I don’t know if it’s the “new norm”, but it is happening a lot more than it used to. I think it’s just that so much new information is running around out there that people are finally beginning to understand that while the “old ways” aren’t necessarily bad, they may not be the best way to approach pitcher conditioning.
When my kid was pitching just 10 years ago, he was running his butt off in practices, and hated it, and so were most of the other pitchers. So rather than looking forward to practice, it became something many didn’t want to do. If anyone could have shown why it was something that actually benefitted their pitching it would have been different.