Powerful Hips for Power Hitters

Today we're going to touch on a topic that certainly doesn't warrant a prolix explanation, yet needs to be addressed regardless, as from time to time as I run into folks in the baseball/softball circles - be they coaches, parents, or players - who have been misguided in this area.

How does one improve the power of their swing, in order to make the ball fly farther and faster?

Just to clear the air, there are two primary components that must be capitalized upon: technique, and strength+power.

One can possess all the strength in the world, so much so that it makes Bane look like a utter weakling, but if they lack technique - timing of the swing, proper sequencing of the hips, shoulders and arms; hand-eye coordination to make the ball meet the bat at the precise location - then that ball isn't going to go very far, if anywhere.

Now that that is out of the way, let's look at the other side of the coin, strength+power. Which muscles in the human body are going to be able to harness and produce the most force, in the context of hitting a baseball?

The Hips!

With a capital H. Now, I can see some of you rolling your eyes, thinking, "Well, duh, please tell me something else that's painfully obvious...." but I had to clear this up given that (and I tell you true) I've had people approach me to say that it is the biceps and shoulders that posses the most potential to hit and/or throw a ball.

Excuse me while I go throw my face into a hornets' nest.

Let's all take a deep breathe, relax, and come to an agreement that the hips are indeed king when it comes to power production. To say that it's the shoulders and arms would be akin to saying that you can take a car with brand new, top-of-the-line tires, yet only a 200 horse power engine, and expect it to win a Grand Prix! Of course the tires are necessary to connect the chassis of the car to the road and have it go where you want to, but they aren't of much value without a powerful engine to move them, are they? The arms certainly have their merit in a swing, just as tires do in a road race, but they're both a far cry from the bread and butter we're looking for in terms of power output.

Just ask Miguel Cabrera, Jose Bautista, Bryce Harper, or any of the other big hitters currently instilling trepidation in pitchers all across the big leagues; I'm inclined to believe they'll concur.

Just watch the incredible hip extension+rotation during any number of Cabrera's home runs in the highlight video below.

So how does one develop these oh-so-important hips, to prepare them for prodigious levels power output and be the driving force behind smashing a ball into oblivion?

First, it may be prudent to discuss what not to do, as one can find an alarmingly high number of misguided training practices proliferating among the strength and conditioning programs of little league, high school, college, and yes, professional, levels.

Here's a blueprint if you'd like a sure fire way of attenuating a baseball players' force production:

• Perform copious volumes of long distance running.
• Do lots of high-rep, lower body work while in a state of fatigue. Walking overhead plate lunges across a gymnasium would be a perfect option here. Barbell squats in the middle of a circuit, even better.
• Undergo 300m repeats with only :30-:60 rest between each one. This will ensure that you never fully recover, and become increasingly mired down and slow throughout the season.
• Whatever you do, don't do deadlifts. They'll only strengthen your entire posterior chain and teach you how to put force into the ground.
• Instead of deadlifting, bench press three times per week. Putting the health of your shoulders and elbows in jeopardy is key so that you force your hips to pick up the slack.

Now, what TO do?

- Glute and hamstring work becomes your best friend, and anything that develops the posterior chain, for that matter. So, things like glute bridges, slider hamstring curls, RDLs, KB swings, a healthy dose of single-leg work, along with countless other options, are prime candidates.

- Deadlift, but keep the reps low and use plenty of rest between sets, for the love! This is power production we're training for, not an AMRAP contest at the Crossfit games.

Deadlifts are one of the best ways to develop the hips, just don't feel the need to be a hero and use so much weight that your form falls apart (which then shifts all the work away from your hips anyway, and instead fries your spine). And even though you may be using lower rep ranges - say, a set of three - this doesn't necessitate grinding out a three-rep max and continually using maximal loads. Keep the bar speed high, refine technique, learn to feel feel the hips powering the movement, and be amazed as you actually get stronger.

Strength is a skill, not a circus act; keep it as such.

- Squat.

- As I discussed in this article, baseball players need to get outside of the sagittal plane in order to maximize potential in a rotational context. Thus, the various lateral hops/bounds, and lateral single-leg variations will bode well for frontal plane development, and med ball work will take care of most needs in the transverse plane.

- Get the anterior core strong and stable, so that it can resist undesired motion and thus help the hips appropriately transfer force through the entire body

-Sprint! One of the truest forms of plyometric training one can perform, and your glutes and hamstrings will thank you for it.

Unfortunately, many coaches don't know how to administer a sound sprint training program. Keep the distance relatively short, the overall volume low, and rest long enough to be fresh for each sprint iteration. If it looks and feels like a mindless "get your sweat on" show, then that's all it likely is! At best, those "run till you drop" sessions will make you sweat a ton; at worst, they'll make you weak, tired, and slow.

There's no doubt that the hips are a critical, if not the most important, driving force of the musculoskeletal system for just about ANY athlete; hopefully this article helped to shed a bit of light on why baseball and softball players are no exception.

Energy Systems Training

Energy systems training, or EST for you acronym lovers, has come to the forefront of SAPT"s training programs for our high school athletes as new research has manifested about the importance of specifically training those systems. I advise you to grab a cup of coffee, this is a heavy one! (no pun intended)

Definitions first.

ATP- the currency, if you will, of energy within the body. ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is an adenosine molecule with three phosphate molecules attached. The bonds that hold the phosphate molecules to adenosine are considered "high energy" bonds, meaning when their broken a large amount of energy is released. This energy is harnessed by the cells within the muscle to drive function. Simply, ATP makes muscle contraction possible and thus the glorious thing we call athletic movement. (And, well, movement in general.) The soon-to-be-mentioned energy systems regenerate fresh sources of ATP (through metabolic processes not important to know at this point) and their ability to produce ATP varies upon the duration of the exercise, the length of the recovery period, and the number of activity bouts.

PCr/Alactic system- Provides immediate energy. The first couple explosive steps during a sprint or an approach and hit, the alactic system kicks into gear. it"s important, for example, for our baseball and volleyball training programs to include exercises that challenge the alactic system. (think jumping drills, acceleration drills, MB throws, etc.) Thankfully, near SAPT Fairfax, we have a turf field that we can perform running drills for our baseball, volleyball, and youth athletes.

*note* PCr stands for phosphocreatine. This is a molecule each of phosphate and creatine. The bond between them is weak, and the creatine will quickly relinquish it"s phosphate to reform the ATP. Part of that metabolic process I mentioned earlier. So, theoretically, an athlete that can replenish PCr faster, can use their alactic system to a greater capacity.

Glycolitic/lactic system- Provides intermediate energy. For example, in a 100 m race, the alactic provides for first 6-10 seconds and the glycolitic takes over as the predominate source of ATP production for the remainder of the sprint. Or, in a prowler race, the second pass is entirely glycolitic.

Aerobic system- Provides long-term energy. This can be anywhere from taking a long, leisurely walk with your dog, to the brief rest period on the field between plays. Technically, watching TV is an aerobic activity since all your energy is being produced by the aerobic system. But, for purposes of this post, we"ll consider aerobic system as the energy provider for the recovery time betwixt exercise bouts in athletics.

The initial thought was that energy systems turned on successively: the alactic system fired up it"s ATP production for the first 6 seconds or so, then the glycolytic system took over until the 90 second mark, followed by the aerobic system for any activity lasting longer than 90 seconds. Recent research disproved this and demonstrated that all systems are working simultaneously full tilt to produce ATP as fast as they"re capable of from the outset of activity.

The amount of ATP a system can contribute is dependent upon the power of the system and it"s capacity. Power = the rate which a system turns on and can produce ATP. The alactic system can start up the quickest, which is why it contributes so much at the onset of activity, while the aerobic system is a bit slower to get rolling. Capacity = duration at which the energy system can produce ATPs at a given activity level.  The alactic system can produce a lot of ATP at a high level of activity, but only for short while; in contrast the aerobic system sustainably produces the most ATP at lower levels of activity. Which is why one can"t just sprint forever: the activity level exceeds the capacity of the alactic system to keep up with the energy demand. (good thing breathing doesn"t exceed the aerobic system"s capacity!)

The 1999 study but Parolin et al. asked the subject to perform three, 30 second sprint bouts on a bike followed by 4 minutes of recovery. The researchers sought to discover what was going on at a cellular level. One would postulate that the glycolitic system would be the predominate supplier of energy correct? Hold onto you hats, the curious researchers found that, over the course of those sprint bouts, the glycolitic system"s contribution decreased! Check out this graph from the study:

As you can see, the alactic system still provides the bulk of ATP for the first 6 seconds or so of the sprint, but the aerobic system steps it up in the last sprint and the glycolitic"s contribution is paltry at best. It"s suggested that the accumulation of the glycolitic by-products limits it"s ability to continue functioning, thus the aerobic system is tapped into in order to supply the online casino ATP. There"s another study here demonstrating similar effects if you care to check it out.

Ok, geeky strength coach, how does this relate to me and my training? A majority of sports, outside of the endurance sports (cycling, cross country, swimming, etc.) consist of short, intense bursts of activity followed by longer periods of rest. Think of a volleyball player on the court, for the most part, she"s shuffling around but not sprinting (aerobic mostly) this court movement punctuated by a spike or dive (alactic). Same thing with any field player, soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, football, etc. are all short sprints followed by longer periods of low intensity jogging.

Even lifting is an alactic/aerobic sport!

Gotta recover from that pull!

If a majority of athletes rely on the alactic and aerobic systems for energy production, why employ training methods like windsprints, suicides, and sprinting 400s, usually I might add, utilizing little to no recovery? Training the glycolitic system (which all these methods tend to do, since the activity bouts are usually longer than 10 seconds with inadequate recovery) actually hurts these athletes. Without a well-developed aerobic system, the athlete has no choice but to dip into the glycolitic system for energy production over repeated bouts of activity, and as demonstrated, the glycolitic system is limited because of the build up of by-products. Fatigue and decreased power output are the only options at this point. Not good.

Since this month"s articles are dedicated to training our overhead athletes, conveniently are mostly power athletes: volleyball, baseball, softball (with the exception of swimmers, athletes, sorry. Though the information STILL applies to you since the aerobic component of your sport is pretty high!) this is a game-changer when it comes to training.

Remember the PCr from up top? The essential ingredient to a high-capacity alactic system? Guess what replenishes PCr the best during the recovery periods... the aerobic system. Not only does the aerobic system contribute ATPs, it indirectly supplies ATP by helping out the alactic system by providing it the substrate (PCr) it needs to function. Power athletes NEED a solid aerobic base in order to perform at a high-intensity level without fatiguing before the end of the game/match.

Whoa, now, Kelsey, it sounds like you"re advocating long-distance running for power athletes. No, I"m not. Let"s be clear, a jog now and then won"t hurt (especially if it"s a REEEEALLLY nice day) but it should NOT, I repeat NOT, be the main focus of aerobic training. This especially applies to athletes that already stress their joints repeatedly during their sports. At SAPT, we help build the aerobic base, then back off to a maintenance level while focusing on the power/strength component of athletic preparation for our high school athletes. I wrote about the benefits of training sprint work here.

To build the aerobic foundation, at SAPT we like to throw in cardiac out put circuits as a joint-friendly conditioning for our baseball and volleyball athletes. Since this post is insanely long already and Steve did a spectacular job of explaining and providing samples of cardiac output circuits, I shall direct you here. The biggest take away is this little gem:

Perform the following in circuit fashion, keeping your heart rate roughly in the 120-150bpm range. Many people like to get way too crazy with these and push their heart rates through the roof (due to all the rage of high intensity training). Resist this urge, and take a moment to rest if your heart rate shoots above the desired range.

That keeps the athlete OUT of the glycolitic system"s domain and in the alactic (the exercises) and aerobic (rest in between). Ladders are another great way to train your aerobic system without stressing the joints too much and build strength.

Another option is High-Intensity Continuous Training, or HICT. Once again, my amazing other half has a post on it (video included! Bonus!) here. AND here should HICT tickle your fancy.

Am I saying that you should never run repeated sprints? No, especially if you"re a track athlete, but for the power athletes (including weight lifters!), maintaining a solid aerobic system while training strength will produce ideal effects.

Main Points to Remember:

- If you"re a power athlete, the bulk of your conditioning work should focus on building the aerobic system through cardiac output circuits, ladders, or sprints/hill sprints (with full, adequate rest). A little goes a long way, so don"t go crazy and sacrifice your strength for your aerobic training. Once the foundation is laid, one or two training sessions a week (max!) should be dedicated to training the aerobic system (especially if the sports season is in play, in that case, athletics will take care of most of it).

- The glycolitic system is not evil, and still needs to be respected, however, training modalities that rely on the glycolitic system (repeated sprints/exercises with little to no rest) are not as useful to power athletes a) do not mimic most athletic energy demands, b) cause fatigue faster (thus masking true fitness or strength) and c) due to fatigue during the training session, injuries are more likely.

- It"s still all about strength!

5 Tips for the Vertical Jump

As mentioned a bunch of times by now, our theme for this month on the blog is Training for Overhead Athletes. The holy grail of performance indicators for volleyball players is, without doubt, the VERTICAL JUMP and with good reason, the sport is won or lost in the air, so an athlete will clearly have the advantage the longer they can stay in the air to execute their portion of the play. Stevo did a great job talking about the pros and cons of the vertical jump as a test itself back in January 2012. You should check it out.

Now, if you read that post, you will clearly understand the limits of the test, but you may still be wondering "Okay, okay, Stevo... I get it. But can you PLEASE give me some tips on how to jump higher. I promise I won't vert test every day, nor will I ever allow my knees to cave!" Okay, since you've promised not to break the golden rules, I'll go ahead and give you my top 5 for improving your vertical jump. Please note, they are in order of basic to advanced:

1. Get Stronger - you're entire body needs to be stronger to jump higher, but obviously some heavy emphasis on the lower body is required. And, NO, it's NOT your calf training routine that will make the difference. Think hips and hamstrings. You can pretty much read any other post on this site to learn how to do that.
2. Try - yes, I'm throwing this out there: to jump higher, you must commit to doing so and that involves actually trying to achieve #1. Focus on it, embrace it, and it will happen.
3. Practice Jumping Variations - Not just vertical jumping, but jumping in all planes of motion with as many variances as you can think of. And, for the love of your joints, please don't execute these with poor form and at 100% intensity/effort. You must be smart and your body will get much more from refining and perfecting technique than from being a hard-headed fool.
4. Short Sprints - running is a plyometric activity, so add in some very short, high-intensity sprints.
5. Consider Re-Working your Genetics - this is the "advanced" tip... what do I mean? At some point, you may need to acknowledge that your vertical jump dreams may not be achieved in 12-weeks and sadly (believe me, I know from personal experience) there's no amount of training that will fix the genes you were dealt. Once you realize it will be a tough road, go ahead and start back at #1.

Shoulder Range of Motion for the Overhead Athlete

Okay. So today’s post is on the shoulder and range of motion needed for the overhead athlete. Things may get a little hairy, as I’m about to nerd out like a 90’s kid on some old Pokemon cards; the path ahead may become science-y and there may be instances where you say, “I think he just made that joint up…” but trust me, it’s there and it’s important! The shoulder girdle is a very complicated series of joints fixed upon the thoracic spine. Many factors actually play into shoulder health that are often overlooked and unaddressed within traditional "injury prevention" routines. I will go over those factors to help promote a more thorough and global understanding on how the shoulder is affected by specific movements and adaptations of overhead sports.

Most people view the shoulder as just the glenohumeral joint, this is where your humerus (upper arm bone) sits inside the glenoid (socket, on the side of the scapula). But many times they forget that the scapula glides around the ribs and is suspended by several muscles to the thoracic spine. It is also attached to the clavicle at the Acromioclavicular joint; the clavicle is attached to the sternum by the Sternoclavicular joint. Of course the sternum is attached to the ribcage which is also suspended by the, drum roll please, thoracic spine. The thoracic spine is comprised of 12 vertebrae and is supposed to be the more mobile part of the spine. All of this comes into play when assessing shoulder issues and creating preventative maintenance.

First let’s start with the obvious, the glenouhumeral joint. This is an important area because it is where most of the mobility of the shoulder is orchestrated.  The scapula changes its angle to help add mobility, but the glenohumeral joint, the actual ball and socket of the shoulder, is the most mobile joint in the entire body. This mobility can be altered, especially in overhead sports. The shoulder girdle will undergo soft tissue and bony adaptations due to the high velocity, extreme movements imposed on it; we generally see the result as having more external rotation and less internal rotation in the throwing shoulder. This phenomenon is known as Retroversion. This is a somewhat needed adaptation in overhead athletes. But if there is an asymmetry in total range of rotational motion between shoulders, that is known as Glenohumeral Internal Rotation Defecit(GIRD). This is not a needed adaptation.

It's theorized that a healthy, "perfect" shoulder should have 180 degrees of total rotation (90 degree external rotation + 90 degrees internal rotation). Someone with Retroversion typically loses some internal rotation on the dominant arm and gain extra external rotation. However, they will not always have the total 180 degrees of rotation due to the tightening of the tissues or bony adaptations. This is not a huge issue, unless Retroversion on the dominant arm becomes so bad it causes GIRD. GIRD early in an athlete’s career has been associated with Impingement Syndrome and Labral issues.

Traditional prehab approaches for overhead athletes seem to focus on the internal and external rotation of the humerus in the glenohumeral joint. It's pretty well known that the muscles of the rotator cuff undergo the most stress in the deceleration phase of the pitch. These muscles are forced to slow that arm down over and over again and tighten as up as a result. This is an important aspect to address, but when a pitcher throws a pitch, or a volleyball player spikes a ball, is it only that joint that comes into play? No! It’s a series of joint movements that ride and feed off of each other to translate into the action that the athlete needs to accomplish. So for that reason, we should not assume that when we find a case of GIRD, that it’s only an issue of the rotator cuff needing the proper stretching/strengthening. The rotator cuff does need extra treatment, but we can't pretend that that is the only factor needing to be addressed.

Having excessive external rotation has always been a usual thing among most overhead athletes. In fact, it's needed to add speed to a pitch or spike. However, we really can't say how much external rotation is needed for performance versus how much is too much and will increase the likelihood of injury. Even researchers haven’t been able to truly establish an, “acceptable” range of motion for glenohumeral rotation in baseball players or any other overhead athlete. I hypothesize this is because you can't try to quantify the effects of a total body movement on a single joint. When you watch a pitcher throw, you see some borderline exorcism-like external rotation occur in that shoulder. Immediately you can see that that repeated movement is going to cause an adaptation in the shoulder girdle to allow a crap ton of external rotation. But, is all external rotation created equal? What if the pitcher has poor thoracic extension, giving him a hunched posture? Or sub-par upward scapular rotation?  Would it not then cause a compensation further down the chain of movement? That arm would need to cock back for the throw, but the thoracic spine wouldn't extend and the scapula wouldn't upwardly rotate properly. It would require even more movement out of the glenohumeral joint through external rotation, causing the glenohumeral joint to lose congruency between the ball and socket. This would mean that his shoulder or even elbow, would burn out much faster than the other team’s pitcher who has been training as SAPT.

Our first job as Strength and Conditioning Professionals is to create a program that will essentially "bullet proof" the athlete from the demands of their sport and give them the strength and power to excel. That pitcher with the exorcism arm isn’t going to stop playing baseball, and continuing to throw through an entire season has shown to increase external rotation. It’s hard to say at what point it will become an issue since, again, there is no established norm. But from common sense we know that too much of anything can be a bad thing. So giving him drills to increase his internal rotation should help. Yet, I think addressing his global movement restrictions to ensure he is not compensating through even more external rotation in his throw will help too. Put them together with some scapular stabilization and eccentric external rotation drills and you’ve got a pretty effective prehab program.

Now I’m sure all the volleyball and tennis players are sitting patiently, waiting for their sport's turn. These concepts apply to all sports. If your thoracic spine is locked up and you slouch in your posture, it’s going to affect your entire, global, shoulder movement when you serve that ball. All overhead sports require thoracic extension, flexion and rotation as well as scapular upward rotation. Without it, the rotator cuff is going to take a larger brunt of the work. So when GIRD shows its ugly face, don't drop all the blame on your rotator cuff, it may not be the only root cause. If you have lost mobility in one area, it will be reciprocated elsewhere. Never look solely at the one joint in question, look at the movement.

Should Baseball Players Olympic Lift? 5 Reasons Why Ours Don't

The snatch and the clean and jerk are amongst the most impressive feats a human being can perform.  These two events are so highly regarded that every four years countries from all over the world showcase their best lifters to compete for national pride in the Olympic games. Many of us have seen it on TV or YouTube: An athlete grabs a heavy barbell that's placed motionless on the ground, then creates enough tension throughout their body to break inertia and throw the barbell overhead with inhuman ease, speed, and fluidity.  This is a breathtaking display of the perfect blend of mobility, explosiveness, technique, and overall stability.

These “O-lifters,” when compared to athletes of other sports, are often associated with having increased numbers of type II muscle fibers, greater ability to produce power, superior vertical jumping ability, and greater levels of hypertrophy.

One may thus conclude that practicing these movements may lead to adaptations towards becoming a bigger, stronger, faster, more powerful athlete… and one would be correct!  Who wouldn’t want that?

Baseball is one of the most “power-based” sports around, due to the stop-and-go nature of the game.  Power is a key component in a successful baseball player, and each year SAPT excels at augmenting our baseball players ability to harness and produce power during their hitting, sprinting, and throwing.

Are the Olympic lifts a phenomenal tool to develop power and explosiveness? Absolutely. Is a strength coach wise to employ them with many of his or her athletes? Of course.

However, ask any of our baseball beasts how often they snatch, clean, or jerk during a training cycle at SAPT and you will probably find that the range of frequency falls between “never” and “0 times a week.”

Why? Well, here are 5 reasons why SAPT baseball players don't Olympic lift:

1. Plane-Specific Transference of Training Qualities

(Note: In general, movement is categorized into three different planes: sagittal, frontal, and transverse. Sagittal plane movement involves anything going front-to-back, without any involved rotation or leaning side to side. So, things like lunges, squats, sit-ups, deadlifts, sprints, box jumping, and Olympic lifts, all occur in the sagittal plane. Frontal plane movement examples include side lunges, side shuffles, and side raises. Transverse plane movement involves anything with a rotation component; a perfect example of this is the stroke Obi Wan used with his lightsaber to kill Darth Maul.)

To an extent, strength and power development is very specific to the plane of motion in which it is trained.  Sure, there will be a bit of carryover from one plane to another when it comes to transference of athletic qualities, but to truly maximize potential in a given plane, you need to train that plane, specifically!

Guess which planes of motion a baseball player remains in to hit, throw, and/or pitch? The frontal and transverse planes.

Now, guess what plane of motion the Olympic lifts exclusively take place in? The sagittal plane.

So, for the baseball athlete, how can they train outside of the sagittal plane in order to best enhance power production in the frontal and transverse planes? Which exercises will provide them the most bang for their buck, be time efficient, and have the most carryover to their sport?

It is here I argue that the answer doesn't lie with the Olympic lifts, but in med ball work and lateral jumping variations. These become an enormous asset to the baseball player; they are fun (few things beat throwing a medicine ball into a wall as hard as you can), fairly easy to learn, allow the athlete to demonstrate and forge power output in a concerted manner, and they're downright effective!

Here are just a few of the med ball variations and lateral jumps we use at SAPT. (We have over 30 variations in each category to cycle through.)

MB Cross-Behind Shotput

MB Cross-Behind Shotput w/Partner Pass

MB Heiden to Side Scoop Throw

MB Cyclone Overhead Throw to Wall

MB Hop-Back Side Throw

In-Place Heiden with Stick Landing

Single-leg Depth Drop to Heiden with Stick Landing

The options are virtually limitless.

Assuming they are already proficient in the sagittal plane - as one DOES need to learn to master that plane before attempting to train frontal and transverse, similar how one should learn to add and subtract before performing algebra - roughly 80-90% of the "power" development we utilize with our baseball guys takes place outside of the sagittal plane. The remaining 10-20% we will fill by having them perform sagittal-based movements such as KB swings, broad jumps, and speed deadlifts and speed squats.

2. Faulty Movement Patterns Overhead

Watch the majority of people put their arms overhead, and, if you know what you're looking for, you'll often find nothing short of a multiplicity of grody compensation patterns taking place along the entire kinetic chain. Yes, even in overhead athletes.

Tony Gentilcore has said that the majority of trainees must "earn the right" to press overhead, and I continue to nod my head in agreement with him. Watch someone press a bar overhead (or snatch or jerk it, as one would during an O-lift), and, using a classification system I learned in my college biomechanics class: their mechanics lie somewhere between poop and utter poop.

I hope it goes without saying that it'd be far from prudent to have these folks continually throw a loaded bar overhead at high speeds. However, the strength coach can't freak out about ALL overhead movements for the baseball player, as their sport does, in fact (get ready to have your mind blown....), necessitate them going overhead.

While we can certainly improve a baseball player's overhead mechanics by having them perform core stabilization drills, thoracic spine mobilizations, shoulder "corrective" drills, and improving lat length, there's still something to be said for doing a few, shoulder-friendly, loaded overhead activities to complement the corrective drills and give the athlete a chance to further ingrain solid overhead mechanics.

One of our favorites is the landmine press, as the neutral grip position opens up the subacromial space - giving the rotator cuff tendons more room to "breathe" - and the natural arc of the press grooves some nice scapular upward rotation. Not to mention, the core musculature has to work like crazy to keep the pelvis and ribcage in a stable position. I've yet to work with anyone - including myself, and I have a REALLY beat up shoulder - who has shoulder pain while landmine pressing.

Another option is to use the single-arm bottoms-up KB press, as many of the benefits of the landmine press still apply (scapular upward rotation, core stabilization, etc.) yet you get to train through an even greater degree of humeral elevation (flexion+abduction), and also receive some nice "reflexive" firing of the rotator cuff due to the kettlebell wanting to shake back and forth in your hand.

Both of the above exercises can be performed half-kneeling, tall-kneeling, standing in parallel stance, or standing in a staggered stance.

There are a host of other options as well, but the point is there are much less "dummy proof" methods of training the overhead position without resorting to a jerk or snatch. (Even though the O-lifts do look way cooler.)

3. Wrist and Elbow Concerns

To say the success of a baseball player's career is at least partly contingent upon the health of his wrist and elbow is akin to saying that Superman derives his power by absorbing and metabolizing solar energy from the Earth's energy; both are platitudes.

As Dan John aptly put it, the "Rule #1" a strength coach needs to live and breathe by is Do No Harm! 

To rely on Olympic lifts as the primary tool for developing the baseball athlete would make about as much as much sense crossing the the Atlantic Ocean in a one-man canoe. Or using a canoe of any size, for that matter. Could it be done? Sure. But do there exist other ways to accomplish the same goal, with a much lower risk of something undesired occurring in the process? You bet.

Given that, day in and day out, baseball players' wrists and elbows already take a wicked beating from pitching, throwing, and hitting, why compound the issue by performing lifts that stress those same bodily structures more than perhaps any other lift? Especially given that, as you saw earlier in this article, there exists a host of other training modalities one can employ to enhance athletic power.

Regarding the power and hang clean, most baseball players have a hard enough time even being able to comfortably get into the clean position for front squatting, without the mere position causing their wrists or forearms to scream, so why we would choose to add velocity and then CATCH in that position is beyond me. And, if we're discussing the snatch: the top, catch position places considerable levels of strain on the UCLs (ulnar collateral ligaments) of both elbows; if you follow professional baseball to any capacity, then you for sure know how important the UCL is to a baseball player. Tommy John Surgery, anyone?

One last point I'll add is that not only do you have the wrists and elbows taking a beating during cleans, but the AC (acromioclavicular) joint, as well, due to that poor fellow living smack dab in the middle of the barbell's landing zone. The AC joint is located just inside of the index fingers during the catch phase of a clean, and while professional Olympic lifters often "flow" into the catch phase with minimal impact, it's far from uncommon to find high school and college baseball guys literally slamming the bar onto their shoulder during the catch, as it can take years to make it a fluid transition.

Now, just because baseball players overuse their elbows and wrists, and we don't recommend the inclusion of cleans and snatches in their programming, does this mean they are to be babied, forever relegated to pilates as the most intense training they're "allowed" to perform? Don't be silly!

As demonstrated earlier, we use the countless other methods at our disposal for their power training, and then have them perform plenty of heavy lifting to develop strength, structural integrity, and throwing speed.

4. Sagittal Plane Dominance           

A typical training program for our baseball guys are rich with lifts such as squat variations, deadlift variations, lunges, glute bridges, step-ups, and the list goes on. Notice a pattern?  These are all movements that occur in the sagittal plane.  (We can argue about frontal and transverse stability components in the single leg exercises, valid points indeed... but let's save that for another day.)

The point is, although we dip into the other planes of motion, the majority of the work is sagittal.  Throwing in Olympic lifting variations just adds to the volume of sagittal plane work and takes time away from working the other planes of motion.

To build a properly balanced athlete, we have to save some room in the program for some work in the frontal and transverse planes which can include tons of variations of: lateral step-downs and step-ups, lateral lunges, single arm farmer’s walks, anti-rotation/pallof presses, prowler side-drags, jumping, hopping, and, as exhibited earlier, medicine ball drills.

5. Time

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I am going to have to bring up the token argument against Olympic lifting: It takes too long to learn.

When it comes to training competitive athletes, time is the major limiting factor.  With most of our baseball guys, who typically have 3-5 months of off-season training with us, we opt for a program consisting of exercises that don’t require such a significance prerequisite time-commitment for the learning process.  The price in time we must pay to proficiently learn and perform the snatch, clean, jerk, and their variations safely and effectively (as it doesn't do them any good to perform the lifts poorly) is often more costly than we care for.  Instead we use the modalities shown above in point #1, for supreme power development.

Another critical focal point we attend to for baseball power development is sprint work.  We spend a significant amount of time working on our athlete's sprint technique, stride length/frequency, change of direction speed and starting speed.

With such limited time (and not to mention recovery capacities; many of these guys are still in leagues or camps throughout the off-season) it is simply impractical to throw in the O-lifts into the mix.

If a baseball player never learns to snatch during his athletic career, does it really matter?  I’d be more concerned with his on-base percentage, runs, stolen bases, strikeouts, consistency, and health.

"Hello Sir, why do you hate lunges?"

Okay, I have to admit something - I receive the Parillo Performance Press magazine in the mail. I ordered from the company years ago and am seemingly on their mailing list for life. If you've seen this publication before, you'll no doubt have noticed it can be a little light on the science backing their articles and recommendations. I'm not saying the advice is bad for physique athletes, I'm not qualified to say that, I'm just pointing out it's a bit light on science... that's all. Over the weekend I got a new magazine in the mail - for August - well, I hadn't actually looked at one in a while, so I flipped through it. I landed on the Q&A section with Iron Vic. I don't know who this is... if it's someone I should know, please feel free to enlighten me in the comments section.

One of the questions was asking why Iron Vic hates lunges. I just thought the answer was too good not to post (my highlighted points are below if you don't want to read the whole thing... but seriously, read it):

The high... okay, low... points in this for me are:

• The idea that the lunge is a "strange stupid exercise" - as if to suggest a lunge is some exotic variance or something more useful.
• That the lunge was "devised by Olympic weightlifters." Hmm, interesting... I sort of think of it as a basic movement pattern that all humans go through naturally in any number of a variety of situations for both daily life and sport.
• I truly appreciate his italicized emphasis on how if a lunge is done correctly "the back knee touches the floor on each rep." as if to say with that extra emphasis "can you even imagine going all the way down?"
• More great quotes: "lunges are worthless"
• "I am no fan of this pathetic exercise"
• "The lunge, on the worthless exercise scale..."
• "Ditch the lunge."

Wow. Just wow.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. For whatever it's worth, Parillo products are actually pretty good.