Hey everyone...I thought I'd share some of my views on baseball training. Comments/questions/disagreements are always welcome.
So first a little background on me. I am a junior MIF/3B in high school, planning to play in college. Last summer, I had a stress fracture on my medial epicondyle and was out for the season. I was ****ed. I researched everything - from what caused it, to how I could have prevented it, to how I could rehab it, to how I could continue to train and get better around it. I like to think that I know a lot about training...I've sort of become dedicated to maximizing the incredible machine that the human body is. I think its really cool and hope to study something in the performance field in college. Anyways, here are some thoughts on training. It may come out super jumbled, or it may even make sense...hopefully you can learn from my successes and failures.
Training for baseball is unlike training for any other sport. In football, you see guys in the gym training for a big bench, a big squat, and a big clean. BIG BIG BIG. No pre/re-hab stuff, no rotator cuff work, nothing. You might think they are being idiots, but they honestly don't have to worry about a fraction of the stuff that baseball players have to when we train. They just have to get bigger, faster, and stronger. So do we, but we have to do it in a way that will prevent us from getting hurt in the future. I'm not going to go into detail on this (partly because I should read more literature on it, and partly because I believe that it is way too in depth for a message board), but overhead throwing is incredibly stressful on the shoulder and elbow. We must prepare our bodies for the grueling action, as well as not get hurt in the process of trying to get stronger, more powerful, and faster. Here are some important factors that will accomplish the baseball players goal of staying healthy, becoming more powerful, hitting the ball with more power, throwing harder, and running faster:
1. Soft tissue work. Buy a $12 foam roller. Go through your soft-tissue work before every warmup. Once the foam roller becomes too easy and doesn't "hurt" anymore when you do it, buy a $4 PVC pipe to replace the foam roller. Here is the soft-tissue warmup I do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8caF1Keg2XU
2. Mobility and Stability. Baseball players often approach the limits of the human body. UCL tears occur because the valgus stress of the throwing motion cannot be physically tolerated by throwing a baseball. No other sport does this - sprinters legs don't (usually, or as much as pitcher's arms do) tear apart because they have reached the limit of human performance. Preparing a baseball player to throw has to be approached like a boxer: your giving him a helmet, but he's still going to get hit in the head. Briefly, here are some important areas for baseball players to make sure they have adequate range of motion on: Shoulder internal rotation, elbow extension, elbow flexion, Hip internal rotation, ankle mobility, thoracic spine mobility, adductor mobility, and hip flexor mobility. Probably much more that I am not thinking of. The other part of this is stability. You need stability in your core and shoulder to be able to stay healthy. Train your core for anti-rotation and anti-extension. DON'T do situps or crunches. You core is meant to stabilize, not to go into flexion. If it were meant to go into flexion, it would look like a hamstring. Instead, it is cross-sectioned. Once you have trained core stability (lumbar stability as well), you can train thoracic rotation via medball drills and thoracic cable chops. Shoulder stability can be trained highly effectively by rhythmic stabilization drills. Also, some classic shoulder external rotations are beneficial to shoulder health.
3. To become more powerful and faster, you have to lift heavy weights, and do heavy movements. Squats and Deadlifts are the kings of getting stronger and faster. Jon Doyle preaches working at 40-65% of 1RM. I used his programs and found decent success, but nothing compared to when I started to lift heavy. Most high school athletes need to develop a foundation of strength. Once that strength has been developed, then we can work to maximize bar speed. I dropped .3 on my 60 during a whole offseason doing 40-65% 1RM focus lifts, and this offseason, coming off of an injury, I dropped .84, while increasing (after major surgery) my arm strength by 4 mph. MOVE THINGS. Trap bar deadlift, sumo deadlift, regular deadlift, front squat, Giant Cambered Bar back squat (stay away from regular bar back squat for baseball players...), Safety bar squat are the big ones.
4. Upper body strength is surprisingly helpful as well. Pushing and Pulling movements are great. Make sure to do a ratio of 2:3 press/pull to keep your back side stronger than front side. Rows, and presses. Stay away from overhead pressing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqYazYDIpxU . Feel free to move some heavy weights here as well, just keep good form.
5. Medballs are great for reactive strength in baseball. Overhead stomp to floor, recoiled overhead stomp to floor, med ball scoop toss, rot. med ball shotput are a few great ones for increasing hitting power and throwing velocity.
6. Single leg work is great as well. This often gets overlooked. Almost all of the "big" compound lifts are with 2 legs. However, many actions in sports, especially baseball, are done with just one leg at a time. Sprinting is the big one that comes to mind. There are so many options for 1 leg training. Just the tip of the iceberg include: 1 leg 1 arm RDL, Bulgarian split squat, Bulgarian Split Squat from Deficit, Anterior loaded barbell step ups, Slideboard reverse lunges w/ barbell, any lunge variation.
7. Posterior chain work is very beneficial. Baseball players (and all athletes) need to activate glutes especially, but hamstrings and lower back is important as well. Barbell hipthrusters, 1 leg hip thrusters off bench vs. chains, glute ham raise are just a few to crush the p-chain.
8. STAY AWAY FROM ISOLATION EXERCISES. I don't think I need to elaborate here.
9. Don't forget your sprint work. On a 4 day/week weight training schedule, I have 2 other days for sprint training. You'll be amazed that your body can perform maximally 6 times per week.
10. Conditioning. But not your classic "cardio" workouts. Prowler pushes, sled drags, stongman stuff, farmers walks + variations are awesome for baseball players. They also always crush the grip strength, which is also very important for baseball players.
Here is how my offseason workouts looked:
Day 1: Full Body
A1) Big leg movement, squat variation, deadlift variation etc. Heavy.
A2) Pushup variation, 3x6
B1) Single leg training 3x8
B2) Pulling movement 4x8
C1) Core Stability
C2) Prehab/shoulder stability
D1) Conditioning
Stretch
Day 2: Upper Body
A1) Big pulling movement 3x4, 4x4, 3x6, 4x6, etc. low range. EX: pullups + as much weight as possilbe, 3x4.
A2) Mobility Filler
B1) Pressing Movement/Pushup variation 4x3, 3x3, 3x4, 4x6, etc.
B2) Supplemental Pulling movement 3x8
C1) Supplemental pressing movement 3x6
C2) Shoulder Stability/pre-hab.
D1) Core Stability
D2) Strongman Conditioning
Stretch
Day 3: Lower body
Foam roll, then dynamic warmup
pre-work: Medball work
A1) Deadlift variation. Either 3x3, 4x3, 4x4, 4x5, 4x6, somewhere in that range. HEAVY
A2) Mobility "filler" for resting 3x10
B1) Supplemental leg exercise 3x6 (usually quad dominate movement)
B2) Supplemental leg exercise 3x8 (posterior chain)
C1) Core Stability drill 3x8-12
C2) Shoulder pre-hab/stability 3x10
D1) Conditioning - farmers walk variation/sled drag/prowler push variation
Static Stretch.
Day 4: Full Body
A1) Strong single leg lift eg; reverse barbell lunges 4x6 (killer)
A2) Mobilization filler drill
B1) Pressing variation 3x6
B2) Supplemental leg exersise 3x8
C1) Pulling exersise 3x8
C2) Core Stability
D1) Conditioning.
Stretch
Tell me what you guys think of my approach. I've tried tons of things, and I think I have found a great approach. Comments are appreciated!
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