Archive for category news
Soliciting Feedback from You!
As my various partnerships and deals with facilities get wrapped up (I wish I could talk more about this, but can’t at the moment), I’ve been focusing quite a bit on marketing the blog and the training that we do at Driveline Baseball for Seattle-based athletes. With that comes a steady increase in traffic to the blog and a lot of hits to our training sites – both our Pitching Program and our Strength and Conditioning subpages. (Our hitting page is coming soon.)
Those subpages were written quite some time ago, and while I’m mostly happy with the content on them, they definitely need to be updated. And that’s where you come in – the reader! I want to know what you would like to know about our business: How we train athletes, what we do for corrective exercise, how we use motion capture, etc.
I’d also like to hear suggestions for main blog content, as I plan on ramping up posting frequency over the next few months.
The way I see it, it’s a win-win situation: You get more insight as to how we train baseball athletes, and I get some great ideas for blog content!
Feel free to comment to this post, or if you want to share your details privately, visit our Contact page for ways to get in touch with me.
Hiring: Biomechanics / Kinesiology Interns
Yep, we’re hiring here at Driveline Baseball. We’re looking for students who are about to start their junior or senior years in college/university who are focusing on kinesiology and/or biomechanics. (Recent grads are OK too!)
Applicants will be:
- Familiar with the overhand throwing motion
- Strong with anatomical terms
- Experienced with kinematic/kinetic analysis software packages (KAvideo, HU-M-AN, Kinovea, etc)
- Experienced with high-speed video capture
- Based in or around Seattle, Washington
- Attend a local university in Seattle
- Have experience with high-speed videography/photography
- Have prior baseball playing experience
Please send your cover letter and resume to kyle@drivelinebaseball.com with a brief description of projects that you’ve worked on in the past.
Compensation is commensurate with experience and level of education – remember, this is an internship that has the possibility of turning into a long-term consulting gig.
We’re looking for someone who can help design and build-out the Driveline Baseball motion capture laboratory to help eliminate and prevent pitching injuries in youth pitchers. Will it be you?
MLB Draft!
I hope you’re enjoying the MLB Draft as much as we are at Driveline Baseball. (We had the live draft on while we were lifting today.) As a Cleveland Indians’ fan, I’m happy that we got Drew Pomeranz with the fifth pick:
The guy picked 17th overall (and headed to Tampa Bay) is one to watch for – Josh Sale. An outfielder from Bishop Blanchet HS here in Seattle, this kid can absolutely rake. One of our clients hung a sinker against him in competition, and, well, something like this happened to him:
I’ve seen him play personally. Great arm, plus power, runs well for a big guy. It’ll be interesting to see how he climbs the ladder in Tampa – their farm system is absolutely loaded!
Random Monday Thoughts
Haven’t posted in awhile, so I figured I’d chime in with what’s new at Driveline Baseball:
- We’re getting close to a prototype that attaches the Wii MotionPlus to the pitching wrist and can measure the rate of change (in degrees) of pronation/supination during the delivery
How cool is that? We’ve opened and tinkered with this simple module:
Wii MotionPlus
And with some programming and some hacking, we’ll be able to measure one of the key mechanical factors in the baseball pitching delivery. I’m really stoked.
- Moving into the facility has been slow going
We still don’t have all of our strength equipment at the NSBA facility yet, as we’re going through a long process in order to make sure all of our ducks are in a row.
- We got our shipment of bands from EliteFTS
Our strength training programs incorporate a lot of speed/power/dynamic effort work taken directly from the guys at Westside Barbell and EliteFTS, so we’re happy to have gotten all of our bands to use for dynamic efforts. Here’s a sample picture (not of my gym) of a band-resisted squat setup:
Band-Resisted Squat
We have a few guys trying to break through some plateaus with all the challenges of in-season training, and I know that bands and dynamic effort-based training will help them get there.
That’s all for now! There will be a lot of videos and multimedia stuff going on once we get moved into our facility.
News: Strength and Conditioning Coming to NSBA Facility!
Great news: Driveline Baseball will be moving all of its strength and conditioning equipment into the NSBA facility at 8512 20th Ave NE in Seattle! There is ample room in the facility to set up our full suite of equipment, and we’re extremely excited to announce the start of what will be an excellent partnership between Driveline Baseball and North Seattle Baseball Association.
What you can expect from this partnership:
- The lowest rates for batting cage time in the Seattle area – as low as $20/hr without bulk purchasing plans required!
- Use of a fully-equipped strength and conditioning facility.
- Free classes being offered to Seattle-area coaches and instructors on how to set up proper resistance training programs for youth athletes.
- On-site computers that track your workout progress and allow you to review your standard and high-speed video files.
- Low-cost weight training sessions and workout programming assistance.
We’ll also be permanently setting up our kinematic analysis equipment at the NSBA facility to improve turnaround times when developing high-speed video and finishing your kinematic reports.
Here’s a comprehensive list of the strength and training equipment you will soon find at the NSBA / Driveline Baseball facility:
- Full power cage with straight chin-up / pull-up bar (appropriately knurled)
- Deadlift / Olympic lifting platform (rubberized surface)
- High-quality barbells and dumbbells
- Kettlebells in varying weights
- 1000+ pounds of iron plates
- Bumper plates in varying weights for Olympic and “quick” lifts
- Medicine balls in various sizes and weights
- Weight sleds, sledgehammers, tires, push-up bars, and other general physical preparedness (GPP) equipment
- SPRI resistance bands in all tensile strengths (including O-bands for specific scapular work)
- Jumpstretch bands for X-band walks, assisted chin-ups/pull-ups, Pallof presses, other core work
- Inflatable swiss exercise balls for core and mobility work
- Foam rollers for self-myofascial release
- Massage table for initial assessment use and stretching demonstrations
We’ll be sure to keep you updated with progress (and pictures!) of the facility as it’s coming along. If there’s strength and conditioning equipment that you want but don’t see, please leave us a comment and we’ll definitely take a look into it!
It’s an exciting time to be working with or training at Driveline Baseball. Off-season and in-season training programs are available, though room is running out as we partner with the NSBA and sign up their athletes! Contact us today to get started immediately.
More Pictures of Our S&C Facility
The weather’s beautiful here and I’ve been doing some spring cleaning, so I figured I’d take a few pictures of the old S&C facility before it gets moved (news forthcoming on this, I promise).
Power Cage in our Strength and Conditioning Facility
Here’s most of our equipment that our baseball players use frequently:
Baseball-Specific Equipment
Equipment List
- Medicine Balls: 10 lb (link), 4 kg (SPARQ Football Standard – link), 3 kg (SPARQ Baseball Standard - link), 4 lb (link), 3 lb pliable ball (link)
- Two 45 lb. plates
- Dumbbells: 5 lb pair, 20 lb pair
- Wrist Weights: 10 lb pair (link), 5 lb pair (link)
- Weighted Baseballs (link)
- Foam Roller (link)
- SPRI Resistance Bands (link)
- Jumpstretch Band (link)
Sample Offseason Workout - High School Baseball
Small Whiteboard at our S&C Facility (red: 1RM, black: working sets)
Optimal Shoulder Performance
Two days ago, I ordered my copy of Optimal Shoulder Performance by Eric Cressey and Mike Reinold. I’m very excited to review the product and implement the training protocols with my clients.
Optimal Shoulder Performance
I have Eric’s Magnificent Mobility and it has been instrumental in improving functional mobility in my baseball and football clients, helping to prevent and rehab injury as well as gain performance in some critical lifts (improving ankle mobility for better squats, for example).
Sorry for the lack of updates, but it’s been pretty busy in the cages and the gym with the in-season training protocols starting. There’s a lot of great news coming that I can’t reveal, and a few more projects by yours truly that I’m excited to launch over the next few months.
News: WPtouch Theme Installed
We’ve installed the WPtouch iPhone Theme for iPhone users on our site – this way, when you go to our website, you get something like this:
Our site becomes a bit more usable and compact for our mobile iPhone viewers. Let me know if you’re having problems with the theme. Thanks!
News: Products Page Completed
At Driveline Baseball, we use a variety of tools and products to help our clients achieve their goals – be it a faster 40 yard dash time, higher fastball velocities, better break on their curveballs, more batspeed, even a higher vertical leap! – and I’ve finally put together a page on our site that lists many of the products that we use on a daily basis to help clients meet these goals. You can find this page above on the bar labeled Products and navigate the various categories by using the drop-down or by simply going to the Products page and seeing a list of what we have on our site. Most of the products have free shipping from Amazon.com, so check them out!
We’ll be posting free videos and articles that shows these products in action soon. Keep an eye out for them!
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