Today’s episode features Miguel Aragoncillo, strength coach and skill acquisition specialist based out of Boston, MA.  Miguel has worked with athletes of all levels, and now specializes in working with baseball pitchers where he is getting serious results through integration of skill and motor learning tools.  Miguel has a significant background in PRI and worked as an assistant in multiple courses.  He also has a unique athletic backstory, as he was a break-dancer before moving into a coaching role.

Miguel is one of the most intelligent and innovative coaches in the field.  He is pushing human performance forward by integrating what he has learned in the world of strength and conditioning, neuro-mechanics and skill acquisition, and is using that to get results such as tacking 5-7MPH on pitching speed in a matter of minutes.

Our field is still growing at a rapid rate.  Although hard-line definitions of the scope of a strength coach definitely exist in the university and professional sectors, there is no doubt as to the inter-disciplinary nature of sports performance, as well as the impact that the wide-scope of S&C related concepts can have on the next level up on the performance pyramid, that of sport skill itself.  This is something that Mike Guadango mentioned in podcast #151, and has been resonating with me for some time.

Miguel’s intelligent take on the performance industry has been on my radar for some time.  On today’s show, Miguel and I chat about guiding athletes in the process of skill acquisition, through processes on creating drills to improve sport skills, integrating biomechanical and PRI based concepts, and also setting up sport skill training through sensory contrasts.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.

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Miguel Aragoncillo's Key Points

How Miguel got into strength and conditioning, and eventually, into coaching baseball pitchers

How to guide athletes correctly in skill acquisition without over-cueing and over-coaching

Miguel’s thought process on creating drills to improve sport skills

Integrating biomechanics and PRI based concepts into a sport skill teaching process

Setting up sport skill training through sensory contrast

How Miguel sets of resistance training for young athletes outside of actual skill coaching

 

Miguel Aragoncillo Quotes

“If I’m trying to help individuals to throw faster, I can get them to deadlift 500lbs for reps, to have vertical jumps and bounds for so many feet, we can do RSI, etc. etc., but what happens when someone simply doesn’t know what it means to throw”

“You don’t need a lot of drills in order to improve one’s relationship with one’s own body”

“When we do any movement, I show them the movement, and then I ask them, “what do you feel”…. “where do you feel”, “what do you feel”, why do you feel it””

“I’m allowing the individual to self-organize on the context of building a better mental representation of what their body is doing”

“Internal cueing, in my head, is a good thing… because even sometimes the experts will need an internal cue to be more aware of something that they are lacking”

“The funny thing is you are always using some type of constraints, but you are not really thinking of it like that”

“I will literally just say, do you want me to explain this drill, or do you just want to do it”

“Pitching is both a frontal and transverse dominant plane”

“When you do a non-manual technique of some sort to gain range of motion, now you need to go through a guided discovery process doing the terminal skillsets with different constraints, and that’s where it gets fun”

“If you ever watch me coach, I almost never say no… I’ve read a lot of research speaking about negative feedback.  It’s something I’ve picked up and I found out ...