This post got me fired up. Fortunately I know Samuel (he interned at Nomad a couple years ago) so I reached out to him directly to ask where this athlete trained this past summer Turns out the athlete he referenced trained at Nomad!! So let’s dive in one point at a time… 1. The athlete in question came to us from a referral. Dad and athlete said “he isn’t throwing as hard as he should” So we ran him through our evaluation process, as we do with every athlete that chooses to train with us. Part of our evaluation process is an MP assessment. And yes, I assessed this athlete as “associated” I also assessed this athlete as severely undertrained and in the 20th percentile of many of the objective data points we collect. Further, I assessed this athlete as being limited in his t-spine mobility, particularly left rotation 2. Sam misspoke when he referred to an unnamed facility (Nomad) as a “Motor Preferences program”. Nomad is not a MP program (not even sure what that means) Nomad is a holistic development program that uses MP to HELP make decisions. Labeling us as a “motor preferences” program is disingenuous and only used to make a point and get more likes. 3. We use the technology that we have to collect data. We do not have a mocap lab, force plate mound, etc. But we do use what we have (OVR sprint gates, OVR jump, VBT device, Voltra, Arm Care device, Sensor Edge plates) to collect and track data that also helps us make decisions. We tracked the following data points: Body weight: 203➡️210 Med ball Shotput ⬆️ 6% CMJ ⬆️ 14% Bench Press (m/s) ⬆️ 17% Trap Bar Deadlift (m/s) ⬆️ 22% Rotational RFD ⬆️ 24% We also placed an emphasis on mobility and according to Samuel’s post, he increased his t-spine mobility by ~20% !!!(which is the point of his post) 4. This athlete came to us with arm + back pain. He left throwing 2mph harder and no pain. Strike % was also increased Objectively he is a better pitcher right now compared to the start of the summer Samuel argued that an undertrained pitcher should see those improvements from simply cleaning up the arm action. He’s not wrong The arm happens to work off of the proximal components. Thinking and feeling more “associated” helped clean up the arm action for this athlete 5. This particular athlete was obsessed with “hip-shoulder separation” — and he created plenty of it on the mound. Samuel admitted this in his post The problem was a disconnect—too much separation, arm dragging, elbow climb…trying really hard without much output I assessed this athlete as “associated” and used this to design throwing drills and lifting programs. In isolation, associated means nothing. With context, it means a lot. Associated means way more than how an athlete rotates or how much hip-shoulder separation they can create. But you’d have to actually study MP to understand that “Separation” also occurs in more than the transverse plane. Something we worked on with this athlete Also, guess what the brain doesn’t care about? PASSIVE RANGE OF MOTION Using term “associated” the way Samuel did to discredit MP is dishonest and not correct. Final point: using this particular athlete and his T-spine testing as an indictment on MP and our training philosophy at Nomad is bullshit We aren’t perfect at Nomad but I think we do a really good job getting pitchers better. We use technology and objective data we are able to collect along with MP assessments and athlete context. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what happens on the field. Is this guy a better pitcher than he was before he started training with us? This is the only question that matters in this instance And the answer, in this case, is yes. I’m not in this for clickbait posts. I’m in this for the player that needs to succeed in the arena. Always have been and always will be. Coach the player, not the numbers. Come at me, Nomad, and MP all you want @Midgette_28 @John__Curtis