– [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.