Probably Silly BS, but I'll ask anyhow...

[Matt Stacks]

I've seen and heard and trusted this stuff when I played. I was a d2 baseball player.

Now that I overhead press regularly, I realize I should've been pressing overhead since your son's age.

When I was enlightened as to what the rotator cuff actually does, it seemed like a no-brainer that I needed to press. Alas, it was too late for my playing career.

[hollowpond]

personal anecdote that may or may not be relevant here. Earlier this year I got my press up to 159 for doubles. Body weight roughly 192 lb. 40 years old. I didn't experience any detrimental effects on my tennis serve (which is essentially an upwards throwing motion), and I've got a fairly big serve.

Maybe the benching caused an injury that is sensitive to explosive throwing motions? Maybe a throwing technique issue, or lack of warmup?

Maybe you weren't recovered enough from the stress of the workout to perform?

I suppose if you gained enough weight in your arms, that might have an effect (the internal and external rotators now have to accelerate/decelerate a larger mass), but this is just idle speculation on my part.

All of the above would be more sensitive to aging.

Do you recall being able to throw without aggravation when you weren't significantly younger than today, yet were substantially smaller/weaker?

That was my thought before. Heavier arms with a similar warm up that I used to do.

Over the last 3 years I have dealt with several pitchers that will likely make significant amounts of money pitching in their lifetime. Each were vastly different in build and style of pitching. All I know is that properly pressing them overhead progressively improved their shoulder mobility. From what I have seen at the high school level, the baseball culture for S&C is the worst. "Experts" charging kids $400 for a function movement screen to tell kids their shoulders are weak/and have limited range of motion and then give them an 8 week "program" that consists of hex bar deadlifts and shoulder PT exercises. They never advertise the JV pitcher they work with, only the big time recruits or pro's. The kids I get that go to those "experts" are traditionally the worst lifters and have no control or postural awareness. 8 weeks on an LP they are usually fixed. It's hard to say what the work in the weightroom once they get to us did for them, because they are already national level pitchers when they get here. To make a long story short, doing what you are doing is best to help to develop your son. Keep it up.

Will do. And I agree, baseball contains the silliest BS out of all the silly BS...

[pstein]

If I had bothered to press/squat/DL heavy during my baseball years, I probably would've avoided the shoulder injuries that ended my baseball career.

Our S&C (more conditioning) program was P90x. We all had ABZZZZ by the end of the year, though.

[slhuckstead]

I have a friend who was a MLB pitcher (member of the '99 Yankees, who won the WS). He was an okay pitcher at the AA level (his fastest was 86/87 mph) but he was inconsistent and off target. His problem was that he was tall (6'6"), skinny (180lbs), and thus not strong. Now, he took the easy way to gain strength and mass (he topped out at 248 lbs in '99), 7-10 cc's per week of T was usual and as his wealth grew he moved over to HGH, but his ball speed and accuracy went through he roof (his average pro speed was around 98 mph).

Now, because he got so big so quickly, and because he was still doing silly BS in the weight room, he was also injured all the time. All of this is to say that 1) getting bigger and stronger makes a better and faster pitcher, 2) Performing proper technique, training, and programming will, likely result in fewer injuries (yay adaptation), and thus 3) the suggestions of your son's coach does not fit the data--circling back to point 1--look at how good the 90's players were because they new that getting bigger and stronger made them better athletes (yes, they used PEDs, but that is, as Coach Rippetoe has stated in articles on this very topic, because they were poorly trained and doing ineffective exercises in those regimen).

I've run two of my sons through the SSLP and watched both of them put on between 20 t0 40 lbs of weight and as a result, these pretty average athletes, dominate their peers when it comes to general activity as well as their chosen HS sport.

The gym I attend has a personal trainer/physical therapist who rents space and I see him training kids with the dumbest techniques, bands, quarter squats, kettle bells, skipping, etc. It hurts to watch, especially since this guy was a power lifter and trained with Dave Tate and Lou Simmons. We have 20,000 lbs of steel in this place and he has them playing with rubber bands and doing speed drills--and he wonders why they are not getting stronger. He's following the CW of the before mentioned baseball coach and his kids don't see progress and are consistently exhibiting injuries from lack of strength. I'd just look back at your son's coach, chuckle, and tell him to just teach your the rules of baseball--and use the towel to wipe your son's face after he does his dead lifts.

[Jay Mund]

So the coach liked the progress your son made with the techniques you used, but he didn't like the techniques you used? Makes sense. But seriously, it sounds like the coach is worried about injuring shoulders. Lots of people hurt their shoulders benching and pressing and shoulders are critical for baseball so it's understandable that he's concerned, but everyone that I've ever worked with who has complained about their shoulders hurting from either pressing movement reports no pain after being coached. It's always something they've done on their own and they're always "amazed at how technical these lifts are" after receiving countless error corrections because they had no idea what they were doing beforehand.

But I'm sure this baseball coach is elite A F so he probably knows what he's doing when it comes to coaching barbell training. Regardless, his argument is just irrefutable. Baseball players don't do presses. They bench with a towel on their chest. Trust him.

But this

they new that getting bigger and stronger made them better athletes

is interesting, because all you heard about during those ridiculous senate inquisitions and on the news in the early 00's was how these elite athletes weren't taking the PEDs to get stronger, oh no, not baseball players. They were doing it because the PEDs helped their recovery. Of course steroids helped their recovery. It's a perfect illustration of how little the general public understands about the strength acquisition process - that stress followed by recovery results in an adaptation of strength improvement and that anything that aids in the recovery process aids in the development of strength and by extension performance of anything involving force production/movement.

[hollowpond]

The coach is a great guy and a good friend. Which makes it even more frustrating. He knows what he wants...bigger, stronger baseball players, but he has no idea how to do that. I coach cross country, indoor and outdoor track working primarily with throwers and sprinters (the cross-country is just by default of being the track coack...I have no clue what I'm doing with those kids.), I am perpetually running SSLP with my kids because I can't get them out of novice progression. I will get close, but then they will go to whatever their next sport is and that coach ruins them with SBS.
Case in point; I just received this "work-out plan" from the football coach to see what I think of it. I've told him exactly what I think of it, but he will run it anyways. I am the strongest person at my high school and I am 42 years old. It is so damn frustrating...
IMG950691.jpg

[Bluefan75]

is interesting, because all you heard about during those ridiculous senate inquisitions and on the news in the early 00's was how these elite athletes weren't taking the PEDs to get stronger, oh no, not baseball players. They were doing it because the PEDs helped their recovery. Of course steroids helped their recovery. It's a perfect illustration of how little the general public understands about the strength acquisition process - that stress followed by recovery results in an adaptation of strength improvement and that anything that aids in the recovery process aids in the development of strength and by extension performance of anything involving force production/movement.

To be fair, at that level, you need to hit the ball perfectly in order to send it out. No amount of strength is going to improve *that* particular skill. Bat speed, sure. but if you can't square it up, it doesn't matter.

What it did mean though, was that, despite the popular notions of the fat guy etc., a 162 game season is brutal on the body. The PEDS allowed a guy to work out, and *stay in the lineup* while doing everything. All the batting practice, lifting, and other things these guys do(particularly given the "conventional wisdom" of the S&C people) is a recipe for missing games. Unless of course you get a little help. Baseball Prospectus did a pretty in depth study, and they found that with basically one exception, the home runs boost was not so much steroid driven. The only guys that PEDS really helped were the middling infielders who couldn't hit 10, now were approaching 20. But your big guys were hitting home runs at a pretty good clip. The difference PEDS had on them, if it had any, was that they were in more games, which sample size being what it is, means they will hit more HRs with more PAs.

But added strength was really not the reason PEDs had their impact.

[Mark Rippetoe]

But added strength was really not the reason PEDs had their impact.

Right.

[Bluefan75]

Right.

In so far as guys hit more home runs, not really, with the one exception I noted. The 90s was an era of new ballparks, all of which were smaller than their predecessor(chicks dig the long ball). That had a bigger impact than PEDs on home run totals.

I'm not saying stronger is not better, not by any stretch, and pitching likely saw a great benefit. But his point was trying to say that the recovery argument that was put out was bunk, and it really wasn't. Mark McGwire hit a bunch of home runs before he weighed anything. Barry Bonds was the best player in the game before any thing ever looked funny. They didn't need the PEDs to be better players. Their balls in play were home runs already. Stronger did not make them hit the ball any more purely. What they did need them for though was to be able to come to the plate every game. Is it the strength that made them able to do so? Sure. But it was 40-50 extra at bats a season they were taking them for, not 40-50 extra feet on fly balls.

[Scaldrew]

To be fair, at that level, you need to hit the ball perfectly in order to send it out. No amount of strength is going to improve *that* particular skill. Bat speed, sure. but if you can't square it up, it doesn't matter.

I have to ask, Mr. Fan, if you're at all serious when you say this. Surely, you've had bad training days where you could barely keep the bar level or where you were shaking under the weight? It's days like these that prove precisely the point that balance is a factor of strength. So if adding 100lb to your bench/press does not help you in handling a 2lb bat, I can't think of anything that does. Coordination seems to me to be balancing an object throughout a desired and specific ROM, so adding those same 100lb should help that, too, no?

Call me a jerk if you will, but I think you're conflating the idea that "a stronger guy is a better athlete" with "a stronger athlete has the potential to be a better athlete". The argument isn't that stronger people can outperform athletes, but that, ceteris paribus, the stronger athlete is the better athlete, emphasis on paribus.