Pre-Season Preparation

Happy New Year!

Welcome back to Baseball Strength Coaching.com’s blog. We hope the New Year will bring new opportunities and new success to everyone. As the New Year starts it is very important that you as a player or a coach puts down what you want to accomplish for the year. A little goal setting never hurt anyone. It allows you to refocus and make sure you start the year out right. What’s nice about Baseball is that the season is about ready to begin so many of the goals will be seen fairly early, and so is very rewarding. I don’t want to get too caught up in the goals and vision of the year; I just want to make a quick reminder to do it.

What I want to get into is getting the body prepared for the up coming season. Every coach and player starts to think about conditioning before the season, and many times they try to get prepared to late in our minds. During tryouts and early pre season is not the time to have your most intense conditioning. Your main goal should be looking at talent or displaying your talent the best way possible. As a coach I know that many of you have workouts before the official season starts and this should be the time to prepare the players with heavy conditioning. They should be prepared to play (or conditioned) before the tryouts start. You will continue to condition through out the season but the main foundation should be laid before the tryouts start. I will give examples later in the blog. As for players if your coach is not getting you a great foundation it is your responsibility to be prepared. You want to step on the field ready to go and if heavy conditioning is part of tryouts then you are one step ahead. What this means is that you are not as sore and fatigued meaning you can put your best foot forward during the tryouts. You will have more fun and perform at your best.

Let me give you some examples of things you need to be doing before tryouts start.

You must lay the foundation:

In conditioning that usually means some long distance type running, but we are going to be really specific for baseball. We believe at this time there is no need to go over 3 miles in a workout. Baseball is a game of short bursts no matter what position you look at. Intensity is king. If you are out jogging you need to push the pace and that is why there is no need to go over 3 miles. Try to keep your miles around 7 minutes or less. That should be your goal. So if you go out for the 3 miles try to keep it around 21-25 minutes. This is also the time to include you longer sprint type workouts, 800’s, 400’s, 200’s. Remember intensity is king; you must push yourself at all times. I have included a basic week of workouts.

Week 1:
-Monday: 1.5 mile jog (shoot for 7 min mile)

-Tuesday: 2x 800’s
2x 400’s
2x 200’s

-Weds: 1.5 mile jog

-Thursday: 2x 800’s
2x 400’s
2x 200’s

-Friday: 1.5 mile jog

Week 2:
-Monday: 2 mile jog (shoot for 7 min mile)

-Tuesday: 3x 800’s
3x 400’s
3x 200’s

-Weds: 2 mile jog

-Thursday: 3x 800’s
3x 400’s
3x 200’s

-Friday: 2 mile jog

Hopefully you can see how the progression goes, this will continue for 4 weeks. After the 4th week the program changes to increase the sprinting, to include shorter and faster sprints. I hope this helps get everyone off on the right foot. Remember to set those goals and go get them this year

Brian Niswender, MA, CSCS
Warrior Sports Training
Baseballstrengthcoaching.com