Posts Tagged ‘strength training’

Strength Training for Softball

Posted: October 14, 2013 in Softball, Training
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The Problem

There’s really no way to sugarcoat this, so I’m just going to go ahead and say it:  many strength and conditioning programs for girls aren’t very good. And this is a shame because it prevents many young women from fully realizing their athletic potential, potentially costing them college scholarships. For whatever reason, the majority of training programs for young women seems to be more oriented towards traditional “speed and agility” work, with less of an emphasis placed on overall strength and power training. So basically, lots of cones and ladders and TRX, and not a lot of squats and deadlifts. This is a mistake.

5 pound bicep curls? On a Swiss ball? Stop it.

5 pound bicep curls? On a Swiss ball? Stop it.

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New Stack Article: 7 Must-Do Exercises for Baseball Players

Posted: May 30, 2013 in Baseball, Training
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Here’s another of my articles that was published to Stack today:

http://www.stack.com/2013/05/29/baseball-lifts/

baseball fielder

Training With Minimal (Or No) Equipment

Posted: May 29, 2013 in Lift Technique, Training
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One problem that we ran into a lot last offseason at Next Level Sports Performance was that we had a lot of athletes in the gym, and not enough equipment for everybody to use. This year, thankfully, we’ll be expanding and buying more equipment/plates/dumbbells, so this hopefully won’t be an issue anymore. However, last year we had to do a lot of improvising due to limited equipment. For starters, our dumbbells only went up to 50 pounds, and we only had 2 of each. We had four 45-lb plates, and 2 each of 35s, 25s, 10s, 5s, and 2.5s. With up to 6 athletes in the gym at a time, this quickly became a problem.

The majority of the time I spent writing programs was dedicated to figuring out how to best utilize our resources, while making sure everyone got the work that they needed. I’d say out of every hour I spent programming, 40 minutes of it was dedicated to figuring out creative ways to make use of what we had, without shortchanging anybody.

If you’re ever in a situation where you don’t have access to the gym equipment you normally use, you can use these methods to still get a good workout in. Or, if you’re looking to add some variety to your workouts, you can substitute these exercises into your current program.

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How to Get a Bigger Butt and Be Better at Sports

Posted: April 8, 2013 in Training
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“Posterior chain” training is getting a lot of hype these days, and for good reason. Building a strong, powerful posterior chain will improve athletic ability dramatically by allowing you to run faster, jump higher, throw harder and hit farther.

There are other ways to hit baseballs farther, but I don't condone some of them.

There are other ways to hit baseballs farther, but I don’t condone some of them.

What is the posterior chain?

Simply put, it’s the muscles located on the back (posterior) of your body. When talking about sports performance, it typically refers to the lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. (more…)