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Re-Conditioning Phase (Hypertrophy)… Training in the Fall

Training in the fall sets up the foundation for later phases of training. The main objective is to elicit a progressive adaptation of the athlete’s anatomy and tendon strength to enable them to safely lift with more load later on. Athletes who skip these months and jump right into training strength in November do not reap the same benefits as those athletes that spend 4-8 weeks in the fall prior to moving into November. With the fall season right around the corner, I thought this would be a great time for me to talk a little bit about the importance of early off-season training, what I call the “re-conditioning phase”.

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How to Increase Your Bat Speed in the Weight Room

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Interested in increasing your bat speed in the weight room? Click here for our “remote” strength training program for position players.

How to increase bat speed is a topic that gets a lot of attention and interest from our baseball players.  Today, we’re going to review 6 topics and related exercises to increase bat speed in the weight room that are paramount and should be addressed in any training program: Continue reading “How to Increase Your Bat Speed in the Weight Room”

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How to Improve Blast Motion Rotation Score (Power)

Blast Rotation Score

Given the rotational nature of hitting a baseball, there are variety of potential physical impediments that could lead to an undesirable Rotation Score (rotational acceleration and bat speed).  Issues could range from the bottom of the kinetic chain to the top, including lower body weaknesses, hip mobility limitations, t-spine related issues and even weaknesses in the upper extremities. Continue reading “How to Improve Blast Motion Rotation Score (Power)”

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New Jersey’s Most Comprehensive Baseball Training Facility

baseball training facility

RPP Baseball is a high performance baseball training facility located in Paramus (Bergen county), New Jersey. From the weight room to our pitching and hitting programs, we utilize the latest in technology, in a holistic and data-driven approach which allows us to assess, train and re-assess players on an ongoing basis. Our athletes are walking testimonials as to the power of our highly customized programming. Below is a summary of our extensive services for pitchers and baseball players: Continue reading “New Jersey’s Most Comprehensive Baseball Training Facility”

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Blast Motion Baseball Metrics, Rotation, Angles and Power

blast motion baseball

In my previous internship before RPP, part of my responsibilities included watching Minor League baseball games. After my first few games, I noticed a recurring trend, every player wore a Blast Motion Baseball sensor during the game. As I saw more organizations’ Minor League teams, not all had their players wear the sensors; however, the idea behind it was simple, data collection.

At RPP, we use Blast Motion sensors for the same purpose, and this allows us to help identify and develop athletes’ inefficiencies. The only difference is we do not have the ability to collect data from athletes’ in-game at-bats. Therefore, we collect data from batting practice at our facility and are still able to get a good picture of what an athlete does well, and what they struggle with.

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A Review of Blast Motion Baseball and Its Swing Metrics

blast motion baseball

If you don’t own a Blast Motion baseball sensor, you should.  We’ve been using Blast sensors for quite some time now and we are very impressed.  Frankly they are very easy to use and they don’t require calibration prior to hitting.  The only shortfall we discovered early on was how all the metrics related to each other, which actually prompted this internal write-up.  Blast reports 3 swing quality scores, Plane, Connection and Rotation, which they also refer to as PCR.  Their scores (20-80) are based on relative measurements of similar age groups and skill levels.  The sensor provides 10 pre-contact metrics categorized as follows:

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The Top Secret Part I Left out from the Secret Sauce

Top Secret

My prior article on our Secret Sauce at RPP (click here) ended with this “Oh, and making our pitchers as strong and explosive as we can, in all the right places”.  In this article, I would like to go a little further and review why and how we have been successful in training high performance athletes. The truth is, it’s all about mass customization.  Strength training is science but it’s also art. I have heard my partner, Nunzio Signore, say to clients a million times “the body is connected in all parts and ways, a potential issue in one location may very well be due to an issue somewhere else”.  The reality is that every athlete that walks into our facility needs a different road-map to be the best they can be.  So here we go with the Top Secret stuff… Continue reading “The Top Secret Part I Left out from the Secret Sauce”

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What is Velocity-Based Training? What Are the Benefits?

velocity based training

Athletes who are able to recruit higher ratios of Type II “fast twitch” muscle fibers have shown to be able to produce more power.  For ballplayers, this means that they are more likely to throw harder off the mound or have a higher exit velo at the plate.  Genetics do come into play, but many times they only give us a better “starting point”.  By no means should they dictate a definitive “end-point”.  After reading a copy of Dr. Bryan Mann’s book on velocity-based training (VBT) a light went off in my head as to how elements of VBT could be implemented here at RPP.    Continue reading “What is Velocity-Based Training? What Are the Benefits?”