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STOP Athletic Performance Training? [VIDEO]

Athletic Performance Training Interview With Jeremy Frisch: Is It Smart To Shut Down Overhead Shoulder Development?

Here’s what we go over in the athletic performance training interview with Jeremy Frisch:

  • What do you feel the biggest mistake is when those kids are being trained by strength and conditioning coaches?
  • What do you think about something like that, where you’re totally shut down any overhead shoulder development for baseball, softball players?STOP Athletic Performance Training? [VIDEO]
  • When you do an athletic performance training evaluation of a hang, what do you look at? How long if a player is poor in that, versus is good in that? How long can they hang for?
  • When you get a kid like that a high school, junior high school on up, what do you do with that kid? Do you have to go back in
    time, work that out? And how long does that usually take?
  • “…you had them wrestling or something similar?”
  • Are you looking to do some franchising or something like that, to where people can have access to that around?
  • Is there a certain athletic performance training formula like maybe the four or five things that you look for that we make sure in one hour that we’re getting done?
  • Where can people find more about you? And so that’s number one. And two, are there anything new? Any kind of projects you’re working on right now?
  • Any other parting thoughts before we go?

Here’s the athletic performance training video transcription… (estimated reading time is about 30-minutes)

 

Joey Myers 

Hello and welcome to Swing Smarter Monthly Newsletter or Newsletter Monthly, I say it both ways. This is your host Joey Myers from hittingperformancelab.com and I have the honor today, finally, to get Jeremy Frisch and it’s Frisch, right? Not Frisch.  I have Jeremy Frisch on with me. He is the owner of Achieve Performance Training.

Jeremy Frisch 

It’s at achieveperformance.net.

Joey Myers 

.net. Okay, cool. Then it reroutes? The big thing Jeremy is a big, like, if you go onto his Twitter is @JeremyFrisch and Frisch spelled F-R-I-S-C-H. If you go on there, and his Twitter says, strength conditioning, long term athletic development, which we’ll be talking a lot about in this call. He’s a physical education youth football coach at Clinton High.

Joey Myers 

I see that, I think he’s actually out though, I know you’re at the elementary school, huh? Elementary, that’s where all your training is?

Jeremy Frisch 

Yes.

Joey Myers 

Clinton High, Bridgeton Academy, looks like Worchester State University. So welcome to the show, Mr. Jeremy.

Jeremy Frisch 

Fire it up. I’ve been a big fan for a long time and read your books and your live drive baseball package that I bought and watch those videos. This is exciting for me.

Joey Myers 

What I love, is the very thing that you do to help kids get into, is the biggest component i think that is not put in or at least it’s put in wrong, it’s plugged in wrong. My first question to you is, what do you feel on the strength conditioning side with the kids that you’re talking about? Say, maybe through elementary school? What do you feel the biggest mistake is when those kids are being trained by strength and conditioning coaches?

What do you feel the biggest athletic performance training mistake is when those kids are being trained by strength and conditioning coaches?

Jeremy Frisch 

I think over the years, you got athletic performance training started up with professional and college level, and it’s trickled down and it went through the high school and then and now it’s at the middle school. And I think with private facilities, people try to make money so they’ll have some type of like, kids’ program, right? And what happens is that, I think a lot of facilities may not have the experience of working with kids, so they just default to what they know.

Jeremy Frisch 

They’ll put on training programs that are made, probably more for adults, than for kids. They sort of watered down a little bit, and try to make them kid friendly, but they’re really not. You know, what I mean?  The elementary school age, what we’re really talking about is physical education, right? And we want to get those kids to be able to move around as much as possible.

Jeremy Frisch 

I think the most important part of that is you could say move around a lot. And you can get them to do jumping jacks, and hops and stuff like that, and all that stuff’s great. But to get them in an environment where they have to think and react and move, and that’s why that age, games are the best, right? You get them in an environment, playing tag, or chasing each other things like that, or playing dodge-ball, those type of things develop kinesthetic awareness, they develop spatial awareness, they develop their ability to track with your eyes, which talking about baseball, right?

Jeremy Frisch 

I mean, that’s the name of the game right there. And so those things lead to, being able to track not only is awesome for baseball and other sports, but it’s also awesome for reading, right? Because we all know we need that, too. Any activity that allows us to track a ball or track a person, or be able to have to react to a ball or a person or auditory signal or anything where we have to react to something in front of us. It’s probably the best thing that you can give to a child that age.

Jeremy Frisch 

The other thing that they really need to be able to do, is to be able to handle their own body weight. And like people think about that it’s like, “Ah! We’re going to get them to do pushups and squats and lunges and stuff.” And it’s not that.  It’s more like can they climb up a tree? Or can they climb on a bar and hang? Can they do a forward roll? Can they bear crawl? You know what I mean? Can they jump off a box and land without totally collapsing and hitting the ground? You know, what I mean?

Jeremy Frisch 

When I was a kid, we used to jump off stuff all the time. You know what I mean? And we did it in like a play type atmosphere, but those type of environments really developed the athleticism, and we didn’t even know it. You know what I mean?

Joey Myers 

Right. And, obviously in baseball, we’re talking, hitting and things like that, but throwing and one of the things that I thought, I didn’t know really much in junior senior year of college coming out, but one of the athletic performance training programs I think was University of Texas, it just won the College World Series. I think that was my junior year and then my senior year, their strength conditioning program almost got rolled out to every D1 all over the country.

Joey Myers 

And one of the things that they did not do was anything over shoulder, no vertical shoulder, anything. We weren’t allowed to do any vertical shoulder stuff. And to me at the time, I remember thinking to myself, wait a minute, don’t you need to be strong in every position possible? I understand that we’re overhand a lot. We’re doing a lot of overhand throwing and stuff. But what’s your opinion? Or what do you think about something like that, where you’re totally shut down any overhead shoulder development for baseball, softball players?

 

What do you think about something like that, where you’re totally shut down any overhead shoulder development for baseball, softball players?

Jeremy Frisch 

Yeah. The old saying, if you don’t use it, you lose it. You know what I mean? You’re asking these guys to pitch and they’re going through an extreme range of motion at a very high velocity.  You better be strong to be able to do that, you better be strong when you start doing it. And I think when we’re talking about kids, there’s probably thousands and thousands of kids across the country that pitch every weekend, probably can’t hold himself up, like hanging from a bar for more than 30 seconds.

Jeremy Frisch 

They don’t have the grip strength in the hand, they don’t have the strength in the shoulder to be able to hang, to hold themselves there. But you’re asking them to pitch a ball as hard as they can, or swing a bat, as hard as they can. I think when you look at it that way, too, it’s no wonder that I think some guys have trouble teaching kids how to hit or how to pitch because the physical abilities aren’t there. Right? The physical abilities aren’t there, to be able to teach them how to swing a bat fast, or how to throw hard.

Jeremy Frisch 

I think there’s needs to be a foundational level of strength for kids before they actually get into their first few years of playing sports.  I’m a huge fan of hanging or pull ups or climbing all that stuff for kids is awesome. And I test because my kids play baseball, so some of their friends come in, and we get kids from the surrounding area that are supposedly really good players. And the first thing I test like, how long can they hang from a bar?  And it tells me right away what they got going on up top.

Jeremy Frisch 

It’s a really good sign, obviously hitting and pitching and throwing, and a lot of that comes from the forces through the ground, too. But it’s important that their shoulders are strong, scapula is strong, has good range of motion. I’m a huge fan of when those kids start to hit like their tween years, like the 11, 12, 13-year-olds, we do tons of one arm dumbbell presses, we’ll do stuff where they’ll hold the dumbbell overhead and walk. I’m a huge fan of that stuff. Huge fan.

Jeremy Frisch 

And for power development, we do a lot of medicine balls, most kids will throw medicine balls between probably four pounds to eight pounds, 10 pounds, but we have these medicine balls that are 15, 20, 25, 30 pounds, and we do a lot of vertical throws with them. The kids are going to do a push press when they launch the ball in the air. And will let it go and hit the ground, and they’ll repeat. We do a lot of that stuff.  So yeah, I’m a big fan of trying to get as strong as you can through a complete range of motion.

Joey Myers 

I love that. You mentioned the hang. When you do an athletic performance training evaluation of a hang, what do you look at? How long if a player is poor in that, versus is good in that? How long can they hang for?

 

When you do an athletic performance training evaluation of a hang, what do you look at? How long if a player is poor in that, versus is good in that? How long can they hang for?

Jeremy Frisch 

I want to see the base level, like 30 seconds. I remember that summer, I had like three or four kids that were between the ages of 11 and 12. And thought they were, and these kids play a lot of baseball, and they’re pretty good. But they were struggling at 30 seconds. But you know what the great thing is, is if you practice that every day or every other day, you could get really, really friggin good at it. It doesn’t take a long time to get stronger. And I use that as proof for the kids like look at, if you work at this, just like swinging a bat and pitching a ball…

Jeremy Frisch 

You work at this every week or every day you’re in here, you’re going to get better and we got kids that went from like barely getting 30 seconds to well over a minute.  It’s a huge part of my program when I first have kids that come in to my facility and I love the younger kids, not only just hanging but get them to like shimmy across the bars, back and forth where they have to sort of like navigate across the bars. My kids, I set up years ago, and they’re still in there, they’re like the gymnastic rings like monkey rings, so they have to swing from ring the ring go all the way down the rack and back.

Jeremy Frisch 

I tell you, I think it’s great not only for shoulder strength, but grip strength as well. And I think that’s another thing that so many baseball players, I think leave on the table is grip strength. I mean, you’re literally holding a bat. The bat is in your hands, right? And everyone overlooks grip strength. You have so many nerves in your hands, and it connects all the way up into your shoulder. And I think that’s another thing that’s totally overlooked in a lot of training programs is grip strength, you know?

Joey Myers 

You know what’s crazy is that people now have to pay strength conditioning people, athletic performance training yodas like yourself to do this kind of stuff instead of like you and I, when we were younger, we went to the playground, and we did all the monkey ring stuff and all that. And now we have to pay a Yoda like yourself now in order to get that kind of training.

Jeremy Frisch 

Yeah. And I think too, if you do it early, like my son, my oldest is 13. He’s a big kid. He grew up got six inches over, he hit his growth spurt over COVID. And he’s just sprouted up. And he’s not skinny. He’s pretty solid kid. Right? When he was little, we did rope climbs all the time. He used to climb that rope all the time. And I swear, even though he’s grown a lot, developing that grip strength and shoulder strength when he was that age, allows him to be able to still do chin ups at his size, and stuff.

Jeremy Frisch 

I feel like he developed that strength when he was younger. And now that he’s gotten older, even though he’s grown, he’s been able to hold on to it, because he’s trained through that time period. And he’s able to do those things. I think for younger kids, it’s just huge to be able to get… and it’s fun, right? That stuff is fun. We’re not like making them do one arm dumbbell rows, and like SCAP pull ups, we’re not doing corrective exercises.  That gets fun, you’re climbing on bars, you’re hanging, you’re trying to get from ring to ring, it’s like you’re playing but you’re training at the same time.  I think it’s huge.

Joey Myers 

That kind of stuff in the gym, the monkey bars, and the whole gymnasium type of thing in the parks that we play in, it was tag, we were walking on, like I see your kids doing walking on little, whether they’re beams that are above the ground, or you’re having to balance, you’re having to, all this kind of stuff. And that’s what I really like.

Joey Myers 

One of the athletic performance training questions I actually wanted to ask you, you did the strength conditioning episodes on your site in the about section, like bottom third of the page, and they were talking about some things they asked you about the older kids that you get, whether they’re high school, maybe even college guys that come back, or maybe just started to work with you. And that there were some developmental holes in their past. When you get a kid like that a high school, junior high school on up, what do you do with that kid? Do you have to go back in time, work that out? And how long does that usually take?

 

When you get a kid like that a high school, junior high school on up, what do you do with that kid? Do you have to go back in time, work that out? And how long does that usually take?

Jeremy Frisch 

That was a big change for me with my programming. And when I really started working with the kids and realize like, these are the things that kids need. And these are the things that will help them to develop to be a better athlete.  I sort of took that idea and morphed it into using it with the older kids. And the idea came, well, let’s try to fill in these developmental holes with these kids during their warm up period. Right?

Jeremy Frisch 

10 minutes a day, 15 minutes, they’ll come in, we’ll do a little bit of crawling to work core strength and stability of the shoulder. Because we know that’s good, it’s a little bit more structured.  It doesn’t look as fun as the kids do it.  But it would be like, alright, we’re going to do 50 yards of total crawling, broken up into small parts.  We’re going to do some foundational… we might do hanging, we might have them use a bar, where they’re going to work on their typical strength exercises.  Just to get them in the right positions to be able to do a squat or bench press or shoulder press, whatever.

Jeremy Frisch 

We’ll do a lot of stuff on the balance beams.  We’ll get them walking sideways on a balance beam, maybe doing a low lunge on a balance beam.  We’ll get a medicine ball in their hands and get them throwing the ball different ways. That’s another big one, like just side throws, overhead throw, slams to the ground, get them in circuits like that, so they get to move their body through a bunch of different ranges of motion, directions and stuff.

Jeremy Frisch 

Stuff they’ve never been used to. And for me, that’s where I fill in those developmental holes. We use the warmup period to go back and maybe touch on the things that they may not have developed when they were younger.

Joey Myers 

Correct me if I’m wrong, I think I’ve seen an athletic performance training video on your Twitter before, where you had them wrestling, or some sort of wrestling. I know you guys can roll out the wrestling mats out in the hall I think you were saying, and then you had them wrestling or something similar?

 

“…you had them wrestling or something similar?”

Jeremy Frisch 

Yeah, so sometimes we have them do… they’ll get in a bear crawl and face off. And they’ll have to grab each other’s arm and have to try to pull the other one over. Or we’ll do plyometrics where an athlete will jump in the air. And then while he’s in the air, the other athlete will whack them, sort of push them, so they land a little bit awkwardly. We’ll do stuff like that.  We’ll do where the athlete boxes another guy out, like in basketball, a box out drill.

Jeremy Frisch 

You have to work on like they’re pushing each other back and forth. Yeah, so I love that stuff. Because I think it’s a different type of strength. Right? You ever have a buddy that wrestled?  He grabbed you, and you’re always knew, shoot, this dude. It’s just a different type of… because he’s used to just pushing and pulling with someone and he knows, the moment you try to make a move, he knows how to counteract that, that type of motion.

Jeremy Frisch 

It’s like you always knew when one of your buddies wrestled because they just had that extra, this sort of sixth sense in strength. I love that stuff. And you’ve probably seen it, the younger kids wrestle all the time. And I tell the parents listen, your kids are going to wrestle when they come in, they’re going to push each other, we’re going to put the mats out, we’re going to roll around, we’re going to play games that forced them to tackle each other.

Jeremy Frisch 

I’m a football guy, too. I coach football. If I can get kids to get used to that physicality of the game. I think you can’t beat it, because those skills are going to use later on.

Joey Myers 

Yeah, and because I focus on the hitting side, I don’t have… we have a few places there’s a parkour place that we have our son at, we have a place called Little gym that they do beginning gymnastics. Both my son and daughter were in that for a couple years. They do a lot of cool… a lot of things we see on your videos, not everything, but a few of those. And then with the whole COVID thing, the little gym shut down.

Joey Myers 

We were trying to find another place, so they do parkour. So a lot of the things that you’re doing, so we don’t have a ton of that here, which I wish there was, but what I usually suggest to my hitters, is to get in things like martial arts, for the females dance, even swimming is good, you just don’t get the ground reaction forces in that.  Those kinds of things are gymnastics, obviously, are always good as developmental things to do, if we don’t have access to something like what you’re doing.

Joey Myers 

Are you thinking? …Are you looking to do some athletic performance training franchising or something like that, to where people can have access to that around? Have you given that thought?

Are you looking to do some franchising or something like that, to where people can have access to that around?

Jeremy Frisch 

I’ve had so many people contact me about, do you have a facility in: Georgia, Florida, Texas, California, I’ve had people ask me.  If I could have an entrepreneurial side of my life, like a group of people that could do that stuff, I would do it in a heartbeat. But I am way too unorganized. I’m just getting by every day, just having my own place as a businessman, you know what I mean?

Jeremy Frisch 

I’m like the idea guy, I love going to the gym and coming up with all the different ways to do it. Laying that out on a national scale. I think for me, it’s way above my head. But it would be awesome. Because I think you’re right, there’s not enough places around like that. And I think for me, even thinking in an even broader scale, like you just said, I would love to have a place that catered to, you have your gym, where you have your older athletes so they can lift and do your traditional training.

Jeremy Frisch 

You have your PE slash transition into strength conditioning that I do. And then you can also have that area where kids can just go and play and do parkour, or Ninja Warrior. You could even take it one step further and have a big space where you had a batting cage, and a basketball court and a little turf area where kids can play seven on seven football, or play hoops or play baseball. You know what I mean? That’s my dream. My dream facility.

Jeremy Frisch 

We have yet to find the space because I think if you can have something like that you have kids have access to so much athletic development. And I’ll tell you what to, and I wanted to say this before… watching my kids go and transition from Little League into a higher-level baseball, right?  Definitely jumping from like a USA bat to a BB core bat. And seeing kids who are not physically developed or strong enough to struggle, because they just went from a drop 12 to a drop three.

Jeremy Frisch 

Its kids get up and they’re swinging a freakin tree. Yeah. And one of my athletes, he’s actually a football player, but he likes baseball. He doesn’t put full time, like a lot of attention into it, he just plays. But I was blown away this summer watching him be able to use his athletic ability on the baseball field, running the bases, running balls down in center-field, just making contact where he put the ball where he needed to so we could get on first.

Jeremy Frisch 

It just got me thinking, man, just having those skills is so big for baseball, you know? And so for me, I’m always backtracking, how can we develop those skills with kids, so when they do get to this level, there’ll be successful?

Joey Myers 

Yeah, I agree. And like I told you, at the beginning of this athletic performance training call, that everything you’re doing is a piece of the puzzle that a lot aren’t doing. And I think a combination of what you’re doing with that transitioning side, you talk about this football player, is just an absolute athlete, been working out with you doing that kind of stuff. He’s got the foundation to be able to just step in.

Joey Myers 

Then the next piece of the puzzle are the movement principles, the human movement principles that are validated by science, we apply them to hitting a ball. And those are the things… I’m a big spinal engine guy, love springy fascia and as you know, and that is the next step once you get moving correctly, and you can take out ankle mobility issues or shoulder mobility or thoracic spine once you take that stuff out. Then it’s all hands-on deck.

Joey Myers 

Now they have full range they can create things like neck pressure where they wind up the head in the shoulders and things like that. Ever since we connected, I wish I could have, Frisch heaven, about all these surrounding developmental things. One of the biggest things I wish I had was a Jeremy Frisch next door to me that I can tell my hitters, this is a must you need to go to this. That’s going to make what we do in the cage or on the field so much better.

Joey Myers 

I just wish we had a Jeremy Frisch next door. But maybe that’s something that we can talk about. Because we’re working on things that we could talk over the phone, on the franchising side of it. There could be something there, we just have to take your brain and formulate how that would look and would be really cool. Something like a little gym. Right little gym is very formulaic. You don’t have a little gym out there, a little gym, just a smaller version of gymnastics, right? They’re going to do the flips and all that. But it’s all building up to the back-flips and all those things.

Joey Myers 

But maybe that’s something we can talk to you… one thing before I let you go, I wanted to ask about where people can find you. But before that, what is your kind of formula for… when we do a workout, we want to make sure we’re doing a roll, we’re going to make sure that we’re doing sort of a hard press a jump? Is there a certain athletic performance training formula like maybe the four or five things that you look for that we make sure in one hour that we’re getting done?

 

Is there a certain formula like maybe the four or five things that you look for that we make sure in one hour that we’re getting done?

Jeremy Frisch 

Sure, yeah. And I can even give you like… so a lot of the athletes that I train with are probably between the ages like 10 and 14, 15. Right. And so that’s a great age, because there’s so much development going on. And that’s really the golden age of when you start to see their athletic skills start to blossom.

Jeremy Frisch 

When an athlete comes into my facility around that age, we spend a tremendous amount of time, we’re going to spend a good chunk of time when they first come in, we’re going to move.  Before we do anything, we try to increase our body temperature. We move.  We have circuits where we’re working on smart fundamental movement skills, so that’s a great time. So we’re going to do 20 yards of skips, 20 yards of shuffles, 20 yards back pedaling, 20 yards of hops, stuff like that.

Jeremy Frisch 

Another series, we do in place, where we just do jumping jacks, or skips and hops side to side, but we want to move, and when we do move, we want to do everything. When we’re skipping, we’re doing arm swings.  When we’re backpedaling, we’re holding our arms overhead.  When we’re hopping, when we’re doing side shuffles, our arms are making big circles. We’re trying to integrate the entire body and make it awkward and weird for the kids.

Jeremy Frisch 

Just because we know all that movement is going to lay a bigger foundation, the more movement you do, the better you get at it.  The first thing we always do is movement, to warm up, and usually fundamental movement skills. Then from there, we usually move on to two things, we work on stability, and then range of motion.

Jeremy Frisch 

Stability would be like getting the kids on the ground doing short stints of like bear crawl, or crab reaches where we’re really focusing on the core and they have to lift an arm off the ground and stabilize themselves in a good position or lift a leg off the ground, or crawl like maybe 10 yards really slowly with their knees close to the ground. It’s hard work.

Jeremy Frisch 

But you’re really focusing on staying stable and not moving much. Or moving very slowly over a short range of short distance. And then to go with that, I usually do them together, we do these, what we call it’s, the name of the company is called stick mobility. But we do like these big ranges of motion with PVC pipes. We’re asking them to overhead squat, we’re asking them to do a lunge with a bar overhead, we’re asking them.

Jeremy Frisch 

A big one I do with the pitchers, they get in a lunge with the stick over their head, and they create a lot of tension in the shoulders. And they’re going to bend side to side, at their waist, we’re going to do big side bends, we’re going to do laterals ups, we’re going to do step ups and single leg work. We do this stability slash flexibility at the same time. And that happens in every session.

Jeremy Frisch 

The next part of our workout, we do plyometrics. We always do jumps. And again, we pair that with… this is where we get into, I guess more specific throws off the wall where we do our plyometrics, like medicine ball work, side throws, similar to like, I want to see the kids loading.  Try to get that upper body rotation while they’re stepping forward, I want to see how they look almost similar to how they swing.

Jeremy Frisch 

We do a lot of that stuff, overhead throws, heavy slams. One arm punches, all different… we have medicine balls, that we do drills that are two pounds, we have medicine balls that we’re all the way up to 30 pounds. So that’s a huge one for us. And then from plyometric work, and their jumps. So I should backtrack, after we do our throws, before we do our jumps, we’re always going to do something double leg, and we’re always going to do something single leg, so we’re always going to be hopping off on one foot, we’re always going to be jumping up at two feet, just to make sure we cover all our bases.

Jeremy Frisch 

The last thing in our movement series, after plyometrics is we’re ready to go. This is when we’re going to sprint. We’re going to do short sprints, we’re going to chase each other, we might do resisted runs, we might do some type of agility, where we play tag and run each other down. Or we’re going to do some type of high-speed work. Where we’re really moving. Yeah, so and then from there, it’s all your basic stuff from in the weight room.  We teach our kids how to Olympic lift, we’re not scared of teaching getting the bar on the kid’s hands, we definitely teach our kids how to squat, dead-lift, hinge, get strong on one leg, they do plenty of pull ups, lots of rows, really basic, basic barbell dumbbell movements.

Joey Myers 

I love that dude. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. And again, we got to figure out how to get you a lot more outside of the Massachusetts area, Clinton, Mass. area. But before we get there, I appreciate your time today. Where can people find more about you? And so that’s number one. And two, are there anything new? Any kind of projects you’re working on right now?

 

Where can people find more about you? And so that’s number one. And two, are there anything new? Any kind of projects you’re working on right now?

Jeremy Frisch 

Yeah, so you can find me, there’s a bunch of athletic performance training articles that I’ve written, I think five or six on simply faster. If you just type in Jeremy Frisch, simply faster, all those will come up. You’ll see a lot of the things that you and I just talked about; you’ll find a lot of those things in those articles. And there’s a lot of great videos in there, too. Some good examples for parents looking for ideas to use with their kids, or coaches looking to do stuff with their athletes.

Jeremy Frisch 

And then, I’ve been slowly just trying to take videos of the things that we do, and sort of database them. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, if I can present it to a group of coaches that want it, or say you want it and say, Hey, give me the, I need 10 exercises for my baseball players, boom here it is.  I’m trying to put that together, there are so many exercises, it’s a little overwhelming right now.

Jeremy Frisch 

Once I get that athletic performance training database growing, and explain it all… the other part of it is too is, you see the games that we play, I posted about the games that we play, but I’ve never really, there’s never enough space on Twitter or Facebook, and I don’t really have the time to explain how they work.

Jeremy Frisch 

How the games work, and what are the rules. I’d love to put together a database of games that athletes can use and how do you play this? What are the rules? And what are we working on? That’s my current project.

Joey Myers 

Very cool. Well, we’ll talk more about that you and I just do a phone call. I showed you some things there that we can… whether that’s an online thing or franchise thing is going to take a little bit longer because that’s going to take into account creating some standard operating procedures and operations manuals. You know, that kind of thing.  That’s going to take probably a little bit longer, but an online thing might be something worth looking at right now as the low hanging fruit.

Joey Myers 

And we mentioned your athletic performance training website, you said was AcheivePerformance.net? People want to find you there. Twitter. Where can people find you? What’s your handle? I know we discussed earlier, but just as a reminder.

Jeremy Frisch 

Yeah, it’s just that @JeremyFrisch. And I posted, I love Twitter. I love being able to come up with my ideas and little short phrases. It’s way easier to do it. Do that then have to write an entire article or book.  Obviously, videos can truly show what you do. I love posting on there.  Mostly, just because I think there’s a lot of people out there that could use it.  There’s a lot of mom and pop coaches, there’s a lot of Phys ed teachers, there’s a lot of different people that could look at that stuff and find it useful.

Jeremy Frisch 

So yeah, and then I’m on Facebook, too. It’s mostly people from my town, that are college friends and stuff like that, but I do post some stuff of the things we do with the kids on there. The rest of my time, if I’m not working, I’ve got four kids. I usually coach football in the fall and basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring. So yeah…

Joey Myers 

Busy guy, dude, busy guy. Well, hey, thank you for everything that you do out there. And we’ll see if we can touch more people besides over there in Clinton, Massachusetts, and appreciate your time today Mr. Jeremy, you guys have a Happy Thanksgiving. Any other athletic performance training parting thoughts before we go?

 

Any other parting thoughts before we go?

Jeremy Frisch 

Well, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. Like I said, I think I read both your books, and they were fantastic. And they’ve definitely helped us. My kids help me as far as coaching goes, but also giving me an understanding of how, I didn’t understand all of it with the hitting book, and then you said, Oh, I threw the shot-put in college, and I saw shot-put and I’m like, Damn, like, That’s it. That’s it, it’s there, I understand what he’s talking about. It was really great. It was really great for me that I could take what I knew about shot putting, and I could put it back into teaching my kids how to hit, which is great. Awesome stuff. I appreciate you having me on.

Joey Myers 

I love it, dude. All right, man. Well keep up the good work again. Happy Thanksgiving. And we’ll talk soon. I’ll reach out and we’ll have a conversation about some of the other stuff we were talking about.

Jeremy Frisch 

Sounds great. Can’t wait. I’ll talk to you soon.

Joey Myers 

Alright brother.

Jeremy Frisch 

Bye.

Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

ASK THE EXPERTS: Jeremy Frisch, Taylor Gardner, & Matt Nokes Cover The Shocking Mistakes Killing Your Swing 

Let’s start this party off with Mr.,

Jeremy Frisch – Owner of Achieve Performance

Jeremy Frisch is owner of Achieve Performance training in Clinton Massachusetts and former assistant strength and conditioning coach at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester Massachusetts. Jeremy’s focus is on long-term athlete development where he works with children as young a 5 years of age up through college level athletes.

He’ll answer the following question I often get from my readers…

“What is an effective way to strengthen a swing, say mechanics are good but need more body strength for speed?”

Believe it or not, improving strength in the young athlete is easier than one might think. Young athletes need nothing more than their own body-weight or medicine ball to get stronger. When I train an young athlete’s I am looking at doing 4 exercises.

  1. Total body exercise
  2. Upper Body exercise
  3. Torso exercise
  4. Lower body exercise
Total body Exercise

In my opinion the bear crawl is one of the best all around total body exercises a young athlete can do. The bear crawl improves coordination, trains stability of the core and shoulder girdle and strengthens the lower body all at the same time. The bear crawl can be done in multiple directions, distances and speeds. Because of the difficulty of the exercise young athletes often fatigue quickly therefore very short distances should be used like 10-15 yards at a slow pace.

Upper body exercise

My go to exercise for training the upper body is so simple that many coaches don’t believe me. The exercise is simple: the bar hang. Hang from a chin-up bar or monkey bars with the arms straight for as long as possible. Develops unbelievable strength from the grip through the shoulder and core, not to mention develops mental toughness because the kids can always dig a little deeper and hold on for a few more seconds. Climbing and hanging is a long lost art in children’s lives. Maybe if kids were a bit stronger and more agile in the upper bodies these days we would see less elbow and shoulder injuries.

Torso Exercise

The medicine ball is a fantastic tool for developing rotation power needed to throw and swing a bat. A medicine ball and a brick wall makes a perfect combination to develop a powerful swing. The athlete stands sideways in a stance similar to their batting stance rotate the ball back and using a motion similar to a swing, throw the ball off the wall as hard as possible. Aim for both sides 3-5 sets of 6-8 repetitions

Lower Body Exercise

One of the best and most affordable ways to develop great leg strength and as a bonus speed , running form and all around conditioning are hill sprints. Look to find a steep hill 15-25 yards long and sprint up full speed. The key with hill sprints is to make sure the athlete has the appropriate rest between sets. Too many coaches use hill sprints as a torture device to punish their athletes. All that does is make them tired slow and miserable. Baseball is a game of speed and power and hill sprints can develop that speed and power in the lower body. Each sprint should be followed with a slow walk down the hill followed by at least a minute to 1:30 rest. Look to get 10-15 full speed reps with good rest per workout 2 x per week.

You can see more of what Jeremy is doing at the following places:

 

Taylor Gardner – Co-Founder of The Backspin Batting Tee

Taylor Gardner is an Edison Award Winning Inventor of the Back-Spin Tee, who currently has the biggest social media following of any batting product in the world. With the help of his brother, former professional player and coach, he was able to break into the Major League Hitting World by bringing simple physics to the minds of many players and coaches. Now working across the world, Taylor is expanding his product line and instruction to bust the game’s biggest myths.

He’ll answer the following question I often get from my readers…

“Of all the issues you cover on hitting mechanics, what 2 do you consider to be the most compelling for most hitters?”

Of all the hitting mechanics that I have had the privilege of learning and teaching, there are two that stand out the most.

  1. The element of the stride in relation to getting on time and its importance into the weight shift, and
  2. The mechanism of lining the shoulders on path with the incoming pitch.
The Stride

The stride portion of the swing has seen many variations and is a highly talked about subject. I see a lot of hitters performing their style of a stride, but few seem to understand how to simplify the stride mechanism without destroying other vital parts of the swing. The stride itself is a combination of a step, and a weight shift…That’s what makes it a stride. If you simply reach your front foot forward with no regard for weight shift, it is a step, and practically adding another movement to the swing making your swing take longer than necessary.

I see a lot of young hitters believe that they are late on a ball because they reach their foot out, then weight shift, then attempt to align to the ball, and then swing. Yes, after doing all those movements, they are late…BUT…it’s because they started too soon!

During the stride a hitter can weight shift, and align their bodies to the pitch (yes, even getting into an advantageous position of lag) all in sync. Once the hitter lands all they must do is swing from there. It cuts the timeline down tremendously. Hitters can track the ball deeper than they ever had before and still take a powerful swing without sacrificing their rhythm or connected movements.

Think of how a quarterback throws a pass, or for the matter- a pitcher throwing a ball. They do a lot of great movements during their stride phase, so that when they land, they can simply “throw”. We like to call it “Land-throw timing” or “Land-swing timing” for the hitters.

Lining the Shoulders

Lining the shoulders on the ball is the second mechanism I see that a lot of hitters could benefit from learning more about. Yes, you can begin to get your shoulders lined up to the pitch during your stride phase, but to be more in depth, even if your stride doesn’t put you on perfect timing with the pitch (and most hitters are slightly early even on their best hits), you still must get your shoulders lined up to the pitch to stay on path for contact.

The barrel of the bat will be parallel to the shoulder plane at contact when done correctly. HOWEVER, this is where I see players and coaches trying to get on plane TOO SOON! If you drop your barrel on what seems to be on path early in the swing (Sounds like a good thing right?), but are unable to complete your weight shift/stride, or even track the ball long enough to decide where to swing, you will leave a huge hole in your swing that pitchers can pitch around.

I take some blame for this whole “Launch Angle” Revolution. My product was the first to talk about the importance of launch angles, and since, we have seen many people take our Trademark – “On Path, Bottom Half” to the extremes. You want to be on path with the pitch coming in, hitting the bottom half of the ball ON TIME. On time isn’t just hitting ball to center field, it also stands for

  • Shifting your weight on time,
  • Lining your shoulders on time, and
  • Releasing the energy into the bat on time.

Not early, and certainly not late. I understand hitting a baseball or softball is the single hardest thing to do in sports, however if you do not continue to understand the simple timing elements that lead to an appropriate swing, we will accidentally continue to make hitting a ball even harder than it already is.

You can stay up to date on what Taylor and the Backspin Tee are doing at the following places:

 

Matt Nokes – Founder of One Hitting Solution

Matt Nokes coaching “Around The Zone” Soft Toss

Matt Nokes is a 10-year MLB Veteran, playing for the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers.  In that time he was a Silver Slugger Award Winner and All-Star Catcher.  Since then he’s been working hard helping hitters as the founder of his company ONE HITTING SOLUTION.  

For over 20 years as a hitting coach he’s been researching and finding out what transforms hitters 99 out of 100 times, he’s developed 12 simple natural hitting Rules, Action Steps, Do’s NOT Don’ts, that he calls the 12 Touchstones because they’re the rehearsals that bring to the surface only the relevant “In The Zone Feelings”.

No more random adjustments 50 times a day fiddling with your mechanics. This program is a 6-week transformational reset suppressing all the clutter, myths and half truths you’ve learned over the years from coaches, parents and now YouTube.

The bottom line is these 12 Touchstones solve 99 out of 100 problems before they ever come up.  You become intentional and take action in the form of rehearsals that weave a triple braided chord of:

  1. Brutally efficient.
  2. Laser focused hitting mindset with the true MLB Plan as the proper context and perspective.
  3. Timing – the 3rd and final chord wrapped tight around the other 2 skill sets.

The glue holding all 3 together to execute your only mandate: Never Miss Your Pitch.  Click Here:   But first watch this short powerful video to give you an idea for what’s in store for you and you’ll be given the opportunity to schedule a FREE Strategy Call with Matt Nokes.

In this post, Matt Nokes answers the following question I often get from my readers…

“Of all the issues you cover on hitting mechanics what 2 do you consider to be the most compelling for most hitters?”

On the most primitive level, if you’re going to express timing with one physical mechanical expression it would be transferring into the ball on time. You can’t separate your weight shift from your swing [that’s called quitting], so it’s critical if you want to develop properly you need to learn to coordinate your stride and transfer.

The 1st way I’d practice getting your weight into the ball is by learning the basic movement of the “step to swing”. You can use a tee without a ball for a point to aim at but it’s good to begin rehearsing the movement without the distraction of whether you hit the ball hard or not.  Hitting the ball at this point is irrelevant.

You want to learn the movement first and then begin adding variables.  If you decide to NOT use a tee, make sure you visualize where the ball would be and don’t let your eyes wander.  You body follows your head but your head follows your eyes and if your eyes are wandering then you’re in trouble, and will most likely wobble in your rotation.

The 2nd way is adding the performance variable using a tee with the “Tall and Fall” drill:

 

The 3rd way would be to add a measure of timing. Once you’ve coordinated your stride and transfer then any soft toss drill will add a some more variables for timing but it’ll be easy enough for your automatic mind to handle without much trouble:

  1. Swinging across your face. Crossing your face is a swing rehearsal cue that ensures you don’t pull your head.  The alternative is to chase your face, and if you do that you’ll be pulling off the ball without much success. Swinging across your face may be the most powerful way to stay on the ball, direct your energy into a fine point and keep the ball fair on the inside pitch.
  2. What are your favorite drills to hit off speed pitches?
My best advice on hitting the curve-ball…Don’t miss the fastball

That sounds like a joke, but it’s not. The best hitters are always ready for the fastball don’t miss it.  Frank Robinson [Hall of Fame] changed the course of my career by teaching me the MLB Plan and a big part of it was never missing the fastball. Frank went on to say “you show me a good curve-ball hitter and I’ll show you a guy with a slow bat.

Ok now that we have that mindset on the books, let’s talk about hitting the off speed pitch.  First you need to practice good timing but without going too deep into timing philosophy there’s a few good ideas and rules to follow along with some solid methods for practicing…

Slow pitch in the batting cages.

A great place to start for hitting off speed pitches is also one of the most convenient places to start and that’s in an automatic batting cage [in the slowest cage].

Most young hitters have trouble hitting in the slow cages because they’ve never been taught to deal with all the timing variables and they’re often discouraged when they have trouble, but they give up before they learn how to let the ball travel.  It’s a mindset and a good way to think of a slow pitch is how you’d hit in slow pitch soft ball.

Trust me…Timing is a skillset that is easily taught but it’s counterintuitive because it’s not a popular topic in the mainstream hitting community.  It’s more popular to say timing can NOT be taught…but that’s a myth.

Seeing the ball up is another cue for hitting the off speed and helps you visualize the trajectory of a potential off speed pitch, so you can still look fastball but won’t freeze on the strike curve-ball. One of the first obstacles to overcome is understanding what causes hitters to vapor lock or freeze on the curve ball.

The higher release point of a “strike curveball” often freezes hitters  because it appears to look like a fastball thrown so high that the hitter immediately quits on it right as it’s released from the pitcher.

Now when a hitter is looking for a normal fastball between the waste and knees and gets a curveball in the dirt, they don’t automatically freeze on a ball in the dirt because it initially looks like a fastball. By the time you recognize it’s a curveball its usually too late and you’re feeling “I can still hit this”.

If you see the ball up you’re able to look for your fastball [you can always adjust down on a fastball] but by looking up the only curveball that’ll look good is the hanging strike curve-ball that usually makes you freeze early in the count.

 

Finally, there’s the technique I call one of the “Touchstones” called “Buying time”

Buying time involves going out and getting the ball by getting deeper into your legs, which gives the ball more time to travel into your hitting bubble within your reach.

Every 7/1000th of a second the ball travels a foot, so if you’re off 21/1000th of a second the ball is traveling 3 feet.  So buying time by falling deeper into your legs before you hit, gives the ball a little time to get closer, and your lower center of gravity allows you to access your farthest reach without leaking if you execute the “Touchstone” correctly.

Either way, you often have to go out and get the ball farther out front without interrupting the flow of your land swing timing.

You can see more of what Matt Nokes is doing at the following places:

But before I let you go…