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Is Your Off-season Strength Program Working for YOU?

After 15 years of training baseball players of all ages and levels, I can tell you with the highest degree of certainty that the purpose of a great off-season baseball strength training program is to:

    • Increase explosive power
    • Create more efficient movers
    • Build more durable athletes

While different athletes will always require more of one of these adaptations than the other, when focusing on the youth population (13-18 year olds) the deciding factor is almost always:

    • Increasing lean body mass
    • Increasing absolute strength

Is your off-season strength program working for you? Let’s get into it…

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How to Improve Your Defensive Fielding… The Three Pillars

Today, I decided to get together with Dr. Ismael Gallo, DPT, the founder of the Baseball Flows™ App. As a former professional baseball player turned Doctor of Physical Therapy, Dr. Gallo specializes in effectively bridging the gap between the movements in-gym to the specific movements essential for on-field excellence.

 Many young ball players face a common hurdle.  They lack the athleticism to play defense at a high level. In order to field a ground ball or charge a bunt efficiently, movements need to be fluid and this requires what is known as agility. And, when it comes to fielding a ground ball, agility involves making these rapid movements mentioned above in constantly changing, unpredictable environments.

So, what exactly IS agility?

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Why You Should Begin Your Training in the Fall for the Next Season?

It’s no great secret by now that playing baseball year-round is not such a great idea, mentally (burn out) or physically (velo drops / injury). When we first started training baseball players around 10 years ago, just about everyone who played ball began their training in January. Athletes would show up desperately trying to get their velo up…. IN JUST 8 WEEKS! Back then trying to convince high school athletes to begin lifting weights in November was like pulling a cow through a keyhole. A few pitching coaches we worked with didn’t even believe in strength training for baseball players at all. Times have changed.  Nowadays, more and more athletes begin their training right after “fall ball”, in November.

So, here we are, ready to rock the boat once again.

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Off-Season Training for High School Ball Players, the How , the Why and the When…

Note: Please note that at the end of this article there are two webpage links with access to exercise videos referred to throughout this article for novice and intermediate / advanced athletes.

Why it is important?

According to Escamilla JSCR ’12 Young athletes participating in a strength program increased velocity in a much safer manner than those who participated in a throwing program only.

Here is why!

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How Strong is Strong Enough?

Why Do We Test Strength?

To better maximize our training time in the gym, we need to focus on only what the athlete needs without taking away the attributes that they are already good at.

Testing max strength helps us determine what the focus of training will be throughout the upcoming training period. This enables us to prioritize the athletes “lowest hanging fruit” when it comes to Strength (> 80% 1RM) vs Power (between 30-80% 1RM). We utilize VBT to help better pinpoint specific strength zones. Continue reading “How Strong is Strong Enough?”

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How to Improve Pitchers Shoulder Mobility

pitchers shoulder

Today, we’re going to review some of the topics we look at during an assessment in regard to pitchers shoulder mobility as well the major players that can affect it. The four big guys are as follows:

    1. Shoulder
    2. Scapula
    3. T-Spine (Extension)
    4. Lumbo-Pelvic Control

Let’s review and discuss each and go over a handful of shoulder exercises that may be helpful for each segment.

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Profiling Pitchers… The RPP Pitching Assessment

Most often, pitchers and position players associate their pitching velocity or exit velo with their mechanics. As our understanding of the body and technology has improved over the years, it is now more apparent than ever that your velocity ceiling, whether it’s pitching or hitting, is limited by your physical ability more than anything else.  Whether you’re a position player or a pitcher and your velo is stuck… let’s find out why.

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How to Build Athleticism in Young Athletes

A couple years ago, I wrote an article about youth strength training covering all the related myths and facts.  I have been asked several times since then what my young athlete should be doing if he or she is too young for the weight room.  There are four basic movements that every young athlete can master using their own body weight as resistance in order to better build his or her athleticism. Becoming athletic takes time at any age, but the good news is that young athletes have a higher window of adaptation at this age, allowing for giant leaps in athleticism over a short period of time.

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What to Consider with In-Season Baseball Workouts

At this time of the year, after a full off-season of strength training, upcoming tryouts and practices, sitting on the bench in a kyphotic posture and waiting to get your reps on the mound are a few of the variables that can wreak havoc on an athlete’s body and more importantly his arm/shoulder. There are several considerations when you’re looking to maintain your strength and mobility with in-season baseball workouts.

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