Rob Ellis

The day we learned that at the highest levels of MLB, they don't understand why or how pitchers are getting hurt, ended up leading to our company name, Legend4D.

@lethbridgejimbo @flowsdoc Who claimed that throwing off speed pitches came at the expense of learning how to throw fastballs with command? Do both.

@Legend_4D @flowsdoc Because learning how to spot your fastball is more important than throwing breaking balls

Should kids throw curveballs? Or are we asking the WRONG question? I just evaluated a 10-year-old with a UCL tear… who couldn’t even do a simple get up from the ground. And we’re debating pitch types? This isn’t a curveball problem. This is a youth development problem. Kids are: ⚾️ Playing 90+ games a year ⚾️ Throwing max intent before they can move ⚾️ Training like mini-pros ⚾️ Skipping athletic development ⚾️ Living in velocity culture And then we’re shocked when their elbows explode. So I’ll ask again: 👉 Is the curveball the villain? Or are we breaking kids before they ever get the chance to grow?

@lethbridgejimbo @flowsdoc If their off speed pitches are stress free why would you limit them?

@flowsdoc The sooner you teach a kid the proper technique for throwing a stress-free curveball—as well as a change up—the less likely the kid will be to wreck their arm trying to figure it out on their own. And THEN you limit how many they throw in games conditions

@EkoLovesYou Kindergarten for me, still remember...

MAN THIS IS SO RELATABLE

Good writeup. I like the 800M as the give and take distance. I ran this event in HS (sub 2 minutes); to me it's the most brutal event in track as it's near max effort over an extended period of time. The top 800M guys were both fast and in excellent cardio condition. You'd see these guys running in the 400M and or the 800M relays and competing in the mile race as well. Bottom line - Be explosive and in good cardio shape; you can do both.

Hot take with science: Pitching is more like a middle distance runner than a sprinter. Old school pitchers ran miles. Over the last decade, that shifted to almost exclusively sprints or sprint/power based training. The rational was that pitching is a power activity, dominated almost completely by ATP-CP system. That’s mostly a misunderstanding of physiology. Let's break it down. The modern argument went like this. Each pitch only lasts ~2 seconds of windup. It's about power. We should train like sprint/power athletes. The problem is this: It's repeated sprint-power, with a pitching clock between pitches which gives you 15-20 seconds. The misunderstanding of physiology is that the ATP-CP system would give you enough juice to handle those 2 seconds, recover, and do it again and again. But that's not how the energy systems work... They aren't all or nothing, they share the load, especially as fatigue comes into play. We can see this in recent data that looked at continuous lactate of a simulated 15min pitching, lactate levels peaked at 7.2mmol. HR reached close to 90% max HR. This shows you that there's both a strong anaerobic and aerobic component, and that contrary to what some have said, it's not just ATP-PC dominating...it's all three energy systems. As we'd expect. And while lactate does NOT cause fatigue, it's helpful surrogate marker that rises at similar time as things that do. So the first pitch looks a lot different than throwing with 5, 6, 7mmol of lactate in the system from an energetic system standpoint. In addition the study found that lactate took 20-25min to return to baseline. So...what we've got instead of a pure speed/power profile is one where fatigue matters. Where we need to be near-max, but then be able to recover well enough to maintain that ability. The aerobic system is what helps the most on that recoverability. Think of it in track terms: If I said, who "wins" this workout? 6 sets of 15x 15 meter near max sprint with 15 seconds recovery, with long recovery between sets? The 100m sprinter will look great for a good number of these initial sprints, but the short rest, and rising lactate will catch up. They'll start to tire. And even with long rest, won't recover enough to repeat. The marathon runner won't have enough pure speed to get close for a long time until fatigue really did the sprinter in. But the 800m runner with strong power/speed and endurance will do the best. I get it's a simplistic imperfect analogy. But it helps get at the underlying energetics. You want someone with great speed/power with also solid endurance. Which is why, often in training the pendelum swings from one extreme to the other, but th4e best lies somewhere in the messy middle. In speed/power training systems there's often this mostly overblown fear of running miles. As if it instantly saps all your speed. They fear a 1-3 mile run... Look, at some point distance does take away...But an occasional run here or there is NOT doing that. It's over blown. And secondly, it discounts that there are many effective ways to train aerobically without just running easy miles. We can use aerobic intervals, Igloi style intervals, fartlek, etc. which is often seen in modern 400 and 800m training. Plus...you periodize it, building some aerobic foundation before switching to more speed and power. The point: I'm not a baseball guru. Just a good that understands physiology and training. But to me, from the outside looking in, it seems the pendelum swung all the way to the other side, when it should have landed somewhere in the middle. Plus...the fear of an occasional jog is overblown. Take it or leave it. Just an observation. Study: Continuous lactate monitoring for real-time fatigue assessment in baseball pitchers

It will completely depend upon your community Little League. Coaching in a small community (and therefore less competitive talent) we transitioned at 10U to travel ball to go play teams an hour away (Austin). I have to admit, taking 11 boys from a town of 9,000 to go beat teams out of Austin, Houston, and San Antonio was A LOT of fun. At least three of these boys will go play college ball (sophomores and juniors in HS now).

When should you transition your kid from Little league to Travel Ball?

If we coaches take on the responsibility of not allowing these behaviors from the parents this issue goes away (at least for one team). I'm sure most coaches reading this have parent meetings preseason. If you don't, do yourself a massive favor and begin to do so. A few things we cover: * No coaching from the stands (concerns about techniques, approach, etc. are addressed outside of the game). * All umpire calls/disputes are handled by the coaches. * All cheering is directed towards our players. No commenting or voicing of any kind directed towards the other team or their coaches. Before every game I say a prayer with our players. One thing we ask the Lord for is humility. To treat the other players, coaches, families, teammates and umpires with respect. I do not allow any negative comments from my players directed towards the opponent. Players leading by example cleans up a lot of what takes place in the stands.

I can’t for the life of me figure out why youth baseball (Little league age, travel ball, high school) is one of the only arenas where people with absolutely no experience have the strongest opinions. Stay with me here. Like adults that know for a fact they never played baseball ever stand at sporting events criticizing coaches or kids for making mistakes while also knowing virtually nothing about the subject matter. It’s the most ignorant, lacking any self awareness things in society. Do you also walk in the kitchen during dinner service and question the executive chef or ask the roofing professionals if they’re replacing your shingles correctly knowing you have no idea what you’re talking about it’s such an insane concept to me. Yelling at children knowing you trip over your own feet mowing your lawn. just be positive and encourage the kids, thank the coaches for doing the job you can’t even come close to doing. Stop embarrassing yourself and your kids.

@TheTruthFromBen Stretch to the ball, not the player.

You’ve been put in a position in a major league game, so yes it’s your responsibility to have a technical understanding of this play. Extend up, not out & it’s actually a routine play, proven by the fact it hit his glove And then after… it’s leadership to look at your teammate dead in the face & say what he said. He didn’t take the coward way and throw bad body language or talk to another teammate. He waited until the first possible moment he was face to face and he said exactly what should have been said… ‘I work my ass off for this and so should you.’ He didn’t say it exactly like that, but that’s what he said and the point was spot on and received based upon reaction Folks who are critical of this and calling Chapman a bad teammate have never had their livelihood depend on technical baseball training that plays itself out in a game setting

We've started playing non-district games. I'm going two to three innings max with my rotation. And my guys have been throwing for a long time already in preparation for the season. The opposing teams' pitchers have pitched four and five innings and I can see their velo dropping as they go. I can't imagine how their arms felt the next day.

It’s that time of year again where we see a spike in arm injuries in the MLB. March and April are peak injury months because workloads spike fast. HS season starts next week, and many athletes are about to ramp up without consistent offseason throwing. Pitch counts aren’t the answer. A workload monitoring system is. Good news is it doesn’t have to be expensive. A grip strength tester + crane scale can give daily readiness. Monitoring needs to become the norm.

@doogadoo11 "Deserve's got nothing to do with it." William Munny, Unforgiven.

My favorite is “Now yous can’t leave” by Sonny from A Bronx Tale.

What’s your all-time favorite movie quote?

Last summer a friend of mine asked to come out to Marble Falls from Austin so we could visit at my facility and discuss his son's arm pain. In his last outing his boy threw 83 pitches (high school travel ball). Come to find out his arm was sore but there didn't appear to be any joint related issues. I asked them, when was the last time he threw an 83 pitch pen? They looked genuinely confused by this question. Their answer? Never. You don't train for a triathlon by sitting on a Peloton, swimming in your pool, and running laps at the local Middle School.

Raise the floor, raise the ceiling. I won't advocate 200-pitch pens, but you shouldn't throw 5 times as many pitches in a game as you've thrown in a bullpen. You need to raise the floor of the number of pitches in a bullpen to maximize the ceiling number of pitches in a game.

@Jsudds44 Didn't realize Jake you pitched for the White Sox. Our outside observer in this video worked for the White Sox as a pitching coach for 30 years. Kirk is an awesome man.

@Jsudds44 Love it. Here we show our pro player throw 197 times retaining 90+ velo. Once the mechanics are in place, throw more not less: youtu.be/RCOVtux-3xA?fe…

THREAD: Why you need to start throwing 200 pitches bullpens. People obsessed with pitch count are missing the boat. Most injuries aren’t only “overuse”. What they actually are is a spike in workload that the body was underprepared for.

@pitchingschool What's the/your definition of a perfect mover?

Also, if mechanics were the main driver, we’d see: Perfect movers never get hurt. And “poor” movers always get hurt. Reality? There are big leaguers with violent deliveries and healthy elbows. And clean movers who get injured.

The “Tommy John epidemic is just a mechanics problem” take I’m seeing shared on this platform is lazy. UCL injuries are multifactorial. Workload. Velocity. Intent. Fatigue. Maturation. Previous injury. Recovery environment. AND mechanics. It’s not one villain. Anyone telling you it is doesn’t understand the research.

@TommiPedruzzi Followed!

@Legend_4D Hey Rob, can't enter your DM if you don't follow

Everyone's talking about Claude Code. But most people missed the real money play. Using Claude for AI publishing. I used it to write a 90-page eBook. It now makes me $3,000 every month. I’ve put 5+ hours of video breaking down my exact system and prompts that turn Claude into a full-blown eBook writing machine. Comment “AI” and I’ll DM you everything.

@TheTruthFromBen If you're a player and you're not on the lineup don't question yourself "Why not?" Go ask the coach, he'll be happy to tell you what you need to do to be on it.

A coach posting their lineup in the dugout is a very valid form of communication If you’re not in it consistently, the message is you’re not good enough or he doesn’t like you Players and parents so often miss this, I’m telling you not to! Personally, I played everyone and communicated when and why… but that was my method. Not all leaders like that avenue Don’t accuse coaches of lack of communication on playing time if they’re posting a lineup… that’s their way and it’s a players responsibility to change the coaches view or change their own!

@atensnut Go read The Dancing Wu Li Masters if you want a fun ride with quantum mechanics.

Hilarious Professor of Quantum Mechanics!! 🤣🤣🤣

@AllAmerican202 @amazing_physics Very first thought I had as well...Van Gogh. Beautiful.

@amazing_physics Is this a Van Gogh painting? Wow.🤩

NASA just dropped the closest image ever taken of Jupiter...

@XCreators @grok Made this in a few hours with Grok Imagine. As a baseball coach and a dad of two, the "superhero dad" idea hit close to home. This is real life. @XAi @elonmusk @XCreators

@XCreators @grok Be the hero they already think you are (with Grok).

You thought the fun was over? 🏈 This weekend, video takes center stage on the timeline. We’re awarding $1M, $500K, and $250K to the top three videos about @grok, created with Imagine 1.0.