Mark Bell's Power Project - From Powerlifting to Pro Baseball: Eric Cressey on Building Elite Athletes

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Avoid common mistakes in powerlifting training and transform your strength game with insights from Eric Cressey. 💥 Join Mark Bell's Power Project as we dive deep into powerlifting principles, injury prevention, and training smarter to build a stronger, healthier you.Key highlights from this episode:- The foundational principles of powerlifting for athletes of all levels.- How to avoid overtraining and balance strength with mobility.- The role of rotational movements and variability in athletic performance.- Expert advice on preventing injuries like shoulder and elbow pain.- Inside look at Eric Cressey’s work with professional athletes, including MLB players.CHAPTERS:00:00 - Intro01:18 - Powerlifting Principles in Baseball02:05 - What to Leave Out in Training03:17 - Overview of Cressey Performance09:14 - Simplifying Shoulder Health09:52 - Understanding Rotational Capacity17:44 - The Role of Fascia in Performance20:10 - Effectiveness of Fascia Training24:10 - Importance of the Fascial System26:20 - Specificity in Sports Training29:50 - Mark's Love for Xero Shoes31:50 - Impact of Early Sports Specialization37:05 - Movement Symmetry in Athletics39:17 - Techniques to Throw Faster42:30 - Throwing Mechanics Explained44:50 - Utilizing Clubs and Kettlebells46:07 - Benefits of Methylene Blue48:15 - Favorite Exercises Discussed50:15 - Trends in Sports Injuries53:40 - Understanding Overuse Injuries56:30 - Experience Working for the Yankees57:00 - Personal Training Insights58:55 - Safe Strength Training Tips01:01:39 - Golfer's Elbow and Tennis Elbow01:04:03 - Surprising Aids for Athletes01:05:40 - Finding Eric Cressey OnlineSpecial perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!Best 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!

Baseball's in a terrible spot right now, to be honest. You know, I don't think you can ever go wrong recapturing rotation with people who have lost it. You know, the principles of powerlifting, obviously in moderation, apply to pretty much every sport. So for us, we quickly realized that, you know, it wasn't good enough just to like, be a strength and addition coach

that happened to work with baseball players. We needed to figure out how to deliver a really comprehensive offering for them. We do some very advanced stuff. Our pitching coaches have to have access to all the data that our strength addition coaches are integrating in their assessments. What's happening in baseball, you have this meteoric rise in fastball velocity. It's a steady linear trend over the last 20 plus years. And then concurrently, injury rates go right alongside of it.

All right, Eric Cressy, welcome to the show. It's been a long time since I've seen you in person. I think I maybe only met you maybe once or twice, but the last time I saw you, I think was at a Powerlifting meet 20 something years ago. You're not kidding. Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. And then that, the last time I saw you was APF Senior Nationals and that ended up being

part of the film Bigger Stronger Faster. Wow, that's a throwback. And it was 2005. I know we had a really good time at the Bellagio after I bombed out of that meet. ended up being part of the film Bigger Stronger Faster. It's a, wow, that's a throwback. And it was 2005. I know we had a really good time at the Bellagio after I bombed out of that meet, so. Are you still dead lifting these days? I am a little bit less after a meniscus surgery

a couple years ago, so I'm trying to be a little bit more responsible at age 43, but yeah, still move some weight around a little bit. So a lot of people know you from the baseball world. You work with a lot of professional athletes. Are you having these athletes also utilize some methods that you utilized in powerlifting? Yeah, I think the principles of powerlifting,

obviously in moderation, apply to pretty much every sport. You've got to get athletes strong. You've got to create adaptation, whether it's trying to put some muscle mass on guys, trying to get some endocrine benefits with in-season season training and then obviously I I talk a lot about strengths the foundation For everything right you you can't have speed you can have agility You can have joint stability if you don't have some underlying strengths So I think a lot of those principles from my early days certainly sustain obviously modified approach

But no doubt about it it impacts me every day Is there anything that you somewhat like leave out? You know, I mean some athletes don't mess with Olympic lifting at all. Yeah. I'm curious if there's anything that you purposefully just like don't mess with when it comes to training baseball players. Yeah. I'd say, you know, I think the Olympic lifts are great. I just, I don't think the juice is probably worth the squeeze in the baseball population. I think we can get a lot of the things that we need, you know, a little bit safer, you

know, a little bit more awareness of, you know, elbow, wrist, hand health in a population that kind of makes their money throwing a five ounce baseball where they have to manipulate things that are really high level here. But I think just beyond that, like the carryover just wasn't quite as good as we saw with a lot of our rotational power initiatives, things like that. So I'd much rather take the time we might spend on that and save some time, focus on jumping whether it's loaded and unloaded jumping, but then throwing med balls, sprint, change of direction.

There's different ways to move fast and really get the benefits. And I think the most important thing is that you have a rationale for doing it. And for us, we do a lot of force velocity profiling, a lot of force plate jumps, a lot of rotational power testing. And the biggest thing is that there's gotta be carryover and there's gotta be a level of individualization that drives all of your programming. Can you give us an idea of Cressy performance so people can understand?

Cuz I'm not gonna be able to do it justice, but a good friend, Jesse Burdick, I know that you know Jesse very well and Jesse works with baseball players. Your facility seems extremely sophisticated. It seems like you have a lot of people that work under you. You have people that intern and that, you know, kind of get into performance through some of your teachings and some of the things you're doing, but like the assessments that you guys do,

I think are some next level things. You're not gonna necessarily train a first baseman the same way maybe you train an outfielder and so forth. And it's not to overcomplicate things, it's to maybe address maybe these patterns that you've recognized over the years. So can you kind of give us a little bit of a view of what it'd be like to

step into your facility and to work with you? Yeah, sure. So just for context, I finished grad school 100% thinking I was going to be a college basketball strength and conditioning coach. I was at the University of Connecticut 2003 to 2005. I was fortunate, I had some really good mentors and I was basically in a weight room with four number one teams in the country between men's and women's basketball and men's and women's soccer, and that was kind of my wheelhouse. So I had some opportunities

to kind of go into college basketball, and there was an opportunity in the private sector that kind of came up and led me to Massachusetts, and it just so happened that some of the first players I started working with were baseball guys. And I was actually a tennis player growing up, had a bum shoulder because of that experience. So I kind of always had that upper extremity health focus

in a lot of my writings and my readings and all that. And one athlete became two athletes and two became four, four became eight. And just how it works, word of mouth spreads. And over the course of time, we built this kind of baseball empire up in Massachusetts. And eventually it led to a second facility down here in Florida

where I am now and I also work as director of player health and performance for the New York Yankees. So what it's really afforded us is just an opportunity to really build a giant sample size in baseball and then also to some degree I think it's maybe similar to what you kind of saw with what Joe DeFranco was doing in the football community is like you're trying to find an underserved population and really give it a higher level of individualization. So for us, we quickly realized that it wasn't good enough just to be a strength and conditioning coach that happened to work with baseball players.

We needed to figure out how to deliver a really comprehensive offering for them. So what did that mean? It mean bringing in pitching coaches, bringing in hitting coaches. We have analysts on staff, we have massage therapists, we have physical therapists, you know we have kind of this built-out crew of you know strength addition coaches obviously as well but people that really understand the game. So you know if you walked into a Cressy Sports performance facility you know for here in Palm Beach Gardens with me you know obviously go through a you know with health history and we do a

thorough evaluation and movement screen you know looking at joint range of motion looking at some you know actual functional health history and we do a thorough evaluation of movement screen, you know, looking at joint range of motion, looking at some, you know, actual functional movement tests, things like that. We'd be jumping on force plates to do some force velocity profile in that way. You know, we get on proteus to do some rotational power testing. We use the 1080, you know, for speed testing, you can get right left asymmetry on, you know, on sprint tests and things like that. That's a newer offering that we've rolled out. You've got dynamometer testing just to look at manual muscle strength at specific joints. And then actually once you get outside

and start working with some of our coaches, you get a wide variety of things that you might utilize. Obviously like a track man, with something that measures ball flight characteristics for pitchers and hitters. It can measure launch angle, exit velocity for hitters, things like that. But you can also look at spin rate,

spin axis, all these different things that allow us to work with, you know, our pitchers, we use edutronic cameras, it's like $8,000 camera that, you know, looks at like pitch profiles. So if we're looking to change somebody's slider grip, or something like that, it's a way to really hone in on on that side of things. And then we use a markerless biomechanics setup called FIA, which is a collection of a bunch of cameras that side of things. And then we use a markerless biomechanics setup called FIA, which is a collection of a bunch of cameras

that we can take out on the field and actually kind of bring a biomechanics lab to the athlete. I think one of the shortcomings of a lot of the tech out there is it kind of puts you in this lab environment. And I love the idea of actually getting data on guys that are in cleats, throwing off a dirt mound, even with a kind of a fake hitter in the box just to simulate who

they really are. So we do some very advanced stuff in that regard. What I think is, is really important to me with respect to all that assessment stuff, though, is, is two things. One, it has to be a synergistic offering, meaning, our pitching coaches have to have access to all the data that our strength edition coaches are integrating in their assessments, right? We need to look at how they move on force plates. You know, if a guy's at 2.6 peak velocity

on a force plate, he's never going to move fast on a mountain. He's just slow, weak, deconditioned. Like there's a lot of things that they just can't do with an athlete like that. Versus a guy who jumps at 3.5, like, you know, he's jump out of the gym, athleticism, you can do a lot more with that guy. So I think that's vitally important. And then the second part of it is like, you never want to collect data just to collect data. It always has to drive some kind of decision making. Otherwise, you're just, you know, spending money on expensive equipment for no reason. So over the course of time, like we've built out a really expensive offering that they can serve different populations obviously what we can do with our big league guys who were we're very very you know nuanced and experienced you know in terms of what we can do with helping them to sequence and you know generate scouting reports for how they're gonna attack opposing

lineups you know it gets more and more advanced when you go from the you know the 12 or 13 year old kid all the way up into the more advanced athlete but big picture you know we're actually going through a big renovation right now. Our Florida facility is going to be a 19,000 square foot training facility plus a 12,000 square foot baseball operations building. We have a full size stadium, 100 yards of turf right next to it. So it's, it's kind of like our own little spring training complex here in the paradise of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

That's incredible. I just want to, you know, it's good to paint that picture for the audience and then say, okay, this is how it pertains to you. Because a lot of them don't have, you know, multi-million dollar arms, right? Yeah. You know, it's probably a little frustrating.

I know you're a very positive guy. It's probably a little frustrating sometimes to see like on Instagram or some of these things where these are three things you can do for your shoulder. And you're like, oh my God, there's like 19,000 things that you could do for your shoulder that could be helpful. And sometimes it's hard to assess and it's hard to just give information to the masses like that. But what are some things that maybe have shocked you or surprised you when somebody does have a shoulder injury and you worked on maybe other areas, maybe you worked on an oblique or a hip or a quad

or something like that and it had really upstream benefit to the shoulder. Yeah, I mean I think, you know, especially, you know, kind of we talked about power lifting a little bit before. You know, I don't think you can ever go wrong and this isn't just shoulder related, this is everything. I don't think you could ever go wrong recapturing rotation with people who have lost it, right?

Like, you know, all of us at one point or another were, you know, 14, 15 year old athletes playing multiple sports, like change in direction, sprinting, like we were going through a wide variety of activities and being athletic and I think over the course of time, like the quest to get, you know, to get bigger and stronger, you know, lots of classic bilateral exercises and, you know, usually happens alongside the time when we just stopped doing as many pure athletic things. We don't play ultimate frisbee with our buddies.

We don't play tag as kids. I think we see a lot of people who just lose rotational capacity, right? So that's not just shoulder internal and external rotation. That's thoracic spine rotation. That's cervical rotation. That's hip rotation. Even tibial internal rotation.

And I think you see a lot of people as they lose that, they kind of just become cement blocks. And they don't have arms when they walk and things like that. So I think when I evaluate a lot of athletes, really anybody, that's something I'm looking at. It's like what range of motion was there that they lost as a negative outcome

from the training process. There are different ways to attack it. I think, you know, Bill Hartman has done some really cool stuff with his model, talking a lot about wide versus narrow and for certain angles. And you know, I think we've probably seen a lot of these like narrow ISA athletes, you know, kind of your six foot three, 185 pound, like triple jumpers, you know, elite, you know, shooting guards who are just really, really athletic. And, you know, we put them in a weight room for five years and we took away some of their

superpowers and made them a little bit too stiff. And, you know, I think at the end of the spectrum, we have the guys that were built square that are meant to be, you know, NFL offensive linemen and fullbacks who thrive on that side of things. So it's all about, you know, working with whatever athletes in front of you, but, you know, specific to the shoulder, if you can recapture some rotation, I think it goes a long way because you're in many cases, you're just giving people more degrees of freedom to be successful, right? Like more ways that you can reach the back

seat and, you know, hand your kid a drink while you're driving or, you know, put your seatbelt on, you know, when you're, when you're just trying to find motion wherever you can get it. And Eric, I kind of want to, I want to get into a little bit of detail what you mentioned in terms of losing that rotational ability, because, you know, I think one thing that a lot of people mentioned is like, Okay, you know what, if you can lift, but then you can maintain something, some activity that allows you these athletic rotational outputs. That's the key, right? Because I think some people think that it's a myth that if you are doing these sagittal plane movements over and over over time, they think that no, that doesn't make you less athletic. That makes you bigger, stronger, faster, right? So what in what context does this happen to people so people can really understand what you're saying?

I think it's a bell curve, right? There's like this point of diminishing returns. I always tell the story like we see these like, you know, I use the example, like six foot three, 180 pound pitcher, right? High school kid who's, you know, throwing 86 to 88 miles an hour. He's, you know, most athletic kid in high school goes to play division one baseball, right? And what happens freshman year, he puts on 25 pounds, fills out, you know, big upper back, you know, basically his butt and hamstrings and quads

get a bunch bigger and all of a sudden he's throwing 90 to 92, so everybody's happy. There's a great outcome there. And then obviously the window of adaptation gets a little bit smaller for a guy like that. So sophomore year, maybe it's 92, 93. And then often like junior year, that same kid's got low back pain.

He regresses, you know, struggles with his delivery, just can't seem to find his way. And in many cases, it's just because they they gave him too much of a good thing, right? I think those athletes sometimes start to have, you know, consequences that go with it. So we need to make sure that anytime we add, you know, a lot of conventional lifting stuff like that, we got to, you know, pair it with the right mobility exercises, we got to pair it with, you know, things that expose them to a wide variety of activities, you know, you know, keep throwing bad balls, keep changing direction, keep doing all those things that made you successful in the first place. And to be honest, like pro pro baseball has been

very eye opening for me, this is, you know, kind of a sidetrack to it. But I think when we evaluate baseball players, we've always been, you know, kind of tricked into thinking that like high school players always have the biggest window of adaptation, right? Because they haven't had good nutrition and good training. Like I've been stunned at some of the crazy improvements that we've seen in college players that that you know, we've been around in professional baseball, the 21 year old guys who literally dropped like 15 pounds of body fat and put on 15 pounds of muscle mass in the first year like we have You know Dexa scans and things like that that'll blow your mind like the the force put qualities You know jump off the page at you and you're like holy cow Did you just like skip lifting and just like live in the cafeteria for the last three years at that? ACC or SEC school you were at so I think you know there are times honestly where bad training is worse than no training at All like sometimes if we left an athlete alone, he was gonna self organize pretty darn well

and make himself into a first rounder and the training process actually got in the way. With that said though, there are some like really, really good guys out there that are doing an awesome job with blending the two, right? You'll get like a Rick Fransbaugh and Beck Clemson, great strength Edition coach, super in tune with all this stuff.

He gets his guys strong, but they're still really good movers, great rotators. So there are people that are figuring things out and delivering good comprehensive offerings to their athletes. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they wanna do is put you on pills.

Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with him more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tanned. A lot of us just wanna look good, feel good. And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have, high cholesterol or these various things, it's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work

as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing, they can look at your cholesterol, they can look at the various markers that you have, and they can kind of see where you're at, and they can help guide you through that. And there's a few aspects too, where it's like,

yes, I mean, no, no shades of doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coordinators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle, because there's a lot of things

you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into

the Hulk. But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys. When you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels

for everything you're working with. Whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good bro. Even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what type of things you can do in terms of your lifestyle. And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to,

to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do.

Sometimes it's supplementation, sometimes it's TRT, and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, head to MerrickHealth.com and use code PowerProject for 10% off any panel

of your choice. It was a while back, but I tweaked my shoulder quite a bit and it was one of the annoying things that I couldn't quite figure out. I did some Myofascial release and a bunch of other things for it and it just, nothing was really working. And then I decided to throw a four pound and a six pound med ball.

And I noticed I could throw the med ball really well. Like I could, for me I could throw it really well. And I was like, that's really weird. How am I able to throw this, but I can barely raise my arm over my head. And I certainly wouldn't have been able to throw like a baseball or something, like a wiffle ball or something would have killed me.

Why is that so? Like why can you get almost like a recovery response from trying to move something heavier? Yeah, I think for sure. As a good rule of thumb, the lighter the implement, the faster you're gonna move. So a guy like you, everyone has the example, like go and try to throw a tennis ball versus a baseball.

Like you kind of guard. The tennis ball should move faster and the last thing you wanna do is let it go and have your arm go flying off your body at the same time. So I do think to some degree like that's one of the beautiful things about med balls is you can train them with crazy frequency. Like I'm always amazed that we can like have guys that you know get after it with med balls, you know four plus days a week and it doesn't seem to beat them up versus if I had them go out and try to throw a five ounce baseball, you know 95 every day with the same of intensity, like it would beat him up quite a bit.

But you know, I think you touched on another really important topic is like the, you know, the role for manual therapy. I mean, it's been on cave paintings for, you know, four to 5,000 years for a reason, like massage works. I think there are a lot of people out there who like to argue on the internet about whether it works and you know, what kind is better and all that stuff. It's like, it's probably different for everybody. Like I don't feel very much better if I dry needle,

but if you throw a cup on me and just drag it, I feel like a million bucks for a couple weeks. And I think everybody's a little bit different in how they respond. And we're starting to get more and more, I think good research like Sue Falzone's presented on some really good stuff that just looks at like kind of how fascial layers are gliding

Pre-imposed treatment so like to your point like you've lifted some really heavy stuff over the years, right? You're you're very dense Like it's very different than someone who just bodybuild it for a long time and maybe just hasn't have like the same kind of density Of their tissues so you're probably a guy who you know got some stuff gliding just a little bit better You were able to like tap into that fascial system a little bit better, you were able to like tap into that facial system a little bit better and, you know, be a little bit more elastic instead of just trying to muscle through everything.

Okay, Eric, man, all the things that you mentioned are really cool, especially the facial aspect of it because right now there seems to be, you're not, you probably don't pay much attention to social media, which is probably a great thing, but there is a fight between two sects of coaches on social media. There's these coaches that are coming out,

sharing a lot of information on improving your fascia to improve your movement. And then there are coaches on the more traditional side of things who are saying, there's no research to back any of this up. This is woo-woo stuff. You can't train your fascia. Even myofascial release and that type of work is woo

woo and there's no research behind it. And I think when people are seeing this stuff, they're seeing the benefits that these fascial coaches are finding and they're seeing all these before and afters of movement and they're like, well, I see something here but this coach says there's no research and fascia is a myth. So from you practicing this stuff, seeing this stuff in action, what is your, what do you take away from it so far about the facial side of things and maybe its importance

or what's overblown? Yeah, I think number one takeaway is that there are a lot of people like to argue on the internet, right? They'll find anything, it's like, hey, people feel better. Especially if you get a good manual therapist that has a good diagnostic capability. Here's what I can tell you. I mean, I've seen scenarios of people who have gone through, you know, months and months of failed rehab for a bum shoulder, and somebody

throws one dry needle in an infraspinatus and their pain goes away after, you know, being told they needed surgeries and all this stuff like, you know, like I've said, it's an extreme example. But there's a whole lot about the body that we don't know. I remember Thomas Myers who wrote Anatomy Trains, you know, super bright guy in this world. Back in 2008 or nine when I saw him talk, he said we probably know about 25%

of what we need to know about the fascial system. So, you know, fast forward, you know, well over a decade, now probably 16 years, like we probably, maybe we know 50% right now, we're getting better diagnostic capabilities just to kind of see what actually happens pre and post treatment. But I think it's a really, really hard thing unless you've seen a large body of like people getting better with it.

It does make a discernible difference. The research is also very challenging to look at with respect to massage. Like I actually remember, I can't remember which Olympics it was, but they actually showed that athletes who had more massage performed worse at the Olympics. So the initial takeaway, you know, if you just casually hear that in conversation is that massage makes the athlete world worse, but if it's not a controlled study, maybe the athletes who are already injured were seeking out massage more often. Maybe the athletes who are lazy and

didn't want to put in the work to prepare, were more interested just laying on a table and getting treated every day. And then you hear stories about like a Roger Federer, like living on a massage table, and he had one of the longest tennis careers you can imagine, like, I think it all comes down to matching the athlete to the intervention. But put it this way, I don't think that there's any debate that the fascial system plays a massive role in high performance right we wouldn't see so many freak athletes like you guys follow

tennis at all like yeah so we trained Riley Opelka who's you know been top 20 in the world one of the best servers of all time he's seven feet tall like watching Riley pay tennis is is like sitting front-row at an NBA game Like freakish athletic little changed my perspective on us as a lot of citizen. I sat in the coach's box the US Open I think it was 2021 just to see it's like the the most insane You know change of direction like and Riley's actually pretty impressive guy in the weight room But his his like tenons are this long like there. There's no muscle bellies on somebody that tall.

If we're just trying to do this from a pure muscular strength standpoint, you can't accomplish what these people do. Look at Jacob deGrom, throwing up 103 miles an hour at probably 175 pounds, you know, at six foot three, six foot four, the amount of forces that are being imparted into these objects, it just doesn't make sense from a pure muscular strength

standpoint. And it's especially fascinating because it's such a finely tuned thing, right? Like I was a little dude that deadlifted a lot of weight, like, I just got really good at being a one trick pony, like, you asked me to like help you move a couch, I'm probably no better than the guy like down the street, right? I just think we have athletes that understand how to really, really wire certain patterns. They've done some imaging on javelin throwers and how they're throwing shoulder adapts. There's just so much more to high performance that we can't really necessarily define that

absolutely isn't there. And in the meantime, people like to get clicks. What do you think about like partial range of motion stuff because I'm imagining with like a seven footer you know you might some some coaches might be excited to try to teach most of these athletes mainly what they know and then sometimes because of what they know they're trying to have an athlete like that you know do like an astrograph squat or something like that and I'm not saying that an astrograph squat would be pointless for him I'm just saying that it might be easier especially to get to work right away. Yeah utilizing some partial range of motion work

Yeah for sure. I think I think it's more specific to the athlete than the height, you know I think there are times when there's Put it this way. There's a consequence to everything right if if you walk in and you know You just tend to that your shoulder stuff in the, and you've got shoulder flexion to 80 degrees, and I asked you to go push press, it's probably not going to end well, right? Like you're going to find lumbar extension and wind up with a, you know, some kind of back pain as a result, or you're just going to plow through the front

of your shoulder and wind up with symptoms there. So what I would say is I've seen, you know, guys who are, you know, seven feet tall that move brilliantly, and could, you know, take a front squat and put their butt on their heels and it's pristine. Or maybe they can do it if you give them a goblet set up and you put them on a slant board and you kind of give them some kind of a modifier that allows them to reposition their center of mass a little bit better.

So I just try to stay away from absolutes because I've seen athletes that you would never think can do this stuff stuff handle it really really well But at the end of the spectrum, I've seen you know woefully under prepared 13 year old kids who should be able to do pretty much everything you know who come in and you know They're they're like a newborn giraffe On the note of like, you know younger athletes and maybe some athletes in general of like, you know, younger athletes and maybe some athletes in general. And pertaining to baseball, it seems like a sport, it takes a certain type of athleticism. So you're going to see a baseball players, the general avatar for

baseball players different than most football players, right? They don't necessarily all look like they're super athletic, but they are. Right. So I wonder, when it comes to specificity of sport, do you think that? Playing or doing more different things would be better than just repetitively doing that specific sport and I'm thinking of baseball specifically because of the amount of throwing that's involved and Probably the amount of dominant side rotational throwing and I just wonder over years of doing that same side What that could potentially cause? I just wonder over years of doing that same side, what that could potentially cause.

Yeah, for sure. So a couple questions layered in there, so I'll try to hit them one by one. The first thing I'll say is that like, I don't know, you're good, man. It was great conversation material. The first thing is early sports specialization doesn't work, right?

Like outside of very specific initiatives, things like figure skating, maybe gymnastics, where athletes peak very, very early. And frankly, those are largely just who survives and doesn't get hurt. I think for the most part, nothing matters with respect to specialization prior to puberty. Like play as many different things as you possibly can

until 12, 13, and then maybe you start to narrow the scope a little bit more. And the research is honestly pretty compelling on that side of things. And it's interesting because I have twin 10 year olds and a six year old, all girls. And we're kind of in this world where gymnastics is trying to like force them into this, you know, one sport year round kind of dynamic when they still like playing softball, we have one that does dance, one that's doing soccer. It's just, it's, there's a lot of layers to it.

Now that I'm a parent, I actually see it through a very different lens than just the coach who would always just rant and rave about it from afar. But in general, there are certain adaptations you do need for baseball. So one of the things that you see in a throwing shoulder, you have a growth plate at your proximal humerus right up by your shoulder. And everyone's born with tons and tons of retroversion that allows for you to lay your arm back quite a bit. And over the course of time as we age, we just get more and more antiverted, you know, kind of shift towards internal rotation. And what they've shown is that kids that throw in their dominant shoulder, they preserve that retroversion. So they basically work the growth plate at the top portion of their

upper arm. And what it does is it gives rise to more external rotation. So more ability to lay the arm back during the throwing motion. And it's interesting, like this is kind of where the phrase throw like a girl comes from, if you really think about it. Most of the time when you hear somebody who throws like a girl, it's very pushy. Like the elbow is out in front of the shoulder by a lot. And it's because people don't have retroversion

of their humorous. You can actually see if you go watch a first pitch like George Bush, one of the Texas Rangers, laid his arm back pristine, Barack Obama, a basketball player didn't have a lot of retroversion. You can see in their deliveries, they're actually very different. And they actually did a controlled study

that looked at European soccer players and they didn't have retroversion in their throwing shoulders. So the joke is you don't throw like a girl, you throw like a European soccer player. But the point is that you do need to do enough just to adapt. And I think what we see sometimes is when people

have awkward like throwing motions, a lot of times it's because they just don't have the ability to lay their arm back because they didn't do enough younger. And it's why you don't see a lot of people like take up baseball and be very good when they're like 16 or 17 Versus like you know you have someone that's like athletic and they go out and they just become a great wide receiver because they ran track

So mark you have been loving wearing these Paloovus for a long time Why is it that you like these shoes that look like this? I'm trying to get my feet to be jacked You know, I think it's funny how sometimes people will when I wear these these shoes, they're like, oh, those are different. And I'm like, well, maybe you should blame God because this is the human foot. This is the way that it looks. But Paluvas are awesome because it's gonna allow you to train your feet and train your toes

and allow for that toe spread because you got the five finger toe thing going on. It's like a, like put on a glove for your feet. It feels amazing. It's like walking around with toe spacers. We've been working on our feet for a long time now. You always hear the benefit of people talking about these tribes who have gone without shoes forever,

and they have this toe space and have these amazing feet. And these shoes will allow you to just passively get that back by walking around. You don't realize what a disadvantage you're at when your foot is all clumped together from the football cleats or soccer cleats or whatever else you were wearing when you were young. And so it's nice to be able to splay your toes.

In addition to that though, one thing I love about Paloova is the fact that it's not a regular barefoot shoe. I do love barefoot shoes as well, but it also has appropriate padding. And when you're stepping on some crazy pebbles and rocks and different things, like when I'm out on a run, some terrain is a little different than others. I don't have to be worried that I'm gonna get

some sort of stabbing crazy thing happening to my foot because it has an appropriate amount of cushion underneath the foot and guys Paluva has a lot of different styles on their website I think one of the newest styles they just came out with which is a little bit more of a rigorous do is the strand ATR it's not these these are the strands but the ATRs have a little bit more of a rigorous do is the Strand ATR. It's not these, these are the Strands, but the ATRs have a little bit more, if you wanna go hiking with them, you totally can. Those are amazing.

If you go out, throw those on and go sprint on a field, and your feet feel so strong, grabbing the grass and being able to actually grab the ground with your foot feels amazing. I'm more of a chill guy with my Paluva, so I like the Zen slip-ons, but that's the thing. With Paluva, there's a lot of different options. So if you head to Paluva.com and use code powerproject,

you'll be able to save 15% off your entire purchase. And they also have toe socks. Their five feet of your toe socks are no show, so check those out too. What about the injuries that you start to see when someone does specialize? I mean, you see that a lot with baseball. I have some friends, family friends and stuff like that.

And their kid, unfortunately, needed like an elbow surgery and they're like in 11th grade, you know, and it's because they started playing baseball and they were like five years old type thing and they've started pitching right away and things like that. Yeah, baseball is in a terrible spot right now, to be honest. You know, it's at all levels, like people hear about all the Major League Baseball players that are having a lot of injuries but the truth is that the injury rates are astronomically higher you know in college and the amateur ranks like they actually did a study that Pac-12 baseball injury rates went up 500% over I think it was 2019 to 2024 give or take take, it was a study that just came out recently,

like insane number of injuries. You know, and not only that, they're not just more injuries, they're longer ones, they're Tommy John surgeries where you're out for 14 months. And a lot of it's just this trickle down effect of, you know, excessive sports specialization, you know, thinking you can do it faster, you know, playing way more, playing for multiple teams.

But I think also it's like, it's a very never-ending quest for velocity. We see everybody just chasing and chasing and chasing the ability to throw hard, and it's just, it's more forces on the elbow and the shoulder. So I think we're seeing these problems across all sports, but they're particularly problematic in baseball. Very simply, baseball is the, you know, throwing a throwing a baseball at 7,000 degrees of internal rotation per second. It's the fastest motion documented in sports.

And it's a hinge joint that's asked to do something that it probably wasn't really made to do. Certainly not made to do 100 times every three hours. So I think we're seeing a lot of big problems. The tricky thing right now, though, is a lot of those young kids that were broken and overused at a really young age are now becoming your major leaguers. And the challenge is what do you, you know, it used to be like, all right, your elbow, you know, gets beaten up, you have a Tommy John surgery at 31 years old that saves your career so you can pitch a few more years. Now we have Tommy John surgeries and 15 year

olds. So what happens when they're drafted at 21 and they blow it out again at 23? Like we have guys that are on their third ligament in professional baseball now and like the inside of your elbow like that meatal epicondyle is not very big. You can only drill it so many times and put in new ligaments. So um we're at a really big crossroads in baseball. Like you know I've been very like adamant very public about it that Major League Baseball needs to intervene more you know because they're they're celebrating the high performance and the guys throwing a hundred miles an hour and all that stuff but there's never gonna be a trickle-down effect to the younger levels until they take a step back and realize that they're

really just copying what all the big leaguers are doing. How could they intervene do you think what are some things they could do? I think a couple things one you could do a lot more in terms of like a scouting dead period to force kids to actually have periods throughout the year where they're not pitching. You know it's it's interesting. So I live in in in Jupiter, Florida. Jupiter is the single biggest underclassmen event of the year in the first two weeks in October. So you think about it like Major League Baseball players are playing in the postseason

When a bunch of high school kids are trying to just absolutely blow it out in front of a bunch of you know College and professional scouts at the end of the year when they're coasting like they're they're on fumes So I think having like a dead period on scouting like you shouldn't be evaluating kids and you know October November December Like you should actually give them a period to like recharge Do their strain the addition work get their arm care stuff in, then do a gradual build up into their season. The research is pretty compelling that kids that throw over 100 innings a year have massively higher injury rates, kids that attend showcases have massively higher injury rates. We kind of have to protect kids from themselves.

To me, it's kind of like putting the bumpers on the gutters in the bowling alley when you're at a birthday party for kids like you just have to protect them from being really really stupid. The challenge is the overwhelming majority of injuries that I see in kids and this is really sad to say all of them are 100 percent preventable like this isn't just like you got hit by a pitch and it broke it was it was usually like an idiot that wanted to win a trophy that didn't matter. Like one of our good friends, you know, is one street over, has three sons, and her middle son played in a game

where like literally an 11 year old threw 101 pitches in six innings to like win a trophy the other day. It's like, A, it's a problem because it's a cute stressor, you know, on the kid. But B, you look at the box score, and the kid also had like a double, a triple, stole three bags, all this stuff. So it's like, clearly all we're doing

is we're sending out the best player on the team to do everything and try to win a tournament. And so the side effect to that is that you have 15 other kids on the team who aren't coming back to play next year, because they didn't get innings, they didn't get at bats. At that level, the only thing that matters is that kids come back and to play next year, because they didn't get innings, they didn't get at bats. Like at that level, the only thing that matters is that kids come back and play the next year.

And unfortunately, we're trying to peak kids way too early. So like, I think we need to really, really get back to Major League Baseball advocating for multi-sport participation and, you know, in periods of like rest and recovery, and honestly like prepare your body for what's ahead. Do you think that there's anything to the idea of like movement symmetry?

I asked this like, I grapple. I've been doing judo for a very long time and for myself as a martial artist, there's a tendency to sweep your opponent to your dominant side after you've learned something. So you're doing something towards one side over and over and over. Over time I developed this lower back pain in the right side of my back

that would never go away. After a while, I started doing other practices that allowed me more rotational symmetry on the left side of my body. And then soon after that lower back pain went away, I started being able to do more stuff to my left side. Bam, right? So I'm curious, you working with rotational athletes who have dominant sides, do you think that there's anything to finding something that will allow for symmetrical amount of movement or net? Yeah. I think movement variability will never lead you wrong. Unless you're someone who's like woefully unprepared for it.

Like don't be an NFL law offensive lineman that just goes out and plays 18 holes of golf. Like, you know, like that's not going to work while you're probably going to give yourself a stress fracture, right? But if you prepare yourself over the course of time, it can really work. Like what do we see? We see a lot of people who like make a bad decision and you know rupture an Achilles or whatever it is because they don't Gradually build up to it. But what's interesting in my world and I deal with crazy Asymmetries is it's actually really hard to evaluate because sometimes their asymmetry is their superpower and sometimes it's a massive injury predisposition. So we'll see

athletes that have like literally like 50% differences in terms of how much they break on a force plate. So they go down at the bottom of a vertical jump and they literally shift to one hip and do 50% more work on that side versus the other ones and you're wrestling with like all right is this just because of this is the way that he's hit? Is this him working away from an ankle injury that was five years old that was never rehabilitated correctly? So you have to dig really deep but I would say for the overwhelming majority of people that are probably gonna listen this conversation Movement variability is always gonna be a good thing It's something that'll you know give you the ability to do what you love to do

For a longer period of time because you always want to have good strategies, right? Like, you know, we're, we're, you know, maybe we feel old sometimes, but we're pretty young dudes in the grand scheme of things. Like when you're 85 and you slip on the ice, you want to have some strategies that allow you to not like, you know, break a hip and die. So I think it's good to preserve those qualities as long as we can during our athletic careers. How do you help people to throw faster, throw harder, swing the bat faster and so forth in a safe way? I'm sure that injuries are going to sort of happen here and there, kind of out of your control sometimes, but how do you mitigate that?

Yeah, I think the first thing is the foundation, right? I think everybody gets really excited about the top of the pyramid which is like pitch design and trying to basically get on an aggressive throwing program a lot of stuff a lot of that stuff like you can gain velocity by lifting weights and getting stronger your body weight is predictive of velocity right you can get it by doing a medicine ball program you do it by sprinting you can do it by jumping you can do it by you know getting more mobile you can do it by gettinging, you can do it by jumping, you can do it by getting more mobile,

you can do it by getting healthy, like a good rehabilitation program. There's research that shows that just doing like rotator cuff and scapular control exercises improves velocity. Those are all like bottom tier, but what's important is when you build that broad base to the pyramid, all the other stuff that you wanna do,

the sexier stuff is really the stuff that like, it has higher risk, but if you built the foundation, you can do it easier. The one thing I will say, like nothing improves velocity better than sequencing, like understanding how to put your body in the best positions to be successful. And that's where like some of the biomechanical analysis is so powerful. But you can actually see like a guy that throws 98 side by side with a guy who throws 88 and you look at when the segments peak in terms of Their velocity and some of these athletes they're they're trying really hard like they're they're racing to create early arm speed

When if their lower half did the job better it would deliver on to a great position Yeah, or maybe the development of being able to Throw some different pitches right like not everything's always about just I mean I think I've heard and I don't I don't follow baseball a ton but I think I heard it was last year where they brought in like some of the suckiest pitchers on the team and intentionally had them like throw for a little bit for a couple innings because they they threw quite a bit slower and Than the other guys

and people couldn't hit off of them. You'll see it like position players and like blowouts will come in and throw the eighth and ninth innings and sometimes, yeah, it's 40 miles an hour and it's just, it doesn't for them. What's actually really fascinating is if you look at what's happening in baseball, you have this meteoric rise in fastball velocity.

It's a steady linear trend over the last 20 plus years. And then concurrently injury rates go right alongside of it. But you know what's wild is that fastball usage goes down. So as fastballs have gotten better and better and better, pitchers are throwing them less. Why? Because hitters have corrected. They've found opportunities to hit off machines that are throwing at lead velocities. There's a piece of technology called Traject that a lot of major league teams have where it's like a simulator so you can see the starting pitcher that you're facing that night and actually get like practice at bats against them.

So hitters have gotten exponentially better. It's just that pitchers are always ahead, but we've guys throwing 102 to 105 miles an hour in the big leagues and there are still hitters that can square them up as crazy as it sounds. It doesn't happen often But it we are kind of testing the limits of you know what humans can safely do so we're gonna We're in a really weird time for sure We hear a lot of people talking about sprinting and the value of you know being able to sprint or at least Some capacity to sprint your body in something like even if you get on the salt bike Yeah, that's a pretty damn good start right if You're you're racing your body. It sounds great. Do you think that your average person should kind of have the their North Star

for upper body like mobility and movement should maybe be to throw And then maybe maybe additionally to swing a little bit and I'm not talking about like, you know, throwing real fast or anything, but just, just a good ability, right arm, left arm, to be able to throw with some sort of decent proficiency. Yeah. I think you should be able to do it without being super awkward. I think that's that, that goes without saying we all did it at some point when we were younger and it probably would be, you know, maybe indicative of having the requisite mobility it takes to do.

I think for most people throwing the med balls is probably the next best option, you know, like do a shot better or do a scoop toss and be relatively efficient with it. Like, you know, I think we should all be able to get out and play tennis, hit forehands and backhands and change direction, you know, actually be able to serve some of that stuff. And you know, that requires a lot of motion

in certain places. So I think, you know, it could be a decent north star, I think for some people, but I would never force that on people. But I would say that probably what we all do need to do is something fast right I'm not saying go out and sprint and like blow out a hammy today but like some people do well with like doing more hill sprints or resistant sprinting some people do well just doing you know kettlebell swings and

some people want to do box jumps like you know find what's right for you but it is the the big thing is that power does detrain pretty quickly if we don't work hard to preserve it. So that's something that should be a like a key component in your long term success. What about maybe some swinging, just like swinging a bat or swinging an ax or swinging something? Yeah, I don't think it would hurt. I mean, you look at like some of the swingstitch

that are out there for like, you know, developing golf clubhead speed. You know, sledgehammers have kind of been a thing for a long time, you kind of find some of the swing sticks that are out there for like, you know, developing golf club head speed. You know, sledgehammers have kind of been a thing for for a long time, you kind of find them in the parking lot at every powerlifting gym there is. So that stuff is definitely out there. And I think there's a there's a place for for people integrating it. You know, being athletic, I think that it goes a long way. We have one right here. One of the swing sticks.

Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, this is it's like a Oh, yeah, like clubhouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, it's like a club. Yeah, like a club that's fun, yeah? Yeah, amazing. And actually that brings me to another question because again, it seems like when it comes to training, there is divide. There are some people that look at like kettlebells and clubs

and from the traditional sense, like that stuff's useless. You're just swinging an object through space. And on the kettlebell and club side, some people are just such purists that they think like, well, this is all you have to really do right so From your perspective. I don't really I don't know if you use clubs or anything with these types of athletes I mean I doubt it, but I don't know but from what you know about the shoulder the scapula the health of those areas What benefit do you think or? Do you think like the benefits are blown that clubs could bring?

You know any type of mover. I think I think there's a place for it for sure. You know I don't use a ton of them myself But I do know that they are pretty popular Chuck Wolf's a guy who uses them a lot in our space and everything And we found different ways that get the job done But I do love anything that like you know cyclical activities like that that are understanding how to like transfer force across joints. I think that stuff goes a long way. You know, we've kind of been in this isolationist world, I think for a really, really long time with respect to how we program exercise. So it gets people moving a little bit more full body. I think it's great. And you have you do see, you know, people that that have very like, good experience with it, they talk about it, that it's really changed

a lot of how they move. So I could totally get behind that for a lot of people. The way that I use Methylene Blue is very similar to the way that you're using it. I don't use it every day. I think things that push that button to change your mood, you might wanna be a little cautious with it. In my opinion and the feelings that I get

from Methylene Blue, it does change my mood a little bit. It's a mood enhancer. When I go out and run, I feel like I do have a little bit more endurance. I do feel like I can breathe a little bit. It's a mood enhancer. When I go out and run, I feel like I do have a little bit more endurance. I do feel like I can breathe a little bit better, but that could also be, I've been training very hard as well, so it could be an adaptation to that as well.

But as we've had David Herrera and many other people come on the show before, they basically just say methylene blue is a electron donor, and it allows the body to utilize energy just more efficiently. And I don't know if I can feel that per se, but I know that I feel better when I'm running when I'm using Methylene Blue.

Yeah, post sessions of grappling, that's what I usually use. I use it two or three times a week, post sessions of Jujitsu, I always feel like I have more energy, like much more energy than I typically have. Which makes me understand that, you know, if I did want to go for longer sessions, I could,

but it also helps me understand that I'm gonna be recovering better for my next session the next day, which is a big deal. But yeah, I think that if you guys, first off, this stuff is great because it's third party tested, methylene blue in other sources like the stuff that you'll see on Amazon or random websites, there's no regulation.

So a lot of people have levels of toxicity from the supplement because it's not dosed correctly. And there are other things in that methylene blue. Again, this is something that is lab made. It's not, you know what I mean? So you got to be careful. And this is why we like using this stuff, because we know it's not going to mess us up.

You can go on their website. You can go on the transcriptions website can go on the Troscriptions website and you can get a report of the third party tested methylene blue and double, triple check it for yourself. In addition to that, they have the canateen, which I have not used that much, but when I have used it pre-workout, I did notice I get a zip from it.

It has, I think it has nicotine in it, along with a couple other things to go along with the methylene blue. So do yourselves a favor, check out Troscriptions, check out what they got. Strength is never weak this week, this never strength, catch you guys later.

Seems like you're the kind of guy that likes to just keep the playbook really open in terms of what you utilize and what you don't utilize. Doesn't seem like you have like written certain things off. It seems like you're willing to do a lot of different things. You know, some people talk about rotation and anti rotation. And for some reason, for some reason, like in this world, there's always like these big arguments about these things. I mean, I know some people that get like fights over the big toe and how the big toe should

work and it's just like silly stuff. But like, I'm imagining that you stand somewhere in the middle on this as you do with probably many other things. You know I think it's it's funny like early in my career like I'd probably like to die on a lot more hills than I should have you know like to argue on internet forums and things like that I you know it's kind of a very eye-opening experience just like step away from doing that realizing how much more productive I could be if I if I devoted my, or my attention elsewhere, particularly, you know, I'm a dad of three kids, I get a wife and two facilities and a role in Major League Baseball.

So I think for me it was a necessity to step away from unnecessary arguments. Big picture though, I think I'm just very agnostic with respect to all methods. I think there's a merit to a ton of different things. I try to do a lot of listening. Honestly, I try to hire people that don't replicate me. I try to hire people that compliment me, really smart people that'll ask good questions, challenge me on ideas I've had,

that'll bring unique skills to our facility. That's something I think I've always done well, is I've just been curious. And it was born out of the fact that I was a baseball outsider, like I only played baseball until eighth grade. I was a much better tennis and soccer player. So baseball kind of found me.

So I had to do a lot more listening and ask a lot more questions. And I think it's really served me well. Plus I, you know, be honest, like I don't have like a gadget to sell, you know? I think that that, that sometimes like is really, really helpful. Like, you know, nobody, nobody's making money on like isometrics. to sell. I think that sometimes is really, really helpful.

Nobody's making money on isometrics. Nobody's making money on cable external rotations or something like that. So I think for me, it's allowed me to kind of take a step back and just not really worry about aligning myself perfectly with one discipline over another. Yeah, I think it's interesting the way that you use the cables and different things. And I'm probably only seeing a fraction of the way that you train the athletes But I saw like one video in particular where somebody was holding like kind of like a Pavlov press type thing But then they were also moving their hips and they were there and that that seemed like that would be really

Challenging to only move your hips while you're holding You know some some rigidness in another area. Yeah. I think, you know, the other thing too is like, I don't want to say it's innovation for the sake of innovating. I will say like when we talked to a lot of our athletes that have been with us for an entire career, people who are, you know, who are still here, you know, like Tyler Kinley is a relief pitcher for the Colorado Rockies is actually a neighbor of mine.

He was one of my first evaluations when we opened our facility in 2014 and he's you know, he's still playing, you know, our kids are about the same ages and they play. So, you know, we're going on like 12 off-seasons together. Like when you have some of these guys that are very, like, you know, aware of like what their body needs and what's worked for them, what haven't, like when they come back to the off from the off-season or from the season, you have a sit-down discussion and you really build out a plan together. But what's always been very, I think, helpful for me is with those long-term relationships with those guys come back and they say,

hey, that's new. Like, why are we doing that? Why is it different? They, athletes recognize it. Like, imagine coming back and getting the same off season program for like 10, 12 years. Like, it's mind numbing.

I can't imagine having like the same career every single year. It's just like you gotta have new experiences and grow and evolve. And you know, it's really a function of being surrounded by some really awesome people that I get to work with both at the facility and in my Yankees role. Are there any, just cause you've worked with so many

college athletes, high school athletes, you see people coming in, are there any trends and maybe injury types or just like issues that you're seeing arise within a certain age group of athletes that maybe you haven't seen before? Yeah, it's a really good question. I do think we are seeing more elaborate injuries.

And the question is, are they more prevalent? Are they just being diagnosed better? Certainly like something like thoracic outlet syndrome is getting a lot more attention nowadays, like it was kind of this mythical diagnosis that a lot of orthos didn't believe in 15 years ago. And now you realize some of these kids who had, you know, chronic ulnar nerve symptoms didn't really have

an elbow issue, they had, you know, something that was further up the chain. So we see that a lot in the baseball world. Not so much younger. That's a big one. But um, we're seeing way more cases like spondy cases, lumbar spine stress fractures, just with athletes, I think because of, you know, hyper participation and, you know, in one specific sport, on top of maybe some some questionable

lifting techniques, on top of kids that are going through like normal adolescent growth spurts, where, you know know the muscles and tendons are stretching out really really fast but they're shooting the bones are stretching out fast but the muscles and tendons can't really keep up so yeah I would say we are seeing a lot more spines we're seeing more more spondees but you know the big one in baseball is always gonna be Tommy John more UCL reconstructions it's scary because these used to be like I said earlier older injuries and now they're happening with young kids and it's just the function of them throwing so hard. You know, if they're not old enough to tear a ligament, they're just having a

medullal epicondyle stress fracture, you know, or, you know, like a classic little league elbow presentation because the bone is the path of least resistance. So it's the same problems just at different ages presenting a little bit differently. Are you noticing any like, I guess, other strength gains from things like working the grip or things like working your feet or things like working your neck, some of these kind of things that maybe some people aren't really thinking about. I imagine like if a baseball player, you know, if they're working their grip, it's got to be pretty good for their being able to handle the baseball bat and stuff like that.

Yeah, for sure. There's a little bit of research on the grip side of things that does show, you know, some favorable benefits. Also finger strength, believe it or not, is a big one. You think about how much force the fingers impart to the baseball for various pitches. But even beyond that, all the tendons that go down into your fingers, they actually attach on your medial epicondyle. So they cross the elbow and create some basically, I guess, active stabilizers that can protect the ulnar collateral ligament during the layback phase of throwing when pitchers will often injure that elbow. So yeah, I think finger strength, grip strength, a lot of direct forearm work is kind of the new thing. One of the things that's really changed, Dr. Keith Meister is kind of at the forefront

of a lot of all things, pitching injuries right now probably does more Tommy Johns than everybody on the planet, particularly in higher level throwers. He's talked a lot about how the injury mechanism has changed. In the past, everybody blew out their elbow transitioning from cocking to acceleration. What he said is now it's happening at ball release. We have a lot of really high level pitchers who are learning to do different things with the baseball. So they're basically manipulating the baseball out front. And what it's actually creating is a situation where like the flexor tendon

actually is taking on a lot of the stress. So we're seeing far more flexor injuries and baseball players at the highest level. It comes alongside the crackdown on the use of sticky substances for being able to get better grip and all that stuff. So it's a really weird transitional time for baseball in terms of trying to find a ball that everybody can agree on, trying to figure out what level of tack is okay. And on top of that, recognizing all this is taking place while guys are trying to make a living competing at a really high level. And a lot of them are willing to take on a lot of risk in order to make money to feed their families. So baseball's in a really weird

place right now. And you got the torpedo bats. Yeah, a famous part of Yankees. Oh my goodness, that got so overblown. That was incredible. baseball for like three years. But yeah, I got a got a lot of attention all of a sudden just because of one camera angle, I guess. The Corputo bats. It's just like a larger looking bat. The barrel of it is extended downward a little bit longer or something like that, right?

Yeah, you can kind of just shift the composition of a barrel. It's basically just move the wood around to different places on the bat to match up for how guys swing and where they typically make contact. But yeah, it was an interesting couple of weeks and it's kind of gone away now, but it happened I think in large part because we hit a lot of home runs in one game and became front and center. Eric, what's it like working for the Yankees? I mean that's wild. Amazing, very

cool experience. Obviously a storied franchise, but you know that I always tell people the best thing about it is I get to be the dumbest person in the room every single day you know it's a it's a really cool chance to work with some really really bright people and you know kind of seek out opportunities to learn and you have really you know supportive front office and ownership group that put us in a good position to be successful so it's yeah dream come true. With all your knowledge all the things you've learned over the years what are some things that you still do in your training to kind of keep your joints and keep your body healthy? Yeah, for sure.

It's funny, I hinted at it a little bit earlier. I competed, last powerlifting meet was 2008, I think it was, and then still kept just kind of training as if I was a powerlifter for a long time and never really found time to actually get to meets. But what was interesting is I, believe it or not, I tore a meniscus re-racking a weight Christmas Eve 2020. Then I went to take it off of a safety squat bar and put it on the next rack over. A little twist, heard a pop, didn't think anything of it. Finished my lift, they include ham raises, reverse lunges, did the reverse climb or all that. Picked up sushi on the way home and got home. I couldn't even move my leg

when I got out of the car. So I had that pretty good sized meniscus tear that had to be repaired in January of 21. It was interesting because rehab was all smooth. I was extra cognizant because those surgeries actually don't have a great success rate. But I got it fixed and every time I pull over 500, my knee just talks to me. It's like, just don't be stupid, be smart. And you know, I'm at a point, I'm 43 years old, I get a lot of things going on,

like having another surgery just doesn't work with my schedule. Not only that, like chasing a 700 pound deadlift doesn't make me more money, doesn't make my kids love me anymore, definitely doesn't make my wife happy with me. So I hate to say it, but I probably work out a lot more than I train these days,

but I'm still in the gym six days a week You know usually lifting for get out and sprinting being athletic once usually one like longer like a real bit base type work But that's probably the biggest change is adding more and more aerobic stuff as I've aged just from a cardiovascular health standpoint But I still lift four days a week and it's you know Classic upper lower split isn't really never steered me wrong And actually trying to get back into playing a little bit of tennis. That was my best sport growing up So sneaking it in once a week if I'm lucky All right

And this brings me to a question that it's gonna be hard to answer because you can't answer it for everyone Everyone has different goals, but for the person that they are interested in getting stronger. They just in lifting weights They're not a power lifter, right? So that's not their sport, right? But they wanna see bigger and bigger numbers on the barbell with whatever they're doing. How can one think about building an adequate amount of strength, safely?

Because when you start really trying to get stronger and you start seeing those numbers increase, sometimes you get so tunnel vision that you just wanna see 500, 600, 700. But it's like, what will that 600 and 700 bring you that the 400 maybe doesn't? How do you think someone can gauge when increasing weight becomes unnecessary and it potentially becomes a hindrance? Yeah, for sure.

Your wrist tolerance is a really hard thing to even talk through just because there are going to be times where it's just not worth selling out for the dream. I think we probably all wrestled with those moments over the course of our training career. What I can speak to you though that never did me wrong was I can't tell you how many times I just got in the work even if it felt like a 4 out of 10 on the intensity scale. I went at one point like 8 years without missing a planned lift. Like I was a loser, I had nothing going on from age like, you know, basically 20 to 28.

Like it was, you know, work or go to school and train. And you know, I was very, very focused on it. It served me well, obviously in the context of powerlifting and career development stuff. But, you know, I missed the lift because we got like 32 inches of snow and you literally couldn't go anywhere. So I think for me, I look back on that time

and there weren't all 10 out of 10 lifts in terms of intensity and PRs and stuff like that. But I just, I kept showing up. It's funny, I've talked to Ben Bruno about this quite a bit because he's got a little orthopedic history with a knee and a low back as well. And it's just like, man, like it, if you can just consistently show up,

even if it's at 50 you know, 50% capacity Good, you know sometimes go in just go through a thorough warm-up on those days when you feel terrible all of a sudden You never realize that obviously it becomes a seven out of ten lift or something like that So that that was really really good for me I think we probably all lifted in powerlifting gyms were like there was there wasn't an option to not show up like you'd have You'd have buddies that would be calling you out if you weren't there to bench on Friday nights and squat on Sunday mornings. Like the week was very mapped out for you.

And that made a big difference for me for the couple of years that I was at Southside and after my grad degree, and I made some of my best progress in my career. So I always tell people, like if you're looking at the long-term, like just keep showing up. And I think if you're able to do that

without even knowing it, you're gonna build a little like awareness of like when to push and when not to push I think usually the people who make really bad mistakes are kind of the novice people That are trying too hard or they're being pushed by a culture that you know that tells you need to like Just chase numbers at the wrong time in your training career Can you give us maybe some insight or a couple exercises for golfers elbow or tennis elbow? Yeah, I mean, for me, it definitely starts with good manual therapy. You know, I think a lot of times we see folks that are they're trending in that direction, they're they're

a little bit on the older side. And what do you see? You know, the tenants just basically don't have the same regenerative properties that haven't been put on there. So the tissue loading exceeds that tissues tolerance for learning. So the tissue loading exceeds that tissue's tolerance for loading. So I love starting off with good quality manual therapy, particularly because it can help people get down underneath that symptomatic threshold. For some folks that might be cupping or scraping or dry needling. There's different ways that you can kind of attack it. Active release can be great for some of that stuff too.

And then after that, nothing better than a good protocol of collagen, vitamin C, and isometrics. Like Dr. Keith Barr's work is really, really compelling on that, he's done a million podcasts, so definitely a good list. And so, you need to- How does that combination work together? Yeah, so- Isometrics, probably a key factor in the vitamin C and collagen.

What's interesting is he's introduced this concept of stress shielding. So you basically have different portions of the tendon that have varying levels of strength. When you see these weaker portions of the tendon, they're more degenerative. What actually happens is if you apply force really, really quickly to the tendon,

the stronger portion's just taken on, so you're actually not strengthening the portions that really need it. What actually happens over the course of about 10 seconds with isometric is you actually can get basically a signal to that weaker tendon where you're actually putting some stress on it. So you're not trying to overload it like crazy.

You're literally just trying to turn on some of the biochemical response to basically make that tendon regenerate. Collagen inviting to see just work synergistically to kind of support that. So using that, take it about an hour before you actually go into the protocol. You can roll that out twice a day with some of support that. So using that, you take it about an hour before you actually go into the protocol. You can roll that out twice a day with some of these people.

Obviously there's some activity modification that might go alongside this, pulling back on the amount of grip work you're doing. If it's a golfer's elbow, and if it's tennis elbow, which we actually don't see a whole lot in tennis players, unless they're hitting really, really bad, one-handed back ends. But some of the same ideas can be there. The other thing with tennis

elbow I always tell people make sure you get your spine you know looked at a lot of the tennis elbow that we see can actually be cervical spine referred pain so always make sure you're working from a good diagnosis. You'd be shocked at how many people with tennis elbow actually have clean elbow MRIs. Has there been anything like weird that's kind of thrown you off that you were kind of surprised like maybe having pitchers or maybe having some of the players maybe doing like curls or something like that had a good impact on helping them stay healthy?

Yeah, for sure. That's an interesting one. I don't know about necessarily like weight room things that have made, you know, a really big difference in that world that maybe surprised me I can tell you there there are times when I've been surprised at someone that I didn't think was Remarkably athletic on paper was able to do really really impressive things at a high level on a baseball field, right? You'd be shocked at how many guys have you know

16 inch vertical jumps that are that are like pitching in the big leagues and throwing 95 miles an hour. So it's kind of more of like your guys who are, your bilateral beasts aren't always great rotators, and sometimes your guys who are bilateral weaklings are very, very efficient rotationally. So I think baseball's really made me, I guess, recalibrate on what I actually think is an athlete, quote unquote. So I think I'm more open-minded to anything and just more reflective on data than I probably ever have been before. Some people can barely walk and then they go out there

and they play their sport and they're amazing. Yeah, honestly, we always joke about it. Swimmers out of the pool are far the worst like you know They do these incredible things and it blows your mind and they get out and they give them a 15 pound dumbbell for a reverse Lunge and they tip over So that's that's you know dry land training with swimmers is always entertaining Thank you so much for your time they really appreciate it where can people find you my pleasure Thank you very much for having me Eric Cressy comm is the website

There's links to the facility there and then all my social media is just at Eric Cressy Instagram and he's pretty good about responding to folks if they reach out with questions. And it looks like you have some YouTube stuff as well. Yep. Yep. On YouTube there's tons of videos up there too on a wide variety of stuff but appreciate you having me. It's cool to see what you guys have done with this.

Definitely miss seeing you in person. Hopefully we'll catch up again in the same room at some point. Catch you later. Thanks guys. Thank you.