Eric Cressey - Lessons From The Big Leagues

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. That personalization is driven by health data. If you are a consumer-focused health and wellness company, you know that acquiring and making use of that health data is traditionally expensive, complicated, and full of friction for the consumer, but not anymore. Thanks to the good people at Sprint, a camera-enabled digital biomarker platform that connects any app to the human body. Formerly known as Elite HRV, the patented technology behind the Sprend platform leverages a decade of research into physiology, behavior, and health insights, including collaboration with 117 universities, analysis of more than 4 billion biomarkers across 20 million user sessions. Using the smartphone as a sensor, Sprend's evidence-based machine learning algorithms deliver actionable biomarker insights such as body composition, HRV, stress, recovery, progress tracking, and more, all through an easy-to-integrate SDK and API. Health and wellness companies are integrating Sprin to better understand their users' holistic health, make their apps more personalized and adaptive, demonstrate measurable progress, and empower their members to understand their bodies and make well-informed decisions for their well-being. Go to Sprin.com and learn more. That is Spren.com. To live your healthiest, longest life possible, you need to understand what's going on inside your body. People age at different speeds, and generic annual blood work doesn't properly evaluate your biological age, but InsightTracker does. InsightTracker is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system designed to extend your health span and slow down the aging process. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, InsightTracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized and where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add InterAge 2.0 to any plan to calculate your true biological age and see how you're aging from the inside out. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future. That's insight tracker.com forward slash future. Eric Cressy, welcome to the future of fitness. It is a pleasure to have you.

Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to uh to join the show.

Yeah, you know, my interactions with you, you always come across as uh you know pretty humble guy. So I'll I'll go ahead and and brag just a little bit. I think in the coaching community, you're nothing short than a short than a legend. Uh, you know, I was talking to a couple of my colleagues. I'm like, I'm excited. I got Cressy coming up later today, and uh I can't wait. And everybody was generally very excited to hear what you had to say. So, you know, congratulations on on all the hard work that has gotten you to the point where um, you know, you're really considered considered a leading mind in the coaching industry and you're obviously very well recognized for it. So it's gonna be a great, a great conversation to have. And uh I guess the place to start, Eric, for people who don't know of you, maybe give a little bit of background into who you are and what you do.

Yeah, for sure. Um so largely focused in the baseball community and in the strength and conditioning world. Um, we, you know, actually initially I did my grad degree at the University of Connecticut, wasn't really sure if I wanted to do strength and conditioning, uh, you know, basically research in the health and human performance world, um, and just really fell in love with coaching. Actually, did a lot more um work with basketball at soccer there. Um, my grad assistorship was actually funded by the US Army on the research side of things. And just so happened when I left to go to the private sector, some of the first guys that I started working with were baseball players and had some good results. And high school guys became college guys, college guys became pro guys, pro guys had agents, you know, they all had buddies, you know, kind of the classic word-of-mouth thing. And so we opened a facility in in Massachusetts in 2007, um, and then a second location in 2014 um in Jupiter, Florida, which is now Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Um, so we see players from all 30 Major League organizations, um, you know, well over 100 players every offseason and kind of oversee their training. And it's you know, it's gradually kind of diversified as well. We have some NFL guys, we've, you know, trained some top 20 tennis players, um, you know, golfers, a little bit everything in that realm that's you know, kind of the overhead slash rotational sport, um, definitely most known for like my work with shoulders and elbows and and necks. Um, and then you know, kind of through the success we had in the private sector, it led to an opportunity. Um, so I serve as director of player health and performance for the New York Yankees. Um kind of my my two full-time jobs. Um, you know, I'm split between a few different things, but um that's been an exciting opportunity to kind of be involved and heavily invested in you know, in an actual organization as opposed to just individual players. So it's been a cool experience to have as well.

Yeah, yeah, that's quite a resume. So, you know, uh we're gonna dive into what I, as I was explaining to you earlier, and my thought is like, you know, there's so much to learn from people like you who work with the 0.01%. And you know, I look at it two ways. You know, at one angle of this um continuum, we have high performing athletes, military, things like that. And on the other side of the continuum, we have the sick, right? People who are dysfunctional and you know, really struggling in that area. And both sides, you know, there's things that everyone in the middle can learn from, you know, working with populations in the middle of that that spectrum. So, you know, I want to get into like what you're doing, how that affects, you know, general population training. And just really out of curiosity, I but I think what would really benefit people is to understand that how grueling the professional sports world is now, not just for athletes, but coaches. I mean, uh these athletes, I sit down, I watch NFL football. These guys are humongous. They're stronger than ever, they're faster than ever, right? And that that takes a toll. I mean, these games are getting more powerful, more violent, um, and just incredibly almost unhuman at times. So maybe you could start by talking about that. Like how have these professional sports and athletes evolved over the last like 10, 15 years to where they are and what we see on our TV now?

Yeah, it's it's pretty incredible. Um, I actually remember a conversation with Buddy Morris. Um, you know, he'd been in the NFL and then gone to the college setting and then came back to the NFL. He's now with you know the Arizona Cardinals. And I want to say I talked to him, you know, 10, 15 years ago, and he's like, you know, Eric, people just don't understand. It's like a car accident on every player right in front of you. The players are so much bigger, so much stronger, so much faster. Um it just everything is magnified. Um and it's you know, it's interesting. Baseball is is a unique sport in the sense that it's it's it's maybe not the longest. I think hockey is actually the longest professional season. You know, the difference though between baseball and hockey is in baseball, you're gonna play 29 games in a month. You know, you you might have two days off in a month. Um I was speaking with Nick Swisher, um, who works with us to the Yankees, and he was on our our 2009 World Series champion roster. And you mentioned they played 211 games from the start of spring training through the 162-game regular season and then into the postseason. So it's just, I mean, it's it's it's a long, long stretch. And what's tricky about something like that is you know, if somebody's banged up, it's hard to just get them a day off because someone else has to pick up the slack. Um, whereas in other sports, you know, outside of baseball, is you know, a guy can sit out a day and all of a sudden he's got four days off. So it's a it's a little bit easier to build yourself a runway to get somebody right when they're a little bit banged up. Um, you know, in football, obviously you play once a week and you know, you have like this long runway to you know get guys at least back to a service condition to put them back out there in the next Sunday. Baseball is just such a you know, I hate to use the term grind because it's a little bit over overused and hackneyed, but um it really is just a really long competitive season. And when I talk to my friends in the NBA or in the NHL or NFL, they just they they're always like stunned. It's like, my gosh, you play that much. Um, the travel is you know really bad. We actually um coming out of the all-star break this year, we had because of the lockout, they had to make up some games. So they actually played a double header in Houston on the first day out of the the um all-star break, and then had a flight from Houston after the second game to Baltimore, got in at 5 a.m. and then played the Orioles, you know, at 7. So you you basically played three Major League Baseball games in 30 hours, you know, with a three-hour flight and a time zone change in the middle. Um, and that's the stuff I mean, you know, you look at you know, certain, you know, Seattle has some of the longest travel in Major League Baseball. You know, we tend to have a lot of like night getaway games just because a lot of people want to see our organization. So it's it's a very different world at that level. Um, and it's very different than it was. The average Major League player is you know substantially larger than they were 20 years ago. Um, you know, what kind of happened honestly is the PED era. You had a lot of players that that used things that were you know illegitimate and illegal, um, or at least at the time, they maybe they weren't, but they certainly are now. So you saw players that you know they were able to be stronger and faster at at heavier body weights because of the advent of strength editioning and some of those you know, unfortunate methods that they got baseball going in the wrong direction. But what actually happened is you know the game got cleaned up, but the players still stayed big and strong and fast. They just didn't get the recovery benefits of those. You know, they got amphetamines after the sport, which was something that got a lot of players, I'm sure, amped up for games. Um, so it's just a different world right now. Guys have to do it natural, and we have to support their ability to do natural. And, you know, um, it's it's just amazing how it's changed pretty, pretty remarkably. And that's where you see you know the injury rates being sky high. Um, you know, we didn't we didn't even look at it until just yesterday, but we were we had the highest basketball velocity of any team in major league history this year. Um, and so it was fascinating. I don't know if you if you remember it during the uh during kind of the pandemic when the the Jordan kind of documentaries came out and everybody was like on in those the the Meguiar-Sosa documentaries came out right afterwards. And you know, it was interesting hearing guys come in and talk about like you know, the the Jordan ones with like great reverence, and then when the Meguiar and Sosa thing came out, I was like, hey, what'd you guys think? And all of our our guys were like, man, those pitchers threw slow. Like it was like 88 to 90, like they weren't seeing like you have guys throwing 102 mile an hour cutters in Major League Baseball. Um, you know, pretty much every team has somebody that hits a hundred. Um, the the the velocities, the stuff, um, the advent of technology is just exponential. You you have guys that are learning brand new sliders on Twitter and throwing them in major league games the next day. So the the game has escalated to such an amazing level that you it's not even comparable to what happened in the late 80s and early 90s, it's a totally different dynamic.

And and how do you keep up with that as a coach? I mean, your job is is basically for the Yankees to keep players healthy, right? And there's there's a lot of not only the incentive to win, but there's a lot of money in that, right? There's a lot of money on the table in these professional sports. So, how with with the increase, I guess, power and output and size of these athletes and um you know how much is demand in them uh on a weekly, daily basis, like how are you keeping what is changing in your job in order to stay at the cutting edge to keep these people on the field?

Yeah, it's it's you know it's true across not just even my work in in you know in the actual MLB sector, but also in what we do in the private sector as well. Is it's I always come back to synergy because if you just view it as a strength edition coach, you will fail miserably because you can have the most well-designed strength editioning program. They can be fully locked in on it, and they're gonna be other entities like if there's a you know a problem with their pitching delivery, you know, if there's a workload issue, um, you know, sleep problems, anything like that. You know, things can really spiral out of control. So I always come back to synergy, you know, trying to work well with my colleagues that are in a collection of different associated disciplines so that we can all fit figure out the right mix with athletes. Um the thing I would say that you know is probably particularly important for your listeners that that might surprise them is um, you know, I always use the example of like small hinges swinging big doors. And I think just because you're playing at the highest level, you know, certainly the assumption is that you know all these players are incredibly highly trained and you're looking for like the most nuanced perfect exercise, and that the difference between like six reps and eight reps is like, you know, a hundred million dollars for their career or anything like that. And in reality, sometimes you have to emotionally separate yourself from the fact that they're really, really good at you know, baseball or whatever the professional sport is in question. And you have to, you know, kind of just look at them as you know, a regular person off the street. Like, what do you see from them movement-wise? You know, what are their shortcomings? And you and you know what's funny is like if you look in the you know, the general population, I actually talked about this on my podcast that I recorded this morning, is like we know that people who smoke have a markedly higher rate of failures on rotator cuff repairs. If you're like vitamin D deficient and you rip cigarettes and you have a rotator cuff repair, it's it's really, really highly likely that your repair will fail. Like nicotine is just not good for tissue quality. You know, mixing, you know, the casual drinker on top of that, you know, nicotine alcohol, you know, just it's not gonna work out well. Um, you know, so we're kind of like looking at this situation where if you if you take a player who you know throws in a dip, drinks on the team plane, doesn't get enough sleep, doesn't get enough sunlight, you know, that you have all these different things that just they're not generally healthy, it's gonna magnify all the things that are you know that are gonna make them more likely to get hurt actually playing their sport. Um so that that for me is is is priority number one is like before we're a high performing athlete, we just need to be a healthy human. Um so I always try to consciously check myself to pull back and say, hey, like a lot of the things that we're doing, you know, we can do better if we attack it upstream, if we look at their nutrition, um all these different things. So we scrutinize the heck out of blood work and we're we're really, really mindful of how guys look, you know, inside, you know, beyond just looking outside. So that's a big one. We we meticulously track workload. That's a really, really big one, is you know, doing our best to put guys in the best position possible to be successful there. And certainly there are individual differences, right? Guys who are who are less trained don't really have a great buffer to handle a high level of stress, particularly when it's you know, six games in seven days or whatever it may be. So um, you know, we we're mindful of certain guys probably need to pull back more often because they don't have the same level of initial fitness capacity. Whereas there are other guys, you know, you see them in baseball, some guys just have rubber arms. They love to throw every day. You know, they never need days off, they actually feel worse if they don't throw. Um they've just built up these insanely high uh chronic workloads that you have to continue to support. Um, and then lastly, obviously, you got to be mindful of what the injury history is. You know, what you do for a 23-year-old player is very different than what you would do for you know a 35-year-old player. If you look at the injury rates, you know, across baseball historically, like the teams with all the lowest injury numbers tend to be really, really young, and they tend to be, you know, teams that don't have really large budgets. They, you know, they aren't willing to like take a chance and spend on a veteran player that that might break. Um, so you have to reconcile those things. It's you know, it's it's it's not really as challenging to hold like a crew of 23-year-old players who don't make a lot of money really, really accountable. It's you know, it's it's a lot more challenging when you deal with older players who have accumulated injuries who might be better at baseball, but you are you know you are acquiring a little bit more risk and kind of pursuing that kind of you know player. And we we certainly have a lot of those. That's the nature of the market, and we know what we signed up for, but it it just creates a different set of challenges than if we were just grabbing the 23-year-old by the ear and dragging him into the weight room to make sure he gets his work in.

Right.

Uh you know, so right now, as we record this, it's October. Uh, naturally, the Yankees are in the playoffs, right? And imagine you're traveling. And I think for a lot of coaches who aspire to be where you are, maybe you should provide some insights into the sheer amount of hustle and travel and workload that you have as a coach, not necessarily the athletes, but the coaches. Although COVID may no longer be a significant threat to business, the connected fitness industry is still facing challenges. As the industry enters an exciting era of transformation, companies are now compelled to innovate not just their product offerings, but their entire business model to keep up with the ever-changing consumer attitude towards health and fitness. After three very successful years, the Connected Health and Fitness Summit is returning to Los Angeles this February 8th and 9th to explore the industry's most pressing challenges and hottest trends. A value-packed, intimate event where real relationships are built and lucrative professional networks are expanding. It's time to reevaluate your value propositions and clearly identify your role into your customers' fitness and wellness routines. We're bringing together the strongest brands in fitness and beyond to find out how. Download the agenda to find out more. Go to connected health and fitness.com and use discount code FOF10 to get an exclusive 10% off your event ticket. That's connectedhealth and fitness.com with discount code FOF10.

Yeah, and I'm not even sure I'm the best person to speak to just because I don't I don't travel on every road trip. Um, you know, a lot of my stuff is remote, a lot of my stuff is in in different places, so um a little bit different. But um, you know, it's it's challenging. It's it's a lot. Um, you know, it's certainly challenging on the on the family side of things as well. Um, you know, even when I just you know leave Florida to come to New York for for a homestand, stuff like that, though, you know, there's complexities there. Um but yeah, I don't think a lot of people necessarily maybe appreciate the sacrifices that go into it. You know, certainly there is more time for you know strength coaches, athletic trainers, things like that in the offseason to not kind of decompress and all that stuff. But you know, during the season, it's it's a long day. Like I even I even think about our our cooks, you know, I like to get to the ballpark really early when I'm here and they're always there when I get there. And you know, they're usually cleaning up at the end of the night because there's always gonna be a couple players that are you know staying after the recovery stuff and things like that. So the longest days are actually like the chefs. Um, because everybody's gotta be fed and there's always gonna be prep work and cleanup um on both ends. Obviously, sports medicine guys need to stay around a long time. Um, you know, the kid the casual, you know, kind of up and coming coach probably doesn't necessarily um appreciate that commitment. And it's certainly a lot harder, you know, when you have a family. It's one thing when you're you know, you know, a single 20-something year old, but it's a lot I'm 41 and I have three kids and a wife. So um life is a little bit more complex leaving home. You know, we have to you know invest in a full-time nanny and all these different things. And we we we largely live our our calendar six to eight weeks in advance, like it's planned out that much for for childcare and knowing who's gonna be where and when. And my wife actually works at the gym with me as well, so there's some extra complexities where you know one of us kind of has to to dodge out to pick him up from school if our nanny's not doing it. So there's there's a lot to sort through. And I don't I don't think that's the glamorous side of the profession that people really think about, but I do think it's important that a lot of younger coaches um, you know, kind of are are mindful of it. And I think the other two is is there's you know, one of the the lines, Steve Donahue, who's been with our organization for I think close to four decades at this point, you know, when I took this job, you know, the the bit of feedback he gave me, he said, you know, these pinstripes can be very heavy. And it was um it was actually really, really good feedback for me to kind of like appreciate, you know, it's not always gonna be rainbows and butterflies. You're gonna have to take the criticism. And I was willing to kind of, for lack of a better term, fall on those grenades and you know, do it on behalf of our department so that our guys can work. And you know, there's obviously, you know, there's a there's a heavy media presence, there's a really large fan base, and you know, they they always want to cheer, and you know, it doesn't always work out from a health standpoint, so you just gotta be mindful of that. You know, sometimes you're gonna be, you know, not necessarily in everybody's good graces if if the results aren't what they expect.

Well, I mean, the New York uh sports market is notoriously rough, right? I mean, it's uh one of the hardest ways to be a coach and athlete.

They're they're they're passionate, you know what I mean? And I I love that. You know, I'd rather be, you know, like the what's the you know, quote, pressure is the privilege. Like that that excites me, you know, is that you you want a fan base that's you know really invested in what you're doing. And um, you know, I I don't I don't I wouldn't complain about it at all. I think it's actually pretty awesome to be honest. So um, you know, got get some my my first experience of a home playoff game last night, actually. We had you know, last year we were uh you know on the road for the wildcard game and two years ago and in 2020 we were in the bubble, so we didn't have any fans at it. So I got to see, you know, a packed house last night for for a game one win. So it's it's pretty cool to see that.

Yeah, yeah, that's great, man. And you know, I one of the things I'm picking up as I'm hearing you talk too is I think one of the big differences between you know general population or even D1 up to the professional level is really there's a heavy um amount of personalization that goes into it. I mean, you mentioned nutrition and training and things like that. Uh maybe you can give us some insights into like some of the technologies and and methods that you guys use to have a really well-refined you know personalization for each athlete. You mentioned nutrition and training and all that, but maybe take one layer one layer deeper.

Yeah, it goes um in a number of different directions. I I'd say, you know, the first thing is you know, athletes make their money on the field. So you always need a tech technology that that evaluates them in a skill specific standpoint. So, you know, basically in our facility, we'll use hit track. Which measures launch angle, exit velocity, things like that for our hitters. You know, kind of gives them a little bit more game speed. You know, everything from like high-speed hitting machines, things like that, blast motion sensors, which measured bat characteristics, bat speed, things like that. On the pitching side of things, we may use Rap Soto, we use track man, we may use those, those are basically ways to measure ball flight, spin axis, spin rate on pitches. Um, you know, they'll call balls and strikes, they'll give you velocity, but um, you know, really a good picture, good way to kind of like do pitch design work. Um, we use edronic cameras, which is a high-speed camera. They run about 7,500 apiece. Um, that's kind of taking the baseball word by storm and really allows pitchers to um, you know, to kind of manipulate baseball in different ways and scrutinize what they're doing on high-speed cameras. So we do that a ton at the facility. Um, utilize Proteus, um, which is a you know kind of a cool MIT invented piece of technology that they actually invested on. Real cool way to kind of like force velocity profile athletes in more rotational concepts. Um, so I joke it's kind of like a rotational force plate. Um, certainly have background in utilizing force plates. Um, you know, we have access to biomechanics labs, which do some some pretty high-level stuff. We use Thea markerless um for our biomechanical assessments at the facility. That's you know, eight cameras, um, you know, pretty, pretty involved like markerless biomechanics setup. So we can do everything from you know looking at like wrist range of motion during the delivery to you know angular velocity of the lead knee, you know, all these different things that that tell us a lot about how an athlete moves. Um, so we can build out some standards of you know how what makes this you know an outlier characteristic that can make him very successful. And then certainly there's you know assessments, classic orthopedic range of motion stuff, um, things along those lines, goniometers, dynamometers, you know, things like that that can be you know super helpful. And then every major league baseball stadium is equipped with Hawkeye, which can give you a million different things. Um, you know, you can get actually like GPS data of how many you know feet they covered in the game. Um you can obviously get a lot of information about how fast they ran, um, you know, how hard they hit the ball, what the launch angle was, you know, some of the pitch characteristics in-game that are really, really helpful. And then honestly, like video is is is incredibly powerful, getting multiple angles and all that stuff. Um, so a lot of what we do is is is heavily scrutinizing the data that we get from technology and also you know, understanding how to disseminate it to the players so you don't overwhelm them, you don't give them the wrong information at the wrong time. You know, some players don't like to have any of it, some like to have a lot of it. So you really got to build a relationship to figure out where they fit in on on kind of that spectrum. But yeah, tech tech's here to stay. I mean, people want objective measures of of process, and it's not just as simple as like saying what the scale says and you know how much weight is on the bar. Now people want force velocity, you know, testing for you know velocity-based training and stuff like that. So it's it's a really um it's an exciting time if you really like numbers. And if you're a guy that you know stubbornly resists like iPads in the weight room and right next to a guy while he's throwing a mound, it's it's probably not a great time to be in baseball because that's that's really where things are headed. So it's I think it's all about just how we how we use it, how we frame the discussions. And um, I think you know, that's a place where we've had a lot of success at the facility and you know, certainly in the Yankees organization, is I think we do a good job of understanding the right amount of information, who should disseminate it, when should be disseminated, how it should be shared across departments that we can we can you know take the athlete to higher ground.

Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. So you brought up uh Proteus. I had Sam Miller on the podcast not too long ago. So it's a fascinating piece of technology. Uh, you know, when I look at something like that, I see you know tech like that that starts at a high level, you know, and high performance. And then, you know, when you with all the technology that you have access to, Eric, like what do you see in the next few years maybe democratizing to the general the general population? Like, what do you think will be useful? And then what do you think will be you know available to to people who are running their own gym? Yeah.

Yeah, you know, it's actually interesting. Somebody asked me this question recently, and I and I think you know, there's there's a lot of sexy initiatives out there. I think one thing that will always have a place is is anything that basically allows people to deliver or to acquire a training effect with lower risk of injury. And I'll use the example, right? The marathon community went all in on like the alter G, right? Because you know, you had elite marathoners that could maintain their mileage at 50% of their body weight. It was a way to increase training volume without winding up with linear phrasitis and you know, tibial stress fractures and all these different things. So it was a means of expanding capacity um, you know, with less risk of injury. So I think anything in that realm is going to be a really big difference maker. So, what are some places where that could change? Well, I I've been fortunate, I've worked with New Balance since 2011. What they're doing in their biomechanics lab in Boston, I think is you know, it's trend setting. You know, nowadays you can 3D print shoes. So we can we can scan an athlete's foot, we can throw them in a biomechanics lab, and we can say, all right, you know, with your foot type, the cleat placement here is not a good fit. We need to change, like, you know, we need a wider toe box and we need to move the cleat a little bit, you know, an inch further towards your heel, something like that. So you're seeing different capabilities where in the past that was that was a multi-year process. And now we're seeing, you know, it can be turned over in off-season for an athlete. He can get a custom shoe. Um, so I think those are really, really like exciting times. And certainly like in the baseball realm, like we're seeing more of like a you know, bat fitting is happening now, similar to like you know, golf clubs were were fitted to people in the golf community. And all those things are just ways to, you know, improve capacity, right? Because you think about your feet and your hands, you know, they have more proprioceptors than the rest of your body combined. So why would you not work on the implements that have the greatest contribution to how you interact with the ground or the implement in your sport of choice? So, you know, I I think we're gonna see a really, really big improvement just in terms of the public's accessibility to more individualized products. Like right now, you can customize the colors of your shoes and you can get you know cool images put on. You can send them out to get them painted and things like that. But it's very different than like literally changing like the you know the plates and the shoes and you know where the eyelets are. You know, we've done three separate CSP um shoes with New Balance, and we sold them out, but those are those are 18-month projects to plan out and you know, get them produced and get them shipped and all these different things. Nowadays, I think we're gonna have an opportunity to do real cool stuff much, much faster. Um, you know, so that's one thing. And in baseball, I mean tech is getting better and better every single day. Virtual reality is is definitely gonna impact the way hitters train. That's something that I think is is you know, it's it's quickly taking over and the technology gets better and better with each passing week. So that's something that I'm excited about. Um, you know, there's many different things.

Who's leading the way on that, Eric? Like on the virtual reality, that's curious.

Yeah, there's there's a few different companies. I think WinReality is probably the one that's the most well known, and they've they've done a lot of marketing. And one of our retired athletes, a couple of our retirement athletes actually work for them as well. And I think there's some other companies that are out there that are you know, are kind of pushing the envelope. So it's you know, it's like anything else where you know one company has some success, and you know, a lot of the ones that kind of come out and do the model a little bit better. So um I think that's an intriguing one, particularly in a sport where you know, pitchers have had kind of always the advantage. Um, you know, they've dictated the flow of the game, they pitch design, um, the ability to scrutinize mechanics. Hitting is very reactive. So hitters haven't always you know had the same amount of technology at their fingertips to kind of help them in their initiatives. So it's it's cool to see that you know, that tide being turned just a little bit. So that I guess there's a little bit more equity in how everybody prepares, even if the pitcher is still gonna win 70% of the time, even with the best scenarios.

So, does that mean like in the virtuality scenario that you know maybe you can prepare for a specific pitcher over and over again in virtual reality? Is that essentially what it is?

Yeah, that'd be the mindset. So, like one of the things that's actually really big now is pitchers are throwing so hard, and you know, it was kind of a trend to see more forcing fastballs up in the zone. So hitters would be swinging a lot of like, you know, basically pitches at their at their nipple level, right? And though that's a hard pitch to like lay off. It just looks medium, ball just kind of takes off. Um, and so you see a lot of pitchers that started setting like hitting machines at really high velocity, you know, instead of seeing, you know, they might they might see you know 100 at 50 feet, you know, instead of like seeing it from the mound and all this stuff. So um different ways to train it, and they got really, really good at the problem is it's it's pretty high risk. Like we used to have 100 miles an hour zinging at you all the time. Um, like if you if you mishit a ball, like you blow up your thumb, you're missing two weeks of hitting. It's like basic stuff like foam balls, believe it or not, like are being used a lot because hitters can get their swing, they can catch up to velocity. But if they mishit it or, you know, God forbid a ball sails on them and they get hit, like it doesn't really hurt. Like nobody complains if they get hit by a tennis ball, or in this case, like a foam ball that looks like a baseball. So it's just again, it's one more way to optimize capacity, to train harder, to prepare more with a lower risk of injury. Um, you know, I think obviously like the recovery field has taken off everything from like BFR to Normotec to Mark Pro. Obviously, like the love of saunas has taken off. Red light therapy, there are so many different things that athletes have at their fingertips, and everybody's different. Like some guys still love doing contrasts. You know, like I hate jumping in cold tubs. I never felt like it did anything for me. All I did was feel like I was freezing my butt off and wasting time. Um, you know, just everybody's a little bit different. So you've got to figure out what the right mix is for all of them. And I I do think actually a lot of it is placebo. There's actually a little bit of research to suggest that like ice paths work if athletes think they're going to work. Um, so you know, it's it's good to have a bunch of different options in that regard.

Yeah, that was gonna be my next question because you mentioned earlier, you know, that you you do you track a lot of of the workload for all these athletes and recovery protocols differ across the board. Is there anything in particular that that you lean on, you know, as far as recovery protocols, things that you like a little bit better, or you've seen actually work besides, you know, the potential of a uh Yeah, go ahead.

Um I'm I'm gonna be boring, but I'll probably give you a good quote. The best recovery solution is to never develop a work capacity problem in the first place. And so what we see is we see people who are inherently drawn to tech, right? Um, they're the same people that are inherently drawn to the coolest, you know, new exercise they saw on Instagram, the fancy sets and rep schemes. They want, you know, reverse undulating periodization with waveloading and germ volume training. And then you realize they can't even deadlift 135. So I think that is a really, really big thing, is too many people are missing out on the initial fitness capacity that that gives them the you know baseline to do a high volume of work and gradually build that chronic workload so that you know they're left chasing recovery strategies. But at the end of the day, I come back to it's it's nutrition, it's hydration, it's sleep quality. Um, you know, there's there's there's nothing better for it. Um, I do think there's something to be said, honestly, like whether it's meditation or just finding a break from distractions, like you think about the average Major League Baseball reliever, right? Like you might see a guy that drinks an energy drink in the fourth inning because he thinks he's gonna go in and have to throw 98 miles an hour in the seventh inning. Well, you know, there's 45,000 people in the stadium. What happens if he doesn't pitch, right? He's had that caffeine, exercise hasn't shortened the half-life of the caffeine. He's wired because he's surrounded by all these fans. You know, he might have to do post-game media stuff, you know, and then drive out of a parking garage with a bunch of fans yelling to him as he goes home. And then quickly you're like, oh yeah, I have to go to sleep. Um and it's it's not that easy for a lot of athletes. So, you know, we have seen a lot of athletes that have benefit a lot just from finding ways to like tone down and just get a little bit more mellow because it's you know, baseball is a is a sport that's really built for night owls, like people who are good at being sympathetic at night. And you know, the other guys really need to figure out like a good napping strategy. Um, because I know a lot of guys that like still can't sleep past 7 a.m. even if they get home and they they go to bed at two. They're just not capable of doing it. So you have to make up that sleep, you know, somewhere else for them.

So, you know, we we've talked a lot about advancements in technology and protocols and all the really cool things that have happened over the last you know 10 years. You know, but the there is, you know, I was telling you I had Kelly Starrett on the show, and he really kind of brings it back to the principles of teaching and coaching and how that's really uh and you've alluded to it several times in this interview, is like you still be got to be able to communicate, you still gotta be able to know the athlete and what type of information they want, when they want it, and things like that. How is that part of the coaching ecosystem evolved? I mean, has it, or is it still fundamentals that are, you know, essentially unresistible?

So are you familiar with the law of repeated exposures from marketing research? Right?

Yeah, I've yes, I'm familiar with it.

So so I always use the example. All right, so let's let's say I'm flying from Florida on jet blue to New York, right? And you know, I I walk past a Dunkin' Donuts in the airport, and I don't buy a coffee, and then I get on jet blue and they offer me a Dunkins, and I'm you know, I'm good. And then I you know, I log into my computer on the airport or airplane Wi-Fi to get some work done and I'm listening to Spotify and I get an ad for Dunkin' Donuts. I say, you know what, I'm good. And then I I get off of the airport, I walk past in their Dunkin' Donuts, I don't buy. And then I hop in my Uber, we drive past the Dunkin' Donuts, we see a billboard, they're everywhere, right? If I think in the old days they said like seven exposures was like the number, right? Where if you were exposed to a marketing message seven times and you didn't purchase, it probably wasn't gonna happen, right? Um, and there was, you know, there's some some studies uh that I saw in the past, just like it was like fewer than 10% of transactions actually occurred on like a potential consumer's first interaction with a marketing message. Like almost all of them were happening, you know, three, four, five, six, seven exposures later. So I think there's actually some really important parallels with coaching because you think about it, that that was seven, that was that's old research. Like that was before social media what was what it is. Like, you know, they say the average person checks their phone 120 times a day, like you're just constantly bombarded with marketing messages. And, you know, so as a result, people become desensitized to each one of them. Maybe they need 15 exposures. Um, and I'm always blown away at this. Like, I see people who like buy my sturdy shoulders course and they've been on my newsletter for like list for like seven years before they bought something. It's like, hey, you know, thanks for coming around, man. I hope you enjoyed all the blogs all these years. Um, so you know, I think some of the same stuff happens when we coach, right? We don't realize how many other messages these athletes might be getting. They might be getting pulled in a lot of different directions by other coaches on our staff. Like, and maybe it's an athlete who doesn't have a ton of bandwidth or they just don't have the ability to figure out how to prioritize, like what's the most important. Um, you know, I've got to do this, this, this, and this. But what about this? Is this also equally you know contributory to my success? So I think athletes are getting overwhelmed a lot more. And in some some to some degree, it's some of their own doing because they are um more exposed to information via social media and all that stuff. Um, but I think what it speaks to is like our marketing message to our athletes, right? You know, it's like the Dan Pink, you know, um, to sell as human. Like everybody is constantly selling. You just don't realize, like, I sell my daughters on going to bed on time, I sell them on you know, eating their vegetables, all these different things. And I think we're doing the same thing with other athletes. And it comes down to like they have to know and they have to like you before they trust you. You know, you're not just gonna roll in and you're gonna tell them exactly what to do on day one. You've got to get to know them, show that you care. Um, and and I'll I'll tell you what, a huge part of my my coaching strategy is really based on just questioning and not telling. You know, it's like the, you know, it's not the uh you know the classic authoritarian receipt regime. It's it's more of like, you know, try to lead, try to inspire, try to lead them to the example to the answers, try to ask questions that get them to think through things in different ways. And I think that's the same way that I interact with a lot of our staff members and stuff. Like I I used to be the micromanaging boss, and it doesn't work. It's it's it's a quick path to being you know frustrated and staring off into blackness at 2 a.m. on all the things you should have done differently. So I've tried to shift my focus a little bit. And it's it's definitely made me a better coach. I think it's made me a better husband and father too. Um, but you know, you you can't try to do everything for everybody, and you certainly can't just tell people. You've got to involve them in the process so that they feel like you know, to some degree it's their idea. Um, and then they'll have a you know larger vested stake in it, they'll be more likely to be adherent to it and and all that stuff. So I I was actually working with a couple of our like really young prospects who are who are phenoms, they're really special players today. And I was like, hey, they were they were working hard at a time when it was was impressive. It was a good thing for them. And I was just like, hey, what's the what's the code word in two years that I can say to you if you start to get comfortable? Like you kind of get to the point where it's a little bit of a joke, but at the same time, you recognize like, hey, like this game is really hard. It humbles everybody. Let's let's be mindful of you know not ever you know getting comfortable and you know and taking a step back in our development. We can always keep getting better. So um I think those are all built on relationships, those are conversations you have.

Yeah, well said, Eric. And and it just reminded me or bringing me back to uh, you know, even like running a CrossFit gym. Like you mentioned, the information that people get, you know, I'd be put all this time into a general program or even an individual program for someone, and then you know, I'd walk into the gym at like 6 p.m. and see someone doing something. I'm like, I don't think I programmed that for them. And I'm walking, I'm like, what are you doing? Oh well, you know, I just got this, it's just more, I'm just doing more work. I'm just doing more work, right? I saw this on whatever Invictus or something, you know, uh, and and they keep adding to it. And that's the that's the challenge. I mean, you get someone who's really hungry, right? In the beginning and tell them that less is more, uh, that that's a challenging conversation. I'm wondering, you know, when you give advice to coaches, like, how do you how do you communicate? I guess it's trust, really, right? That the the person has to trust you that you have them on the right path.

Yeah. I remember um it's a Mac Scherzer quote. I'll never forget, he dropped it on me. He said, I'd rather tame a tiger than motivate a donkey. Um it's always stuck with me. And you know, you want to be surrounded by tigers. So like when I see someone coming in for extra work, getting excited to learn, like that's that's a high motivation and and potentially high skill athlete, they just need direction. You know, they they're craving education, they're craving mentorship. And we see that a lot with young coaches. They just they haven't, I mean, I was that was me. I mean, I grew up in Kennebunk, Maine. There's not a whole lot of strength and additioning resources in 95 to 99 when I was in high school in the great state of Maine. Like um, I was like just desperate for it. I got to the University of Connecticut for my grad degree after I graduated undergrad in 2003, and it was my my world opened up. It's like, oh my gosh, like these are elite athletes everywhere. These are world-renowned professors that I can learn from. It was just, you know, it was it was just a night and day life experience for me. And I was like, I was drinking through a fire hose, like I couldn't get enough. And I I probably worked 18, 20 hour days every week. And I was just so fortunate that I had, I mean, I had Chris West who took me on his wing. Um, you know, Andrea Judia was there. She's now returned to Yukon. Tina Murray was there, just Prajesh Patel. There were just so many really good coaches that have gone on and done even bigger things since then that were willing to take time out of their day to help me. Because that was me as a coach. Like I had, you know, I was like the bull in a china closet. Like I wanted to change the world and I was willing to learn if from anybody that taught me. And I was just really, really lucky that they were willing to take the time.

And that that's you know, I'm sure you could ask this all the qu all all the time. Like, what advice do you have for young coaches? You know, I've you've probably been asked that a million times. And I'm probably gonna ask it again in a minute. But yeah, you know, and and I think nowadays we see uh, you know, social media has changed the coaching profession tremendously. Like, you know, that there's there's a distinct difference between entertainment and coaching and training, right? And a lot of people get stuck on the Instagram followers and uh and you have a monstrous Instagram following, and I'm sure it helps you professionally quite a bit, but that's not the core of who you are, right? That's that's secondary. So, you know, when you look at coaches who are maybe too distracted, you know, with the wrong things, what what are those wrong things and what are the right things to be focusing on if you're just getting your career off the ground?

Yeah, the the first thing I'll tell you is I kind of have like a five-step solution for people as young coaches, and it's it's necessarily broad, but the the first thing I'll tell you before I get to the five steps is is is I'm fortunate. I I review more resumes every year than I can count. You know, whether it's for positions at our facilities, whether it's just applications for our internship program, which I don't necessarily see those, um, or applications for for jobs with the Yankees. Um, one of the things that's interesting in our application process for our internship at our facility is we actually have a tripwire in our in our application process. I won't tell you what it is, but it has everything to do with just how you submit your application. It has nothing to do with your qualifications, has nothing to do with your cover letter, anything like that. It's just about following directions. And we can we can chop 40% of applicants off the top just because they don't follow directions. And the reason is very simple is if you're not attentive enough to really lock it in for an application and a cover letter, like chances are you're gonna be the guy that's that's sleepwalking five hours into a shift of coaching. So, you know, for me, that's that's something that we look at really close, is how well you follow directions. But um, what I'd speak to with respect to the five is step one is is first be useful. And that was actually something I borrowed from Ty Terrell, who's who's done great things in the NBA. But the overall majority of the resumes that we see are just inherently homogenous. They are all the same. And I mean that not in a disparaging or condescending way, but it's like everybody has the exercise science degree. Everybody has the letter recommendation from their department chair and the personal trainer at the hometown, like YMCA that they worked in. They all scooped ice cream in high school. They talk about their academic success. The cover letter talks about their passion. Um, it's just a very homogeneous experience. The same thing over and over again. Um, and you know, the example I always talk about is we had a we had a kid who trained with us who wanted to get into baseball operations at the professional level. And he's like, Hey, would you review my resume? And this is, you know, 21 years old. He was like a junior playing club baseball. I think he was at Northwestern, super bright kid, wonderful dude. And he was like, Yeah, sure, send it to me. And he had his resume, and like all the way down at the bottom, there was a section. Um, and he he said, uh, made $40,000 in the summer buying and selling things on eBay at like age 12. So basically he was like selling junk. I was like, dude, that is professional baseball. Find value where everyone else misses it. Like, you need to move that to the top, write your cover letter about it, highlight it. Sure enough, he had a baseball ops internship in no time. Like it's it's it's it's differentiating, and that's really big. You know, what else do we see? We saw a guy who drove from Michigan to hand deliver his application. Um, you know, and and so things like that, you know, are really, really important. Show that you can walk them out of my shoes, appreciate that, you know, they're challenges that I have, you know, understand how you represent our business. So step one is first be useful, something that you do well. Like it might just be that you're you're super friendly to parents in the office, that you see a piece of trash on the floor and you pick it up, you're punctual, whatever it is. Step two is is really don't be a distraction. Like, because you you'll see people that are useful that are still distractions. They they get there for the first week. Um, you know, like we had we had an intern two summers ago. Um, she was outstanding her literally her second week there. She, you know, she put up a uh a social media post. We're in New Bounce facility. She was in like clothes from like a totally different brand. She had a couple like expletives in her in her uh you know, in her post that weren't really gung-ho with us. There was it was just not a good look for our business. And it was in total violation from the social media policy that she had signed two weeks earlier. It's like, listen, we're we're here to invest in you. We want to make you successful, but like I just spent 30 minutes dealing with your social media posts. So step one is be useful. Step two is don't be a distraction. And then step three is be consistently useful. Like do the things that you do well, be the same person every day. Don't take plays off. Show that you're the one that is always just like fully locked in on stuff. You know, we've seen a lot of people over the years, they do an internship and they're amazing for the first month. And then the last month, you know, three months later, they're just awful. They're you know, sleepwalking around. And I want the person who gets consistently better so that I know what the consistent level of effort that I can really get from them is. Um, and then you know, what I what I actually talk about next is figure out what your boss hates to do and do it really well. Like there are certain things that I don't do well. So it's what's funny is I I invested in Proteus, I love Proteus. I never run the Proteus tests at our facility. Just because it's like 10 minutes, I just don't have. Like, so what'll happen is I'll do an evaluation, we'll go through a warm for that athlete, and I've got like a million notes that I need to make like to write down the assessments not to one of our coaches will take that athlete through the Proteus power test while I make my notes and it streams my day, probably saves me 40 minutes a day because I have coaches that can run that test proficiently so that I can get the data that I need and it works amazingly. Like that's something that I don't enjoy running, even though I love the output and the machine and all that stuff. So, like find something your boss really, really hates and do it incredibly well. Make sure your boss knows that you're willing to do it. Um and then, you know, the step five from a career standpoint is you know, if you've done those four things well, you've developed um a ton of career capital. And once you develop career capital, you have the right to exchange it for the jobs that you want, right? Maybe that's more compensation, maybe it's more flexible work conditions, maybe it's you know, paid vacation time, maybe it's a leadership role, you know, whatever it is. But usually you you develop that collection of career capital and you're in a really good position to you know to kind of build the job of your dreams. And we've seen, you know, to be honest, like some of our staff that have maybe moved on over the years, and I look at like where they were when they moved on, they had just kind of like gotten to stage four and they were you know probably a year or two away from doing some really, really cool stuff, like where I could have like you know sent them off to you know a great job in college training editioning or in professional baseball. I've hired several of our folks to to our staff for the Yankees. Um, and some people just think they're more ready for like the big step first. And I I think that's even more interesting now where I want to say in the millennial population, they say the average time at a job is about 18 months. Um people are just a little bit more transient. And I'm not saying that's that's good or bad, it just it is what it is. Um, and you know, I think sometimes people just really need to think about like, you don't have to worry about like a five or a 10-year plan, but think about if I stayed another year, where would I be at the end of that year? How can I shape my career better if I plan that year out with exactly what I need to do and um what boxes I need to check on my developmental path. And um, so and those are those are kind of the five points is be useful, be consistently useful, don't be a distraction, do what your boss hates to do, and then trade it in for for career capital and and better better working conditions and higher compensation.

Uh it's absolute gold, Eric. And I think it's probably applicable. I'm trying to think like that's applicable to so many different career paths, really anything where you're in a team environment, right? Um and that that can be anything. It could be a sales team, it could be a business development team, it could be you know a startup. Uh, it's uh it's all of those. And uh it's yeah, it's great. I can tell you, and here's the the good the thing about great coaches is you've taken you can take decades of experience and boil it down as simplicit simple things that people can take and digest and run with easily. And that's not easy.

That carries over to like a solo entrepreneur, too. It's like be useful, deliver value to customers, deliver value consistently. Don't write a blog once every seven weeks and expect to develop a following. And then, hey, don't be a distraction. Stop running your mouth on social media, stop getting in internet arguments, stop wasting your time on low return on investment activities, um, you know, and then you know, figure out where your place is in the market. Like offer something that nobody else is offering, and then you know, eventually you never know who's watching, who's listening, who's reading, and and good things seem to happen. Like I didn't consciously put myself out to work in professional baseball. Baseball found me. Um, and I turned down several opportunities over the years that weren't the right fit. I just kept my nose down and kept grinding and you know, putting in good work and getting results in the private sector. And before I knew it, you know, I was I was working for the most storied franchise in Major League history. So it's it's it's a very cool honor. But as I look back, there was an accidental progression that was taking place to get me to that point.

Yeah, it's powerful, man. It really is. So one last question because I know you got to go soon. Uh and one of circles back to the beginning of the interview, and we talked about how big and fast and powerful these players are. Like, let's take your your crystal ball, we're gonna dust it off. How far is this gonna go? Like, what like you know, let's put a timeline on, let's say like 10 years from now. Like, are they gonna be throwing 110, 115? Are these these batters gonna be, you know, 270 pounds, six foot four? Like, what's it gonna look like? How far do you think we can take this human performance thing?

Um, yeah, I'm sure it's context dependent. Some athletes more so than others that probably have more upside. I do think it it a ton of it depends on the nature of sports medicine. You know, can sports medicine keep up with this? Because we know if you look at like the throwing elbow, like the ulmercollateral ligament, which is what you know basically, you know, uh tears when when someone needs Tommy John surgery, you know, UCL injury risk risk goes up about 15% with every one mile per hour increase in average fastball velocity. So you go from 94 to 95, you're you're 15% more likely to go out your UCL. And that doesn't even speak to shoulders, necks, you know, what else can happen. And so we've seen this trickle up every year. Um and what's more concerning though is kids are breaking young. And so we're seeing these kids who are having Tommy John at 15, 16 that are then going to the big leagues. We don't know how long that that ligament's gonna last, that that replacement one. So what we are seeing is we're seeing more sports medicine techniques like hybrid techniques, internal bracing, internal taping, um, alongside reconstructions of the elbow. Um, yeah, but we're also seeing new surgeries. Like we're seeing thoracic outlet done way more. We're seeing um, you know, anterior shoulder dislocations and throwers, which is like insane to me. That never happened, and now it's a new thing. So I think a lot of it has to do with how well sports medicine can keep up. Because if everybody throws 103, like, you know, if if you think the NFL career is short on average, Major League Baseball career is going to be really short if everybody's throwing over 100. Um the game is much more specialized, you know, and so you see the most injuries in the reliever side of things. Um, so it's it's a very uh troubling time, and you know, it's a it's it's it's fun in the sense that like I'm I'm a guy who likes challenges and likes to problem solve and all that stuff. But you know, I think the the challenge is that players are are developing physically too fast for some of their skeletal maturity, as well as sports medicine's ability to keep up with them. So it's a it's a it's an interesting time. So you know, it's it's a great question. Um, do I think we're gonna see guys throwing 110 someday? Probably. You know, there are guys that are throwing 105, 106 now. Um, so it's it's definitely happened. So um, you know, it only takes one one you know generational freak to kind of like push everything forward, and then all of a sudden everybody starts to it. It's like the four-minute mile, right?

Eric, this whole thing's been hugely valuable. Uh you you never disappoint in these interviews. And uh thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this, especially, you know, it's late in the evening there, wherever you are with the Yankees, and you really tend to squeeze these meetings in. Um, if people want to follow you more, if they want to learn more about you, if they want to apply for that that golden internship at Cressy Sports, you know, where where do they go? Where would you like to send the audience?

Yeah, absolutely. My my website's just ericcressy.com. It's E-R-I-C-C-R-E-S-S-E-Y dot com. And then um, you know, basically social media is at Eric Cressy on both Twitter and Instagram. And um I've got a podcast as well. Folks are kind of interested in the the baseball slash sports science slash strength conditioning nutrition kind of realm. Um, that's where we kind of touch on to, so they can they can find all that at those websites and social accounts.

And what's the name of the podcast?

Uh it's called the Elite Baseball Development Podcast. Awesome.

Right on. Well, Eric, thanks again. Uh good luck in the playoffs. Hope everything goes well for you, man. Keep up the great work and uh thanks for spending the time. It's been really valuable. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. Ladies and gentlemen, Eric Cressy. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.