Brien Johnston stepped foot on campus as a freshman in the fall of 2017 at 6 foot 160 pounds. Throughout his freshman fall, he showed a plus breaking ball and the ability to command a mid 80’s fastball. Brien’s college career looked promising in his freshman fall as he earned a spot as one of the best pitchers on an already stacked Florida Southern team. His spring didn’t pan out the way he wanted only tossing 3.2 innings asa freshman that year, but his stuff still played exceptionally well before. However, Brien’s career began to stall as he began to endure elbow pain.
For the next two years, Brien accumulated 5 innings in his2019 and 2020 season. He could not consistently put together healthy outings and was beginning to develop nerve damage to the point where he could not even go through his throwing motion. Once the2020 season was cut short, he knew it was time for a change. Brien signed up to train with Connected Performance during the 2020 summer and for the first time in two years, he was experiencing pain free throwing. Unsure of what the season or the future of college baseball looked like, Brien decided to take some time off and take a break from training. He focused on his future career and shelved training for a while.
Finally, when Brien decided to pick things back up and gear up for fall ball and the upcoming spring, he couldn’t. He was experiencing radiating pain throughout his arm.Finally, after a few trainer evaluations he was sent to multiple doctors. Both doctors came back with different diagnosis but the same opinion. He was diagnosed with nerve damage that was inhibiting his bicep from firing. Therefore, when Brien would attempt to throw, his bicep would never turn on causing excruciating pain and poor performance. Both doctors told Brien he would never be able to pitch again and to stop playing baseball.
With a heavy decision to make, Brien got back in touch with us at Connected Performance. He explained his situation and the medical opinions he was given to our team andBen Baggett designed an individualized assessment and program for him. The concept around it was to overstimulate the bicep and allow it to self-organize and over time, finally get the bicep firing again. Ben rehabbed him in the sock with a baseball blend and then implemented plyo overloads. Brien also followed an individualized program in the gym to take care of any other physical constraints that may have been holding him back, our goal was to work through isometrics and fatiguing the bicep in the gym to turn his bicep back on.
After about 4 months Brien was back throwing again. His onramp was long, and it was a ton of hot Florida days grinding out the same program repeatedly. Most people would have lost their mind over the redundancy of what it took to come back healthy again. However, Brien wasn’t one of them. We knew that one of the biggest risks we ran was blending all this work to the mound, so we put together a solid 6 weeks of blending to accommodate the long duration of time of him not touching the rubber.
In the fall of 2021, it was his final exam. Either all his hard work would have been a waste, or he was going to reap the greatest benefits of hard work he had ever imagined. After his first outing Brien experienced a feeling that he thought didn’t exist anymore. No pain or discomfort. Throughout the entire Fall of 2021 and Spring of2022 Brien never came across any throwing pain or shutdowns. Not only was he able to sustain an entire season of throwing, but in his last outing he hit a personal best of 91 mph. Although Brien won’t be moving on to the next level, he did something all medical professionals told him he couldn’t and with that, comes accomplishment. To defy what everyone else has told you, contact Training@Connected-Performance.com