We began working with Jeremy almost immediately after he was drafted by the Jazz two years ago. Check out some of the hard work and targeted training behind Jeremy’s dunk contest victory.

Other P3 athletes who participated in all-star weekend included Derrick Favors, Gordon Hayward and Marshon Brooks, who all performed well in the Rising Stars Challenge, Anthony Morrow, who lost in the first round of the 3-point shootout, and Deron Williams who dropped 20 points in the main event Sunday.

As the NBA season resumes, expect injuries to continue to play a prominent role.

During the beginning of the NBA, season players were going down left and right with injuries. This prompted Michael Wilbon, one of the most respected and well known sports writers in America, to predict in his ESPN.com article that, “injuries, not talent, will decide the NBA championship.”

It’s one thing to suspect injuries might have a big impact on the season, which we began to do the moment the labor lockout led to a shortened training camp, a barely existent preseason and a severely compressed regular season. But it’s another to realize it, to see three-quarters of the teams scrambling already to cover for players of consequence missing in action, to see sprains and tears become such a dominant storyline that the team trainer is some nights better equipped than the coach to fill out the starting lineup.

Already, less than a dozen games in for some teams, the NBA could trot out an All-Injury Team of Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose at guard, Carmelo Anthony and Zach Randolph at forward and Brook Lopez at center that could absolutely reach the NBA Finals. There’s even a pretty good All-Injured International Team of Steve Nash and Manu Ginobili, Andrew Bogut, Andrea Bargnani and Luc Mbah a Moute that could finish fairly high up in the standings.

Consider a continued list of impact players/former All-Stars who already have missed multiple games because of some injury or another: Chris Paul, Paul Pierce, Al Horford, Richard Hamilton, Chauncey Billups, Grant Hill, Eric Gordon, Jason Richardson and Steph Curry. The 76ers started wonderfully but now have reason to worry about center Spencer Hawes’ Achilles tendon.

People are mistaken when they assume that the modern athlete is in peak physical condition year round. While the off-season is the best time to build the physical systems to excel in basketball, many players to do not take advantage of that time. Every year players report to training camp in poor physical condition, and every year players go down to injury because of their poor condition. Normally, players have access to team staff and facilities in the summer, eight weeks of mandatory practice and conditioning, as well as seven or eight preseason games to gradually get themselves in game shape. This year, players had less than three weeks of practice, and only two pre-season games to get ready. This is a significant decrease in “ramping” time, even for the most well conditioned athletes.

With virtually no time to practice during the season and with each game carrying more weight (66 games instead of 82 games), it’s likely that coaches would have been solely concerned with getting players up to speed from a basketball and metabolic conditioning standpoint, and it’s unlikely that identifying injury risks and having players do injury prevention work would have been a priority during training camp.

In general, there is a lack of effort and science applied to stratifying individual injury risk in professional athletes, and while this is one of the main factors that contributes to injuries, Dr. Elliott still believes the best predictor of injury is “change in environment,” and points to the data collected during his 10-year study of NFL hamstring injuries, which showed that 53.1% of hamstring injuries in the NFL occur during the 7-week pre-season period compared to the 16-week regular season. Of all hamstring injuries occurring during the season, 79.8% occurred during the pre-season.  Broken down further, 56.0% of practice related injuries occurred in the first month of pre-season (July), 23.8% occurred in the 2nd month (August).

Dr. Elliott attributes the high-preseason injury rates in the NFL to the relative de-conditioning that takes place during the off-season. During his time with the New England Patriots, Dr. Elliott exposed athletes to progressively intense bouts of sprinting and sport-specific neuromuscular training during the off-season and early in the pre-season. Dr. Elliott believes that their application of progressive increases in volume and intensity along with their ability to accurately assess each individual athlete were the main reasons why the Patriot’s program was so successful in reducing injuries and improving athleticism.

The rate of injuries, especially traumatic injuries, has decreased since Wilbon’s article was published on January 18th.  This is not surprising, as players have now had time to adapt to the physical demands of an NBA game.

Expect recovery time or lack thereof be a main contributor moving forward, especially as it pertains to chronic injuries.

Players have a very demanding schedule during a regular 82-game season. On average, teams play two to four games per week. This season is even more demanding as teams have to play an extra two games per month on average and will play at least one set of back-to-back-to-back games, with some teams having to do this as many as three times.

Research looking at European soccer players showed that recovery duration and or game frequency can have major impact on injury rates.

Gregory Dupont from the University of Lille’s Laboratory of Human Movement Studies in France monitored injuries during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 UEFA Champions League seasons. He found the injury rate was six times higher when players played two matches per week versus one match per week. He published the study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine in 2010.

Dr. Elliott believes this soccer research applies to basketball and that coaches and teams will have to be better than ever in how they manage players minutes and emphasize injury prevention work. Teams with deep benches and the luxury of being able to rest key players will certainly have an advantage.

Injuries incurred during the beginning of the year will continue to have an impact as the season progresses. We will see less traumatic injuries than we did at the outset of the season, but should expect chronic injuries to be more of a factor as the wear and tear of playing nearly every night becomes too much for many players to handle.

In 2007, Dr. Marcus Elliott and P3 sports scientists wrote an academic paper titled, Power athletes and distance training a physiological and biomechanical rationale for change, which showed unequivocal drawbacks to distance training for power athletes, including inappropriate neuromuscular adaptations, a catabolic hormonal profile, an increased risk for overtraining and an ineffective motor learning environment.

Despite the fact that the science of strength and conditioning is no longer in its infancy and considerable evidence exists showing interference of strength and power gains in athletes who concurrently train aerobically, (2-4) power athletes continue to practice sustained aerobic exercise at all levels.

The following is a brief overview of energy systems, and specific guidelines for improving both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems without negatively affecting power development and movement patterns.

Energy Systems

Human energy is ultimately the end result of our body’s ability to process the foods we eat and adapt to the physical demands it is conditioned under. Our ability to work, to exercise, and to perform the day to day tasks that we hold as necessary requires our bodies ability to employ three separate energy systems each suited best for specific performance demands. ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) is the human body’s main source of energy at the cellular level. It is required for all muscle contraction and is employed by the two part anabolic system and the aerobic system to engage in any activity. All three systems can work concurrently, however, in different training and sporting environments, under varying energy demands, and over various amounts of time, one energy system will predominate to meet the peak performance demands of the athlete.

The anaerobic energy systems are comprised of two divisions, the alactic and lactic. Alactic sports include football and baseball, which both involve brief intermittent tasks involving very large power outputs. The predominant energy source for these sports is the phosphocreatine (PCr) system. Lactic sports, such as basketball and soccer, involve repetitive high intensity activity. Both the PCr/adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and glycogen/glucose systems predominantly provide energy for these sports.

Elite Baseball, Football, and Basketball players warming up at P3. Sustained aerobic exercise should never be a part of these athletes' training programs. Photo courtesy of Jonas Jungblut.

The aerobic system is able to supply a level of sustained energy, but is limited by its capacity to provide energy quickly enough to meet immediate maximal effort demands. Therefore, the aerobic system predominates during bouts of demand at less than maximal but over a sustained period, and becomes a larger contributor to meeting energy demands as the period of demand increases. Aerobic metabolic pathways are important as they are required for recovery during and after activity, mostly to provide energy for the re-synthesis of PCr and the oxidation of lactate.(1)

All of the potential benefits of aerobic training, such as increased rate of PCr regeneration and improved connective tissue properties, can be attained by carefully prescribed interval training and in some cases, light technique work of sports skill development.

Guidelines for Improving
Power and Endurance

Interval training can be defined as a type of physical training that involves burst of high intensity work, followed by complete or active rest. Intervals should be <30 seconds to avoid significant lactate accumulation, as well as resemble the shorter duration of most athletic movement. Between these work intervals, the athlete should perform active rest at about half of the effort of the more intense intervals to continue to oxidize anaerobic metabolites and maintain a relatively low level of lactic acid in the muscle tissue. Although the work-to-rest ratio may be manipulated for certain situations and desired goals, a ratio of 1 : 1 has been suggested to sustain a higher aerobic stimulus, while minimizing lactate accumulation.

The complex in the clip above was specifically applied to improve Derrick Favor’s lateral speed and change of direction. When done with short rest intervals this complex is very demanding from a metabolic standpoint. This off-season we have been working to make Derrick a “metabolic monster,” with the capacity to give maximal effort over and over again throughout the course of a 48-minute game without fatiguing. Derrick has responded very well to the demanding workouts at P3, and should be more than ready to physically dominate and utilize his world class power once the season starts.

At P3, a major route to improving performance is through the application of “complex training,” which involves combining high load strength movements with biomechanically similar plyometric/ballistic movements as a means of taking advantage of Post Activation Potentiation (PAP), a phenomenon that refers to enhancement of muscle function as a result of its contractile history. The PAP element of the complex will often be followed by sports specific metabolic movements <30 seconds for athletes who need to improve their body composition, work capacity and or aerobic fitness. Complex training is also an excellent way to increase training density, which directly affects work capacity and is essential for building the type of anaerobic energy system and muscle endurance that allow an athlete to give maximal effort throughout the course of a competition or practice.

1. Burleson MA, O’Bryant HS, Stone MH, et al. Effect of weight training exercise and treadmill exercise on post-exercise oxygen consumption. Med Sci Sports Exerc 1998; 30 (4): 518-22

2. Bell GJ, Syrotuik D, Martin TP, et al. Effect of concurrent strength and endurance training on skeletal muscle properties and hormone concentrations in humans. Eur J Appl Physiol Mar 2000; 81 (5): 418-27

3. Hennessy LC, Watson AWS. The interference effects of training for strength and endurance simultaneously. J Strength Cond Res 1994; 8: 12-9

4. Kraemer WJ, Patton JF, Gordon SE, et al. Compatibility of high-intensity strength and endurance training on hormonal and skeletal muscle adaptations. J Appl Physiol 1995; 78 (3): 976-89

Two athletes making exceptional gains over the past months have been surfers, Sage Erickson and Yadin Nicol. Sage had been surfing on the women’s World Qualifying Series (WQS) for a few years and has missed making the World Tour by a single spot the past two years. As a means of improving her performance and chances of qualifying for the tour Sage committed to undergo very personalized, intensive training at P3.

Much of P3 Action Sport’s work with Sage over the past few months has focused on creating dynamic hip stability and shifting demand from knee to hip, allowing Sage to control femoral rotation and adduction. This process has involved both strengthening and neuromuscular re-education of how to stabilize and activate her gluteus medius and upper-third of gluteus maximus. When the glutes don’t fire correctly it can cause internal rotation of the hips and put a tremendous amount of stress across the patellar-femoral joint. Greater utilization of these muscles will significantly decrease knee valgus moments and angles. Hip stability also allows surfers to maintain their hip position through dynamic movements, train more aggressively (enabling the athlete to become more powerful), safely transfer force generated from the lower body through the trunk and produce more explosive rotational movements.

We are very pleased with the progress Sage is making. Her body composition has improved, she has reduced her total body weight by 16%, while increasing lower extremity power (shown by a 2-inch increase in her vertical jump), rotary power (a 17% increase to both right and left sides), and overall work capacity (26% increase in touches in the 1-minute box jump test).  These improvements have been a direct result of very specific training that began with correcting some poor movement patterns as well as improving some major hip stability issues.

With the qualifying season now in full swing, Sage has already accumulated enough points to not only clinch a spot on next year’s tour, but in securing her top seed as she is currently the highest ranked qualifying surfer in the world.

Another P3 action sports athlete that is doing extremely well is Australian surfer, Yadin Nicol.  Currently ranked 27th on the ASP World Rankings after taking second place in the US Open of Surfing, Yadin has been on a tear, has already qualified for the World Tour. When Yadin first came in to P3, he was dealing with some left knee pain – something that is becoming increasingly common among progressive surfers who are lacking hip dominance – especially while compressing coming out of big above the lip maneuvers.

During Yadin’s initial Depth Jump to Absorption Test (which measures the ability to efficiently compress during the eccentric loading phase) he put up a score of 20.11, which is extremely high compared to other action sports athletes we have tested, and is almost always an indication of quad dominance; as athletes who are able to utilize their hips to absorb the majority of the compression are able to greatly reduce the amount of force that their body place’s into the ground. Yadin also placed the majority of force onto his knee joint during any other squat or compression movement while testing and it was apparent that his knee pain was directly related to the way his body was absorbing compression through the quads and into the knees.

Quad dominance can be observed by the knees moving over the toes, excessive dorsiflexion (bending of the ankle joint), limited hip flexion, and often observed by heels coming off of the ground through any squatting movement. The quad dominant surfer will generally put over 50% of compression force onto the knee joint, while the ankle will absorb about two-thirds of the remaining force, allowing the hip to only take up what force remains.

Habitual quad dominance for surfers is less than ideal for a couple of reasons.  First, moving without utilizing the largest muscle group in the body (Gluteals), will place an obvious limit on force production, resulting in weaker turns and longer transitions in getting the board back on rail coming out of big maneuvers. Compression will be much less efficient, and in some ways impossible for a quad dominant mover, as this type of athlete must rely on perfect positioning of the knees and feet over the board in order to hold on and get back into position without losing speed. This type of surfer will also find much less consistency in surfing due to a lack of stability in the hips.  Secondly, and probably more importantly, the quad dominant mover greatly increases chance of injury – usually to the knee. If the hip extensors are weak relative to the knee extensors, the quads are forced into a state of overuse resulting in greatly increased loading of the knee. An overloaded knee is left completely vulnerable, especially under a surfer like Yadin who is known for landing some of the largest aerial maneuvers in the world.

Yadin and The Cheesestick from CI Surfboards on Vimeo.

Fortunately, Yadin’s inefficient movement patterns were more of a motor programming issue rather than a lack joint mobility. Corrective strategies have included coaching and cuing Yadin through a full range of motion in strength movements (ie. bulgarians, step ups) and plyometrics, various yoga modules to stretch some of the overactive muscles in the quadriceps, ankle mobility and ground contact drills to improve dorsiflexion, building strength in hip extensors to provide hip stability and reduce risk of injury, and a lot of soft tissue work.

Three months after Yadin’s initial testing we re-evaluated him to assess the influence of our intervention. Coming back to the Depth Jump to Absorption, he showed a massive improvement by lowering his score from 20.11 to 7.45, a difference of 170%.  The improved ability to efficiently load his lower body is directly related to being able to move through a larger range of motion utilizing his hips as the major joint for absorbing the compression. This adaptation puts Yadin at much less risk of injury while at the same time giving him the ability to tap into a much larger power source when executing the critical movements of surfing.

P3 Action Sports is excited about the continued development of these two athletes, as well the others currently training at P3, who are making their mark on the surfing world. Both Sage and Yadin have proven that they are ready to do whatever it takes to maximize their success, and as P3 Action Sports continues to set the standard through the utilization of advanced technology and scientifically based training methods, our athletes will assuredly continue to find themselves at the top of the podium.

For more information on P3 Action Sports, visit P3actionsports.com

Chris’ commitment, work ethic, professional approach, and overall efficiency have been off the charts since he first came to P3 in the summer of 2009 for testing, training and to get an individualized program designed. While away at summer ball, he accumulated perhaps the largest gains we’ve seen over a two month period of self directed training. Following that and the subsequent gains, he committed to stay in Southern California for the full summer, driving over an hour both ways, three to five times a week. He has improved by a significant margin in every way physically. His lower body power is larger than 75-80% of  professional baseball players that we have tested.

Chris also has a huge work capacity, excellent stability in his scapular-shoulder complex, and improving mobility in his shoulders. Despite these gains, P3 sports scientists are quite certain that Chris is far from done. Even with his impressive size and power, they expect he will get at least 20% more power, more drive, in his lower half. Also, despite his success this year, he is also still figuring out how to use these recent physical improvements on the mound.

We have a number of athletes that train at P3 that have had, or are having, long and successful careers in sport despite not always being the most talented guy on the team.  None-the-less, they kept finding ways to get better and keep moving along by working harder and smarter than everyone, as well as having a tremendous amount of self belief and an ability to overcome adversity. This is especially true in MLB. Chris is definitely one of these guys, but as most scouts and managers can attest, he also has tremendous physical tools.

Here is a clip of Chris training at P3 just prior to signing with the Dodgers.

Matt Scioscia, Riley Moore, Chris Joyce, Austin Davidson, Christian Lopes, Danny Muno and Devin Lohman were also all selected in the 2011 MLB Draft. Many of these athletes have trained at P3 for a number of years. We look forward to continuing to develop and reduce injury risk for these athletes and other professional and amateur athletes striving to reach their performance goals at P3.

In the video below NJ Nets players are undergoing highly customized individual training and teaching based on evaluations, previous injury history as well as the role on their team.

In order to and help the NBA players and teams we work with mitigate the risk of injury and improve athletic performance P3 has been collecting objective data on and analyzing the biomechanical and neuromuscular aspects of NBA players’ movement for a number of years. Recently P3 began utilizing an eight-camera motion analysis system integrated with three force plates and surface electromyography, allowing us to know the exact lower extremity kinematics (joint angles), kinetics (joint torques) and muscle activation patterns when athletes perform cuts, drop jumps and lateral shuffles.

These types of advanced biomechanical and neuromuscular assessments not only help P3 to better stratify risk and  weak links in movement patterns, but also allow us to more precisely assess the influence of our interventions  throughout the various stages of training, project athletic potential, injury risks, how physical changes correlate with on court performance and compare exactly how individual athletes stack up against each other when performing sports specific movements.

Below are pre-training frontal moment graphs of an NBA athlete’s kinetics as he performs a drop jump to depth jump, a lateral cut and a lateral shuffle.

Drop Jump

Lateral Shuttle

Lateral Cut

These graphs show a considerable amount of asymmetry and biomechanical risk factors for ACL injury including a significant amount, hip adduction moments, and knee valgus moments, especially on the right side.

In order to mitigate the risk of a traumatic ACL injury much of our work has focused on creating dynamic hip stability, and shifting demand from knee to hip, allowing him to control femoral rotation and adduction. This process involved both strengthening and neuromuscular re-education of how to stabilize and activate his gluteus medius and upper-third of gluteus maximus. Greater utilization of these muscles significantly decreases knee valgus moments and angles, thus reducing risk of knee injury by a significant margin.

Despite the the common occurrence of lower extremity injuries in the NBA,  and the massive investments teams make in each player, these advanced biomechanical and neuromuscular workups had previously never been done before with NBA athletes.  Furthermore, NBA basketball players are almost never trained from a movement based perspective or based on their individual needs. These oversights and lack of precision leave room for much improvement when it comes to developing the power, strength, mobility, multi planar speed, anaerobic endurance, and overall athleticism needed to stay healthy and succeed in a grueling 82-game regular season against what many people consider to be the best athletes in the world.

Ah, movement. It is the very rhythm, the baseline (so to speak) of the game. Movement is everything that happens before the ball strike. It’s how the elite players arrive at the desired point of impact — hence the term “being on the ball.” It allows you to take the ball earlier and put yourself in position to hit your best shots, such as running around the backhand

Movement has many components. It is the fitness and flexibility of Novak Djokovic and Kim Clijsters. The jaw-dropping speed of Gael Monfils. The world-class acceleration of Rafael Nadal or Serena Williams or the startling anticipation of Caroline Wozniacki. Or the eerily cat-quiet footwork of Roger Federer.

Think of the Olympic sprinter. Pure speed is the only concern. Point A, the starting blocks, to Point B, the finish line. For the 100 meters, it’s a straight line, the 200 meters involves a single curve. No major changes of direction; fast-forward only.

Now, consider the degree of difficulty involved in the tennis player’s craft: Elevate for a serve, rotate through the ball, check your forward momentum, push off to the left to retrieve the return, stop, execute a swinging backhand, start the feet moving to the right, with chopping steps to get back to the middle of the court, recognize a drop shot, sprint forward, angling to the right, decelerate and chip a forehand into the open court. And that’s merely a five-stroke rally.

The ability of a tennis player to have great court coverage is directly related to  their multi-planar speed, which refers ability to move and accelerate in a variety of directions in order to meet the dynamic movement demands of the sport, analogous to traditional definition of agility.

In order for an athlete to have the multi-planar speed to compete at a high level in tennis, they must have good hip and trunk stability as well as lower extremity power, as these systems serve to improve an athlete’s ability to explosively apply force into the ground in multiple plans, decelerate, set up positive ground angles and change direction. While each athlete has different needs and may have different pathologies or muscle imbalances that prevent them from having multi-planar speed or the ability to safely and efficiently interact with the ground, we generally like to complex strength movements (Various lunges, step ups, balance squats) with plyometrics (split squat jumps, skaters) and or agility movements (variations of the pro agility or slide agility).

In a match that consumed 5 hours, 14 minutes — the longest on record Down Under — according to the Oradsport tracking mechanism, Nadal ran a total of 2.13 miles. The logistics were staggering; the Spaniard sprinted in all directions, stopping, starting, lunging, jumping, swinging for a total of 1,473 strokes.

It’s for this very reason, that long distance running or, purely straight ahead running for tennis players does not make sense. While aerobic energy production is required to some extent, the use of slow, long-duration exercise has been demonstrated by science to lead to inappropriate  neuromuscular adaptations, catabolic hormonal responses, an increased risk of over-training and an ineffective motor learning environment. For more information on aerobic interference for power athletes read Power Athletes and Distance Training Physiological and Biomechanical Rationale for Change.

Anticipation (is making me wait)

Perhaps no one in the game anticipates as well as Wozniacki.

She moves unbelievably,” said Sumyk, who has coached Vera Zvonareva and, currently, Azarenka — both top-five players. “Wozniacki sees and reads the ball really well. The toughest players — Nadal, Djokovic, Federer — they touch every ball.”

Wozniacki is not blindingly fast, but somehow the 20-year-old Dane seems to get to everything.

“I would say that Caroline is one of the great anticipators of the last decade,” Shriver said. “It’s amazing how often she guesses right. She’ll be seemingly out of the play and, boom, she’s back in it.”

At P3, we are very interested in understanding how athletes anticipate and react to stimulus, and over the past few years we have been testing and analyzing athlete’s stimulus response using customized force plates and video software analytics. These technologies allow us to measure the exact biomechanics of an athlete when they are forced to react.

While Andrei Kirilenko did not test that well in terms of power, strength and speed, his reaction times were excellent during stimulus response testing.

Deeply ingrained motor patterns can be difficult to change especially when it athlete has to make split second decisions, so while improving power and stability definitely help athletes react faster it is also important to coach/cue athletes through integrated movements and have athletes respond to stimulus as they are doing high intensity movements.

The recent integration of Neurotopia’s performance brain testing and training technology has given us amazing insight and understanding of how the brain functions to control reaction time and reaction variability. If reaction time is diagnosed as a performance deficit during an athletes initial brain mapping, neuro physicians set up training protocols to improve it.

Performance Brain Training starts by placing a brainwave sensor headset on the athlete. The sensors interpret how the brain is functioning by listening to the brain’s electro-chemical activity. Neurotopia’s software converts this activity into graphs and scores to provide the athlete with visual feedback as to what state their brain is currently in. As their brain state moves toward focus, the athlete can see the graph move upward and the score increase. Similarly, as they become distracted, the graph moves down and the score decreases. For training purposes, Neurotopia converts some of these graphs into video games whereby the game accelerates toward a goal when the brain’s activity is optimal and slows down or stops when the brain shifts from this optimal state.

Experience and a knowledge of an opponents tendencies also play a huge role in an athletes ability to anticipate.

In Tennis, and other sports, understanding the physical systems of sport and then finding ways to precisely measure and train these systems is extremely important. After testing each athletes physical system as it relates to their sport, the next step is to apply science-based nervous system training that adapts athletes to the high intensity movements of their sport and teaches them to be highly efficient, reserving muscle contraction only for the explosive part of the motion. These adaptations results in faster, more agile, powerful athletes without additional muscle bulk.

For more information about P3, visit www.P3.md .

The Neurotopia website does a great job of describing what Performance Brain Training is and how it works:

The brain is the command center that drives the body’s performance. How it functions affects an athlete’s control of focus, speed of reaction, quality of sleep, efficiency of motor movement, emotional reactivity, and ability to mentally recover after an error. When the brain is able to efficiently function, an athlete is better at performing under pressure, sustaining focus, as well as mentally resetting during competition.

Neurotopia’s Performance Brain Training™ is a process which uses technology to provide an athlete with more information about what their brain is doing than their normal senses provide. It produces “real-time” feedback that helps athletes learn to associate the proper feeling with the most effective brainwave activity. This training allows athletes to learn how to suppress brainwaves associated with low performance and increase brainwaves associated with optimal brain function.

Performance Brain Training starts by placing a brainwave sensor headset on the athlete. The sensors interpret how the brain is functioning by listening to the brain’s electro-chemical activity. Neurotopia’s software converts this activity into graphs and scores to provide the athlete with visual feedback as to what state their brain is currently in. As their brain state moves toward focus, the athlete can see the graph move upward and the score increase. Similarly, as they become distracted, the graph moves down and the score decreases. For training purposes, Neurotopia converts some of these graphs into video games whereby the game accelerates toward a goal when the brain’s activity is optimal and slows down or stops when the brain shifts from this optimal state.

Measurement is the key to all advances in peak performance and being able to measure the mental game is finally available. Neurotopia’s Performance Brain Training algorithms provide athletes with the technology to train and quantify mental performance in the same way a stop watch is used to measure an athlete’s speed or a force plate is used to measure an athlete’s horizontal force.

Neuro physicians have been looking at P3 athletes’ peak performance brain wave patterns to determine potential for improvement in mental speed, focus and stress management and we are seeing fascinating results, especially with our MLB players that went through a full-off season of performance brain training.

Along with understanding how Performance Brain Training works it is also important to understand various brain wave functions:

Beta brain waves are associated with increased ability to focus, and being in a highly energetic mental state. It allows one to think quickly and efficiently, however too much beta can lead to stress and anxiety.Alpha brain waves are associated with non-arousal and being in a relaxed state, but at the same time being aware of what is going on.Theta waves dominate brain wave activity when we are not able to concentrate. Theta waves are very active when people are daydreaming.Delta waves are active during deep stages of sleep.

The vast majority of baseball players that participated in brain training mentioned the most noticeable change after undergoing a few sessions was improved quality of sleep. This is of course very important as sleep quality and the ability to access slow wave brain patterns (delta) during sleep improve motor functions, reaction time and overall recovery, enabling athletes to train and play at a high level day in and day out. Research has shown that individuals who do not reach slow wave brain patterns during sleep are not able to recover and continue to have theta waves active during the day, negatively affecting their ability to focus and concentrate. Along with improving overall recovery and ability to focus, slow wave sleep patterns increase human growth hormone, which is a primary driver for muscle mass formation and repair of damaged muscle tissue.

Along with baseball players initial observations of better sleep, the data showed that P3 athletes improved their focus (increased beta, decreased theta), reaction and mental processing speed (decreasing dis-regulation and increasing regulation, brain wave patterns are optimized which enables more efficient processing of sensory information) and stress regulation (having the correct alpha to beta ratio) throughout the off-season. Perhaps most interestingly, we are already able to identify the objective data patterns in different types of athletes within the same sport, such as hitters versus pitchers, based on their original EEG patterns.

Being able to quantify and train mental performance systems, similarly to how we quantify physical systems, is very exciting and will prove to be the new frontier in performance.

For more information and research on Performance Brain Training click here.

Delmon has always had an excellent nervous system, along with plenty of power and strength and while everyone noticed his weight loss and improved physique last season, Delmon’s most important physical gain was his right ankle mobility. In past seasons Delmon’s lack of right ankle mobility made it nearly impossible for him to set up positive horizontal ground angles and utilize his powerful lower half when swinging. It was also difficult for him to load and stay back affecting his ability to stay on a plane when rotating.

While Delmon’s ankle mobility improved tremendously last off-season, Dr. Elliott and P3 performance specialists continued to work on Delmon’s ankle mobility this off-season along with his shoulder mobility, hip mobility and hip extension as a way of continuing to improve his range of motion in dynamic movements.

When working on ankle mobility we like to warm athletes up with low to moderate intensity plyometrics, always emphasizing dorsiflexion. Front squats and trap bar dead lifts are both great strength movements for Delmon. When these strength exercises are done properly, they significantly improve range of motion in the ankle and force hip extension. Having good hip extension is very important for baseball players as it allows them to explosively move their hips through a full range of motion, giving them more horizontal and rotational power. We like to complex these strength movements with aggressive plyometric movements. Delmon’s in-season programs provided by P3 will continue to work on these physical systems.

Delmon had an amazing spring, hitting .410 (16-for-39) with three home runs and nine RBIs.  While P3 plays a very important role in developing Delmon’s physical tools, there are many variables that have gone into making Delmon such a great player. A recent article by David Dorsey of the News Press quotes many of Delmon’s teammates and managers regarding his success, and examines how he is becoming one of the elite hitters in baseball.

The only player that may be hotter than Delmon Young right now is Chicago White Sox outfielder Carlos Quentin. In his last 10 spring training games, Carlos was 17-for-35 with five home runs, four doubles and 10 RBIs. After three regular season games Carlos is hitting .545 with 1 HR, 3 DB and 7 RBIs.

According to Chicago White Sox hitting coach Greg Walker, “Carlos is in a great spot…I tip my hat to the guy for what he did this winter. This just didn’t happen by chance. He worked for it…He’s swinging fantastic, as good as I’ve ever seen him.”

This was Carlos’ second off-season training at P3. Carlos is an extremely powerful individual. He is also hyper mobile in his hips and ankles, which gives him unique advantages as a rotational athlete. While being hyper mobile gives athletes like Carlos’ certain advantages, we also have to make sure the mobility is balanced with stability.

Carlos has had a few injury problems the past couple seasons, with his knee being the most recent.  For athletes like Carlos who are hyper mobile, play all out and are extremely big and powerful, it is essential that they are stable and have sound mechanics. Much of what we did with Carlos this off-season addressed the underlying mechanisms that lead to knee problems. From day one, hip stability, posterior chain, and ground contacts were the main issues being addressed at P3.

Hip stability is a quality that allows an athlete to set proper ground angles and safely transfer force from the lower body to the trunk. Hip and trunk position have a major impact on the types of forces applied across the knee. Corrective strategies for athletes that need more hip stability often include warm ups that create awareness and activate hip stabilizers (Band Waltz, clamshells), followed by  single leg unsupported exercises that force stabilization in multiple planes. Along with hip stability work, Carlos’ workouts included a lot of ground contact drills and posterior chain work.

Video of Carlos working on ground contacts and tempo at P3

At P3 we provide the integration of smart training and physical therapy and soft tissue work. For athletes like Carlos combining these core focuses are vital for longevity and success. Testing results at the end of the off-season revealed that Carlos is as powerful as ever, he also puts less sheer force across his knee when asked to make baseball specific movements. We expect to see Carlos playing at a very high level for years to come.

More on Carlos below:

Carlo Quentin Seems Ready for a Big Year

Sox’ Quentin Off to ’08 Start

We posted about the importance of the study a few months ago, and how we hope the research and findings from this exhaustive study will serve to reduce hamstring muscle strains in sports where hamstring injuries are common, and address more of the underlying issues surrounding injury prevention.

At P3, we believe teams need to do more to assess each individual athlete’s injury predispositions. Certain athletes are predisposed to specific injuries. For example, athletes with a posterior tilt of the hips, that tend to reach their feet out in front when they run, and have poor eccentric adaptations, are at a high risk of having hamstring problems. Often times these predispositions go unnoticed or unaccounted for.

While certain athletes are more predisposed to hamstring injuries than others, Dr.  Elliott’s study demonstrates that the risk of hamstring injuries for all football athletes if neural de-conditioning and relative muscle weaknesses take place during the off-season. In fact, over half of NFL hamstring injuries during the ten year study took place during the pre-season before teams had played any official games. Unfortunately most teams do no take in to account the de-conditioning that takes place during the off-season, and go full speed from the start, instead of implementing progressive increases in sprinting intensity and volume.

During Dr. Elliott’s time as head of injury prevention and performance with the New England Patriots, he placed a heavy emphasis on training nervous system activation of hamstrings through eccentric adaptations. An athlete who is eccentrically adapted is able to forcefully contact the ground and use the elastic properties of their body to execute movement, and thus able to sprint full speed without the risk of injury. If an athlete is stable and has safe mechanics, high intensity plyometrics which activate both the trunk and lower body are an excellent way of improving eccentric adaptations.

Dr. Elliott’s proactive injury prevention program with the New England Patriots leading up to their Super Bowl run effectively identified “at risk” players and significantly decreased morbidity from hamstring muscle strains.

- The four years leading up to the intervention, the Patriots had a mean of 21.5 Hamstring Muscle Strains (HMS) per year.

- Post intervention, the Patriots incurred only two HMS.

- Of these injuries, one was experienced by a player identified as “highest risk” and the other was experienced by a player who was picked up after camp, thus not part of the intervention.

Although the program with the New England Patriots was extremely successful in decreasing injuries, saving millions of dollars, and improving performance, science-based interventions have been extremely rare in professional sports. We hope that this study and our current work with athletes at P3, as well as with professional sports teams in baseball and basketball, will serve as impetus for change.

For more analysis on Dr. Elliott’s recently published study, read this article from Reuters Health. For more information on the Peak Performance Project and the Santa Barbara, California facility, visit www.p3.md.

Plyometrics are a great way to enhance the stretch shortening cycle. For the stretch shortening cycle to take place, the eccentric contraction (pre-load) must be immediately preceded by the concentric contraction. During the eccentric phase of the movement, the muscle tendon elongates and stiffens which allows it to store and release more elastic energy during the subsequent concentric phase.

At P3, we have our athletes do plyometrics very differently than most places, emphasizing dorsiflexion, keeping the feet underneath the hips, keeping the trunk in an upright position, as well as extension through the hips, knees and ankles. Athletes that are able to correctly perform these movements create a significant amount of force, get off the ground very rapidly and greatly reduce sheer force across the patella femoral joint. During the specific line jump exercise we like vary the distances of the boxes because it forces athletes to have to adapt to different environments.

If you watch the clip below, which shows Delmon Young and Ryan Spilbourghs doing line jumps in slow motion,  you can see how forcefully the athletes contact the ground and how quickly they get off the ground.

Even though these plyometric box jumps don’t look like they would be specific to the needs of a baseball player, they are an extremely effective exercise for creating a more powerful and efficient system that will enable baseball players to apply power in many different settings.

For more information on P3 and Dr. Marcus Elliott, visit www.P3.md.