Another baseball season is underway and, once again, the injuries are piling up. On this week’s GAINcast we speculate about what might be causing the injuries, how training is related to injuries, and where using heavy and light implements can go right or wrong.
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Baseball and the throwing events have a lot in common: in both sports you are trying to generate rotational power to move an implement fast. When it comes to training, there a lot of parallels as well. Zach Dechant is the strength coach for one of the top collegiate baseball programs. He joins this week’s podcast to discuss how he focuses on specific strength in training, including player profiling, exercise design, and many aspects of medicine ball training.
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I received word on Saturday that Chet Diemidio, a great friend and coach had passed way. Fortunately, I was able to speak to him last Wednesday. I called him from Zurich Switzerland because I got word, he did not have many days left. His last words to me were “I love you.” Chet was an amazing man. He started coaching with the White Sox the same year I did in 1987 after a career as a Philadelphia policeman. He continued to coach up to four years ago when he was well into his eighties. Chet would get the complex between 4:30 and 5:00 am every morning to workout. He had a strict routine that he followed accompanied by the songs of Frank Sinatra played on a cassette tape recorder. Read more
Baseball has become a faster and more athletic game recently, in large part due to advances in training. Ron Wolforth set up the Texas Baseball Ranch 16 years ago and has been pumping out elite pitchers ever since. The key isn’t in their program, but in the process that helps assess and find the performance pathway for each athlete. On this week’s GAINcast he joins us to discuss his approach to player assessment, training, and specific methodologies. Read more
Microdosing has become a buzz word over the last year in training circles, but it isn’t a new concept. Small but frequent units of training can add up to provide significant value to athletic development. On this episode of the GAINcast we discuss the concept of microdosing, how it looks like in practice, and how to progress microdosing over the season. Read more
Everyone talks about staying in the moment, but few people say how easy it is to fall out of it. Recently the HMMR Podcast discussed how athletes can avoid distractions in training. Coaches can face even more distractions and, as they are not playing the game, it can be even harder to stay present. On this episode of the GAINcast we look at how coaches can help stay present. Read more
Springtime means baseball and on this episode we look specifically at the conditioning needs of pitchers. Pitching is an extremely fast and explosive movement that has unique conditioning demands, yet most conditioning programs are based on tradition rather than being optimized to the needs of the players. On this episode of the podcast Vern Gambetta shares best practices developed while working with top club in Major League Baseball. Read more
Baseball is a simple game; you compete against another team to see who can get the most players around a diamond-shaped playing surface. This means that your team really has two objectives. The first is to get players around the diamond; this means not getting out, either through strikes or being caught. The second is to stop the other team from getting players round the diamond; this means pitching at them well enough so that they can’t hit the ball sufficiently to score a run. To aid these tasks, baseball has traditionally had a number of statistics it can call upon, including batting average (the number of hits you get for each “at-bats”, or hitting attempt), runs scored, and runs allowed. Within the later, you get some pitching statistics, including pitching speed. Common wisdom has it that the faster you pitch, the less time the batter has to figure out where the ball is going to go, and so the less chance he has of hitting it. Read more
Baseball is a sport that oscillates between tradition and modern analytics. Coaches like Paul Davis of the St. Louis Cardinals try to find a balance in the middle. As a developmental pitching coordinator and coach he has to understand the science of movement and the art of coaching. On this episode Davis joins us to walk through his approach to developing pitchers as athletes. Read more
What type of tools does it require to hurl a ball 100 miles per hour? Is throwing a baseball like throwing a javelin? And what type of training does it take? Kyle Boddy, president and founder of Driveline Baseball, joins us on the podcast this week to discuss training pitchers and what he has taken from track and field in training his athletes. Read more
