Today’s episode features Dr. Nick Serio. Nick received his doctorate of education in sport and performance psychology from the University of Western States. He is the co-owner and general manager of the “Athlete’s Warehouse” located in Pleasantville, New York. Nick also serves as the head pitching coach at Fox Lane high school, where the baseball team has had tremendous success.
I watched Nick’s presentation on medicine ball training he did at the NISMAT symposium, which was a phenomenal and creative demonstration of special strength training for pitchers. Nick’s work is the epitome of the full-spectrum blend of knowledge of sport specific skill needs, appropriate special strength exercises, as well as solid general strength principles.
Nick’s special strength medicine ball programming is facilitating significant increases in players throwing speeds, all while keeping their arms healthy, as they avoid throwing baseballs year round (a huge factor in getting injured or burning out early). Despite the impressive results he gets, Nick is a very honest and transparent individual, as he also indicates the many other training modalities the players are doing (plyometrics, resistance training) as well as simply growing and maturing. Regardless, Nick’s creative solutions to training are something special to learn about, and have ramifications for all throwing athletes, and rotational sports.
On the show today, Nick goes into the factors contributing to the massive injury increases in baseball, and how his medicine ball program can help combat this. He also chats about general principles in training throwers, postural issues, and then gets into the fine points of his medicine ball training program. Nick also addresses the action of the front block leg in throwing, which is a universal principle, applicable to a great variety of rotational sports.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.Key Points
- An assessment of the factors contributing to the massive increases in injury in baseball
- How Nick approaches upper and lower extremity work for throwing and rotational athletes from a general weightroom perspective
- Addressing postural issues with throwing athletes
- A full description of Nick’s medicine ball training program designed to improve pitch mechanics and velocity while taking load off of the arm and elbow
- Training the action of the front leg, the block or brake leg in throwing and swinging actions
“There is a lot going on at younger ages that is missed because we are focusing so much on major league baseball. The demands to get recruited and how we get recruited right now, put a tremendous amount of stress on a young pitcher’s arm”
“We created a system to try and attain this velocity (needed to reach the next athletic level) without putting further stress on them (through medicine ball training)”
“In the past, it was the parents that have the answers, today, it is the kids who have the answers”
“I think it’s ridiculous that we have a pitch count in baseball… how many of those pitches in that 100 pitches were maximal intent? Well that’s going to take way more of a taxation of his out than a 2 outs, no runners on situation”
“When you look at most high level throwers, they are going to have retroversion in their shoulder, and that’s from throwing at that younger age; their body is doing that at those morphing times where we are going to have those improvements”
“Any real rotational athlete we’re looking at a couple things: we are looking at the reverse lunge… we love the overhead squat… and then a bear crawl, we are infatuated with crawling.. and then obviously sprinting”
“It’s difficult for me to differentiate the shoulder region from the hip region if I don’t account for the lat”
“It’s no shock that are guys who throw in the mid to upper low 90’s all run well”
“When we see someone stuck in scapular depression, or when we see them stuck in downward rotation, we will constantly try to work that upward rotation, we will constantly get them pressing overhead”
“(Regarding the medicine ball throw progression for pitching) The first three are a linear progression, the next three are a linear progression, starting with a separation, and then the final four are building on momentum”
“We’re trying to get rid of fall baseball, we hate it”
“The kid is hearing the improvement, he is hearing the ball hit the wall differently… we won’t progress someone out of phase 1 until we start getting those emotions”
“If we have a kid throwing a (1lb) med ball in the low to mid 30’s (mph), has equated out to low 70s to mid 70’s (fastball). Upper 30s to low 40’s has equated out to upper 70’s to low 80’s. Mid 40’s to upper 40’s equates to mid 80’s to potentially touching 90’s. Anyone over 50mph generally has already thrown 90+.”
“We see athletes who throw a baseball harder than what their med ball is at, you make them stick to it, and their med ball starts to go up, and when they get to their baseball season, their throwing velocity is now up”
“That second knee pop (in the brake leg) sends a wave of energy back up through the body… what you do notice in all those high velocity throwers, is that the knee does not continue to move and track forward over the toe once the foot hits the ground”
“(Regarding the lower body action) We have taken a pitcher, and ghosted a lacrosse shot over it, and it’s very very close. The lacrosse shot was closer to a baseball swing”
“(Using grip and forearm fatigue as a measure) I would love to do away with the pitch count (when grip strength drops, then you stop pitching)”
Show Notes
Here is a video of Nick’s full system highlighting his training program and methods of using medicine ball training to improve pitch velocity
About Dr. Nick Serio
Dr. Nick Serio received his doctorate of education in sport and performance psychology from the University of Western States. He is the co-owner and general manager of the “Athlete’s Warehouse” located in Pleasantville, New York. Nick also serves as the head pitching coach at Fox Lane high school, where the baseball team has had tremendous success.
Nick is an NSCA Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach (RCSS*D) as well as an NSCA CSCS. He is also a USAW Sports Performance Coach Level 2. Nick’s mission is to redefine the way that society views the development of student-athletes.
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