The Physical Demands of Baseball

The Physical Demands of Baseball
By guest author: Dana Cavalea

As we spend time analyzing sports, every sport has its own set of physical, mental, and skill demands. For years and years now, football has been the gold standard when comparisons start taking place in regards to overall athleticism need to play, as well as the overall physical demand. For this very reason there are so many young athletes, as well as older athletes that are integrating football lifting techniques, as well as conditioning techniques into sports such as baseball.

In the past when I would hear and see this taking place, the excessive grunting, yelling, and weight handling I would cringe. But, after taking a deeper look at what is actually going on, it turns out that there is a lot of hard work and internal drive and personal limit pushing taking place. Putting exercise selection and form aside, this type of increased intensity training is achieving a quality that is often times overlooked, fitness.

Because baseball is a sport that has very low metabolic and physical demands, athletes learn to adapt to their sport. Some athletes even play baseball because it has such low physical demand. Over time, this will lead to athletes that become very proficient and sport-specific skills, such as hitting and throwing, but often health and fitness levels are severely lacking. When these fitness levels start to lack, injuries often result due to the high velocities and torques that are needed to execute the sport-specific skills. Throwing a baseball is one of the most explosive, total body actions in all of sports, yet many pitchers are overweight and inherently lazy.

If as coaches and athletes we really stop and analyze this situation, can you say that you and your team are honestly doing enough in regards to stay lean? Over the years I have heard about Coaches running their athletes with excessive distance running, and again I would get sick to my stomach. Although distance running isn't a specific protocol to baseball, it will without a doubt work to increase caloric burn, which will lead to the shedding of excessive body mass. I still wouldn't recommend excessive running everyday, but I would require some type of conditioning everyday. I would also recommend that these circuits are primarily cardiovascular based rather than being strictly weight lifting oriented. These circuits could include medicine balls, body weight training, form running, jump rope, plyometrics, band work, core work, etc.

The great advantage to a circuit is that they work great for teams. Circuit training allows you to create multiple stations, each station containing a different exercise, and accommodates multiple athletes, as well as providing a good amount of variety. Circuits can be done for reps, or for time. After that athlete achieves the specified reps, or the allotted time, he would then move to the next station. When choosing stations, just like when designing and overall program, you must have a goal. If your goal is strength, then your circuit would be primarily weight training oriented. If your goal is cardiovascular fitness/ endurance and strength, you would select a variety of exercises that contain either cardio fitness, strength, or both.

I have become a huge advocate of circuits in-season because they are time efficient, will work to maintain and hopefully increase work-capacity of the body, and are fun.

Although the physical demands of baseball are extremely low, athletes that spend time increasing their work capacity are at a tremendous advantage in regards to recovery time, as well as a decreased time on the disabled list. Increasing work capacity will allow pitchers to pitch deeper into games, while keeping position players strong throughout the rigors of playing everyday. The gold standard of workouts in the Major Leagues has been Roger Clemens and his legendary SEAL Program. This program is basically one giant circuit. This program is not extremely focused on weigh training in the circuit, but on increasing conditioning levels. This program is a combo of distance and sprint work, as well as lateral work with baseballs.

Take a lesson from the Rocket, don't be a typical lazy baseball player that just gets by because of the low demand of the sport, but learn to out-work the demands of the sport and you will be rewarded by health, efficiency, and most importantly increased performance.

Dana Cavalea is a Sports Performance Consultant specializing in baseball performance training. In addition he works with many professional sports teams, athletes, and colleges' educating on the importance of training, nutrition, and lifestyle for sport.In addition he is the owner of Major League Strength, http://www.mlstrength.com, a sports performance consulting company designed to educate and create awareness on advancements in the field of sports performance training for coaches and athletes.

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Tips For Correcting an Upper Cut Swing

Tips For Correcting an Upper Cut Swing
By guest author: Jim Bain


I have witnessed coaches, who I thought were going to have a cow, in their reaction to a player having an upper cut in their swing, but one must realize there are times an upper swing is quite appropriate and possibly the proper swing.

When a pitch is low in the strike zone, and the situation requires a fly ball, such as trading an out for a runner scoring from third, the hitter wants an upper cut in order to lift the ball into the air.

Historically, Left Handed Batters' Power Alley, ball location where the hitter can utilize his entire core strength when swinging, has been low and inside using an upper cut swing.

So just to set the record straight, there are times a hitter using an upper cut swing is beneficial. However, to have a permanent upper cut motion in every swing, regardless of ball location, will only lead to high strike out numbers and easy fly ball outs.

The reason for a high strike out ratio is simply, it's difficult enough to solidly strike a baseball when the bat is traveling on the same, level plane as the ball, much alone the bat traveling in an upward motion, which totally throws eye to bat to ball timing in the waste can.

Secondly of course, if the hitter is successful at making contact, the baseball comes off the bat with a back spin, which not only creates lift, but also restricts distance, as the ball is essentially Clawing its way back towards the plate, which normally results in a high fly ball to the shallow outfield.

More than likely, somewhere along the line, the batter developed a hitch in his hitting mechanics, which is producing the repetitive upper cuts. The batter is not consciously swinging upwards, but rather the muscle memory responsible for producing the swing is the culprit. These muscle memories must be re-programmed, which can be a tedious and time consuming project, or a change of one part of the mechanics may have near immediate results. Plan on a lengthy project and be overjoyed if it happens quickly.
We are not concerned with creating power or bat speed or anything else other than flattening the swing and there's no substitute for taking hundreds of correct swings in order to achieve that purpose. That's exactly why the use of a batting tee is an excellent method in eliminating an upper cut.

Set the batting tee at slightly above belt height, anything higher will create a handcuff effect and will do more harm than good. Using a whiffle ball and bat, remember we're changing mechanics and actually the lighter weight of a whiffle ball bat allows more swings without fatigue than a regular wood or metal bat, a practice swinging Down on the ball.

The downward swing will produce ground balls, so the hitter is able to immediately know if the swing was proper, if it wasn't the ball will be hit into the air. When the batter can successfully drive ground balls off the tee, the next step is to hit a moving ball.

We then move to the batting cages and while using a regular bat and a moving baseball, see if we can continually hit ground balls. Should the batter fail to hit ground balls, it's back to the hitting tee for more practice.

Bear in mind, when hitting, whether off the tee or in the batting cage, you will hit an occasional fly ball, which doesn't mean you're failing. Set a goal of hitting 2 ground balls for every fly ball, then increase to 3 ground balls for every fly. Also, don't become frustrated if your ground balls are not hit with authority, that will correct itself as you become more efficient at hitting the ball on a level plane.

Jim Bain - Former Minor league baseball player, who since retiring has dedicated his life to teaching baseball to youth. Visit his exciting info packed website: http://www.Learn-Youth-Baseball-Coaching.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Bain




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