Let’s face it, baseball is all about being explosive. To excel in this sport, remain healthy and stay at the top of your game, you must be able to move explosively through space. To do that requires an optimal level of power (a solid amount of muscle) and a minimal level of dead weight (fat). This muscle to fat ratio is known as Lean Body Mass (LBM) and it is today’s topic. Continue reading “Single Most “Over-Looked” Factor to Increase Performance”
Here in Part 3 of this 2017 “Best of” series, are this year’s most popular articles on strength and conditioning… Continue reading “The Best of 2017 – Strength and Conditioning Articles”
As we get closer to the end of another year here at RPP, it seems like a good time to reflect back on 2017, and provide you with a glimpse of where we might be headed in 2018. Continue reading “Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Headed”
Here we go with Part 3 of this series on “Stop Wasting Your Money”. This one is for catchers and position players (please click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2, related to pitchers).
Continue reading “Parents… Stop Wasting Your Money – Part 3 (Catchers and Position Players)”
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?”
For parents of some young athletes (for the scope of this article I’m talking about athletes ages 13-16), lifting heavy weights seems to get a bad rap. Years ago players were told not to lift weights because it would make them too “big”. You could even hear words like “stiff” or “tight” getting thrown around at the drop of a hat.
While I whole heartedly believe in the phrase that “age is wisdom”, this would be one of those times that I beg to differ. Being strong is a good thing. And if you want to be explosive you have to be strong first. Performance, speed (have I got your attention now?) and injury prevention all are built on a foundation of strength. But exactly what type of strength training and at what age seems to be where parents (and strength and conditioning coaches for that matter) get tripped up.
Most of you who read my blogs know that I spend a great deal of time emphasizing training according to where the athlete is during the season. Let’s take a look… Continue reading “Training Explosiveness through Strength Training”
