As we move into the the final weeks of the calendar year, it isn’t just the holidays that are fast approaching. High school baseball season, too, is almost here. Many high schools in the south will begin holding tryouts in the middle of January, and those in the north tend to start their seasons lat...
In the previous post we discussed the importance of a ballplayer’s first year of strength-training, and how to go about making the most of that first year. Today we will extend from that topic by discussing further the great window of adaptation that novice athletes possess, and why it is impo...
While every year, off-season, month, and week of training is vitally important to the development of the athlete, not all years are created equal. In fact, many might say that the training cycles that carry the most weight and significance are those that occur later in a career, when a player has ac...
The previous two parts of this series discussed both the intro and intermediate phases of my own progressions for core/trunk training. Part I specifically discussed what it actually means to train the “core” – or as we are calling it instead, the trunk – and how to build the...
In just about every baseball circle, whether it be those in high school, college, travel ball, or professional, you will hear coaches echo identical sentiments on their emphasis on strength training for baseball; you’ve probably heard it before, “It’s all in the legs and core, esp...
There are a lot of reasons to admire and emulate professional athletes when you are a young amateur student-athlete aspiring for athletic greatness. As a strength and conditioning specialist, the most obvious and observable qualities that I take notice of when working with higher level athletes pert...
In the first installment of this three-part series we discussed one of the most widely used and accepted exercises in all of performance training, the Squat, some of the common flaws seen by novice trainees when performing it, and a couple of solutions for those faults. Part two addressed the same t...
In part one of this series we discussed the some of the common technical culprits that are generally seen in the squat – an exercise that is one of the most prevalent and effective exercises in all of performance training. Today we will discuss another major exercise that not only has at least...
The warm-up in baseball is an integral part of the throwing and pitching process. It is not simply a mundane obstacle that we must hurdle in order to get to the game or gain access to the bullpen. Likewise, the same can be said about the warm-up in training. It isn’t about getting through the...
When you’re a rookie-ball strength and conditioning coach – as I was during my time in professional baseball – you work with many young players. But, this is not at the exclusion of other players, as you’re also afforded the opportunity to see and interact with players of all...
