🥇 The Athlete Development Journal

Developing speed, strength, power, health, and character, so athletes get the most out of their athletic career.

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Mind. Less, but better.

If everyone else is doing it, shouldn’t you do it, too? You don’t want to get left behind, do you?

The youth and high school sports world is a poorly designed machine, largely run by a mix of people with good intentions but bad information, and people with bad intentions but even worse information.

The answer to your development is rarely more. More camps, more showcases, more games, more teams, more practices, more lessons, more equipment, more recruiting services.

The answer is less, but better. Identify the important things and double down on those.

Body. My plea to the softball community.

I always joke that if I was an amoral Ebenezer and just wanted to make as much money as possible, I would open a physical therapy clinic solely designated to back pain in softball athletes, build my brand around that, and charge out the wazoo.

I see a higher low back injury rate in this sport than any others bar none.

The thing that irks me the most is most of these are preventable to some degree. Actually, I don’t want to use cautious speak; most of these are preventable.

I think the disproportionately high rates of back injury in softball players comes down to the confluence of 3 factors:*

1. You’re playing a sport that the human body isn’t really designed to do at a high level. Evolution didn’t build us a spine that’s designed to handle astronomically high rotational forces repeatedly, for weeks, months, and years on end.
2. The acute to chronic workload ratio is often disastrous.
3. The longer-term chronic workloads are incessant.

The 1st and 3rd point aren’t our topics for today, but high quality training and stepping away from the sport for 3-4 months per year are simple solutions, respectively.

Today, I want to dive into acute to chronic workload ratios.

Acute to Chronic Workload Ratio

Our bodies are the most adaptive machines on earth. The amount of stress they can handle is truly awe-inspiring.

But, you must gradually build up to handle that stress.

If you slowly build up your workload, your body will have time to adapt and make the changes needed to handle more load. If you go too fast, however, your body won’t be able to handle it and you’ll end up injured.

We can actually measure this using an acute to chronic workload ratio (ACWR).

The ACWR is calculated by dividing the acute load (the work done in the current week) by the chronic load (the average work done over the past 4 weeks or so).

If you have an ACWR over 1.5, you are 2 to 4x more likely to get injured.

The injury risk is lowest when you stay in the “sweet spot” of 0.8-1.3.

The problem with our current “back pain season” is that we’ve seen exponential increases in volume, with ACWRs over 3.0…

Why so much?

To build out an intentional ramp up period, we reverse engineer from the game demands. But, for most softball players, this is where things get really interesting.

In an entire softball game, you’re going to get around 10 live swings. You’ll take a handful of BP swings pre-game and a couple dry swings before each plate appearance. In total, you’re probably swinging a bat less than 30 times on game day, during a 3 hour time period.

I had some of our softball girls count their swings in recent practices:

• 90 swings in a 2.5 hour practice
• 105 swings in a 2.5 hour practice
• 85 swings in a 1.5 hour practice
• and the real zinger… 150 swings in a 30 minute batting lesson

Your single day practice loads are over 3 to 5x your game day loads.

That is such a large discrepancy between how many swings are needed in a game versus how many are actually taken in practice.

I won’t pretend I’m the least bit qualified to serve as a hitting coach.

But, I do teach movement for a living and that quick-paced, volume method runs counter to every motor learning principle. If you want to train a skill, deliberate practice is much more impactful than mindless volume.

Purposeful iterative repetitions move the needle much further than rapid fire willy-nilly swinging.

But, that’s not the biggest issue.

Ramp it up

The biggest issue is that we’re seeing athletes asked to do these loads on day 1. They’re going from very little swinging, to 150 swings in a session.

If you are insistent that your athletes absolutely must get that many swings in during a practice, then you have to at least slowly ramp them up to be able to tolerate it.

Let’s say your regular practice plan calls for 350 swings in a week. You’ll reverse engineer by starting at 40-50% of that volume, which is 140-175 swings in this instance.

Then, each week you’ll increase your volume by about 10%, gradually working your way up to that 350 swings marker.

These weekly workloads should be spaced throughout the week.

You can’t “save up” your swings and do 200 in one day. That just puts us into an ACWR problem within a single week.

Importantly, every rep counts. Dry swings, soft toss, live ABs. They all get added to the swing count.

I know that’s a lot of confusing math, so I built something for you.

Swing planner

I built out a “swing planner” that automatically builds out your ramp up period, based on the number of swings you want to work up to, how aggressive of an ACWR you’re willing to use, and how many days per week you plan on hitting.

It’s free to use at ​gtperformance.co/swingplanner​.

I can’t tell you exactly what you should do, that’s not my job. We’re all individuals free to make our own decisions. However, I will tell you what I would do with my daughter.

If it were my daughter…

If my daughter were a 13 to 18-year-old softball player, she would be on a swing count.

As a starting point, her upper limit would be 500 swings per week. She might be able to tolerate more, she might be able to tolerate less.

When the season was approaching, we’d use an ACWR of around 1.30 to ramp up to that upper limit of 500 swings (using the swing planner).

She would pay attention to her symptoms and notice when excessive low back soreness starts to pop up. Over time, as we’re tracking swings and soreness, she’ll identify trends and find out what her individual upper limit should be.

A special note for pitchers

Pitchers have a unique issue, where swings aren’t their only high-volume extension-rotation forces. You have to factor your pitches into your progression plan.

The spinal forces in a pitch, however, are much less than a swing; it seems that the forces are about half.

So, for every 2 softball pitches you throw, that’s equal to 1 softball swing.

You can use the same swing planner to map out both your swings and your pitches.

I’d put the upper limit for pitchers at around 250 swings per week and 500 pitches per week. Again, some will be able to tolerate more, some will be able to tolerate less.

And yes, you need to count your practice, bullpen, or whatever other reps.

What about baseball?

*One of the counter-questions I often get when discussing this is: “Well, why don’t I see these back injuries as often in baseball?”

To which I’ll respond:

1. When little boys go through puberty, they add a ton of protective muscle mass and thick bone mineral density. When little girls go through puberty, they don’t.
2. The public health crusade to instill pitch counts in the sport of baseball has successfully raised awareness about overuse. Pitch counts in baseball were designed largely to combat little league elbow and little league shoulder. The same crusade didn’t happen in softball, because the pitching mechanics don’t place the same stress on the elbow and shoulder, and are therefore promoted as being “safer.” However, that force just ends up moving downstream and producing wear and tear in your low back. Furthermore, because pitch counts have a mind-share in the baseball community, that permeates through other aspects of the sport as well. Like, less overall swings taken in a given practice. (Obviously, this is a gross generalization and the sport of baseball has plenty of its own issues.)

TL;DR

• The Problem: Softball athletes are experiencing a back pain pandemic, partly caused by ACWR (Acute to Chronic Workload Ratio) spikes. Essentially, athletes are doing too much, too soon without a proper ramp-up.
• The Shocking Stat: A typical game requires only ~30 swings, yet a single 30-minute private lesson can reach 150 swings. That is 5x the game-day load, often forced on athletes on Day 1.
• The Risk: If your workload ratio exceeds 1.5, you are 2x to 4x more likely to get injured.
• The Solution: Stay in the “Sweet Spot” (0.8–1.3 ratio) by:
  1. Starting at 40-50% of your target weekly volume.
  2. Increasing total volume by only ~10% per week.
  3. For Pitchers: Count every 2 pitches as 1 swing to track your total spinal stress.
• The Tool: Use the ​Swing Planner​ to automate the math and build a safe 500-swing-per-week threshold.

Soul. A question for you to ponder.

If you could never play, watch, or think about sports again, what would you do? How would you fill your days?

If you don’t have an answer, it might be time to expand your horizons and learn more about what lights you up.

Let’s wrap it up with a couple important things…

1. This newsletter and podcast is completely free. I spend many hours each week researching, writing, illustrating, recording, editing, and uploading. The best way you can support it and allow it to continue is to share it with people you know. You can just send them to ​gtperformance.co/newsletter​ and they can subscribe there!
2. Everything in these newsletters, podcasts, social media, and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or your athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.

Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!

Be >,

Zach

Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS