs in high school. Most of them are all state in one or two sports and we want them to be well-rounded because you’ve got to figure out what race you want to be racing. And I see a lot, one of our hubs, both of our hubs, excuse me are in Fairfield County and we’ve got a very type A personalities running around all the time and it’s great. It creates a really good environment for development, but we’ve got to figure out what race we’re running. And if the race is to have your kid on ESPN when they’re 12 years old, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But you also have to understand that, do you want them to be playing when they’re a senior in high school or a freshmen in college or trying to make the majors? Because if you’re running the race to get them only prepared for that next step of making the little league world series, I think you’re not really looking at it straight on and not giving your kid an opportunity to really develop. – [Paul] Right. Yeah, it’s funny, I almost feel like– We’ve talked about on other podcasts, I almost feel like we’ve moved the majors down. Like making it used to be getting a scholarship or going to the pros, the pros were playing in college, and now it’s kind of like can you get on that– The most important thing is like this next thing that’s kind of coming up, you know? These tournaments and showcases and stuff like that. – [Josh] Absolutely. – [Paul] I love that you said multi-sport athletes, because I think that’s so important. I just had two emails this morning of dads asking me some more questions. So I’m in 100% agreement on that. I think there was a stat, you might know it, but one of the NFL draft, I think– I don’t remember the exact– – [Josh] Yeah something like 83% of all guys that were drafted in the NFL played at least two sports throughout high school. Don’t quote me on those numbers, but I think it’s somewhere around there. – [Paul] It was the majority, we can say that for sure. It was definitely the majority of first round picks. So let’s talk about this 90 mile per hour formula ’cause this is, I’m gonna tell you, I’m gonna encourage you guys to– Josh can give out all his info, but got to joshheenan.com and search for this post, the 90 mile per hour formula, especially if you are the age that we talked about. For my money, developing that– We were talking about before that our program is very simple, our program is definitely for an athlete who’s starting to train, getting control of your body, but this is like, to me, this one little slide that you have up, it’s like dropping the pin on your mobile ath– What am I trying to say? Your maps app on your phone. I want to move to this town called 90 miles per hour and what do I need to get there? This is the first thing that I’ve seen, and maybe I just missed it, but this is the first thing that I’ve seen that says, “Here are some real measurements “that you can kind of shoot for.” Lets just talk about this, how did you come up with it, what was the research and I want to hear all about it. – [Josh] Alright so the 90 mile an hour formula was accidentally discovered about eight years ago, I was training a guy by the name of John Murphy, he’s now an Army coach baseball coach within the Yankees organization for a little while. And I realized that a lot of the qualities he had were very similar to the other athletes I’ve had that’s over 90. John was a shortstop in college, but could easily crank it up to 92, 94 on the bump if he was out there. So I was trying to figure out how do we string this along and how do we create a roadmap that not only we can have guys aim for, but also can kind of guarantee us they’re gonna be able to throw 90 and know that they’re gonna stay healthy? And that’s the thing that I think most people see online, especially Twitter where it’s gaining some traction, is that the 90 mile an hour formula is not only a parameter for me to say, “Alright if you can do these things “you can throw 90 miles an hour without question,” what it really is is a great balance of the body, making sure that we have the right movements down so that you can do this as long as you want to do it. I don’t think, I think getting someone like our pro guys, we want to get them to the majors, but I don’t want to make the majors, I want them to stay in the majors for 15 years and be healthy. And that’s the same thing with our high school guys. So that’s where we came up with it and I’ve really teased it out and now we use it with, if you include other people that have reached out to me and have implemented it into their own training, we’re getting close to 1,000 athletes and we have yet to have one that can hit all the metrics on the 90 mile an hour formula and can’t throw 90 miles an hour. There’s som caveats in there as we go through the bullet points, but the caveats are that sometimes they can’t translate it onto the mound which means there’s a breakdown on the mound mechanics. – [Paul] Right. So let’s go through this kind of step-by-step ’cause what I want to make sure is that as we give out this formula, these four measurements, that we also talk about that, so when you say deadlift 400 pounds for one rep, I want to make sure that we don’t send 100 16-year-olds to the gym– – To the emergency room. – [Paul] Right, right, right. So let’s go through these one by one. I have it in front me, do you want me to read them off and then you can kind of talk, or if you want to go through it’s up to you? – [Josh] Yeah, I’ll talk right through them. So the first category is our momentum potential. And really what I see is that we need to be able to generate enough momentum. This comes from myself, I’m 5’9″, I was 155 pounds in high school, I played low-level college baseball, junior college and then got cut from a D1 program. I could hit all these metrics except my minimum body potential, excuse me, minimum momentum potential which is our height in inches times 2.5 equals our minimum ideal body weight. So if you’re looking at a guy like me who’s 5’9″, you want to have me at about 175 pounds is our minimum ideal body weight. And we just look at that as the metric that is run through with all of our athletes to know that they have enough muscle mass to generate the force, but also enough muscle mass to protect our body from the forces that we’re putting on our body when we’re throwing this hard. I believe that the optimal range is somewhere between 2.75 and 3.25 times our inches in height is the optimal range, but 2.5 is definitely the minimum that we see. – [Paul] So let’s take that for a six foot kid, we’re looking at two– You’re smarter than me, man, you do the math. – [Josh] We’re looking at about a buck 80. – [Paul] Okay, awesome, okay perfect. – [Josh] Give or take. And that’s, like I said, that’s just our general baseline that we’re looking for. The next bullet point is our force production. So literally the ability just to put force into the ground, that’s where we’re gonna generate our force that we can transfer into the ball on the mound. And we want our deadlift to be 400 pounds for one rep as a minimum. Now, like you said, we don’t want to be sending people to the hospital. We’re looking for good form, we’re looking for and I don’t discriminate between, with this one, we don’t discriminate between two mode deadlift, conventional deadlift, trap bar, it doesn’t matter to me. There’s different, another topic for another day, but everybody’s body types can be a little bit different, more efficient at certain patterns as far as strength building and strength training. So we’re just looking for that minimum baseline saying, “You know what? If you can pull 400 pounds off the ground “that means one you’re healthy enough to deadlift, “you’re healthy enough to touch your toes, “and two that you actually have that force production “available.” So that’s our next category as far as our force production goes. – [Paul] So let’s say now I am, I’m a dad, I hear this, I don’t know, does my son– I don’t even know if my son does deadlift, do they deadlift? What would be the steps to make sure that we start doing this safely, a deadlift? – You know, I could give out the kind of canned answer like you want to make sure you have a coach watching you, which is fine and I think that’s important to make sure you have someone modifying and making sure that you’re qualified to do it. We look for can you touch your toes and then let’s start you with a kettle bell in between your legs, just as a regular kettle bell deadlift making sure you have a neutral spine so you don’t see any flexing on the spine, whether it’s from your lumbar, thoracic, or cervical vertebrae and no extension there. They’re nice and neutral and then just picking that kettle bell off the ground and standing nice and tall, erect, and then controlling it back down. And then from there you can start progressing it. I think what’s lost in a lot of the training is we want to be great movers first. Like we talked about, you want to be great athletes. I want to create really good movers first. So if you deadlift with a rounded spine, your neck’s looking up, and you’re just trying to hit that 400 pounds, that’s not gonna really lead us into the good movement pattern that we need to be able to throw hard and stay healthy, and that’s our ultimate goal. – [Paul] You just said it there. So this is like the fight that it’s pulling hard and staying healthy. And I think, so I don’t want to show off, but I have deadlifted 405, I’m just gonna say, just gonna put it out there. One time it was one time and I haven’t been close to it since, but it was actually a funny story. Do you know Jim Smith from Decal Strength? – [Josh] Yes, I do. – Okay so he’s like my best friend. He’s one of my two best friends in the world. And he made me a bet that I couldn’t do it. And so I’m not a good, I’m not So it took me like eight weeks and I got there for one rep and he can deadlift like 550. And I said, “Look man, you’ve been lifting for 20 years, “and in six weeks I became 80% of the lifter that you are. “Another three or four weeks I’m gonna blow past that 550.” He didn’t like that. So the quest– That’s the key is I think we see a lot of things out there that is the act of velocity. So I see these new mechanics which I’m kind of confused about how Nolan Ryan was able to throw 100 miles an hour with those old mechanics. But these new mechanics are supposedly gonna throw harder. And what I see is a lot of people sacrificing, I like to say they pay a higher price per pitch. You get that extra where they’re compromising mechanics to throw harder, right at the radar gun. So I know that I could probably go and deadlift 400 pounds now, but I know that I could not do it with good form. I knew if I rounded my back and I picked up– So a good point to make here and I want to get your opinion on is let’s talk about that when form falls apart, we’re putting ourselves at risk of injury. Whether we have a weight in our hand or a baseball in our hand. Am I correct in that? – [Josh] Yeah and I think everything gets blown out of proportion as far as way the ball goes and deadlifting a lot of weight. We have guys that deadlift five, six, close to 700 pounds and they go to the major league organization and they say, “Alright now that you’re with us we don’t “want you to deadlift more than 225, you can go as many “reps as you want.” First of all I think the reps are gonna, higher reps you’re gonna breakdown, likely breakdown more just because of general fatigue. So that’s a big red flag to me. We’ve already trained and developed our athletes to handle that force and they’re handling it efficiently. And that’s what we want, we want mechanically efficient movements. And the thing that we see a lot with our UCL injuries is we see, for the nerds and science people out there, we see what thewould call a cervical spine rotational SNCD. All that really means, for general population, is that you can’t naturally move your neck without having some compensations. Now, if you think about what we see a lot of times in our deadlifts and something that drives me nuts and I’m in the process putting a post together on it is when we’re deadlifting and if you watch videos of people deadlifting and they have their head up where they’re actually in hyperextension of their neck when they’re going to grip that bar on the ground and they’re looking straight up and they can see. If they were looking in the mirror they could see themselves. That position is not only mechanically inefficient for general day-to-day moving, but also it’s gonna start training patterns of dysfunction in our neck and core stability ’cause our core really, our trunk stability, core stability, whatever you want to call it runs from our hips all the way to our neck. So if we have a dysfunction in our hips it can migrate through our neck and if we have something at our neck it can migrate down our hips. Now, if we’re dysfunctional at our neck we’re gonna be dysfunctional at the joints next to it. So where are we gonna be dysfunctional? We’re gonna be dysfunctional at the thoracic spine, cervical spine, and the shoulder. Well if we’re dysfunctional at any of those levels it’s gonna throw off our mechanics when we’re throwing. And it might not happen over night, but if you start to crank up the innings and get in more reps, now you start asking for trouble and we have an opportunity, I would say to our athletes and our coaches, we have an opportunity every time we walk into the gym to get better or worse. And if we’re not getting better and we’re not becoming more efficient, we’re actually doing our athletes and our clients a disservice. So every time we touch a bar we need to be moving more efficiently. Any time we pick up a weighted ball or a baseball or anything we want to be teaching more efficient mechanics so that we have less of an opportunity to breakdown. And that’s something that we want to drill in, even if it’s something as simple as a deadlift. I don’t care about our athletes hitting the 90 mile an hour formula unless the next paycheck is derived on it. What I care about is them moving more efficiently. So if we have a guy that’s at 225 and wants to get to 400, he’s got to hit 250, 275 before he hits all those other things with really good form. – [Paul] I hope every pitching coach that’s listening to this and every coach that’s listening to this is inspired to go find somebody in your area like Josh. Everything, this is how we talk about the four pillars of working with people who can help us do what we want, what we’re trying to instruct our players to do. And there’s so many things he said in there, you should hit the back 15, 20, hit it back the 15 second thing on your phone and listen to that again because I’m telling you guys that is the difference. The difference is having somebody who understands those little things about technique, about position, and how those things affect the rest of the body. You may have a kid with a shoulder problem and it might not be a shoulder problem. It might be that he’s using bad form with his body in the garage in the weight room. And how are we gonna know that unless we pull on these dowels who are so brilliant that could help us figure this stuff out? So thank you for that, that was awesome. Let me ask you this, just one more question with deadlift, guys are gonna train for it and stuff. I know how 16 and 17 year old kids do, they’re gonna see how it goes every time they go in the weight room, how much they have– How often should we be testing that and, you know, just give me your thoughts on that. – [Josh] I think, again, it’s where the end goal is in mind. We will hit maybe a one rep max with our elite level guys that are really making a big push and we’re cranking it. We’ll do a one rep max maybe, maybe every three to six weeks. But, to be honest, it’s not the number that they currently have in them. Because they can have a good night’s sleep, they could have just broken up with a girlfriend, they could have really good nutrition or really poor nutrition that’s gonna throw these things off in a very short window. So we’ll go looking for it, it’s literally just a nice progression toward those numbers. So I would rather guys stick into sets of two to five at the beginning and really get their reps down and getting their quality reps down and then start really loading it up. Andabout 315, we don’t need to add any special modifications of doing a lot of singles and doubles as far as in the gym. We just want to get them moving efficiently and getting their body to understand those reps. You don’t get good at throwing a baseball by throwing it six times every other week. You get good because you long toss and you work on different mechanical drills and then you get your flat ground work and then you start working 10s and then So you need those reps to start building up and that’s why we need to increase our body at the beginning of training. So guys are listening to this and they just want to– And they’ve never dead lifted before and they know they can touch their toes and they’re just getting, working into those heavier weights as far as actually putting on a barbell. We would encourage you to do something like five sets of five or three sets of five just to get yourself going and understanding the move mechanics. And you have the best tool in the world right now, better than any coach out there, on the fly every single day you have your phone. You can literally prop your phone up and look at those mechanics and for anybody that’s on Instagram that tags me in a post, my Instagram handle is @doctorheenan, all you do is tag me in a post and say, “Hey how’s my form?” And I’ll comment on there and so will a lot of other coaches. So you could always get another set of eyes. And once you see what you’re doing right and wrong it’s really easy to pick up on your own. So you don’t need to have a coach there every single rep to fix you, you just need to make sure that you’re consistently working on that form. – [Paul] That’s awesome. You guys should really take him up on that because I definitely have some experience with that. I think that I was doing that, it feels right when you’re doing them, but you don’t have that visual cue and the coaching. If you can’t, it’s hard to see what your body’s doing when you’re doing it, right? So, definitely, that’s a great offer. So let’s move onto the next part of this. So number two with the barbell and reverse lunge. – [Josh] Yeah so the next one is our stable power position is what I call it, the barbell reverse lunge. And what we’re looking for is our body weight on the bar, 10 reps on one side and then 10 reps on the other side. That is our minimum baseline. So the reverse lunge is basically just the opposite motion of our throwing position. So when we go to throw off the mound we’re doing a forward lunge. But our reverse lunge, I have found over time, it’s easier on our knees, it loads our glutes and hips a little bit better, it forces our core stability to be up a little bit more. Just a lot of little tweaks in there that that’s why I like that motion. And I’m not against forward lunges or split squats or anything like that. And a lot of people hate the 90 mile an hour formula and kind of say, “Oh well you and your reverse lunges.” Well that’s not true, we do a lot of things to get that number to be higher, but we want our minimum body weight or our body weight on the bar for 10 reps each side. And that just allows us to know that we can control those forces. I can’t tell you how many people that we have come in, whether high level college or pro guys that can’t lunge well and they can’t control their own body weight. I have a great story, I have a guy that, we had a guy that was a left-hander, about six feet, about 205 pounds in high school touch 96 on a regular basis. Absolute stud, one of the best pitchers in the country came to us first day running through a full set and everything looked good and then we did a reverse lunge, just body weight, just wanted to see how he moved and he literally toppled over. And I asked him, I was like, and my mind was boggled. I’m like, you have no history in your neck, no neck problems, no shoulder, no back, no elbow, no nothing? He’s like, “No, no, no, no I’m good.” I’m like “Okay.” And then we did it again and he kind of caught himself, went through the motion, it was really ugly. And I was like, “What, this doesn’t make any sense, “how are you not in pain every day walking around “let alone throwing a baseball?” And he’s like, “No, I’m good.” And dad was over in the corner and he’s like, “Did you tell him you had two UCL surgeries?” and I was blown away. He says, “Oh well I didn’t have it right now so I didn’t “think I need to tell him.” I was like, “Oh my God.” So my whole thing with this, and this kind of leads into the weighted ball stuff is you’ve got to be able to control your own motions and be able to control them with velocity and volume on a regular basis on the mounds or when you’re running. I mean all this stuff relays well into running, as well. But if he can’t control his motion on the mound or his motion just in body weight there’s no way he’s not gonna breakdown on the mound at some level. And it may not happen overnight, but as the reps continue to go as far as volume, as far as throws, he’s gonna breakdown. And no coincidence that he had two major elbow surgeries before he was 18 years old. I mean that’s a tragedy right there. And I think that a lot of people see that reverse lunge as something, “That’s a nice accessory exercise.” We have guys that, we have freshmen in college that are reverse lunging 365 for reps. We have professional pitchers that are reverse lunging 455 for reps. I mean, that is some serious weight and that means they can contr– They own their position and they control their position really well on the mound. – [Paul] Well that’s great. Let’s, ’cause you brought up weighted balls, while we’re on it I’d love to get your opinion on weighted balls ’cause it’s, you know, it’s not anything new, but it’s all the rage. So what are your thoughts on them? – [Josh] I will go on the record and say I love weighted balls, but I also think that they need to be used at the right time and the right place for the right personal with all modalities. I think exercise, therapy, drug interventions, weighted ball stuff I think this is– They’re all medicines, they’re all types of input we give to give the brain and the brain is gonna make the response it needs to a different outcome for every response we put in. So when we just blind give someone a weighted ball I think we’re doing a disservice and I think we’re setting people up for failure. But I think the reason we utilize them is we don’t utilize them with everybody, we utilize them on a very particular basis with guys that need them to reach certain goals. And by goals I mean either to make sure that they can handle the volumes that they’re going to be having in their upcomingto make sure that we’re clearing up– I know Phil and I will talk about some of this stuff, sometimes we’ll have an athlete that we share and we’ll modify some drills with a weighted ball, but that’s not the end-all be-all. We’ve got to movement screen these guys first, we’ve got to do an orthopedic screen, we’ve got to make sure that they have hit these basic metrics. Giving a guy that can’t lunge a weighted ball, lunge with their body weight and give them a weighted ball is literally like asking a new driver to go on a race car track and run 200 miles per hour. You’re asking for issues. Now is there problems with weighted balls? Absolutely not ’cause I think a lot of the same things can happen with a thigh bounce ball or throwing a football, but I just think that we need to prepare our body for these movements first and make sure that we’re progressing them individually. And if there is pain or there is discomfort or they start to get tightness in the neck or shoulder or forearm then that’s a good time to shut down and say, “Alright well why are you in pain? “Why are you not feeling good?” I like to say we’re cautiously aggressive. I want to be aggressive with all of our athletes, but weighted balls are something that can highlight inefficiencies very quickly and those inefficiencies can be injuries very, very quickly. – [Paul] So about this feeling on weighted balls, I’m very conservative on it. I’m kind of of the mindset that 20% up 20% down I participated in years– Another lifetime some of those studies and saw the results of them. So I’m kind of a four ounce, six ounce guy. How do you feel about the, even, let’s say we’ve checked off all the boxes, what are your thoughts on those balls that go heavier than that? ‘Cause I see them go real heavy, but I don’t see– I don’t see it on the under-load side. – [Josh] So the under-load, the velocities on the under-load scare me a little bit more than the overload just because, I think the real reason that we have a lot of these shoulder and elbow injuries, especially the elbow stuff is we can’t detail the humerus a quick as we need to, just that arm bone. And I think that’s where we get a lot of these velocities creep up and our body can’t handle those forces. So that’s where we start to breakdown. So an under weighted ball scares me a little bit more than an over weighted ball. I know the research is definitely indicating that a heavier ball is gonna be morestress on the elbow. There’s no denying that, but the decelerating forces is where I think we have a lot of issues. I have no problem with our guys going heavier with the weighted balls. Now, we’re not throwing around a three pound weighted ball. I’ve seen some crazy stuff out there, and I’m sure you have too where– – Yeah. – [Josh] I don’t think we need that, we go as heavy as a 14 ounce ball. But I actually have, I’ll share with you later and actually there’s a post online on Instagram that’s a good one. I think a lot of good things happen when you utilize the right weighted ball for the right athlete at the right time. We’ve seen guys that have terrible, and we never fix throwing mechanics, we just work on true body mechanics. But we’ve seen guys that come in that have terrible throwing mechanics and we’ll give them a weighted ball just to see how they move and all of a sudden it clears up a lot of things. And I actually think that’s, I actually think that’s more of a core stability issue, that’s way outside of the conversation here, but I think it really is a core insufficiency and giving them a weighted ball or a counter balance of a weighted ball. So sometimes we’ll put like a three pound ball in their lead harm, it is a huge, huge effector of creating good arm mechanics. So I just think that you don’t need to go crazy with it on either end. Like you said, we don’t go very heavy on the balls, but we’ll go as heavy as a 12 or 14 ounce ball depending on the athlete, depending on the goal. But most of the time we’re staying low in that nine ounce ball range. – [Paul] Yeah, funny you see these things with these kids with these two ounce balls running 60 feet, curl hopping and throwing it and the radar gun says 90. And you’re a 90 mile an hour thrower now. Cool, so let’s take it back up on this formula, we talked about deadlift, we talked about barbell reverse lunge, what’s up next? – [Josh] We look at the chin up as our key force transfer. So we look at can you transfer the force from your trunk stability all the way through your shoulders, all the way through your hands? So we look at a 250 pound chin up for one rep, which would be, for a 200 pound athlete we’re looking to add 50 pounds of external weight to that athlete. So strapping it on them, whether it’s a weighted vest or weights hang from belts, totalling a minimum of 250 pounds. And what that does for us is it allows us to say this athlete has enough strength to both concentrically and eccentrically. So pulling ourselves up and decelerating ourselves down from a chin up, they have enough strength to cover those motions. Which, if you think about a baseball throw we’re decelerating the second half of that throw, there’s a lot of distraction forces on our shoulder as we’re releasing that ball in that last little blip of getting that ball out of our fingertips. So with those forces, we need to make sure that we can handle that stress. And I think this is the number one factor on the 90 mile an hour formula to predict whether or not we’re gonna have a shoulder elbow injury because a lot of guys can’t control themselves all the way up and all the way down and that’s a big issue. And it needs to be full shoulder flexion arm extended at the bottom and then bring yourself all the way up without poking your neck forward and reaching with your neck. You need to be nice and fluid through that motion so that that will transfer to good mechanics on the mound and good just movement mechanics, not even arm mechanics. – [Paul] Mike Ronald was on, I’m sure you know Mike, and he was talking about how fast the arm is going and what the shoulder, everything has to stabilize. I’m pretty sure he said it was 7,000 rotation, like if you were to let it go, if you were to let the arm go and spin around, like 7,000 rotation per second, that was the speed that your arm goes from external rotation to internal rotation. Your body holds all that together pretty well. – [Josh] And that’s the thing is that a lot of the research right now, especially for UCL injuries, which is where we’re really interested because this is a pretty big epidemic we’re having right now, the research is showing that cadavers can only handle 50 newtons of valgus force on the elbow. And we can make arguments that are cadavers the right thing to be studying on or whatnot? But let’s just take that 50 number and say, alright well the body can handle 50 units of force there, but when we’re throwing it’s anywhere between 60 and 120. So where’s the rest of the make up on that? Where is the breakdown? Because we should be breaking down on every single throw. Well that means we have muscle mass that’s gonna cover those tendons and ligaments that allows us to protect those motions. So I think the breakdown is really inefficient mechanics is a huge one, too much volume of throwing, and also not having enough muscle mass and enough strength to decelerate those forces and have those forces run through the muscle mass instead of through the ligaments, which is where we get that breakdown. – [Paul] Yes, this is– I just really hope the pitching coaches are listening to this. It’s always my wish that you guys are really– What I’ve learned with guys like Josh and guys like Mike Ronald and guys, I don’t need to be as smart as them. I really don’t. I think we all bring different skillsets. What I need to do is have a relationship with them and work with them and we kind of put the– I like to use the chocolate and the peanut butter together and now we’ve got something that just makes the whole thing taste good. So I think, I hope that, as you’re listening to this you’re seeing that there’s a lot– You need a lot of people to kind of help you through this. Whether you’re a coach, you’re a player, you’re a parent, just have more voices in there. This stuff, I listen to it all day, but I just learned a long time ago that I’m gonna let these guys be really good and what they do and I’m gonna be really good at what I do and I’m gonna try and make friends will all these guys and have relationships with them so that we work together for the betterment of all of our pitchers. So this last one is interesting to me, I love this one. We’re gonna talk about, we talked about it a little bit before but let’s talk about your body weight of where that needs to be in this formula. – [Josh] Yeah and that body weight number, like I said before, it needs to be that 2.5 times your body weight in height in inches is our minimum body weight. So like I said before if I’m 5’6″, excuse me, 5’9″ I need to be 172 pounds is give or take where it needs to be. And then the last one I have here is the arm power category, which we need to throw a minimum of 300 feet in long toss. And that’s something that we don’t really work on with our athletes too much. That’s where we rely on the pitching coaches and the baseball coaches to oversee making sure that they’re progressing with their long toss and making sure that they’re including that. Because just basic physics, and we can argue again on launch angles and all that, and crow hopping and all that stuff, all I want to know with the 90 mile an hour formula is can we cover that amount of ground? If you can cover 300 feet, generally speaking, you can throw 90 miles an hour and it has to come 90 miles an hour out of the hand. So we know that you have it in you. Now can you translate that onto the mound? – [Paul] Right, right. So when you talk about body weight and gaining weight, let’s just clarify here that you’re not talking about stopping at Dairy Queen on the way home from school every day, correct? That’s not the real plan. – [Josh] No, the goal is obviously muscle mass because muscle mass is gonna be able to generate force. I will say that I think that, we never want our athletes to be overweight. One for health reasons, but also too just because that’s not gonna really add much to their ability as far as generating that force. But what we have noticed, and if you look right through the hard throwers of the MLB, take a guy like CC Sabathia, I mean he’s got a lot of weight behind him and he’s got a lot of extra fat to him. And I’m not advocating that anybody should get– Don’t get on the 90 mile an hour formula and get fat, that’s not the goal. The goal is to get lean and strong. But I think being five or six percent body fat as a pitcher may be detrimental in the long run. I think that there may be a more optimal range of that eight to 15% body fat range, or eight to 12% just because there’s no need to be super lean and you’re not fighting your– You’re not trying to overcome your body like you are with sprinting or running. So a little extra fat mass is not a terrible thing. And, again, I’m not advocating to be fat I’m just saying that I think that momentum potential is important, it’s a key piece of the puzzle, and we want as much muscle mass as we can get on those athletes, but we also want to make sure that we can get as much weight as we can on them, too, to make sure that they can generate that force and be healthy. So its’ a nice balance of all of those qualities. – [Paul] And I think, I’m sure we’re on the same page here where I see a lot of players and I hear this a lot from dads like, “He’s so muscular, he looks great, “and he’s got abs and he’s got all of these things.” And in the back of my mind I’m going, “Boy, you wasted a lot of time on things that look good. “Maybe if you didn’t waste so much time on that stuff “you could spend some time on things that will actually “help like developing muscle mass and maybe not being “so worried about being shredded.” It’s okay if you’ve got a few pounds on there. Just give me your thoughts around that. ‘Cause I know it’s something that dads, they face, but they all want to– They translate, hey the kid looks good, that must mean he’s gonna play good. – [Josh] Right and I think I would rather take our athletes who can move well through the formula and can do their– 250 pound chin up is no easy task for someone that does not do chin ups regularly. It is, there’s a lot that needs to go on there and a little secret of chin ups is that you’re gonna have to overcome your body weight at some point. So you’re gonna want to be leaner to be able to hit your chin ups in body weight. And I think that the number here of 250 pounds for one rep is our baseline, but I think it should be 250 pounds for one rep or 10 body weight chin ups is really where we’re looking at right now. The 250 pounds metric has run through with all of our athletes, but I think 10 chin ups also should be another baseline. So if you’re a 300 pound athlete I think you should be able to do 10 chin ups, which would be a very tough task. But at that point you’re gonna be a lot leaner, you’re gonna look better if you can move your body weight well, move your body well with that much body weight than just focusing on doing bicep curls or working on your abs. The end goal needs to be figured out a long time before this and I know this is stuff, I’ve seen you speak, and I know especially with hitting mechanics and throwing mechanics and stuff like that, we’ve got to figure out where you want to be and then let’s do everything possible to get you there. If you want to look great, that’s awesome and I have no problem with that. Let’s get you with someone that– If you want to be a body builder, be a body builder. The second that you start working with us and you say your goal is to be a high-level college athlete or high-level professional athlete, we’re gonna cater your training to make sure that you’re healthy enough to run onto the field every single day and be darn close to 100% if not 100% and that you’re gonna be able to move really efficiently so that you can be the best athlete on the field so that you can perform the best and you have the most opportunities. If those are not in line with your goals, then you’re not– If your training is not in line with those goals then you’re not doing the right things to reach your goals so I think that’s kind of fruitless for a lot of the athletes out there just doing bench press to look good. – [Paul] Yep, amen. Let’s give everybody all of the information on how they can contact you, there’s opportunities to work with you, you’ve got some great programs, you write this great blog and you’re also facility. Let’s give everybody all that information so they know how best to get in touch with you. – [Josh] Yeah, so the easiest way to grab me is through my personal website, joshheenan.com, our company website is advancedtherapyperformance.com, the company is Advanced Therapy and Performance. We have two locations in Connecticut, one’s in Norwalk and one is in Stanford. And I am kind of branched out through the rest of the country, but the easiest way to grab us is either through my website or @doctorheenan on Instagram. You know, I’m happy to answer emails and interact with people and always answering questions, as I know you are too. So this is a big community and we’re going to be launching a shoulder and elbow research study pretty soon where we’re gonna take in a lot of information and we want to be able to have the largest shoulder and elbow study for baseball players ever done and we would love to get to interact with every single athlete that is out there playing baseball that wants to prevent their shoulder and elbow injuries. And then we’re going to track them through a nice longitudinal study and give them some tools along the way to see if we can curtail this epidemic of some injuries. – [Paul] Awesome. So I encourage you guys to reach out and get in touch with Josh, follow what he’s doing and these are the things that I read, guys. I have to be honest with you, we’ve had Mike on, we’ve had Lance on, we’ve had all these other coaches, Chris Gizelle and these are the guys, if you want to know who’s coaching the coach, Josh and I have met but this is the first time we’ve really had a chance to talk, but he’s kind of been coaching me through all these resources he just gave you. I really look to these guys who are just so brilliant at what they do and their knowledge of the body and how they can really help us, help our pitchers. So these are the guys that are kind of coaching the coaches. So please pay attention and check out everything that he’s got. So, Josh, let’s play a game. Let’s play a little, maybe we’ll do– 20 questions, but it’ll be a few questions. In one word, baseball health. – [Josh] Proactive. – [Paul] Baseball health. – Proactive. – Nice. What’s your favorite exercise? You personally. – [Josh] Uh, the push up. – [Paul] What do you think the first thing every pitcher should do after he listens to this podcast? – [Josh] Uh, sign up for my newsletter. I really think there’s a lot of good information. Honestly, no– – I agree. – [Josh] A lot of good information and a couple hours of presentation for free out there and question what they’re, what people are saying. If I had all the answers, like I said to you before, every one of our athletes would be throwing 100 miles an hour. I really, I cherish what you’re doing, I cherish what Phil does, Mike, Bryan Dinacrio is my righthand man at Stanford, we banter and question stuff every day. We don’t all agree on everything. There’s a lot of questions to be answered and I think you’ve got to be proactive with your questions and make sure that you’re not just taking anything I say for granted ’cause I might not be right. – [Paul] What does every baseball dad need to know to help their kid succeed? – [Josh] At the beginning they’ve got to be having a great time and having fun and doing it for the right reasons and then they need to treat their body as a temple and they need to learn to move well. Once they move well, really good things happen very quickly. – [Paul] What’s your favorite team? – [Josh] Boston Red Sox. – [Paul] Favorite player. Okay so we’re recording this after game one of the World Series, who wins the World Series and in how many games? – [Josh] I go Astros in five. – [Paul] Wow! Wow! Really? – Yep. – [Paul] I’ve got to know why. – [Josh] I could be wrong. I like, you know, I like their chemistry, I really do. That is a bold statement, but I just, I like their chemistry, I like what they’re bringing. I mean this may turn out completely opposite of that, they may lose it in five but I just have a good feeling about the Astros right now. – [Paul] You’ve coached a lot of athletes and this will be the last question, there are some athletes that are just better humans, Lebron James was born with things that you and I don’t have. But there’s guys that seem to make the most with what they’ve got. What do you feel, the athletes you’ve coached, what’s special about the guys that have achieved the most? – [Josh] They are so hungry for knowledge and so hungry to get out there and challenge things every single day. It’s a battle and I think that they just want to learn and they want to get better and they won’t accept no for an answer. – [Paul] Awesome. So guys, if you’re in any of those areas that you can get access to Josh or access to one of his trainers he’s working with, I would encourage you to do that. I would encourage you to go to joshheeenan.com, sign up for the newsletter, get on the list because first question I asked Josh was baseball health and he said proactive. And I know he’s probably as frustrated as I am that a lot of times nobody cares about an injury until they’re hurt. But the biggest thing that we see, and I think that’s why guys like us, we get more passionate about this, more frustrated at it ’cause we see so much on the other side. And it’s kind of like one of those things where you don’t know until it happens to you. And the odds are if you’re gonna pitch for any length of time, if you’re 15 years old, you plan on pitching for the next 10 years, you’re gonna have something, you’re gonna have something. And be proactive about it is really the key and going to Josh’s site, getting on his blog, following what he does, he has information that we are not gonna be able to provide you. I wish we could, it’s not what God made me. So get on their list, follow what Josh is doing and I know it’ll help you. So Josh thanks so much for coming on, I appreciate your time and wish you all the best, man. – [Josh] Hey, thanks for putting this out, this is resources I wish we had when we were younger and I’m glad that we’re able to get this out and provide good stuff and have people start asking better questions.