Posts Tagged baseball

More Pictures of Our S&C Facility

Posted by Kyle in News on April 11, 2010

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).

powercage

Power Cage in our Strength and Conditioning Facility

Here’s most of our equipment that our baseball players use frequently:

baseballequipment

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)
OffseasonWorkout

Sample Offseason Workout - High School Baseball

whiteboard

Small Whiteboard at our S&C Facility (red: 1RM, black: working sets)

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Pitching Decelerator Exercises

Posted by Kyle in Training on April 6, 2010

A lot of pitchers prioritize rotator cuff strength to help prevent injury and improve performance on the mound. Probably the most common program for this goal is ASMI’s Thrower’s Ten. Thrower’s Ten involves a lot of basic resistance band work and light dumbbell work in order to strengthen the muscles that make up the rotator cuff – supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis. I have no problem with these types of programs, but so-called “band work” isn’t all that effective when you think about what happens in the typical pitching delivery. I talked a lot about this in my article “Is Resistance Band Work Overrated?” In that article, I said:

But is resistance band work overrated? That’s a really scary question to ask, and many people (perhaps including you) will have the same kneejerk response: Heck no! I want to make it clear that I believe that resistance band work makes up a lot of what we do at Driveline Baseball – especially with regards to scapular stabilization and mobilization work

Later in the article, I talked about maximum strength training being important for baseball pitchers to help decelerate the arm safely. However, since many athletes are either starting their seasons or are right in the middle of them, it’s tough to train for maximum strength in your in-season training program. Some great postural and mobility exercises that can help develop your pitching decelerators while your in the middle of your season or even in the off-season are:

  • Chin-Ups
  • Pull-Ups
  • Rear Delt Flys
  • Chest-Supported Rows
  • Suitcase Deadlifts

Pulling and rowing variants are king here, since you’re very focused on developing upper back musculature and endurance. If you have a TRX setup, you can do lateral sagittal pulls and unilateral work to develop the trunk musculature that controls trunk lean – barbell work like suitcase deadlifts are great for this as well.

Here’s a few videos of the Rear Delt Fly and the Suitcase Deadlift – two lifts that aren’t very popular but do the job quite well!



Try throwing these in your training program and I’ll bet you see pretty good improvement in stability and you might find yourself going deeper into games as a result.

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Link/Video: Mariners Strength Program

Posted by Kyle in Training on March 18, 2010

The Seattle Mariners have switched from a generic strength and conditioning program to a “high-tech” advanced program by Dr. Marcus Elliot. Many articles on the switch have talked about the lack of weights in the weight room and the emphasis on plyometric/movement training, leading many to believe that weights were completely left out of the program altogether. As the video below shows, this isn’t exactly the case:


As you can see, they have a significant amount of cable pulleys with variable resistance to train hip rotation, a rack of dumbbells, and three power cages with a variety of barbells. While this doesn’t constitute a “lack of weights” by anyone in the know, I’m willing to bet most reporters were used to seeing a bunch of isolation-based machines and equated them as “weight training.”

As Dr. Marcus Elliot so succinctly points out, training hip rotation is extremely important in baseball athletes. He also goes on to say that athletes must train their legs for strength and also mentions the need for improved thoracic extension. Improving tissue quality via self-myofascial release (SMR, also known as foam rolling) and performing postural exercises that address these needs is extremely important in a baseball training program.

I’m glad to see a major-league organization that “gets it” and doesn’t have their guys training on machines like most other organizations do. The attention to thoracic extension, hip rotation, and leg strength (just to name a few things I like about the program) are all very good and necessary if you want to effectively train baseball athletes.

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In-Season Training: A Difficult Task

Posted by Kyle in Training on March 13, 2010

Strength and conditioning is tough enough in the offseason, but once you have to focus on practices, bullpens, batting cage time, skill development, and playing games, training for strength and speed becomes nearly impossible! I’m a huge supporter of youth athletes picking up multiple sports in their early years of high school – by all means, join the soccer team, lacrosse team, football team, and baseball team (of course). However, this diversity comes at a price: You can get good at all the sports and increase your overall fitness as a result, but you’ll rarely be great at any of them. Why? There’s no offseason to take your focus off performance and place it on training to increase general strength and conditioning.

kb-swing

Kettlebell Swings: Great conditioning work for any season

As you progress through high school, it’s worth analyzing what sports you really like and the ones you have some talent in. If you’ve got a shot to play college or pro baseball, you should seriously consider dropping the other sports so you can have a clearly defined workout program in the off-season to focus on your SPARQ Baseball metrics, overall bat speed, fastball velocity, fat loss, or just getting stronger and fitter.

When you have a clearly defined off-season and in-season timeline, I recommend focusing the bulk of your off-season work with high volume and high intensity weight training that’s hard to recover from. This type of training is inappropriate for in-season training but yields great benefits if you can set aside enough time to recover from the effects of the exercises. As you approach the competitive season, you should deload and switch your focus to skill work like taking grounders/fly balls, throwing long toss and bullpens, changing your pitching mechanics so you can throw harder and with less effort, examining your swing for flaws, and putting that increased strength and fitness to good use!

During the season, strength training will become very hard. If you’re in high school, you have 20 games with the school, plus playoffs, plus five practices a week, plus weekend practices or workouts with your select/travel team. Yikes! It becomes impossible to squat or deadlift heavy and recover from the effects of the training in enough time for the next game. Finding one day per week that you can lift heavy to maintain strength is your best bet, if possible.  Focusing on high intensity but low volume workouts (heavy triples in the squat and deadlift, for example) will help you maintain the strength levels you built up in the off-season without seriously impacting your recovery system in a negative manner.

Improving your sprint times and medball throws are goals you can focus on during the season, as these activities dovetail nicely with conditioning that’s done in-season with your team already and won’t tax you too much. Kettlebell swings are a great way to develop rapid hip extension power, provides a nice conditioning stimulus, and are easy to find time for!

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