Thoughts on Grief Three Years Later

Warning: this blog post is not about training. It's quite personal and vulnerable. Do not feel obligated to read on. On August 10th, 2021, my mother passed away after a long (seven year) battle with cancer. It seems surreal still that she isn't here - it seems impossible that three

The Power of Positive Reinforcement

There's an old Japanese proverb that states, "The teacher opens the door. You must enter by yourself." As coaches, how can we get our athletes through the door? I want to get them through two doors: First, developing the habits and processes necessary for them to develop themselves as best

Thursday Three

Happy Thursday!! Here are three quotes that have been rattling around in my brain a lot lately. "Accept your mediocrity. No one's really that great. You know who ends up being great? The people that just put tremendous amounts of hours into it. It's a game of tonnage." - Jerry

N=1 The Case for Individualization

Writing highly specific, detailed programs takes a lot of effort and time, but the athletes that I work with deserve nothing less. A "cookie cutter" or "one-size fits all" approach is flat out a disservice to the athlete. Now, in certain settings where the coach to athlete ratio is extremely

Erik Sabrowski Makes MLB Debut!

An athlete I've had the privilege of coaching and training for the past twelve years made his boyhood dream a reality last week.  He pitched 1.1 scoreless innings with 2 strikeouts for the Cleveland Guardians last Wednesday against the Kansas City Royals. Erik Sabrowski's first MLB strikeout!#ForTheLand pic.

Random Thoughts on Planning & Program Design

Today's post is going to be a brain dump of sorts on some of my thoughts regarding program design. The inspiration of this post came from this excerpt from Tim Caron's textbook Strength Deficit. "There's an anti-periodization group out there. No doubt it's increasingly difficult to plan and prepare with

Coaching Strategies: Why You Should Prioritize a Broad Skillset

Today I want to outline four major reasons it's important for a coach (whether it's on the skill side or fitness side) to diversify their skillset in order to succeed in their career. 1) In order to be a great specialist, you need to be a great generalist first. I

Sit Down With Reece Hemmerling

Reece had an outstanding two year career with junior college powerhouse Barton CC, in Kansas, and will now be heading to NCAA Division 1 USC Upstate University. After a strong freshman season where he posted a 6-2 record and had 54 strikeouts in 55 innings he took a another step

The Role of A Coach

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear." - Tao Te Ching This is a quote that's been rattling around in my brain a lot lately. As someone who works with predominantly high school and college athletes (and now

Training the Hypermobile Athlete

How much congenital laxity (hypermobility) an athlete possesses often gets overlooked. This is a huge oversight. This post is going to outline how to assess it, and why it's so important to your program design and implementation with athletes. First off, we need to differentiate laxity (hypermobility) and instability. Laxity

The Burns Perspective Podcast: Ep 1 Q and A!

This has been a long time coming, but I'm thrilled to release the first episode of my podcast! I field a handful of questions from some current athletes, ranging from how breathing patterns influence program design, to nutrition strategies, to how to develop more perseverance. ‎The Burns Perspective: First Q

5 Lessons From The Book 'Hidden Potential'

"For every Mozart who makes a big splash early, there are multiple Bachs who slowly ascend and bloom late! What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn...if provided with appropriate conditions of learning. People are actually very rarely freaks of nature. They're freaks of

Warm-Up 101

A lot of coaches aren't accountable for the warm-up. Every single exercise is an opportunity to ingrain good movement, or to allow subpar movement to slip past. The warm-up needs to be task-specific, and designed to prepare the athlete to either optimally train or optimally perform. The warm-up is the

Thursday Three

I hope you've been having a great week. Here are three quotes that have resonated with me lately. "Just as Michelangelo thought there was an angel locked inside every piece of marble, I think there is a brilliant child locked inside every student." - Marva Collins "The road to success

Thoughts on Servant Leadership

"You can have everything in life you want, if you just help enough people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar How can you truly care about those you serve, when helping them achieve is tied to your own personal goals? Are you being genuine in your efforts to help

Delayed Transmutation & Long Term Hockey Development

We have a lot of athletes who end up finishing the season strong, as well as continue to get better as their college and junior career progresses. A lot of that has to do with laying a really solid foundation early. Today, I've got a 4 minute video for you.

Lessons From My College Freshman Pitching Journal

What would you give to be able to go back in time and remember what you were thinking at certain points in your life? The greatest lesson I ever learned from my High School baseball coach was to keep a training journal. I'm so grateful I listened, because I have

Why Assessing Resting Posture Matters For Pitchers

Preface: It matters for all athletes! The same principles I outline can be applied to all athletic populations, not just throwers. For some reason, assessing resting posture has started to be overlooked a little in our industry. Now, it's certainly true that the best posture is one that's constantly changing.

Guest Post: Developing A Hitter's Approach in the Off-Season

This post comes from AHP's Director of Hitting Development, Connor Burns. Enjoy! Was I on time? Was that a good pitch to hit? Far too many hitters get trapped in what we like to call, the "mechanical purgatory." Simply put, after every mishit the athlete thinks it was a fault

Small Hinges Swing Big Doors: Productivity Strategies

1.Write down your to do list the night before. Take the time to actually write out what you need to get done tomorrow. I also use a 1-5 scale for each item. This ensures I don't move on to any "3's" and "4's" until I finish all the "1's"

Avoid These Three Lies

1. "I'll start tomorrow." Do it today. 2. "I'll sleep a little more and just find the time during the day." No you won't. The time is now. When your alarm goes off. Get up. I find it helpful, right before bed to look at my schedule and make my

Stuff to Check Out: November Edition

1. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski This is not your normal: this player hit .315 and his WAR was X so he's the 17th greatest player ever. No. The author certainly talks about each player's baseball ability, career highlights and statistics, but they're interwoven beautifully into fascinating stories about

11 Years Of Reflection

It hit me the other day I have been coaching athletes in the weight room (and on the field) for eleven years. This post is eleven pieces of insight gleaned from this time as a strength and conditioning coach, 1. Keep a journal! I cannot overstate the value this has.

7 Changes I'm Making To My Baseball Off-Season Programming

As the fall rolls along, I figured I'd share this post from a year ago. I'm really excited for yet another off-season with our baseball athletes. It's really hard to believe, but it's going to be my tenth winter training dozens of High School baseball players. It's always such a

Framework For Training Youth Athletes

In today’s post, I’m going to outline a few principles that make up the framework I utilize to train youth athletes, in the early stages of the training process. For the sake of today’s post I’m going to define ‘youth athletes’ as 14-17 years old. It’