Baseball Speed Training
Understanding Baseball Speed Training: Part I
I remember the spring days very well. My friends and I would be outside at the first sign of warm weather. We would grab our ball gloves and stomp through the damp muddy ground to play some catch or perhaps engage in an intense game of run-down. Whatever the activity may be, we all knew that our baseball season was fast approaching.
Like any young athlete we were always looking for ways to improve our game and gain a step on our competition. And like any young athlete we always looked to our superiors for advice. At times they would offer suggestions and teach us a thing or two, but more often than none we usually picked up ideas from observing them.
The one memory that is very vivid in my mind was a training technique that we used called “jogging”. We would band together like a small platoon and jog around the local football field. I can’t remember how far we would jog or for how long? But I can tell you that we jogged and took it quite serious. Sometimes we would jog twice a day; once in the morning and again in the evening. Read more
Total Baseball Speed Conditioning
Total Speed Conditioning
With so many articles on Speed Training, you would assume that there is plenty of great information available. The problem is that the topic of speed is not being totally covered. There are categories of training that are just not being discussed.
There are so many athletes specializing at a young age, and we are seeing a drop in overall work capacity. This is due to low levels of general strength and conditioning. Everyone wants to be doing pure speed work all the time and nobody seems to be building the proper base needed for your body to be able to handle that force and power. The better your work capacity is the easier it is to recover from your speed workouts so the more speed work that you will be able to handle. Basically, you need to add conditioning and recovery days (tempo days) to become a faster, more powerful athlete.
Tempo Training
Tempo work is low intensity training (60-75% intensity) that has many great benefits for speed/power athletes. This type of training is used as recovery, general strength and conditioning work. Tempo work can help maintain healthy joint and soft tissue strength, provide some aerobic capacity work, is a good recovery workout, is core strengthening, helps with balance/coordination/proprioception and enhances gross motor performance. Read more
Top 10 Baseball Speed Training Myths Revealed
Speed Training Myths: Top 10 Speed Training Myths Revealed
Each day we receive questions about training speed. So we’ve taken those questions that we hear the most and answered them in a slightly different format.
1. Static stretching prepares you to compete/practice
Static stretching actually reduces power output. Athletes should prepare for practice by doing a dynamic warm up that moves from basic, low intensity movements to faster, more explosive movements as the muscles loosen up. You want to simulate movements that athletes will go through in practice or a game. What happens when you try and stretch a cold rubber band? In a way, you can think about your muscles the same way.
2. Strength training makes females too bulky
This is a popular mindset with many female athletes that we have worked with. Simply look at some elite female athletes like Mia Hamm, Lisa Leslie, etc. These athletes certainly train with weights and no one would accuse them of having manly physiques. Strength training will improve performance and reduce injury if done correctly.
3. You can’t train speed
For some reason it is a popular belief that you are born with a certain amount of ’speed’ and you can’t improve it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most young athletes are so physically weak and mechanically out of tune that significant improvements in speed can be made often just by working on technique and form. Athletes at any age and any level can improve speed when implementing a complete speed training program designed to improve and develop the entire athlete. Read more
How to Develop Plyometric Power for Baseball
Plyometric Power!
Plyometric training is an excellent supplement to your speed, strength and power training program. Plyometrics can greatly improve your power levels and help increase body control since they deal with moving your own bodyweight through hopping or bounding exercises, medicine ball throws, etc.
However, this type of training requires high levels of coordination, power, strength and balance. Athletes always want to do the most advanced, most technical movements that they see the professional athletes doing in their training. Because these exercises require so much power and coordination, there needs to be progression in the structure of plyometric training (like all other aspects of training). It may not be glorious and exciting, but in the short and long term, learning to evolve from basic to complex movements will always reap the greatest rewards. If we jump right into single leg bounds or depth jumps, without the proper progression, then we are putting our bodies at risk for avoidable injury.
In this week’s Digest, we will go over some introductory level plyometrics focusing on stabilization and landing technique. By learning to perform these exercises correctly, athletes build a foundation for increasingly advanced movements requiring higher strength to body weight ratios. Read more
How to Increase Baseball Running Speed
Increase Running Speed
by Patrick Beith
In this article, we’ll address what I consider to be the critical training components that are a part of every successful speed development program to increase running speed of your athletes.
After all, the fastest athletes on any team and in any sport are almost always the quickest and fastest on the field or the court. and every coach and athlete wants to know the most effective methods to increase running speed.
So the question becomes: what are the training elements that must be addressed in order accomplish this goal?
To start, no athlete can be expect to succeed with their speed training if they aren’t properly warmed up. Many programs still use that old school warm up philosophy of jogging around the field a couple times, getting in a circle and holding static stretches as the whole team counts to 10. Now, I don’t know any sports that require holding a stretch for an extended period of time in order to get prepared to compete or practice. That being the case, such an outdated warm up philosophy is not going to increase running speed.
Instead, athletes must do a dynamic warm up that progresses from slow, simple movements like jogging and skipping to the high intensity speed drills that actually prepare them for an intense practice. Read more
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