One of the biggest problems I see in high school, college, and professional baseball players is their off season training program. Too often I see these athletes performing the WRONG exercises. Some athletes focus on the “beach muscles” that don’t have any positive effect on performance. Others will only train their “core” and do rotator cuff work. While it is important to train the core and rotator cuff, by no means should they be the meat and potatoes of your program.
Instead of focusing on these exercises that don’t have any positive effect on athletic performance, baseball players should perform compound lifts. These lifts give you the best bang for your buck and help you optimize performance. Once the baseball season approaches, baseball players should start to include more jumps, medicine ball throws and sprints.
Below is a list of my top 10 lifts for baseball players in the off season.
If you are reading this site, then chances are you take your training very seriously.
You maintain a very tight training schedule.
You watch your diet, eating and hydrating for sustained high performance.
You track your training results, whether formally or informally.
You take each set and each rep seriously.
And if you are someone who is serious about their training, you know that FAILURE is occasionally a part of the equation.
Sometimes when people FAIL at a lift or MISS their desired reps in a set, it can really have an effect on them.
That set can linger in the back of their mind and have a negative effect on the rest of the workout.
There’s no place for negative thinking in a serious strength or muscle building program.
You have got to move past that sh*t and not let it eat you up inside or else it is going to hold you back.
It’s time to change your MINDSET and look at failure, misses, and other non-successes differently.
Next time you miss a lift or fail to hit your mark, whether it is a squat, deadlift, bench, snatch, clean, press, curl, push-down, pinch lift, gripper attempt, etc, you need to approach it like this:
MISSES ARE JUST WARM-UPS
You missed a lift – JUST A WARM-UP – get it next time.
You didn’t hit depth – JUST A WARM-UP – get it next time.
You lost the jerk out in front – JUST A WARM-UP – get it next time.
The fact of the matter is, sometimes it’s just “not in the cards” for you to hit that big lift or set that big PR.
There are so many variables that impact performance and if just one of those is slightly off that day, it can affect your upper range lifts.
Factors Affecting Performance
Hydration Status
Nutrition the day of the workout and days before
State of Warm-up / Excitation
Spinal / Joint Alignment
Recent Sleeping Patterns
Recent Stress Levels
That’s a lot of stuff to have all in line. Not everyone is going to keep all of those points in order, every day and some are completely OUT OF YOUR CONTROL.
Now, I guarantee you can think of a time where you missed a lift, re-grouped, and then came back and hit it for a successful lift.
The fact is, your body may need an extra attempt in order get ready to do something amazing.
That little thing that is “off” might actually get corrected during your miss and you might be ready to set a new milestone if you try it one more time.
So does it make any sense at all to just stop trying something because you failed at it one time???
Below is an example from a recent training session where I failed, MULTIPLE TIMES, but just kept on going and ended up setting a substantial PR for volume.
It is an iron weight that is cast from a mold from an Original Fat Man Blob. I don’t know the actual weight, but Clones are much harder to lift than other Blobs because they ended up coming out bigger and they surely seem heavier as well.
For years, I thought warming up was a joke – a waste of time. DUMB.
Trainers like Guy Razy would come to train with us and show us cool warm-up drills, and I would ignore them. DUMB.
Guys like Coach Mike wrote me emails telling me I needed to improve my flexibility and mobility and I put it off. DUMB.
Smitty and Brad told me how much better they felt after incorporating more of this stuff into their training and I ignored them. DUMB.
It wasn’t until more than a year later when Smitty and Brad actually ran me through a battery of intense warming up that I realized what I was missing. Now I warm-up intensely every single workout.
In addition to warm-up and dynamic flexibility strategies to get ready to WREAK HAVOC, I’ve also found that I respond well to jumping exercises before hitting the weights.
I’ve always loved jumping, but unfortunately my ceiling is too low for me to leap up on top of jump boxes, so that’s out of the question.
But I recently found something just as good. You’ve probably heard them called Kneeling Jumps, but I call them Up Downs.
Up Downs spark the Central Nervous System BIG TIME.
After doing these, I am ready to DROP BOMBS. I feel more aware, more focused, and I have hit several PR’s since including them. I want you to try these out.
How to Perform Up Downs
You may have seen these done differently elsewhere, but this is how I do them. This way actually makes it harder to perform them, causing you to work just a bit harder, focus more deeply, and as a result, pushing you to a better warm-up finisher.
Starting Position:
Kneel down on the gym floor, placing your entire shin flat on the ground, plantar flexing the foot. This position takes your ankles out of the movement and forces you to engage everything else more intensely.
Power Transfer:
It is imperative to get the arms involved in the movement in order to generate the power to get up off the ground and to the landing position. Swing them back to engage a sretch reflex, then fire your leg and glute power to drive yourself upwards.
Recovery Position:
Once airborne, you must pull your feet out from under you to stick the landing. Try to land as quietly as possible to absorb the energy, and get into an athletic position, like a puma ready to pounce on its prey.
Here’s a quick video demo showing some of the stuff I have done to modify Up Downs even more.
If you’re like me and have hated and dreaded warm-up, you should try this out.
Go through some dynamic warm-up and mobility stuff and then finish it off with some Up Downs or something similar to really prime the CNS. I think you’ll be surprised how good you feel.
Try them and let me know what you think. I think you’ll have a KICK-ASS workout setting MONSTER PR’s.
I opened up my YouTube account and checked out my Subscriptions the other day and couldn’t believe what I saw…
Jordan Vezina, RKC, recently uploaded his entire DVD, “The Corrections,” to YouTube.
I have had this DVD in electronic version since it first came out back in like 2008. Jordan is very knowledgeable about correcting technique and I even reviewed it prior to going to the RKC in September.
It’s not everyday that someone uploads an entire DVD on their own accord, especially a good quality one, like Jordan’s.
If you’re new to Kettlebells or if you’ve acquired some bad habits, you may want to check these out.
