183: Dr. Nick Serio on Innovative Special Strength Training for Throwers and Rotational Athletes | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s episode features Dr. Nick Serio.  Nick received his doctorate of education in sport and performance psychology from the University of Western States.  He is the co-owner and general manager of the “Athlete’s Warehouse” located in Pleasantville, New York. Nick also serves as the head pitching coach at Fox Lane high school, where the baseball team has had tremendous success.   I watched Nick’s presentation on medicine ball training he did at the NISMAT symposium, which was a phenomenal and creative demonstration of special strength training for pitchers.  Nick’s work is the epitome of the full-spectrum blend of knowledge of sport specific skill needs, appropriate special strength exercises, as well as solid general strength principles.    Nick’s special strength medicine ball programming is facilitating significant increases in players throwing speeds, all while keeping their arms healthy, as they avoid throwing baseballs year round (a huge factor in getting injured or burning out early).  Despite the impressive results he gets, Nick is a very honest and transparent individual, as he also indicates the many other training modalities the players are doing (plyometrics, resistance training) as well as simply growing and maturing. Regardless, Nick’s creative solutions to training are something special to learn about, and have ramifications for all throwing athletes, and rotational sports. On the show today, Nick goes into the factors contributing to the massive injury increases in baseball, and how his medicine ball program can help combat this.  He also chats about general principles in training throwers, postural issues, and then gets into the fine points of his medicine ball training program. Nick also addresses the action of the front block leg in throwing, which is a universal principle, applicable to a great variety of rotational sports.  Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster.com, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.