Erie Baseball & Softball Strength & Conditioning Academy

Last fall the Mercyhurst Baseball team hired our assistant coach Dan Popio to run their strength & conditioning program and serve as their bench coach. They came to us to take the entire team through our in-depth baseball assessment and have us aid coach Popio in the development and writing of each players/positions strength & conditioning program. We knew that there was talk of a few special players on the roster and it was an amazing experience to take 45 players through ...our 2-day assessment process. Chris was definitely at the top of the list of potential draft-able prospects and it sure was fun diving down a number of programming rabbit holes in the development of his program. Congrats to him and all of the coaches, family and friend that have helped him along the way. We are certainly honored to have played a tiny role in his athletic journey, but it sure was fun watching what he could do on the mound.

In part 2 of our mini-series on restoring movement changes due to the chronic overhead movements seen in baseball and softball, we will be analyzing the impact that anterior shoulder joint laxity has on performance, why it needs to be restored in the offseason and how we individualize our athlete programs at Lewis Fitness and Performance to do this. If you haven’t read part 1, you can do so here; https://www.facebook.com/eriebaseballsoftballstrengthandconditioning/posts/16624...Continue reading

In the first part of our mini-series on restoring movement changes due to repetitive overhead motions in baseball and softball athletes, we will be looking at what anterior shoulder joint laxity is, what causes it and why it is a bad thing. Before going into the importance of restoring anterior joint laxity, we have to look at what anterior shoulder joint laxity is. Put simply, it is instability of the shoulder joint due to an increased looseness of the ligaments and tendons ...Continue reading

Winter is here, but the baseball season will be here before you know it. This holiday season give your baseball players the best pitching instruction available. Erie native Isaac Mattson, pitcher in the Las Angelas Angels organization, is offering individual pitching lessons every weekend.

The exact same argument made here in regards to ACL injury can be made in regards to arm injuries. The pathology of most arm injuries (shoulder/elbow) are not due solely on the scapula or rotator cuff that most arm care programs target specifically. We are not saying they are not involved, but throwing dozens of rotator cuff and scapula stabilization/strengthening exercises into a program and having them done on a weekly/daily basis would be like throwing darts in the da...rk. You could hit the target, but you’re more likely to hit the wall. To truly reduce the likelihood of arm injuries one must conduct a global movement assessment and then dive deeper, based off of the global screen and the sport/position, goals, injury history of the athlete. Every athlete in our program goes through this process which allows us to customize our Kinstretch activities within their workouts to address their greatest mobility/stability needs that will reduce the chances of injury.