Train the In-Between: Why Transitions Are Where Champions Are Made

Most athletic training programs are obsessed with the destination. You hit the max lift, you reach the end-range position, or you achieve top speed. But in my work with athletes across 27 MLB organizations, I have seen the same recurring flaw: we are evaluating athletes based on snapshots, not the film. When it comes to training transitions, athletes often find themselves caught in a system that doesn't account for the space between the movements.

I am Tracy Tanguay, and after years of applying biomechanics and nervous system regulation to professional baseball, I have learned that the leak is almost always in the transition. If you are only training your end positions, you are ignoring the very threshold where performance is won or lost. Elite movement is not about the shapes you can hold; it is about how efficiently you travel through the space between them.

The Philosophy of the Liminal Space

The liminal space is the threshold. It is the transition, the space between where you are and where you are going. This is the most overlooked dimension of athletic performance. Most coaching models focus on static positions, but your nervous system is dynamic. If your system stops managing the space between demands, you aren't just losing efficiency—you are creating an energy leak that eventually leads to the foundational gap.

In my book, "Sh!t About Movement You Should Know," I break down the five pillars of movement: breathing, opposition, connection, grounding, and transitions. When you fail to train the in-between, you aren't training movement; you are training compensation. When the chain breaks, a hip stops communicating with the ribcage, or a shoulder fails to join the conversation. You must master the transition to master the movement.

Why Transitions Are the Secret to Longevity

When we talk about the injury epidemic in sports, we often look for bad luck or poor conditioning. But as a biomechanist, I see the root cause as movement patterns that were never properly integrated. If you braced instead of using your diagonal system, or if you held your breath because your nervous system didn't trust the movement, you are already behind.

The ground is information. Your nervous system uses pressure through the feet and hands to organize everything upstream. When that grounding disappears during a high-velocity movement, your system starts guessing. By training the transition, you are teaching your nervous system to stay connected throughout the entire sequence, not just at the start or finish of a pitch or a swing.

How Mastering Transitions Impacts Performance

When athletes stop trying to build power on top of dysfunction and start focusing on the efficiency of their transitions, the results are measurable. Performance is not just about output; it is about reducing the energy cost of every movement. Here is what happens when you prioritize the in-between:

• 87% of my pro clients on my mobility series spent zero days on the Injured List.
• We have seen 15x fewer days on the Injured List, with my clients averaging just 4 days compared to the 50-day league average.
• Pitchers have seen a 0.63 ERA reduction across the full season.
• 48% of pitchers experienced a 2-5 mph velocity increase.
• Hitters saw an 80% increase in home run rate.
• 93% of players were promoted at least one level.

Practical Advice for Training the In-Between

You don't need fancy equipment to begin training your transitions. You need to focus on how you move from one point to the next with intention. Here are three ways to start training these spaces today:

1. Prioritize your breath. If you are bracing or your shoulders are rising, your system is compensating. Use a Short Seated Breathing drill to establish a baseline before you load any movement.
2. Incorporate cross-body opposition. Movement is a conversation between opposite corners of your body. Ensure your Standing POPs or other locomotor drills maintain this diagonal connection rather than resorting to static bracing.
3. Turn your drills into flows. Instead of holding a side plank, move through Low Side Plank Rotations or a full flow to train the transition from one side to the other. The goal is to keep the thread between your joints unbroken as you change positions.

The Bottom Line

Champions are not made by finding the perfect position; they are made by mastering the movement through the liminal space. If you are tired of the injury cycle and want to stop building power on top of broken patterns, it is time to shift your focus to the in-between. For a much deeper dive into these protocols and the five pillars of the nervous system, check out my book, "Sh!t About Movement You Should Know."