Developing Pitchers from an Ecological Perspective with Tanner Pruett

Welcome back to Finding the Edge Podcast. I'm Garrett Boyam, joined with Robert Fry and Garrett Baker. And today we have on Tanner, Pruitt. Tanner, it's great to have you, if you'd like, give us an intro on yourself and then yeah, we'll kind of get rolling that way. Yeah, happy to be here. I'm I'm excited to to have a good conversation with you guys. Let's see, I started off my coaching career kind of in the facility doing one-on-one

lessons. Eventually Got to be a pitching coach at Saint Cloud State for a year after that. Left to go work at Tread Athletics for 2 1/2 years and then wife and I decided to move back to Minnesota, which is where we met. Got married and now I am working at MASH Baseball, and I recently took a volunteer position with North Central and Minneapolis, so I'll be helping out the pitchers every once in a while this year as well.

And I suppose I should mention I met you at starters back when Rich and Tyler from emergence were were there and so you were just getting into or getting exposed to ecological dynamics by those guys. And so I guess a good place to start would be, you know what's, what's been your coaching

journey. And part of that, I think it's important to talk about your own playing experience a little bit and so talk a little bit about that, but and how your journey as a player and coach has evolved over time, especially now interacting with these ideas. Yeah, so I guess, I mean, at an early age, I guess the the best thing that that happened to me, I guess as far as sports goes, was I I played as much as I could when I was young, so I was exposed to just anything and everything.

Baseball, football, basketball. I played soccer for a couple years, but you know, those are those are the four that I played. But then it stuck with just football, basketball, baseball, like those are the three. I was always playing something. So as far as athleticism goes, I felt like I was doing everything I could there. However, when it came to football and basketball, I had nobody, you know, to teach me how to properly throw a football. I was a quarterback or shoot a

basketball. So I kind of learned on my own. But when it came to baseball, I had, you know, coaches trying to tell me exactly what to do and and how to pitch, like how I should be moving according to whatever they thought was ideal. Now sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But when I got to high school, it was like, well, I'm just, you know, this is how I throw. These are the the checkpoints

that I need to hit. And because of the athleticism I had, because I was still playing football and basketball, it it worked at that time. So in my mind, I was thinking like having perfect mechanics, that's what's going to get me to the next level. That's what's going to help me propel myself to eventually playing professionally, because that was, that was my goal. But looking through an ecological lens, you know, everything matters.

And when I was in high school, I didn't really lift weights. I was 135 lbs all four years, right? Like, that's not good. So I didn't really have the size to be able to develop the quality scalable to go to each next level. So because of that, I ended up going to a junior college. They really tried changing the way I threw because then they didn't like how I threw and I

wasn't pitching much. And so it was like, well, I'm just going to say screw it. I'm going to do what I need to at least feel good on the mound because they wanted me to throw sidearm. I used to be, you know, straight over the top. They didn't like how I had a big turn in my leg lift. Like they didn't like all those things. And it really kind of irritated me. I'm like, it's not always about mechanics. Like, that was my freshman year of college. I'm like, I'm throwing strikes.

I'm getting out, but I'm still not getting opportunities. So I left, went to Crown College D3 in Minnesota. Now there is where I really got lost in the mechanic situation or the deep dive into being perfect rather than focusing on getting out. So while I was there, we didn't have a pitching coach and I was an exercise science major.

So I was thinking like everything I was learning in the textbook was gospel, basically, and I could apply that to my pitching and I'm going to be the best pitcher out there. Well, if you look at my ERA in conference, my sophomore year, my first year at Crown, it was 27. So you can kind of see how that didn't work. Junior year I was, I still went down that rabbit hole. But I think a big part of it was I took the weight room a little bit more serious. I think that helped me.

So building is general qualities, but I didn't see it that way. I always saw it as like mechanics, the weight room. I'm just, I'm just doing it to put on weight. Like that's what I was doing it for, not necessarily to build general movement qualities. And so I had a good year there. Senior year, we finally had a pitching coach and of course he wanted to change everything.

And of course I was coachable. That's what I was taught to do growing up. Like when a coach says something, you do it. And I think the first half of the year I had twelve walks per nine because I was trying to fit this coach's mold. And halfway through I I had a similar situation with my freshman year. I said screw it, I'm going to do me. And so that's what I did. And I finished with, I think the second-half of the year was like 10 or 11 strikeouts per nine.

So significant performance increased when I was myself. Now, I didn't see it that way until I met Rich and Tyler when they were talking about, hey, this, it isn't all about perfect movements. Everybody's going to interact with the world differently, and because of my experience as a player, it clicked right away. Now, not necessarily the all the underpinning ideas and the terminology, like I obviously didn't understand that, like I had no idea what affordances

were. But the idea that it is much deeper than just how you move, it's who you are. What information do you find important? How, how are you going to move or how are you going to. I don't like using the word interpret, but like how are you going to bring that information? Like what's meaningful, what are you, what are you going to do with it? How do you interact with those constraints?

And to me it made sense because every time I said, hey, I'm not doing what you want me to do, I'm going to, I'm going to do me, I'm going to be myself. Significant performance increase almost right of way. Now, as I continue to dive deeper into these subjects, things start to make more and more sense. You know why I was so good in high school? Well, I was on a mound every single day, right? I was exposing to myself to

slices of the game. Now, maybe not enough, as I probably needed to, but being on the mound six days out of the week is a lot better than in college where I was on the mound one day a week. You know, So being exposed to certain things, it's like, OK, so then it started started going down. How many different things can I expose my athletes to now that I'm done playing? This was at starters, boy. And when I met you and it was

like, well, I don't really know. But they're on the mound every day, whether it's plyos or, like, throwing bullpens. So it's like that's got to be better. And then it was like, well, what are they adapting around? What are they becoming attuned to? Well, we're throwing the 9 pockets. We probably need a catcher there, you know, just because throwing to a nine pocket is nothing like throwing to a catcher. And I knew that, but I didn't

know why. As I begin to understand these things, then it again, it becomes how much more can we expose them to while they're still trying to get better? Like we don't want to just give them enough to where they're successful every time, but where is their challenge point? Where can we work through that? And I think as a coach continuing to go over these things, continue to think about them. It's like, you know now at MASH, you know we're we're velocity testing, but we have catchers.

We have a live stand in hitter. They don't have a real bat. They have a handle because we don't want them swinging yet just because like there's too many things in the cages. We don't have enough space, which is a constraint that we're dealing with. But we're exposing them to a heck of a lot more in the second week of December than they ever have in their careers. Right.

Like I had a kid go coach, I don't know if we should really have a hitter in. I said, well, you're going to have to figure out how to throw to a hitter eventually, right? And he goes, yeah, I guess. I said, if you're worried about hitting him, you shouldn't be pitching. And if the hitter is worried about getting hit, he probably shouldn't be playing baseball. And he goes, all right, then I'll do it. Then like, just no big deal.

He PR Ed by 4 miles an hour and he threw 6 out of 10 strikes. So like that, not only did he, like have another level of focus and intentionality with what he was doing, but it legitimized every number. Because you can throw 6 out of 10 strikes and PR to a nine pocket any day of the week.

But when you add the stress of, oh, now I got to worry about a catcher catching it and there's a hitter in the box, I feel like it just legitimizes those numbers so much more because they are being exposed to what they're facing in game. And this whole time throughout this on ramp leading up to testing, like we haven't touched mechanics at all. Everything we've done is Rep without Rep Hey, you know we're going to do shot foot Med you know, for Med balls today.

But I don't really care what your footwork looks like. Do whatever you want. So we'll kind of switch it up those ways. Maybe we have them do overhead. Hey, maybe try not moving your feet or take a step here, take a step with your other foot. Just getting them to explore different movements, different solutions to the task and in general areas. And then we bring it into throwing with, hey, we're going to do single leg throws. I don't care what leg you're standing on, Figure out how to

hit the nine pocket. Maybe we do jump throws, figure it out. All these things where we're telling them figure it out, Here's the activity, have at it. And again, we weren't working on mechanics, but they're allowed to move freely and however they need or however they want to depending on the task. Engagements up. Performance is up. There are a lot of good things happening that way and that's I guess where I'm at today.

So hopefully that kind of gives you an accurate picture of where I've been and where I'm at. So I kind of want to explore a little bit more the exploration stuff. I'm I'm kind of curious because I know I want to Luke Baker in on this. How have you guys gone to like utilize exploration within? How do you see the role of exploration within developing pitchers? This is a question for for both you, Tanner and and Baker.

Garrett, you want to go? Yeah, I mean First off I'm fired up that we actually have a pitching episode right here this is, this is this is an exciting one I feel. Although the last one we we did release again I don't know the order we're going to release these I guess we I slanted it towards pitching a little bit but yeah the the cell fires me up. I mean I I think a lot of a lot of what you said definitely resonated with me Tanner.

And I think any time we we hop on a call together I feel like the the juices get flowing and I feel like a lot of ideas come out. But like even something just bringing up like you talking about like the Rep without Rep and like changing up how they how they move every throw and like we're not working on mechanics. But that's the one thing I think people may not be able to understand is how that could potentially influence your overall movement, even if you're not working on exactly the

perfect way to move, right. And I think that's one thing I've seen and just allowing people to have a little more freedom, maybe even if just regular catch play. But we're moving around and we're throwing different ways. But you have a goal attached to it, like you're trying to throw it here every single time in the reorganization. And something I'll bring in there is like and Sean Miska really challenged me on this, but it's a reorganization of the

system. Like perceptually I have to connect differently on every single throw. Like just like my thoughts are going to be shaped a little different every single throw we go and we're organizing the cognition, the perception and then the motor system all

intertwined together. And I think those that reorganization and even just like challenging, challenging like the the movement itself will be challenging how well you can just reorganize your intentions to that throw to be able to lock in and get it to where you want to go every single time. So I think that's that's really

cool. Again, there's a lot of places you could go with it, but I think like that and that's kind of one thing I want to ask you, Tanner, based on that is like everybody wants like the change in movement, right?

Like they want to, they want better mechanics quote UN quote like where do where are you starting to see or how do you see like the Rep without Rep or the freedom of movement start to change that Or like how you potentially how that potentially happens within the time scale like how does that actually take place because that's where people I think get stuck in this this idea. So, so as I I'm trying to

understand your question. So I guess understanding or you're asking about like when we do the exploration, how it transfers to pitching? Yeah, yeah. And how we see change in movement. Yeah. So like, you'll probably see like them actually start to move a little better on the mound. And like to the quote, UN quote, mechanics may look a little bit better than they did in some form or fashion. And but we're not working on technical mechanics, right? So like that that's where people get stuck.

And I'm just curious to like your thoughts on that, like where is it coming from? How does it happen? Or just like, what are you seeing as you do it? Yeah, I think that when you allow them to explore and you give them the freedom when they get to the mound with that mindset, it's less robotic. Because almost every kid that I'm working with at MASH, they have had pitching coaches in the past where they need to hit these positions.

I have one kid that has never been in a pitching program, never done lessons or never done group classes. And he PR by like 7 miles an hour or 6 in just five weeks of throwing on an on ramp. And we're like, hey, we're just going to let it rip today. Batter's in the box. You got to catch her like throw as many strikes as you can. You've got 10 pitches. His old PR was 81. That was last year in game. This year he hits 86. And I asked him, I was like, yeah, who who have you worked

with before? And he goes nobody. And this was right after he asked me about working on mechanics. I said honestly, with your age and you sat 85 and touched 86, I'm not messing with you. Like that's my job right now. I'm not. I'm not messing with anything. And with the other kids, it's like they're trying to understand that they don't have to fit this perfect mold and as soon as they understand it, they're plyos. When they throw plyos, it just looks athletic. It looks smooth.

Now we only spend like 5 to 10 minutes on plyos. Give them just some things to do with it, have at it. There's a lot of choice built in. But then they start to gravitate towards constraints or throwing activities that just feel really good, gets them in a positive mind state. So when they go to the mound, everything feels good. They feel loose, they feel free, and they're not trying to hit these perfect positions.

And then what I see is I start to actually see what kind of physiological constraints are at play when they're free, because when they're trying to force things, it's not authentic. When they can move authentically, then you can start to see like, OK, this guy probably has a lot of T spine extension, whatever. So that's that's something to look for. Like if it starts to go away, maybe we start giving them more activities where they get back

into some extension. Cool. And we can start to look at it that way Because when you look at is it Newell's triangle, Do I have that right? Yeah. The Organism environment and task well. And through an ecological lens, I see a lot of coaches going way towards environment and task and then ignoring the actual Organism, right, which you can't ignore any part of that triangle. But we also can't put too much stock into one over the other,

but being able to see that. So then I can see, like, OK, cool, maybe we don't need to have this guy do a specific movement just because we don't need to force him into a certain range of motion that he just doesn't have. Like, give him something that he's good at. Have him explore that. Now you can argue that, well, what if they need to open up range of motion? Well, do they Do they really need to open up range of motion or do we just need to get them ready to move on a mound?

And if we can give them things that they are going to enjoy and going to be engaged with, then why not just give them what they favor or what they're good at already, if that makes any sense. Yeah, no, for sure. And I think son you even you're even pulling on right from the get go talking about like it just opens them up and freely

move authentically. And I think sometimes that's like the mechanic work quote UN quote mechanic work that guys need in general because like the all the fixed and frozen degrees of freedom just because you're like chasing this ideal model. And I think that's that's the complete difference of what

you're talking about. And like I love the way you're you're approaching it because once you see that how they authentically move then you might be able to see some those physiological constraints that you could OK like this may this may be a rate limiter to you just physiologically and that could be something that we could let you go explore over here and you may you may find something over there.

But even just in general, just allowing people to explore and I think you you wrapped it up really nicely, it's like that may just free him up in a way where there's moving that much better and the mechanics just changed naturally because of that. And you get a better version of that picture just because he did that.

And I always wonder like how many, how many people need that and just the OK to go do that and you're going to see some of the changes that people are looking for in the 1st place. Because I think a lot of it and I I've always been interested in the idea of like getting getting or understanding what cues they've been taught early on because that could directly shape how they move and they're trying to force that.

And like we would never know that if that conversation ever happens or you just never give them the freedom to go explore, move differently since then they're no longer thinking about that. Oh I had, I had this coach tell me I need to sit sit deeper in my back leg. So those dudes over cooking that and he's been over cooking in his entire life and that was in the the spot he should never be in physiologically and he's trying to move from there, you

know? Yeah. And I think with most coaches through that traditional approach, you don't, you don't even have them asking the athletes questions. Like it's just they they tell them what to do and hopefully the athlete does it. But like there were kids that I was asking where, you know they trying to work on their their ideal hinge position. I said well what have what have you been taught? Like what are what are you trying to feel?

And he, like, couldn't answer because one, I don't think he's ever been asked that question of what he is trying to do. And the only thing he could give me was, well, I've just told, like you just said, get deeper. And I said, well, what if we just didn't do that? And he, like he, he couldn't comprehend it. I said, let's go, let's go grab a bat. We're going to take a donor, donor activity here. I said, I want you to swing this bat as hard as you can. And he did it.

I was like, OK, now I want you to do it again. But when your front foot lands, I want you to freeze. And so he did it. And I said, how does that feel? He feels powerful. I said, OK, there you go, Go do that on a mound now. And he goes, oh, so that's what I'm supposed to feel. I was like, sure, yeah, I'm not in your body. But if it feels powerful, then, yeah, that that's probably how you should throw. I'm not going to tell you to do that.

Exactly. But you should probably create some kind of feel where you're powerful. He goes, oh, OK, that makes sense. And he's doing, he's doing a lot better. He's not locked up. His degrees of freedom are not frozen as much as they were before, but athletes being asked questions and given ownership, they they tend to just kind of freeze when you talk to them because they're not used to it,

which I think is very sad. And I think it's funny like you mentioned, like when they get that kind of freedom or ask the question, it's like they don't. They have no clue where to go. Like they're stuck right there. Like they've never explored, like they've never, never had the opportunity to actually try something on their own versus like just being told exactly, especially like in the in the facility. Like you're in a facility like doing it completely different.

But the majority of facilities it's and to be fair, like you're in a tough spot, like you do lessons and the parent expects you to be coaching the entire time and telling them what to do the entire time. And that's perceived as good

coaching. Which to be fair, like not to knock everybody in facilities, but that's that's kind of like you almost constraint on you and trying to work around that, kind of like what you're doing there, asking questions, getting them to do things is if you can get to the spot where it kind of clicks, like they're going to want to keep coming back since they're going to have some freedom and be able to do that. But getting to that point's really hard since no, no kid,

even at school, right? Like I've heard that talked about a ton. Like they don't have that freedom in school either. So they never have that time to go there and maybe maybe in a video game, but even that has certain constraints, but they're more willing to explore there. That's about it, right. So it's like that whole new light bulb that comes off is like, oh, like I am my own

unique individual. Like maybe, maybe I do need to find what actually works best for me versus like this one pitcher that this coach modeled me to And then side by side and I was supposed to get to that exact position. But again, like, to be fair, like in the facility setting, you have constraints and it's tough to be able to find that. And that's where I think you guys at MASH are doing it really unique way, which I really like to hear. Appreciate that. Yeah, it's been fun.

Yeah. And so kind of build off what Garrett and Tanner have been talking about. And Tanner, you mentioned newest theory of constraints and you also mentioned, you know different PRS. In your experience with MASH, how have you kind of intertwined both the newest theory of constraints and ecological dynamics into something where we can track better in terms of, you know, analytics slash you know, just odd numbers theory to be able to intertwine those two and, you know, be able to have

results with those teachings? Yeah. So I think like like a big thing that we're doing is every time they're on a mound there is something that represents a hitter in the box whether it's the plastic dummy hitters that we bought or as of recently what we did.

And which I think is incredible that the staff at MASH has like bought into this and we started doing since the second week of December is the the hitting classes at the 30 hour mark will send hitters over to stand in and that's that is a a drill or a whatever you want to call it as part of their their classes their curriculum like OK you two you're going to go over and track pitches you each get 10 come over next to go over.

So they've really bought in because one like they understand that OK if we want to be better as a facility everybody needs to be better. So we have that environmental or even a task constraint too, because you got to throw to a hitter now. But there's all, you know, hitter in the environment. It's all kind of put together, but they're understanding that hitters probably need to at the very least, track pitches out of the hand. Some of them are even taking swings, They just have a a

handle of a broken bat. Some of them are actually swinging at pitches like to try and get the timing down, which I think is great. So pitchers are getting better, hitters are getting better, we're getting more and more catchers, so they're getting better. So environment and task wise, I think that's huge. And then sorry, what was the second part of your question

tracking? Yeah. Like how does tracking that kind of, you know, the PRS, the strike percentage, how does that help within your kind of that newest theory of constraints? Yep. So what it shows us is OK they we they gave us their old PRS right. And so OK, that that is your in game PR. That's the most accurate, the best picture we're going to get from you. What you're how hard you're throwing in game.

Now I don't believe that velocity is everything but unfortunately a lot of these college coaches like if you don't throw X miles an hour, they're not going to give you a look. So it is I think part of our job to at least help them get to that next level best as possible. But for example, there were, there were two extreme cases that we saw. One, this guy is this kids old PR.

He told us it was like 80. I think it was he's like 415 years old 1516, and he throws to a batter in the box and he's 75. And I asked him, I was like, hey man, like how's everything going? Like are you feeling all right? He goes, honestly, coach that hitter in there is messing with me. I said, OK, well, there there is our starting point because he only threw maybe 2 out of 10 for strikes and his average was way down. And so it was like, OK, so this tells us that this is our

starting point for you. We really need you to spend more time in this environment, right? So that's that's big for us. Like, there's a lot of anxiety as soon as the batter's in the box. Then I found out the PR he was giving us was into a net 10 feet away, not full distance. So there's that. The other extreme case was that kid that never had a pitching coach and he PR by like 6 miles

an hour and he threw. I think he was our top strike thrower for that day, not just for that hour, but for that whole day he threw. I think it was 7 or 8 out of 10. I'm like, OK, cool. So maybe that isn't his challenge point, but it's definitely good that he's being exposed to it. So now we or I have to then figure out like, OK, is it lefty versus righty, because we only had righties in that day. So does he need to face different handed hitters or is he just that good and that

skilled with this fastball? Do we need to start looking at other pitches now? So like, now what we're doing for a while is when they get to when they're on the mound, the batter's in there, they're going to throw all pitches. So like yesterday we played a rolling count game because we don't do one-on-one lessons. It's all group stuff. So they're in a line. First guy throws the first pitch. OK, now the count's O1. He threw a fastball in. You've got the next pitch.

What are you throwing next? OK, what is the next guy throwing next based off of what the previous guy threw. So now they're starting to work pitches starting to understand like, OK, if you went fastball in, probably should go something soft away. OK, now what is the next guy going to do after that? And we kind of let them problem solve through it. So then now I can really start to see like, oh, that guy Yanks his slider every single time that he tries to go to the outside.

So he probably needs to look or start the pitch somewhere else because he keeps yanking at 10 feet. Catcher can't even get to it. So then we can start to see, do they struggle with certain pitches? Do they struggle in certain counts? Do they struggle with certain hitters, that type of thing.

And then we're not necessarily keeping track of it then, but then at the end of the program, we're going to have live A BS and that will be like basically the final Test like, OK, the everything that we were exposing to everything that we discussed, like can you do it on your own now? And we're going to start live ABS probably in like February. They're going to get at least a full month of live ABS once a

week. So that's kind of how we're using the tracking to understand, you know, the Newell's triangle theory of constraints, like what part of it do we need to manipulate for the athlete or for the group? Because I have some groups where it's like they all seem to be not the same but struggling with similar things, which I find very interesting. And I found it pretty interesting that you have like these different pictures come in

for essentially one pitch. Just say, hey, here's, you know, pitcher X through this pitch previously picture Y through this. So I wanted to ask, are you for those instances too? Are you incorporating a catcher in a batter? As much as we can, yeah, so. So the the tough part with catchers is it's an open sign up sheet and sometimes there will be 3 catchers and sometimes one catcher will sign up and he doesn't show. So this is the first year we're doing it.

I got here like 2 weeks before we started our offseason programs, so we weren't necessarily able to get all of that figured out right away. But for the next winter, we kind of have a pretty good idea of OK, we we need to do this and this to make sure we have what we need. But as often as possible, we're getting a catcher and basically we just tell the hitters, hey, at the 30 mark for these hours, this is when we need you guys and they send them over.

What what I like about, you know, your your thought process of incorporating the individual task environment constraints when like using numbers to analyze this kind of stuff. If you don't have all three intertwined, you can't really put a, you know, a clear clear model behind it because you're you're missing out on some key ingredients.

So that's just something I kind of wanted to bring in a little bit because it's hard to be able to say like I know what happens a lot in in, you know, kind of small college baseball, but throwing to just a catcher or again throwing to a nine pocket and saying, oh, you know, this was about 70% command. Well, does he actually because when in game does he ever throw to a nine pocket? Never. So And you know, there's no battle there.

So how can we actively, you know, incorporate that when that's just never going to happen. So I appreciate the fact that you can incorporate all three at MASH and that's really kind of what what's pushing it to the next level because you're trying to get as representative as possible to what is actually going to happen.

Yeah. And something that I I just really appreciate working here is that Weston Jermaine has been totally on board with it. He's, he's the director of pitching, I guess you want to say and and he's like look like we this is what what we need to start doing. And I was like sweet, this is what I do like perfect. Like they were on board basically before I even got

hired or at least Weston was. And then when we were able to explain how valuable these things are, it was like, OK, yeah, why are we not doing this at this point? That's good. I wanted to kind of loop back. I mean, there's so many different ways to go. We can go actually down like the the tracking, you know, and analytic side of things. I mean, there's one at some point I want to go and talk about bio mechanics, 'cause that's that's something that we touched on.

But I wanted to at least go back to exploration for a second. And just for me, what I've seen or just noticed when thinking about this whole idea and this concept of Rep without Rep, What I tend to notice is that, OK, the idea is Rep without Rep, like different every single time. But I think sometimes it's about finding because each Rep is going to have its own subtle nuance to it.

You know, just by the mere nature of the fact that you know, previous previous experience or things that have have recently happened are going to influence how we're perceiving the current environment. So just by that small change alone, not to mention that the fact that like your fatigue level or your energy level is going to fluctuate moment to moment as well. You have all these different things. So just by that alone you're going to get some variation.

But what I've noticed in in my own practice design and interacting with athletes or just watching athletes naturally try to explore, you know, you give them sort of a like, hey, I want you to try to do this Rep without Rep But what eventually happens is they find and I'm going to use like from dynamic system theory here, they're going to find this attractor

state. So everything is going to converge, like it's going to start fairly random or there's going to be not random, but like there's going to be more variation. And then as time goes on, even though you have you've you've, you've told them like, hey, I want you to do Rep without Rep Often times what I see is that there is some variation, it's pretty small and then it just comes back to being fairly consistent there with with

hardly at all any variation. And So what I tend to think is that if since that is the case, we have to continually help the athlete search. And by that I mean sometimes we have to give them inspiration and I want to use that word specifically because by inspiration I mean showing them possible ways of of moving. So for example, I've been thinking about this and I want to throw this to you guys.

You know, I've talked a little bit with oh, I can't remember his name right now off the off the top of my head, but he does like the flow stuff. Does anybody know who I'm talking about? Gallo. Dockflow or whatever what's is? My own Gallo is. My own Gallo. Yes, Ishmael Gallo. Forgive me Sir, if I got your your name wrong. I've talked with him on the phone. He's a great guy. Some of the. I like some of the stuff that he's doing.

It's it's not fully ecological, but you can take it and make it ecological. That's where I've been getting really excited with the stuff. I didn't, I didn't love it initially just because of the fact that it's kind of rote, you know like hey here's the mover moving pattern. Here's how you how you should move. And then you know in some ways I mean because in talking with him, he understands. You know, like I don't think he's 100% trying to force a person to move this way.

These pattern like these movements that he's giving people, they tend to clean up just by doing more repetitions of them. You know it, you know because again everything works back towards an attractor state. If the way that I'm thinking about it is with the tractor states or or these landscapes of a possible ways of moving. The more you go down a path or like you let's say for example you go outside OK based upon the environment. Let's say you're walking through the woods based upon the

environment. Certain areas are going to Ford walking through more and are going to be more accessible to you. And so as you navigate through the forest eventually you're going to now you're going to tend to go through certain routes because they tend to be more appealing to you and then they become more efficient for

you. And so I say all that to say that that this helps explain like, OK, why is it through variation we tend to see consistent patterns and and so if we want to be able to understand how to navigate through more parts of the landscape, we have to begin to introduce like hey, what happens if we go over here, let's go over here. And so for example, I like to take because in the past when I have said, hey, I want you to explore, show me how many different ways you can do this.

Most of the time they're only going to express it in one or two, maybe three different ways. But if I want to, if I want to continue to pull out more exploration and because again, like we talked about before, athletes have not been because of the one, how people have been coaching them and two the school system they have not their the creative side has been often

times really dampened. And so to start to pull that out and help foster that for them, we have to begin to give them and show them different ways and eventually over time, they'll be

able to do that on their own. But in the early stages we have to foster it and so I think what's his name Doctor Doctor Flo Flo guy I anyways I was trying to pull up his his Twitter. I I don't have it off off hand but anyways so with his stuff I really like it because I I see it as a potential for for different exploration. So like kind of pulling from his system that he's developed.

You know like there's there's all these cool different ways for example of guys, guys going and sliding picking up a ball and like planting and and turning and throwing. I think that's really cool. And why why do I think that's cool? Well, because when I look at infielders and where let's just say for example I want to I want to work and help a guy improve their lead leg block.

Well, if you watch an infielder go to their backhand and then have to quick off their quick plant and throw, often times they block really, really well. And why is that? To me it's because of the constraints of of that movement affords blocking, like having a really good lead leg block. And so as a result, like OK, if I want to help a guy, a player, explore blocking lead leg blocking, maybe I put them in different environments and like, OK, how can I kind of do this?

To me this is where it gets interesting. And just as I'm thinking about this, OK, what if, what if we we actually turf, you know how I tread they have you know those banks and mounds you know that are all wood, right. Well what if we we actually turf that and then now all of a sudden we go, we we create this like mound or hill and we can start doing different things and different explorations on it.

So one being like OK I slide in you know I, I grab, I pick up the ball like he has any like spins and turns and then throws it you know quick. So like to me like how many different ways can we explore when we start to manipulate the environment. I see it as being harder you know with your traditional mound, portable mound, it's just not enough space. But so that's that's to me like you know, could we explore because I know I'm, I'm even thinking about DCTC for a second.

Here we have, we have these kind of like low hills and slopes that are outside the field. You know, like how can we begin to utilize our space a little bit better for exploration and throwing and being able to throw in different ways off different slopes Because that, you know, obviously there's there's a place for this athletic, this athleticism for pitchers, right, because of your PF PS. Like how can we make PF PS more

interesting? I think, you know, starting to think about it in terms of like infield plays and throws and all that sort of stuff is is one thing. But for me anyways. That, to me, is what I think is important when we begin to. Utilize exploration for players is that we sometimes have to shift either the intention or the task constraint a little bit and shift their attention to be able to explore more of the the space, the possible ways of

moving a little bit more. And so because I think if we want to see players begin to express more athleticism on the mound, they need to also have explored more athletic ways to move. And so because I what what has bothered me a little bit is that everybody talks about athletic throws for pitchers and all it is is a jump throw and it's like well that's actually a very small narrow band of throwing. You know like yes you do have to be athletic to do it.

But there's more ways to be athletic than just a jump throw or throwing from one leg And so for me that's where I I've I've liked what what's it? Doctor Doctor Flo. I want to see if that if yeah I should yeah doctor Doctor Gallo. I can I can actually pronounce that well. So Doctor Gallo his stuff like I think. I think that's a good good space to like borrow inspiration from is like the the system that he's he's worked really hard to put

together. I think you know there's a lot that we from an ecological perspective could borrow from what he is doing and like adapt it to more of an ecological approach. So if you guys are not following Doctor Gallo it's A at flows doc on Twitter. So anyways that's my that's my little rant there. I'll let if anybody has any thoughts jump in on that before I switch to the next thing. Yeah, No, I and I'll just touch

on this real quick son. I've been thinking a little bit about and it was from a graph that Keith David showed, I believe it was him in the SMSC, where's the attractor Wells was he brought those up. But to be able to be in a created a creative and more innovative or authentic mover, right. The deeper we get these movement wells, right, the less creative we're going to be able to be and less like unique and novel. We can't we can be.

And I think I think especially what you're talking about, I think the same with us as coaches as being able to expand our toolbox a little bit because we'll create these deep wells of how we coach and like yeah with athletic throws we we maybe make it a little more shallow where it used to be like perfect repetition and we'll do a jump throw.

But not doing the same thing every single time as a coach or deploying the same thing and being able to us explore a little bit, we'll get those to be a little bit shallower and now we can surf a little bit differently. And I liked your idea of like the the path.

And because I was thinking because we've been doing a little bit hiking since I've been back in the Northeast, it's like if there's a path that's really like really set and it's very obvious where I should go, like I'm probably going to follow that almost every single time. But if it's a little, a little bit little murky and you don't know exactly where you go, it's I'm probably going to go different depending how, how the day speaks to me.

I may go over here, I may go over there, I may go around this tree or that tree or whatever. But it's because the the path isn't so obvious of where I should go. So I'm a little more open to the what is in the environment and how it's speaking to me that day. And I think us as coaches can get stuck in those deep attractor wells. They just do the same thing over and over and over and they get deeper and deeper and deeper. First, like being open to Doctor Gallo, what he's doing, where

can I take that? How could I borrow that? What could that potentially do for me? How could that work on the lead? Like how could that work on the quote UN quote, arm action or the mechanics or whatever it may be? I'm sorry, I don't know. That kind of sparked something and it's same same for coaching as it is our players. When we explore like, we'll be able to be a little more creative, innovative, and may find something that we otherwise would not have found, right?

Well and two off of that, one of the one of the things that came up in the SMSC with Stu Mcmillan's talk was asking the what if question. So for example, you know going back to like what you talked about Tanner, the constraint LED

approach. So based upon what I understand about the constraint LED approach is if if we manipulate A constraint within the system, so it can be anything that you talked about due to the Organism, the environment or the task, it's going to affect how the athlete moves, it's going to affect their mechanics or how they express their movement. So I I I tend to think of it this way.

I ask what if, what if we tried, if we manipulated, say for example, like I'm just going to keep using this for right now for, for ease of use is you know that that one where we put the ball on the ground, we slide up to it, grab and pick it and like turn and throw. OK, what? How is that influencing the movement? And then what if I manipulated that a little bit?

I changed either the speed that they come in to come pick up the ball or if I change the the angle that they come in like how does that then begin to shift and alter their movement. And then if you begin to think about it like OK, what ways would I might be more beneficial for them to move? OK, so now this, this, this segues nicely into bio

mechanics. Like for me how I begin to think about this and I was talking with ASCII recently and he was challenging me on this, which I think is good. When we begin to think about bio mechanics, the way that I think about is that there are bio mechanics help us with our search process for we might not know what the perfect bio mechanics are for an athlete, but if we're struggling and they're struggling to find it, I can maybe I have an idea of like where to begin to educate their search.

I don't know where along this, this continuum towards like you could say this biomechanical ideal because in my mind you could maybe it is the ideal for them. Maybe it's actually further beyond the ideal and maybe it's actually short of it. And so I don't know where that that is but I have, I have a space to you know you need a you need a if you are trying to go someplace.

Meaning we're trying to help the athlete find a more functional fit to the environment and have more functional solutions so they perform better. OK, well that to me is like having a destination. OK. So if I'm trying to get to a place I need to have an idea of like what direction to go. So to me, I use biomechanical, my biomechanical understanding of things to help direct where we're going to search and the direction that we're going to move. But it doesn't mean that we have

to get to this destination. Why? Because what if we find a better place to be that's a better destination for the athlete along the journey.

And so for me, that's that's how I begin to think about bio mechanics and how we're doing this exploration of OK, I think I I want to see, OK, if I manipulate this or I change the task up and I follow this principle, how their movement is going to change and then does that actually manifest in something that's more functional where they actually have more

success? Because to me, when I'm doing my exploration, the way that I think about it is I'm trying to put my back pocket, what is working better for the athlete, what is trending in a more functional direction. I'm going to put those things in my back pocket and then once we have kind of we hit our we people who are more interested on this you can watch we have a different episode up

specifically on exploration. We're kind of go into this more but I'm going to what we we we hit this certain point of the most that we're benefit that we're going to get out of exploring and trying wacky stuff or like really trying to push our edge because then everything starts to like our performance

starts to decline heavily. So what I found is OK you you start to notice for that decline then you stop and then you go back to those things that you put in your back pocket of like hey I had more success doing stuff like this. Let's explore that and hone in on trying to get more consistency of results and then you begin to take those things and move towards more functional solutions and more consistent

results or more consistent. I think the results is is a good enough word for for this right now. So anyways to me that's kind of the my, my thought process on like how to successfully use exploration to get the most out of it. Because otherwise I think you know people's knock on exploration is like OK, they're doing all this this stuff. But how is it translating to I don't see how this translates to to to a guy being a better

pitcher for example. And so to me that's this is how you do it, that you keep things focused on what's the main goal that we're we're here to do as far as training is, is to get the person to be a better pitcher and so making sure that your exploration actually achieves that goal. And I think like just when, when and how much you explore too. As always, I think we talked about that a little bit.

But like I think that's always important conversation, like you need to know when you got to be there too and how much you're willing to explore first, try to get him a little bit closer to that. But Tanner something I want to throw back to you since I mean Gary you brought up kind of the what if and especially like what if I do this and it kind of brings me and I think you kind of were were asking that question. I'm assuming like what if we added a batter in and I think that that too.

And let me talk about exploration. Do you think when you you kind of add that constraint of the batter in because I see it in, in two ways, I'm probably lean more towards the way you think about it. But what if you add a batter in there and how that's going to

influence the movement? And is it I think people may think like, oh, that's going to restrict them too much like when when they're going and working on anything basically like, all right, we're trying to throw as hard as we can, you got a batter

in there. Do you think that limits them too much or that or does that make it more meaningful and you're still can explore with the batter in there or do you feel like you got to take all exploration out completely if you had a batter in there or catch her in a little bit of consequence? If that question makes sense? Because I think that's an extremely important point is like, can you still explore as we ramp up this representativeness, I guess is the way to put that.

Yeah, I mean, I think you definitely can explore, but I think the bandwidth is lessened like there's less room to explore. It's it's kind of like, you know, squatting, doing a barbell squat in your warm up, you can explore quite a bit. But when you start to get to 8090 to 100%, there's a lot less room for exploration that's actually going to work. So I think, I think you can explore and for for one kid that we have, he is 15 top to 86

which is incredible. But he was struggling to throw strikes and his velocity was it fluctuated quite a bit, like he was sometimes 80 sometimes 83. He got up to 86 and I started looking at how he was moving and he strided a little crossbody, which I never I don't really have too much of an issue with. But then his front leg was just, it just wasn't stable. Like he was releasing some like differently, a little bit like

every pitch. I got some videos and it's like, OK, there, there's nothing really consistent. Not that it has to be the exact same every time, but I think there was too much variance for him to be able to functionally pitch. And So what we're starting to do now is experimenting with landing spots. So I said you can try landing more closed or you can try

landing more open. And I I said I think landing somewhere a little bit more open is going to help you out because of when you land your whole front leg bows out to that side to try and allow you to rotate and throw the ball. Sometimes you rotate recently, Sometimes you don't rotate really as much as you probably need. So it's affecting how you release the ball, which then is going to affect where it goes, how hard you throw it.

So we do it in plyos, we do it in Med balls, and now we're doing it on the mound with hitters in there. It's like, hey, can you open or can you stride a little bit more open? If that doesn't work, maybe go a little more closed off, like figure out what's going to work for you. And this was the first week that we did it on the mound because testing was last week. So we've been doing it in plows and Med balls second-half of last week and we did it yesterday with them.

And it's like, OK, your velocity was pretty much in the same area the whole time. And it looked like you were throwing some more strikes and it looked like your front leg was a little bit more stable. So I think he was able to explore to find something functional. And then now he's like Garrett said, like he's he's honing in on it, like he's getting better at it, be more functional. Did he get up to 86 again? No. But he also wasn't feeling that great and was sitting 83.

So I would call that a good day. Throwing some more strikes, a little bit more stable just looks more comfortable. So I would say All in all, I think you can explore, but not as much of A bandwidth as a more general activity. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, for sure. And I think I think too you can explore in different in different ways. I guess something I've been kind of thinking about, especially as you kind of make it more representative is like what are we exploring too, right.

Like I think there are definitely things because I think a lot of times again I guess we're, we're slant, we're slanting it towards bio mechanics here for a second. But like I think we get stuck on the bio mechanics, right. But you can, you could start exploring like different thoughts. You could potentially go into the pitch like what's my intention going into this?

You could play with that or there or you could feel like, oh, why don't, why don't you set up this way or that way or this speed or that speed and different variations of those. And there's still room to kind of explore and play a little bit, even with it's a little High Representative. At least that's something something I've been kind of kind of dwelling on. It's like where where does the exploration live if we want to make it more representative?

Originally in my mind, and this was a flawed flawed view with kind of like you ramp up exploration you ramp down representativeness. But that's not necessarily the case where we can keep representative up, but we can keep exploration up too. It may look a little different like obviously it it you'd probably get a little dangerous and parents may stop bringing it.

If you like are letting this guy like try every different kind of move in the book while there's a batter down there like that's probably not where you want to go. But I I'm always intrigued by that thought, and I think it's not as easy to like, OK, how do we keep exploration kind of high while we're keeping representative kind of, especially in the pitching space? This is inherent risk, right? You stick a batter down there,

right? Well, I also think like, you can explore pitch selection, pitch location, right? So like, I do some classes that they're not necessarily part of. Like a development offseason program is just like a one time sign up. I might get two kids, I might get six or seven. But for those classes, we don't usually have catchers or live humans. So something that I've done recently is with our plastic dummy hitters. I'll either have them crowd the

plate or go way off the plate. I'm like, OK, we're going to do the rolling counts based on where he is in the box. Where do you think your best option to throw it is? And some of them have no idea. Some of them are like, well, he's crowding the plate, Probably want to go inside. Perfect. If you can get it inside, it's a strike. If you leave it down the middle or outside, we're going to call it a single.

And it's like, oh, OK, now they have to figure out how they can throw pitches based on where the hitter is. As soon as they're done with that batter, I change something about it. Maybe I go from lefty to righty. Maybe I go crowding the plate, back them off. Maybe I just go normal position, see what they do, But it is interesting to see them know that, OK, this guy can't hit an outside pitch. How am I going to get it over there? Do they freeze?

Do they change their direction completely to get it over there? Or are they able to handle it no problem. And it's kind of fun to to watch them explore. And usually the kids that actually change something where they're not necessarily frozen, but they're moving a little bit differently, they're able to get it there, which is, I think I find it interesting. It's like, oh, their direction

changed. Oh, they're actually falling off more to the side after they throw it, but they're actually throwing it where they want to. So it's just just interesting. When they get out of that repetition, same thing over and over again. It's like, hey, figure out how to get it outside. I don't care what it looks like, batter's off the plate. You're going to have to throw it

outside. Yeah. And and you'll see what you may actually see within the game setting too, which I think is, is extremely important like versus living within the like we're just pumping the ball into the nine pocket over and over and over with no, no change of intentions or like what you're actually trying to do, pitch the

pitch. So actually, I, I, I, I really like that idea because I'm sure you do see, if you watch it, like you're going to see if you're going inside, outside or you put a righty in versus a lefty in there or just like you change the count on them, you put them behind or up in the count, whatever, like the movement's going to be influenced by those. And I don't think that's talked about because, I mean, to me, that's where the skill component

lives within this whole thing. Because like throwing harder is going to help you get out. And making those changes does a lot for you as far as what you could potentially select. And it may open some things up for you. But then placing it within context is like everything because it is going to be influenced by all those constraints we kind of talked about.

So I think that's cool that in that facility setting, you're kind of already adding that in since you're going to, it's going to expose them to a lot more and you're going to see a lot more to actually be a good pitching coach versus a good just throwing coach, which I think is a big difference. Yeah, and and most of the time it's just me just cuddle, letting them figure it out for the most part.

And if a kid absolutely cannot figure it out, then I'll pull them aside and I'll ask them questions and we'll have that conversation and then we'll go on to like, hey, try it, try doing this or try doing that. What are you seeing? What do you feel? Because some kids will move to the complete other side of the rubber, Like if they're not comfortable, they're just going to move completely away and try

to hit, hit their spots. Now they're able to which it's it's functional, they move to the other side, That's fine. I have no problem with it. But it's you can easily see what causes anxiety and what doesn't. Yeah, I do think it's interesting though. Just set and I think it's it's kind of cool if that's what some of your guys are doing, even if they're just sliding to the other side of the Rover since they're they're searching, right. And I think that's that's extremely important.

They're searching for and you're allowing exploration. Like, even if it's not like what potentially is the most functional within a game setting, at least they're starting that process of searching for something that will help them get to where they're they're trying to go, and if even if that's where they start, it's something. Yeah. And honestly, I don't really have an issue with guys switching sides of the rubber depending on who they're facing. Like.

I mean, I'm sure we've all seen that Paul Skeens clip. He changes side of the rubber depending on, you know, whether he's facing a lefty or righty. And I think more guys should probably do that because your stuff is going to play different because that's almost a whole foot that you're changing your release point, how it's going to break, how it's going to come out of your hand, where you're striding. I think that could be pretty valuable for a lot of guys.

They just have to be willing to explore it. And with the kids that have done it, it's more like, I don't want to hit the guy, so I want to move to the other side. Yeah, well, cool, like you're throwing it where you want to. You should probably keep doing that. Yeah, yeah. No, that's a good point. And I think those are stuff that's probably not explored as much as it could potentially be in pitching.

I mean for a host of reasons. But I think one, it's like how do you find if it's functional too. I think that's that's a tough question to really answer without being exposed to representative problems is if you're just switching side to side in bullpen settings and it feels good or like you're on left ear righty, like, oh, I think this would work better to a left ear versus right ear.

Coach told you like, it's great, but how do we actually know without those slices of the game where we're getting exposed to if it actually is better versus about it or not better versus about it, right? And are we getting feedback from them? Are they are they in there? How they're interacting with us, telling us, which I think is a huge part of the like. Why representative this is extremely important, like how do we know if it's working right

like. Otherwise you're going to find out in the game like that's how you like. You're going to find out, oh, this don't work and that's and then maybe won't get to pitch again for, you know, for for a little bit. And that's that's where I think that to your point, Baker of like, why it's so important to to have representative practice sessions so that you're not finding out in the game when it matters.

You're finding out beforehand so that when you get into the game you can just fall back on what you know works that you have experience working to. To go off of what you were also saying. Baker of how how do you how do I deal with the problem of keeping representativeness high as well as exploration within a practice setting? I I would. Here's how I've dealt with the issue of worried about a hitter getting hit that stand in.

I just think that if you give the guy a glove, if the ball comes at, you just catch it like all these guys, right? Who who if you're if you're. We're not talking about little kids, right? Who? You know, it's iffy whether or not they can catch the ball. But once you get to a certain level, everybody can catch a ball if it's thrown at them. So if you're looking at the ball, which I hope you know, if you're standing hitter, you're looking at the pitcher in the ball and seeing where it's

going. You know, if you feel uncomfortable, just catch the darn thing. You know there's no. I will say that's that's harder than said that because that's what I do. I stand in a ton and like I wear a glove and I and to be fair like I need to train myself as a hitter more and like that's one thing that I've thought a ton is I'm I'm bailing so much it's bad. It's just like you throw a breaker and I'm I'm I'm gone. Which is not giving a very

representative look whatsoever. And I have a glove on because it's the the here's the issue they think of intentions right intention shape action. When I'm thinking, oh shoot, he's coming inside, like I need to be ready to catch it. Like I'm almost always going for the ball when it's not even coming at me because my intentions I'm searching for

like I got to catch it, right? And then if I'm not and I'm trying to give a super representative look like my glove stays here, like I'm almost never ready to actually catch it. Like occasionally, like maybe swat it from my head, but like I'll still get hit, you know, that's where it's hard. That's where the gloves actually like it is still a limitation, but I think it's the best solution that I've seen too. I don't know if anybody else has

any better, but it's hard. I. Mean. I don't know real quick, Robert, having having been at Missouri State standing in because that's the closest I can get to the guys that you, that you're, you know, standing in for, you know, at least for me, Honestly though, I actually never had to catch a ball. Nobody ever, like, got that close to me. I also just maybe it's partially because I was a catcher.

Like, I have to wait, usually fairly long before I can even try to go catch a ball because like, I've caught knuckleballers, dude, if you try to go out and stick a stick a ball that's a knuckleball, you get. I caught cast Crayolo and he was throwing just nasty knuckleballs to me and I was really good at just going out there and sticking it. Well, I didn't have any of my gear on. I wasn't wearing a mask and I went to go try to stick it and that sucker hit me right in the

face. So like, that taught me, like, all right, you know, you got to, you kind of have to wait as long as you can let that ball move and then go get it at the end. So to me, that's that. Well, that was also too, right, Being a hitter, if I want to give myself because this, this to me is why I understood why I like Stanton and these guys get hit in the face, is because they can't move if they move early, right? A ball that comes at him and it's going to be a sweeper like you're done.

You have to, you have to stay in there as long as you can and move at the last second. So to me, that's what, like, that's why it's so hard to come back after getting hit in the face with a ball. That hard is because you need to then retrain yourself not to flinch, not to move to. Because to me, that was how I gave myself a chance to hit the the nasty breaking ball slider or whatever is.

I'm just, I'm not going to move and I'm going to stay in on this and trust that this ball is going to, you know, it's going to come back in or whatever, 'cause that was the only thing that gave me a chance on those type of breaking balls. So to me that's where it is to your point of like it is somewhat of your natural reactions like you have to kind of train some of that. So anyways, Robert, you were

going to say? Yeah, I basically the same variation of what you and both both Garretts have said. So yeah, like intention shapes action. So like if if you anticipate A fastball coming in and like out of the hand it looks like it's a fastball but it ends up being a well tunneled slider, you know, then you you're going to catch the ball before it breaks and then it does not become, you

know, as representative. And that's kind of like a poor feedback system for for the pitch event, because then they'll be like, oh, you know, it's going to hit the batter. Well, I mean I think the hardest pitch, right, is that because you're usually looking when he gives like fastball slider or whatever, but it's that backup slider, the bullet slider is the one that's going to, it's going to be a little bit tough. But I mean I think you know it's.

I don't know it's I think it's way different if you're standing in you know, for Diaz than it is. I mean yeah, I stood in a for younger and younger was up tonight like 9495, you know, with a good slider. But I don't think, you know, I don't know. You know it's it's different, right. Like he had good control. It's different than like a young Dominican kid who's still, you know, is 18 and trying to get a feel for the zone. Whereas like when I when I met

younger, he was like a junior. So like there's there's something different about that. So I get it. It's it's not easy. But I think for me it's at least, you know you can put a catcher's mask on. I don't know. You know, like there's there's, I think, I think we shouldn't let the challenge of the ideal get in the way of trying to find creative ways to make the ideal

work. Yeah, I think. I think maybe this is where like calling myself out like as as a pitching coach and maybe maybe this is an idea all pitching coaches should be doing. It's like we maybe we should be training as hitters a little bit to be able to give a little bit more representative slices. And I think that's something when seeing Sean and Tyler do their in person at the SMSC, like they are trying to give representative looks to the

football players. And I'm like, I can't necessarily give a representative look to a single pitcher. I will get my doors blown off. You throw a breaker, I'm out-of-the-box like that, right? Like, so it's like training like a hitter may actually be the best thing I could do as a as a pitching coach. I should see more pitchers. Maybe I should be going off a machine. Whatever.

Again, how much time do I have? I don't know if I have that much time, but, like, there should probably be some investment in that as far as, like, my coach growth, right. And that's something I've been thinking about this offseason, is how I could potentially do a little more of that. Just because, again, like, I'm not giving as representative of a look and like, they might find functional solutions against me that they thought it was nasty. And then you actually put

somebody who can track the ball. Again, like Gary, you were actually a hitter. So, like, you're probably a little bit better than I am, right? So just something I've been dwelling on for us pitching coaches. But on that point, what I've recognized right is, for me, I've had to learn how to pitch, right. If I want to help hitters, I

have to learn how to pitch. And I think you know you brought it brought it up like if we begin to you know study our opponent begin to inhabit the life that they that they live. All of a sudden now we have more insights. Because to me I think it's fun as as a more of a hitting guy to go to like a pitching conference and then just listen to how how they talk about how to get hitters out.

I mean they're basically giving giving you their playbook like hey we want to go you know how we you know how our school thinks about pitching is attack that low and away corner. We want to pitch guys away low and away. You know to get ground balls whatever. And you're like OK so then we're going to get good at hitting lone away you know it or you know I I, I heard one big league coach talk about like yeah, we we we just told guys to throw it

down the middle. Now there's a reason for that. But I was just like you know because he was saying well because you know only 11% of those balls down the middle end up as hits. And I was like, yeah, but how much of the damage also comes from that that percentage? Like I to me that doesn't eventually, unless your guy that you're telling this to all has a ton of movement to their pitch.

Always, then yeah, that makes a ton of sense for that guy that he should just focus on throw it right down the middle and let the ball move. But if you're not a guy, you know your guy, you're a guy that has maybe more more ride to your ball. Maybe there's some some level into that. But at the same point still like if your ball doesn't have a ton of movement or your movement is fairly average to the league standard.

Like I think if you leave that ball middle middle like it's going to get crushed or like yeah, you might get away with it the majority of the time. But when when those small moments come up that low percentage because I mean what's the percentage of that? Robert, you might know this. What's the percentage of all pitches that end up as runs you know that produce runs It's it's a very small percentage of the

pitches. So like to say that like you can just throw it down the middle because like only a small at a small time you're going to get burned.

Well yeah but those are the only times that matter you know so I I to me that just doesn't make any sense to to say that because what it what are what are hitters if you if you're on the pitching side like what are what are hitters focused on a ton now swing decisions that's and and what is their what are their their focus when it comes to swing decision it is mostly looking middle So something doesn't add up here when both sides are trying to do the same thing right back into the back

in the day when hitting coaches were telling hitters to hit ground balls and pitching coaches were telling pitchers to try to get ground balls. Something's not right here. If we're both trying to do the same thing like this don't make any sense to me like because one like we should be trying to beat the other person So if the goal is to is to for in the pitcher's mind to limit fly balls then I would think that the offense

should try to hit fly balls. I don't know, but you know, So anyways, that's that's kind of my my thing here of like when you're developing your pitching strategy, it should counter what the offense is trying to do. It should not be trying to do the exact same thing and vice versa. So anyways, that's my little rant on that. I guess Tanner I want to ask you this as I mean I've, I have my own thoughts, but I actually have another pitching guy on the

on the call. Finally like as far as that goes because a lot of times we're limited to to not having batters that swing, even if they're just standing in just do the space or just do it do them a myriad of things or you just don't have a hitter. How do you how do you help your guys necessarily train that aspect of it where like you're still trying to get an out and they're still like the batter could be behaving in different ways based on how you just

pitch. So if you're doing like a like potentially A simulated count or whatever, since if it's in a a non representative slice and we don't have people swinging, how can you potentially continue to still work some of those things even without that? Because I mean I run into that all the time and that's where I've been trying to think on ways to do it a little better, even if I have the constraint of that since that's an excuse like oh, I just didn't have a hitter.

But I still think there's got to be better ways to get it done. Yeah, I mean I probably don't have the greatest answer for you just because like at Match right now we are making it pretty representative. But I will say like if if we don't, some of the things that I've been doing, especially with those those one time like drop in classes that we do like we'll play like Pig or something with the nine pocket or like a point

system game. And so like pretty much everybody can throw it either up in the nine pocket or like in the middle. So then what they'll start doing is they'll start calling like, oh, you got to hit the left black frame. So they're trying to live on the edges. Or if we have the standing dummy hitter and it has like an orange string hanging from the arm, so they'll try to hit that orange string.

And so for as pitching coaches, we like it because how many hitters actually like hitting the inside pitch? Not many. They don't like hitting it. So if they're going to continue to try to hit that orange string, well, now they have more practice throwing it inside.

So I haven't really been directing, I guess, their attention to a hitter when there isn't one or trying to do it because most of the kids I'm working with just don't have the mental capabilities to try and think through that yet. Because they're they can be 9:10, 11-12 years old. And it's like, how deep do I need to go into this? Or do we just need to just try and get better at hitting

targets in general? How can we make that a game now for older guys, so guys that may be a little more skilled, it's like, OK, like if we have Trackman on and we have we're throwing a bullpen to a catcher with a dummy hitter, it's like, OK, this pitch is moving in this way. You probably want to avoid throwing it in these locations. So like that's kind of how I would go that way. It's like OK you've you've got a a righty in and you're it's a lefty on the mound and your cutter is 90 to 92.

You probably want to live inside with that because if you leave it out over the plate, it's base of the MLB average, hitting 92 isn't a big problem and it's going to go right into the barrel. You probably want to live glove side with that pitch, just based on the profile. If it's got good carry, hey, it's probably going to be more

effective up in the zone. So let's try and figure out how we can set that pitch up. And then we practice setting it up, go to live ABS when it's appropriate, and then we try it there and then it's like, OK, did that work? OK? If not, why didn't it work? OK, if it did work, was it because of how you actually set it up, or did you miss some spots and that somehow set it up just as well? Or like was the hitter you were facing just not to your skill level by trying to figure out

those things. So I don't know if I can give you a a great answer just because like I said like we're doing pretty good job of getting hitters in there and and catchers so. Yeah. No, no, that that definitely makes a lot of sense. And even even that last point, it's kind of like, you know, it's like building the general capability of throwing it to regions that you should potentially work and then you go battle test them within a representative slice.

I think that's kind of kind of what you're getting at, which I think I think makes a lot of sense to me. And I guess I I I'd open this up to everybody. So I mean this, and I could be completely wrong in this, but something I've I've thought about almost to challenge the idea of like your ten 1112 year olds and not necessarily adding any form of context and just trying to hit a target. Like I've always wondered and I'll have an answer.

I could be completely off on this and it's just me wondering because I'm not currently working with that age group. So like I could be completely off base on this. But training at that age, if they were to only if they're on the mound and they only were to throw pitches as if there was a quote, UN quote batter in there and the pitch is to get an out, like would that help them as they continue to go up levels

transfer that quicker. That's just something I've I've thought of. Again, like it was quick thoughts since I'm not working with that. But like imagine again, this is like the perfect setting and maybe my son will go through this and he'll be my my dummy as we as we grow up. But like if he's on the mound, even if I don't have a catcher or a hitter.

But I say, all right, I want this fastball in a way that you're going to try to get a rightie to ground out or I'm going to, you're going to try to get him to swing and miss or get the ball above his barrel. Or I want you to try to like get the inside part of his bat in the zone on this pitch. Like I always wondered if that's the only way they threw pitches. If once again to game is that much easier, could be off on that. And it may not work.

The intention may not be there and they might not be able to control his pitches, maybe frustrate, I don't know, but I I that's always something I was curious on. But that's a long time scale project that I don't have to go down, but I think there could be something there. My initial thought is that if they're young, right, you know, like with my kid, they don't. It's not going to work with regards to if they don't have the experience, right?

So they need the experience in order for them to even understand that context, right? So. The. Experience of facing a hitter, you know, and seeing those different things before you can introduce that. So like, for example, I mean, I've, I've taken stuff from, you know, what other people's experience, right? Like driveline or Lance, you know, talking about just trying to throw the ball hard. Like that's the first one of just learning how to throw the ball. And to me, it's not, I don't, I

don't use the word hard anymore. I say fast because if I say hard, a guy's going to probably tense up more and if I want him to throw fast, that's that means something different. And so I I at least tell my kid to swing, either swing the bat fast or to throw the ball fast, you know, And so that that to me is just how I'm initially talking about. And then maybe I might educate his attention. So we have these I so actually, Tanner, this is another thing that might be fun in your setting.

I got for my kid for his birthday to blow up, you know, like punching or kicking bags or whatever. So when you hit them, right, they come back up. And So what, what made me think that I wanted to do get this for him was we're outside playing and he there's like a sprinkler hole or whatever. And he took the the plastic bat that we had and and shoved it in there. And then he had like a ball and he was trying to like just knock

it over. So we played this game of, like, throwing it and trying to, like, knock this thing over and then we'd have to go and set it back up. I was like, well, what if I had a thing that just, like, popped it back up? Because it became this game of, at least for me, I throw the ball and if I miss it and I don't actually hit the thing, I have to go run and get it.

So all of a sudden this becomes like, I was thinking about this like a fun conditioning activity for pitchers of we have this target, you throw the ball and you try to knock the target over. Well, if you miss, you have to go run and get the ball. And so you know in a way it becomes this conditioning thing or or even too if you hit it and the ball bounces off whatever, you got to go run and get it.

So now it becomes this, this game that becomes a form of conditioning where the the further I throw it, the further ball or the harder I throw it, the further ball is going to go. So then I'm going to have to run further to go get it and then it and then I pick it up and as soon as I can like I get set up and I try to hit the target again. So it was kind of fun because now all of a sudden there's

these different ranges. So if I don't throw it as hard to try to knock it over, well then my next throw if I miss is going to be closer so it's going to be easier. So anyways I thought that was like you could come up with so many different games though with this with this like thing that you can hit and knock it over and it'll like bounce back up. So that was at least my my initial thought going back to

what you were saying. Baker is like it comes back to where are they skill wise like and then trying to educate their intention or attention to meet the the meet the athlete where they are. And so for me like sometimes like because Ezra will throw to me and I'll hit off of him and sometimes I have to tell him like hey buddy, you got to throw it lower you know. So I'm educating his intention there or you know I'll put the put that that knock up thing up

and it has like a little target. I'm like, hey buddy, try to throw it right here. You know. So sometimes it's it's it's those things of like, but I don't always tell him that. Sometimes I'll just simply tell him to throw it fast and just see like because maybe he's, he's naturally attuned to a target and it's fine because there's sometimes too, when I mean, how old's your son now, Baker? He's like 1.

Yeah, 1515 months. 15 months. So you know, early on, it's just right where where he's at. Hey, throw it right. I say the same thing to OB. He's just like, throw the ball, just just throw it. And obviously it's not. Doesn't look like anything, but it, like with Ezra's, is really interesting to see. Like at some point you're like, oh man, that was actually pretty decent and it was like actually

at a target. I didn't even tell you to throw it at a target, but it actually went towards either myself or, you know, whatever. And you're just like, man. So this is to me why I say like they naturally I think are going to pick up on trying to throw to something specific. It's just, it's just an affordance, right? Like the ball of Ford's throwing at a person.

Partially because when you are throwing it or whatever modeling it for them, you toss it to them like they naturally, you know, see that this is how we want to interact or this is how I should interact with this thing. So I think you only need to educate their attention or intention when you see is

necessary. So that's my thought process with that of like when they when do they get to that stage of OK we can start they've had enough experience or they have enough cognitive awareness that we can start to introduce this concept to them. So that's my thought process of of how to kind of scale it from a, you know, in terms of like youth to to your you could say pro.

Yeah. And I and I guess like where my thought was is the reason I would do that or the reason I thought of it is because you're always keeping problem and solution kind of coupled like like what's the actual problem or what are we trying to solve in doing that every single time. I just don't. In my brain it was like that would always keep them directed there.

So once again, to game, it'd be harder to almost like pull them away from that, where they're almost always searching for the way to get it out versus just becoming a thrower, which is I think the natural way that it's taught nowadays, where they just will naturally kind of become a thrower verse, like always trying to solve a problem with your pitch. And I just wondered again, this is kind of like one of my thoughts when I was like, how can I make the most creative

pitcher possible? Like as as far as the development path, this is where it kind of sparked. I was like, I wonder what kind of creative ways they may potentially come up with if they were trained in this way, where every single pitch was to get an out in some form or fashion and if it would be, if it if the development would look a little different, then differently and again like that. Maybe I don't have like the the original when they first started

baseball, like footage of that. But maybe pitchers were doing some unique like weird creative stuff or like that wasn't even a thought at that point because all it was was getting out, like we just wanted to get this guy out. But you look at like a Wiffle ball, like when we used to play like with the with the Wiffle balls, all the holes in it, like

you literally just did whatever. Like your your movement changed every single time and you're just trying to find a way out just because there's no constraints, right? So I don't know, could be completely out there and completely useless. I'll probably try it at some point in my life, but like, I think there may be something there. I think so. The the one thing that I would say is that we have to leave it

open. Meaning I can see that for some players just based upon their constraints and their natural you know how their how their pitches profile. It might be that focusing on getting it out might not be the the thing that is most successful for them. So I think we have to leave it somewhat open like we can start with an intention and see it because to me this is the whole the whole like test, retest you know thing that's been in

baseball for a while now, right. Like whatever it is we should test and retest, you know, and just see how it goes and then you know, find what works the best for the athlete. I think for me that's that's just been the thing that ecological dynamics has done well for me is just let me go and feel free to just always go with what works best, what works best for this person right here, right now in front of me.

And yeah, we do have to have some thought for the future, but how we get to the future also is dependent upon this moment right here, right now. So if I can get you success here, right here and right now set you up for wanting to stick with it, it gives you motivation and then we can start to eventually in the future maybe if some things need to be changed or whatever, we can deal with it when when we get closer.

And so that's at least been my my thought process or how I think about it. So I at least say that I think that's a good starting place. You know, I think that's going to get you probably minimum 80% of the results that you're looking for. I think it's more than that. I think that'll work for probably 90 to 95 to 99% of people. But just you know we we can't I think in some ways get too married to like this is the answer per SE. But I think it is a a a good

one. I I do want to transition a little bit here back-to-back to pitching mechanics because this was something else that you brought up earlier. Baker I I saw this and this for me resonated with me and it's funny because my old boss and and and the the this, this other company are kind of got into a little debate and it's going to be a debate at ABCA. So Baker, if I know you're going to be there is anybody else going to Abca? Robert, correct me if I said that wrong.

No, you you said it right Tanner, a little little back story. So there was a period of time where Boyam would say. ACBAA. CBA. Every. Time. So every time it drove me nuts, for I don't think either of us corrected them for like a while and then it just got. To a point, they just let it. It's like I had something in my teeth. They just let it go for for for a long time. It was functional though, right? It got the point across, but certain point it wasn't. Functional, Yeah.

And it provided humor, so. Yep. But anyways, so there's this tweet by arm care.com. Pitching mechanics don't cause arm injuries and I'm curious what your thoughts on this are. Because for me like Eco D kind of help break me of this like mechanic stuff. And because to me this is the whole reason that a lot of people will say, well This is why we actually need to focus on mechanics is it prevents injury. So I'm curious what your guys's thoughts are on one each of you individually.

What are your thoughts on mechanics? What is the role? Is there a place for them with an ecological approach? It can be different from mine. You can disagree with my thought and then we can dive into this this this whole kind of conversation about pitching mechanics and injury along with what is it like because because Bleecker I because for for Bleecker I think it's it's not just mechanics for for injury's sake.

It's also about efficiency. I think that's one of the other arguments is you know mechanics lead to a more efficient movement, and so you know based upon your guys's understanding of ecological dynamics and what efficiency means from an ecological dynamics perspective. What are your guys's thoughts when it comes to mechanics? I I would pretty much agree with that tweet, I believe. I don't think it's a mechanics thing. I think Rich actually kind of

begged a question. He goes is it a mechanics thing or is it a workload thing? Is it a poor workload? Like, like, which one is it now? And then does the poor workload cause issues with movements? And then you also have to think, like, are they too weak to be able to throw it in a efficient way? And efficient is different for everybody, but I think it's more of the general qualities that can cause injuries. Now, are there sometimes where

mechanics might cause injury? Yeah, but I don't think it's as big as the baseball industry makes it, if that makes sense. Like of all the guys that I've coached at my previous job job now, like the guys with some of the best looking mechanics usually are the ones where their arms are sore or hurt all the time. The ones with the worst ones, well, those movements usually aren't functional to throw hard

enough to where their arm hurts. So to me it's not necessarily the mechanics, it's workload management. Are they strong enough? Is there a certain muscle that's weak and everything else is being overworked? I don't know. I honestly don't know if there is a specific answer to what causes injuries and then you have genetics on top of that. So like, is it really is mechanics? Are bad mechanics really the bad

guy? And then through an ecological lens, is there such thing as bad mechanics or just functional versus not so functional? Yeah, and I I think I tend to agree with pretty much everything you said there. And something that Rafe Kelly said that's always stuck out is the the idea of like the calluses on your hand. When you, when you're like in a gym, you get calluses in one spot. So it's really hard tissue next to really soft tissues and those tear.

But like in Rafe's world where he's climbing trees and doing all these diverse movements, his whole hand gets calloused and it's hard tissue next to hard tissue and those stay together and they don't break off. So one thing he said it was I thought really fascinating, if you train in a certain way and you have really strong resilient tissue next to tissue that's not trained at all, like that's where some of your non contact

injuries come from. And that's where I think it's, it could be just weakness within the body and you just can't handle that type of stress or you've developed a capacity in certain areas and not other areas and that's what could potentially leading to to some of the some of the injuries. But I think like you could you can move in the worst way possible, have a ton of stress, extra stress, put on ligaments

or soft tissue, whatever. But you, you can be able to withstand that because of the stress you put on yourself previously and you can withstand that type of stress, you're probably not going to get hurt. Or you could have less stress put on you, but you're not trained up to a certain point and you're not strong enough to withstand that and you're going to get hurt. So is it mechanics probably not do. Can they like, contribute? Like probably, yeah. But is that the sole reason?

I I wouldn't think that's ever the sole reason for it, right? Robert, you got any thoughts on this? You know, even Tuesday? Have you have you seen any data related to this or just even from searching your own experience what what are your thoughts on this? Yeah. So I haven't really seen any data to report it, but at the same time, I think it could be an interesting use case if you know the data is presented

itself. We just haven't, there hasn't really been an opportunity to kind of view this on a on a large scale, especially on you know, bio mechanic side of things too, just because that data is just not presently available. So I would find it interesting if you know there's an opportunity there where maybe we can play around with some bio mechanics data and then be able to marry it together and see if there's something interesting there. So that's my take out.

Because the the additional thing that I would say and add to the conversation for me, what was most illuminating for me was going to take Dr. Andrea Ospino's of course is functional range conditioning. And in the in the first one he put up there, you know in in his mind it's a capacity issue. So if the demand exceeds the capacity of the tissues or the structures or whatever, you're going to get injured like that. It just and to me it's like, yeah and like in what cases is

that not true? You know that and so but if you build up the capacity of the tissues and the structures to be able to handle whatever demand that you put on place on it, you're not going to get injured. And so to me that is the fundamental principle by which I look at almost all injuries now well-being because even in contact, right, if it's a contact injury, what happened? Well, the force exceeded the capacity of those tissues or or structures and and destroyed

them or broke them. So to me the goal is with and This is why right and on ramp is so important. What are you trying to do? You're trying to build up the capacity of the tissues to be able to with to withstand whatever, whatever load you're going to place on them later. And you do it in a way and you have to think because to me this is actually the hardest part is to think is to think about it in reverse, reverse order order. OK.

I have a specific date and time by which I need to have the capacity to do XY or Z. And so a lot of times, you know, you want to sit there and think about it like, OK, how many pitches and how frequently because these are, these are the two elements of frequency and and and and load or volume. OK. Because these because. Right. The implement that we're going to use isn't going to vary much at all, right. It's going to be a 5 oz, 5 oz ball.

So we have to think about, OK, what are the two main things that are going to vary? It's going to be a frequency and volume. So what is the, how frequently is a person going to throw? And then two, what type of volume are they going to throw and what's that going to look like? And so you want to work work backwards of like OK, how do I get them built up to there and

how much time do I need? And I think that is actually the harder piece is how much time because a lot of times especially in my context in college well we have winter break and winter break is can be anywhere from three weeks long maybe 2. But generally you're looking at like 3 to 5 weeks long of the of an athlete right before our season just gone on their own doing whatever, who knows what, right you can give them something. But this is the other thing too of like shutdowns.

It's like how long can I shut a guy down if I need him to be ready by a certain date? And then two, when we come back from break, OK, do we on ramp again like you know and what does that look like? How does that cut into other things that we could be doing? If I'm on ramping, can I on ramp in such a way where I'm still getting work done? I think so. But you know initially I think that's a hard thing to figure out of. Well, it's because for me the way that I approach on ramping

is high volume, low intensity. That's how I think about on ramping is I want to build up a ton of capacity, build up a ton of endurance, so that when I go back to whatever it is I want to work on, I can do it. But I also think the hard part is, is also building up the capacity to throw at high intensity and so you also have to have a transition period of high volume, low intensity to higher intensity.

Now the question is, and this is actually a question for you, Tanner, you know, interacting with with Aaron. You know, I think you can throw at high intensity more frequently, but how do you do that? How do you build a person up to throw high intensity more frequently and not only that at a higher volume? Because again when I start to think about things from a weight room perspective, we can't go in there and Max out every single day like you know with with moving the most tonnage.

Now could I go in there and try to move as fast as I could every single day at a specific weight that I do the same weight every single day? I think that is more doable.

But I guess the question is because this is to me is like I look at trying to throw the ball as hard as you can as being very, very similar to trying to go in the weight room and pull as much weight as you possibly can for one RMI and and I think the jury has has concluded and the evidence shows that you cannot do that every single day unless maybe you're on steroids, OK. With the exception of like the

ability to recover very quickly. If you can't do that then we can't come in every single day and and and hit APR every day.

So this is my question I guess maybe throwing it back to you Tanner of like you know working with being around Aaron all the time, like what does it take to actually be able to throw more consistent, how do we, how do we make this transition to higher intent, you know hitting new PRS in terms of velocities etcetera and you know can we do this in an on ramp, what does this look

like? Yeah, I'm honestly not sure how Aaron does it. He just does it like, you know, I I, I can't really give you a solid answer, but it it's fun to watch because it's like every day he calls it his high, high, low program, right? So he does 2 high in 10 days in a row and then it's either low intensity or completely off and then right back to a high intensity.

And I don't know. I think for him he just has the ability to just be able to handle it, 'cause he didn't throw hard for most of his career up until he got to Indy ball and then he just started throwing Max effort, long toss or something like that every single day. And then all of a sudden he had a big velocity jump. So watching or hearing him do it, it just seemed like his body could handle it when he did it. Now in an on ramp, I'm honestly

not sure. I mean I think you need to expose the body to throws at high intensity whether it's medicine balls, swinging a bat, maybe just rotating in a Max effort way. I think that's a place to start.

But once you get to that high intensity, like I guess if you want to call it a phase or like after the on ramp is over, I'm not sure maybe maybe you go after, you know you have a high intent day, a moderate intent and a low however you want to structure it. But like at the end of each session it's one Max effort throw. I don't know, like maybe you just start with one and then the next time you get to a lower moderate and you go 2 and then maybe three. I have no idea.

I haven't tried it yet. I haven't done it, but that's that's maybe how I would do it. Well and and for me having worked with a guy one of our players, he had some arm pain or whatever some of his like medial and some of it was like on the posterior side of his his elbow with the tricep. And so we we did my, my, my like weighted ball on ramp which actually kind of gets extended out.

It works best about 8 weeks, 6 to 8 weeks because I we we'll we'll spend a whole two to three-week block just on like not going out super far and using higher heavier weighted weighted balls and do that for about you know two to three weeks is usually a good good amount to build up a good solid base. And then we start working back and then we start transitioning down in terms of the the weighted balls and we work our way all the way back to to a

regular baseball. And if I if I transition or I drop or I add a a lower weighted baseball going down to a 5 oz that you know if I start at 9 oz and I add 8, So what So it's nine, so it goes 8765, that's 5 weeks or at least four weeks right there just to transition. So we go 2. So I think it's like 2 weeks, so about six weeks it just to do that. And we haven't done any high intensity throwing. All we've done is just increase the distance and drop the weight.

And so now I've been thinking about, OK, so now if I want to properly do it because we did, we did that whole thing and then I had him throw to bases after that and it went OK. It kind of still kind of bugged him.

It was still there. So I'm like, well, if I actually wanted to make this go away, I would have to actually then after that whole block slowly reintroduce high, high intensity throws to make it so that the tissue and like the nervous system can do that and then make that cause The way. The way I think about it is I like this analogy that Tyler used, used for, you know, what we do in the weight room. And then the skill coach, right, is we we, we help them out and

then they get to this bridge. And then we just pat them on the butt and say, hey, good luck taking what we did in the weight room and figure out how to translate it to the field, you know, and. And so to me it's all about like, how can I walk the player further along that bridge so that the jump is actually more gradual. Because I found this is for me, for like weighted balls.

You know how when you when you switch to like a lower weight, you usually, like, Shank it or just like, it's just super weird? Well, I found out if you, like, are constantly alternating between the ball, whatever new ball that you're wanting to do eventually you can just pick him up and you don't. You don't end up, you develop an attunement to the to the differences in the weight and

how to move. So anyways that is what I found, at least how I think about how to transition as you if the more we can smooth it out, the easier the transition is going to be for the athlete anyways. All right. So I know at least one person needs to go soon so I want to, I want to try to land the plane here and see if I can do it in

in 5 minutes is the goal. So anything that you guys want to wrap with closing thoughts, closing words and then we'll go into where can everybody be found and if you want to keep up with them. So any any closing thoughts from

from any of the anybody here? I guess the, I guess the only thing I'll say is I hope anybody who's made it this far in the episode takes takes what people are doing over at MASH as like as an example what you could potentially do at a facility and actually change it up a little bit compared to your traditional model. Add representativeness into it, like encourage freedom, actually create some authentic movers on

the mound. Since I don't think you see it often and I think a lot of people are scared to try it within that setting. So like I think they're they could be a really cool model going forward of how to potentially do it. So I kind of like tip the hat again like only hearing it from and seeing it from afar.

But from from what I'm hearing and what you're kind of talking about, Tanner, I think this would be a really cool place for people interested in these ideas that work in a facility to gain some inspiration of how they could potentially go do it. And then Tanner, where can people find you? And then also too, are there any resources that you would recommend? It doesn't have to be specifically about Eco D You can plug Eco D stuff.

It could be to do with baseball, or it could not do with baseball at all, like any resources that you recommend that people check out. Gotcha. So yeah, if people want to follow me, Instagram is TJP under score training. That's just one I kind of have fun with. You get a look at what I do for myself training wise and then on Twitter, TJ Pruitt 2310. That's going to be more of, I guess educational, just things that I've been thinking about different ideas.

But as far as resources, going to be honest, really anything from emergence I found extremely valuable. Other than that, not really. I mean, I don't know. I mean that's really what I what I kind of look at with all the different ideas and taking ideas from other sports and asking, OK, how can we apply it to baseball? Because there really isn't a whole lot of people writing about these ideas in a baseball setting.

So I would say anything from emergence and you're pretty much going to be set to at least get started into these ideas. Within, within it within 60 seconds, Could you speak briefly on your experience and your thoughts on the Movement Academy and because I, I, I know both you and Baker did that I want. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah, I really liked it because I had already been looking at these ideas before I started Movement Academy for probably a

year and a half to two years. So then being able to be like, OK, this is what you understand. This is where you're at. Let's look at some of these ideas that maybe you're still struggling with or you don't fully grasp. And it was nice to be able to have that one-on-one or two on one conversation with Sean and Tyler to be able to actually like, OK, this is where I am, they're meeting me where you know exactly where I am on that bridge and they're helping me

get across it like, OK, cool. Like, yes, that was a good activity, but you could have made it better by adding XYZ or taking away XYZ and being able to talk through those ideas and actually becoming a better coach and understanding the theory and the practicality of what I was doing and then being able to hear in the big group discussions about what other

coaches are talking about. It's like, oh, I haven't really thought of that idea in that way because I thought I had a good grasp on it. But hearing somebody else's perspective, it's like, oh OK, I can see where that comes in. How can I tie that into who I am So extremely valuable? I felt like it was the equivalence of, I don't know, maybe a college level course maybe. Or even even higher. Maybe like a master's level.

I don't know. I just know that the amount of information and education I got was probably worth more than what I paid. Sweet. So on that note, if you want to be get get a small discount on some of the their courses not not the movement Academy. Use the code Edge 7 to get 7% off and so without further ado till next time.