Lifting For Baseball

I always hear pitchers wondering if traditional lifting is alright for them and if stuff like bench pressing will hurt their shoulders. With a pitcher he relies on the health of his arm and without it, he has nothing. So I’m going to shed some light on getting bigger and stronger as a pitcher, and keeping your body healthy while doing it. (Position players should also read, it will still help) Tim Collins, who made his big league debut at the beginning of the 2011 season at just 21 years of age with the Kansas City Royals as a pitcher is exactly the kind of guy you want to look up to while training. He went from 5’5” 131 pound high school senior to now 5’7” 171 pound major league pitcher. He went from a fastball in the low 80’s to one in the low 90’s currently. He worked hard with his strength coach Eric Cressey and it paid off. Now what he did was a lot of basic strength training at first consisting of deadlifts, lunges, pull-ups and chin-ups, rows, pushups, some squats, and dumbbell chest presses. Cressey doesn’t let him do any barbell presses, which I agree from experience put far more stress on your shoulders than dumbbell presses, and Cressey prefers unilateral (working one at a time) movements for the legs. So lunges are much more effective than squats, as they put less stress on your spine/lower back. From my personal knowledge of lifting, closed chain exercises (performed where the hand (for arm movement) or foot (for leg movement) is fixed and cannot move) are much better for your joints, and Open chain exercises (When your hands or feet are able to move) are much more strenuous on the joints. Not to mention the fact that closed chain movements work more muscles. So don’t worry about being the best bench press in the gym, worry about getting into the right shape and condition. Collins needed to add this 40 pounds to his frame to handle the rigors of a long baseball season, it keeps him healthy and his body from breaking down and becoming injured. However, this is muscle he gained, adding muscle even for pitchers can be a good thing, it is necessary to be strong enough and well-conditioned enough to stay healthy for a full season. As far as arm speed I also have learned that your arm will only travel as fast as it can safely slow it back down, so to increase velocity on your throws, strengthening the muscles that slow your arm down will help a lot. I personally like to use resistance bands and simulate throwing, but have it so the resistance band is trying to pull me through my motion, and I must resist, and only let it pull my arm forward very slowly. Great exercises for pitchers, and baseball players in general (Everyone can use to stay healthy) are lunges, sprints, one leg piston squats (with body weight or dumbbells) and hill runs, for the legs. For the upper body, I would do some dumbbell presses for the chest, especially incline presses along with pushups, I would definitely focus on pull-ups and chin-ups for the back along with rows. Also some curls of any kind (I’m a big fan of zottman curls) and some triceps work (I like dips) should be thrown in. Make sure you do some cardio with the lifting and plyometrics are always good to add explosiveness. Core work is always good (although your core works no matter what you do) but to do some leg lifts, which are most effective ab exercise, is ok. But to avoid back pain that often comes with it, decompress your spine with back bridges, this will undo the compressing that bending over while doing any ab exercise does. Also strengthen the rotator cuff with some resistance band movements; I posted a video the rotator cuff moves below. Train hard and train safe.

The Pen

The bullpen of a baseball team is fascinating to me. It’s always a deadline need for contending teams, and it seems like a cool place to spend your time. Have you ever seen videos of these guys messing around, you spend all game every game with these guys with nothing to do but wait for your name to be called. A lot of times there isn’t a great view of the game, so you have to amuse yourself somehow. I feel like in the dugout goofing off should be kept to a minimum, but the bullpen is like its own world with its own rules, I mean they really have nothing to do until mid-way through the game when they might warm up. First of all, I believe the bullpen is always a need at the deadline for contenders because for one, it is a cheap thing to acquire (relatively speaking). Starting pitching as well as any position players with the ability to start for a contending team are going to be much more expensive because they play a lot more, and have more value to teams. Bullpen help is sort of a cheap way to make your team better. Also I feel there is a lack of depth in relief arms, the better pitchers are starters, or high leverage situation guys out of the bullpens, like closers. Middle relief is filled with guys who can pitch, but a lot of those guys are mediocre and can falter at any time leaving them as undesirable options. Financial commitments to these players aren’t too high, and they are a dime a dozen, so getting a guy who is a step above the rest is going to really help your team in the middle innings. Bullpens seem to change an awful lot, and that’s the way baseball works. Adapt of die I guess. Improve the weak links or lose in this case. Now to the fun stuff. Watching a lot of Red Sox games, I’ve seen the guys in the bullpen making music with assorted items they can find in the bullpen. Seems fun, but I’ve posted a couple videos of the “pen” having a good old time.

Special Delivery: From Start To Finish

So there’s a lot of noise about the end of year awards in the MLB. One that I particularly like is the “Delivery Man of the Year Award.” Now who delivered this year, 2011 winner Jose Valverde takes home the award. This is an award voted on by the fans, but that definitely does not lessen the award at all in my eyes. Valverde had a fantastic season and didn’t get a lot of attention for it, which is why I really like this award, showing some love for the guys who shut it down from the pen. Valverde lead the AL with 49 saves, impressive! More impressive, 0, as in ZERO, blown saves. He my friends shut it down. He helped Detroit get into the playoffs, had a 2.24 ERA and had almost a strikeout per inning. He was well deserving, and I congratulate him for a great season. While I’m on the topic of post season awards, I’d like to enter one argument that seems to be had quite often when a guy like Valverde’s teammate Justin Verlander has a season like 2011. One for the ages that’s for sure, taking home the pitching Triple Crown in the AL, throwing a no-no, and almost getting a second one. He dominated the 2011 season simple as that, and was a unanimous Cy Young winner, but should a pitcher ever win MVP? I used to be opposed to the idea, but in thinking, I believe they should be able too. It’s not like he’d be stealing a position players award, they have silver sluggers and gold gloves, and each position gets their own. So if you field the best or hit the best for your position you get an award. Pitchers as a whole have to fight for the gold glove and Cy Young Award, so there are far less awards to go around, but let me not digress. I think the MVP should go to the player, any player, who has shown the most value that season. If I had to vote for MVP I would vote Matt Kemp in the NL hands down best player this year in the National League. AL is tougher, but I’d have Miguel Cabrera edging out Jacoby Ellsbury, edging out Jose Bautista and I would have Verlander 4^th, but this is definitely a tough call. I really would never even want a vote for MVP. It’s so tough to decide who is the best in a game with so many aspects to it. I will say pitchers should be considered, but it won’t be often they win as it’s tough to be more valuable than a guy who plays in roughly 5 times as many games as you. Maybe if they go back to 4 man rotations pitchers will have a realistic shot at competing for MVP. Once again, congrats to Valverde, and all the rest of the 2011 award recipients.