The off-season is in full swing, and now is the time to get bigger and stronger. With this being said how are you tracking your progress, how do you know you are getting better and how do you know if your doing enough, or too much?
On the strength and conditioning side of a players development keeping track of progress is pretty easy. The player records the resistance being used and how many reps and sets he completes. If the player has some experience with resistance training, the player may also utilize percentages of maxes. The maxes can be estimated or actual. Determining which to use will usually be determined by the experience the athlete posses in resistance training. A player should be proficient in an exercise before attempting to do a maximum lift. If the player keeps track of the weight being used and challenges himself everyday, he should see progress in strength every few weeks. Not every movement will increase strength but expect some to. Tracking of this progress is also very motivating, getting stronger increases a player's motivation to improve and will increase confidence in his own abilities.
The principle of tracking can also be used for conditioning purposes. Knowing how far and how long it takes to complete drills is just as important for conditioning as resistance training. Knowing these stats can keep the player on track for increasing conditioning and speed of the athlete. We all want to know how fast a player is. But we also want to know how he adapts to conditioning and how much is enough to keep him in peak form before, during, and after the season.
Keeping track of your progress for performance factors is not a new idea. Getting into a routine and making sure you record your progress is a habit that will pay off in confidence as well as increased performance. Recording even your skill sessions will help increase your performance and become more effective in practice sessions. For the last few years I have been working with many players that record everything, and when I say everything I mean everything. They record every swing with a bat, what they were working on, and how successful the session was. They record every ground ball, every throw in practice and special workout sessions. We chart this progress to increase the player’s performance; we know exactly how much work they have done each week. This allows us to increase or decrease special practice time based on the target reps and sets of specific skills. We enter each week knowing what we need to accomplish and then get it done in an organized and effective manner.
To help players and coaches, a few sample record sheets have been posted on the website. These sheets can be printed and used, or serve as a design for your own. Remember if you want to know where you are, you have to know where you have been.
www.baseballstrengthcoaching.com
Go to the Training Resources Page.
Brian Niswender MA,CSCS
Co-Founder BaseballStrengthCoaching.com
Showing posts with label motivation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motivation. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Staying In The Moment
It has been a really long baseball season. I hardly remember the first talk coach had at the beginning of the season. I do remember him writing on the board “8/25 - ??.” Those question marks are a symbol of the end of the season.
The nice thing about the beginning of the season is that most everybody has those questions marks that will end of their season. The beginning of the school year means fall baseball, inter squads that seem to never end, six a.m. workouts that make you want to throw up, and what seems to be the endless amount of drills that make you think that the spring season will never arrive.
You take a deep breath and the spring season has finally begins and everyone has a new life. Multiple outings for the bullpen pitchers, high pitch counts for the starters, catchers beaten and bruised, and position players that have legs that feel like lead.
You have put all the work in to make it to this point. The post season has arrived (and probably gone) for some of you. Those endless hours have got you to this point, because not everyone makes it to this point. Although you still have work to be done, stay in the moment. Use those positive experiences of the past (those workouts and endless scrimmages) to guide you through to a positive ending. You might be experiencing some things in the postseason that you have not been through – that’s ok. Guess what – the baseball is still round and the infield is still going to have the same dimensions. You are still going to tie on the cleats and play the game as hard as you can. So sit back for a minute and enjoy the moment. The game is the easy part - dealing with the external activities is what gets everyone.
Sorry to keep this short. My team has a practice to go to in Omaha . Wish me luck.
Chris Ham, MSA, ATC, CES
Athletic Trainer
Vanderbilt University Baseball
The nice thing about the beginning of the season is that most everybody has those questions marks that will end of their season. The beginning of the school year means fall baseball, inter squads that seem to never end, six a.m. workouts that make you want to throw up, and what seems to be the endless amount of drills that make you think that the spring season will never arrive.
You take a deep breath and the spring season has finally begins and everyone has a new life. Multiple outings for the bullpen pitchers, high pitch counts for the starters, catchers beaten and bruised, and position players that have legs that feel like lead.
You have put all the work in to make it to this point. The post season has arrived (and probably gone) for some of you. Those endless hours have got you to this point, because not everyone makes it to this point. Although you still have work to be done, stay in the moment. Use those positive experiences of the past (those workouts and endless scrimmages) to guide you through to a positive ending. You might be experiencing some things in the postseason that you have not been through – that’s ok. Guess what – the baseball is still round and the infield is still going to have the same dimensions. You are still going to tie on the cleats and play the game as hard as you can. So sit back for a minute and enjoy the moment. The game is the easy part - dealing with the external activities is what gets everyone.
Sorry to keep this short. My team has a practice to go to in Omaha . Wish me luck.
Chris Ham, MSA, ATC, CES
Athletic Trainer
Vanderbilt University Baseball
Friday, April 29, 2011
The art and science of at-bat music - Minor Leaguers give a great deal of though to their tunes
04/29/2011 10:00 AM ET
By Benjamin Hill / MiLB.com
The increasing prevalence of baseball walk-up songs -- and the public's fascination with them -- isn't difficult to understand. There are very few occupations in which one's introduction is accompanied by the swagger-inducing backbeat of a favorite tune.
"What would your walk-up song be?" has therefore become a common question amongst baseball fans, one that leads to endless thought, debate and consideration (feel free to add your own opinions in the comments section or on MiLB.com's Facebook page). And, not surprisingly, the players themselves usually approach the topic with the same amount of careful consideration.
Music is a powerful thing, after all, and the proper selection could be the difference between a warning track flyout and a game-deciding home run. You never know.
He's the man
When it comes to unique walk-up songs, it would be hard to top the annual selections of Indianapolis Indians third baseman Josh Harrison. Since his freshman year of college, the 23-year-old Pirates prospect has approached the plate while custom-written tunes blast over the stadium PA.
"Other guys might have to figure out what to walk up to, or might want something that someone else has, but I don't have to worry about that," said Harrison. "My brother does mine."
The sibling in question is older brother Shaun, an amateur rapper and producer whose most recent compositions include "I Ball" and "I'm Da Man." Harrison is alternating between the two this season in Indianapolis, with the latter a popular holdover from his 2010 campaign with the Double-A Altoona Curve.
"Looky looky look at me! Ain't I fresh as I can be? Still I prevail when they test and throw the best at me. Cuz I'm the man. I'm the man. You can tell from my stance I'm the man."
The combination of such strut-worthy lyrics with a giddily propulsive beat quickly made "I'm the Man" a Blair County Ballpark favorite as the Curve proceeded through an Eastern League championship season.
"It definitely surprised me," said Harrison of the song's popularity. "Fans were starting to ask me where it came from, and when I would tell them my brother made it, they'd be like 'Well, where can I get it?' But it's just something [Shaun] does in his free time -- he loves to make music. I've never had any teammates ask if he could make a song for them too, but you never know."
And while the insistent repetition of the words "I'm the Man" indicates a somewhat immodest approach, Harrison makes clear that the song helps to establish the proper at-bat mindset.
"There's a lot of confidence and swagger, but you have to have confidence in the way you carry yourself. Otherwise you won't make it in this game," he said. "And I'm very big on family, so to hear something that my brother wrote helps me stay in the right frame of mind. It relaxes me."
Democracy in action
Earlier this season, Altoona starting pitcher Jeff Locke walked to the plate to a team-selected Lil Jon song. He was less than thrilled with the experience.
"I'm a New Hampshire guy, I'm not familiar with rap," said Locke, a proud resident of North Conway. "I decided that if there was going to be music, it was going to be music that I wanted to hear."
So Locke came up with a thoroughly modern-day solution to his walk-up angst: he logged in to Twitter to solicit suggestions from his followers. What resulted was a deluge of recommendations, many of which were from New Hampshire friends, family and former teammates.
"I wanted a song that would mean more to me than a 'rah rah woo woo' kind of thing that gets a guy pumped up. I wanted something that would make me relaxed," he said. "And so many of my friends and family back home knew I was really into Dave Matthews Band -- for my birthday this past November I got tickets to their final show at [TD] Garden. ... I like to play the guitar as well. I'm not that good at it, but it's something I like to have fun with."
A Twitter consensus was eventually reached, and Locke's new song is a live Dave Mathews version of the iconic "All Along the Watchtower." But the work wasn't done yet. After an extensive period of focused listening and a brainstorming session with teammate Jeremy Farrell, Locke determined that the track should start precisely at the 3:48 mark. That's the snippet of music that will be heard at Blair County Ballpark this season, not only when Locke bats but also when he takes the pitcher's mound.
"A lot of starting pitchers want their walk-out music to start at the start of a song. That makes sense, they're starting pitchers," said Locke. "I'm a starting pitcher too, but if I did that there wouldn't be any music. It would just be fans yelling for the first 25 seconds."
Now that Locke has found what seems to be an ideal choice, he plans on keeping it for a long time to come.
Probably.
"It's really nice to have something that no one else has, instead of the same old country, or the same old rap," he said. "I think this is going to stick with me for a while, unless I start getting hit all over the park."
(Almost) Anything goes
Of course, walk-up music presents many opportunities for comedic ballpark moments. A prime example comes from Kevin Huisman, a veteran of Minor League front offices who in 2006 worked in the Stockton Ports control room.
"Tommy Everidge, our first-baseman, decided that he wanted the New Kids On the Block's 'The Right Stuff' as his walkup song," wrote Huisman in an email. "We were all a little surprised, but the first time we ran it, [relief pitcher] Scot Drucker made it his mission to have a good time with it. Our bullpens at Banner Island Ballpark were out behind the left field wall, with chain-link fencing allowing the fans to see in. Well, it started with Scot and one or two other guys waving their arms when the song came on. Then some of the fans caught on. "By shortly after the All-Star Break, the guys in the bullpen would be sitting on the two rows of bleachers in the bullpen, and coordinating synchronized arm waving, with the front row going one way and the back row going the other way. The fans loved it, and I think it fueled Tommy's performance that season, as well."
Drucker, a 2010 Toledo Mud Hen who will soon be suiting up for the independent Grand Prairie Air Hogs, has fond memories of those Stockton days.
"I don't know how fond the coaches and manager were of us doing that, especially if we were losing, but we generally picked the right times to do it," he recalled. "Tommy was a stocky guy, and he looked pretty funny when he ran. So me being a prankster, I would try to get the soundboard guys to play the 'Super Mario Brothers' theme song whenever he drew a walk."
Drucker often takes a similarly light-hearted approach with his own selections. In Toledo last season, he dusted off the New Kids On the Block once again and took the mound to the saccharine sounds of "Step By Step."
"Oh, yeah, I've got to make fun of myself as well," he said. "I've seen it all. Some guys want to take a comical approach, others need something that's going to get them all fired up for 10 seconds. It doesn't matter, really, as long as it's clean."
The final word
John Foreman, the Altoona Curve's Director of Creative Services, is in charge of determining if his player's requests are indeed "clean."
"Even if a clean version of a song exists, that doesn't always mean it's necessarily ballpark appropriate," said Foreman, who handles nearly every aspect of the team's walk-up requests. "If I'm able to, I'll edit out [offending] words myself, or maybe ask the player if we can start at the second verse instead of the first."
Foreman previously worked for the Class A Short-Season State College Spikes, and he notes that players at that level were far more likely to change up their choices throughout the season.
"I think that maybe, at this level, the fans are more likely to identify with a player through what song he's chosen," he said. "A lot of people in the crowd, not to mention gameday employees, know who's coming up before they even hear a guy's name. As soon as they hear the song, they know exactly who it is."
And as for what those songs might be, it really depends on the player's background.
"You definitely see more rap and hip-hop than anything else, but the guys from Texas are more likely to choose country, and the guys from Latin America are going to go with Latin music," said Foreman.
What it all adds up to is an increasingly entrenched part of the ballpark experience, one that Drucker summarized thusly.
"Knowing a song is coming can help you focus, and some guys do think it gives them a little something extra," he said. "It's a nice routine to have, as long as you don't go too crazy with it, and something that the fans can relate to."
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.
By Benjamin Hill / MiLB.com
The increasing prevalence of baseball walk-up songs -- and the public's fascination with them -- isn't difficult to understand. There are very few occupations in which one's introduction is accompanied by the swagger-inducing backbeat of a favorite tune.
"What would your walk-up song be?" has therefore become a common question amongst baseball fans, one that leads to endless thought, debate and consideration (feel free to add your own opinions in the comments section or on MiLB.com's Facebook page). And, not surprisingly, the players themselves usually approach the topic with the same amount of careful consideration.
Music is a powerful thing, after all, and the proper selection could be the difference between a warning track flyout and a game-deciding home run. You never know.
He's the man
When it comes to unique walk-up songs, it would be hard to top the annual selections of Indianapolis Indians third baseman Josh Harrison. Since his freshman year of college, the 23-year-old Pirates prospect has approached the plate while custom-written tunes blast over the stadium PA.
"Other guys might have to figure out what to walk up to, or might want something that someone else has, but I don't have to worry about that," said Harrison. "My brother does mine."
The sibling in question is older brother Shaun, an amateur rapper and producer whose most recent compositions include "I Ball" and "I'm Da Man." Harrison is alternating between the two this season in Indianapolis, with the latter a popular holdover from his 2010 campaign with the Double-A Altoona Curve.
"Looky looky look at me! Ain't I fresh as I can be? Still I prevail when they test and throw the best at me. Cuz I'm the man. I'm the man. You can tell from my stance I'm the man."
The combination of such strut-worthy lyrics with a giddily propulsive beat quickly made "I'm the Man" a Blair County Ballpark favorite as the Curve proceeded through an Eastern League championship season.
"It definitely surprised me," said Harrison of the song's popularity. "Fans were starting to ask me where it came from, and when I would tell them my brother made it, they'd be like 'Well, where can I get it?' But it's just something [Shaun] does in his free time -- he loves to make music. I've never had any teammates ask if he could make a song for them too, but you never know."
And while the insistent repetition of the words "I'm the Man" indicates a somewhat immodest approach, Harrison makes clear that the song helps to establish the proper at-bat mindset.
"There's a lot of confidence and swagger, but you have to have confidence in the way you carry yourself. Otherwise you won't make it in this game," he said. "And I'm very big on family, so to hear something that my brother wrote helps me stay in the right frame of mind. It relaxes me."
Democracy in action
Earlier this season, Altoona starting pitcher Jeff Locke walked to the plate to a team-selected Lil Jon song. He was less than thrilled with the experience.
"I'm a New Hampshire guy, I'm not familiar with rap," said Locke, a proud resident of North Conway. "I decided that if there was going to be music, it was going to be music that I wanted to hear."
So Locke came up with a thoroughly modern-day solution to his walk-up angst: he logged in to Twitter to solicit suggestions from his followers. What resulted was a deluge of recommendations, many of which were from New Hampshire friends, family and former teammates.
"I wanted a song that would mean more to me than a 'rah rah woo woo' kind of thing that gets a guy pumped up. I wanted something that would make me relaxed," he said. "And so many of my friends and family back home knew I was really into Dave Matthews Band -- for my birthday this past November I got tickets to their final show at [TD] Garden. ... I like to play the guitar as well. I'm not that good at it, but it's something I like to have fun with."
A Twitter consensus was eventually reached, and Locke's new song is a live Dave Mathews version of the iconic "All Along the Watchtower." But the work wasn't done yet. After an extensive period of focused listening and a brainstorming session with teammate Jeremy Farrell, Locke determined that the track should start precisely at the 3:48 mark. That's the snippet of music that will be heard at Blair County Ballpark this season, not only when Locke bats but also when he takes the pitcher's mound.
"A lot of starting pitchers want their walk-out music to start at the start of a song. That makes sense, they're starting pitchers," said Locke. "I'm a starting pitcher too, but if I did that there wouldn't be any music. It would just be fans yelling for the first 25 seconds."
Now that Locke has found what seems to be an ideal choice, he plans on keeping it for a long time to come.
Probably.
"It's really nice to have something that no one else has, instead of the same old country, or the same old rap," he said. "I think this is going to stick with me for a while, unless I start getting hit all over the park."
(Almost) Anything goes
Of course, walk-up music presents many opportunities for comedic ballpark moments. A prime example comes from Kevin Huisman, a veteran of Minor League front offices who in 2006 worked in the Stockton Ports control room.
"Tommy Everidge, our first-baseman, decided that he wanted the New Kids On the Block's 'The Right Stuff' as his walkup song," wrote Huisman in an email. "We were all a little surprised, but the first time we ran it, [relief pitcher] Scot Drucker made it his mission to have a good time with it. Our bullpens at Banner Island Ballpark were out behind the left field wall, with chain-link fencing allowing the fans to see in. Well, it started with Scot and one or two other guys waving their arms when the song came on. Then some of the fans caught on. "By shortly after the All-Star Break, the guys in the bullpen would be sitting on the two rows of bleachers in the bullpen, and coordinating synchronized arm waving, with the front row going one way and the back row going the other way. The fans loved it, and I think it fueled Tommy's performance that season, as well."
Drucker, a 2010 Toledo Mud Hen who will soon be suiting up for the independent Grand Prairie Air Hogs, has fond memories of those Stockton days.
"I don't know how fond the coaches and manager were of us doing that, especially if we were losing, but we generally picked the right times to do it," he recalled. "Tommy was a stocky guy, and he looked pretty funny when he ran. So me being a prankster, I would try to get the soundboard guys to play the 'Super Mario Brothers' theme song whenever he drew a walk."
Drucker often takes a similarly light-hearted approach with his own selections. In Toledo last season, he dusted off the New Kids On the Block once again and took the mound to the saccharine sounds of "Step By Step."
"Oh, yeah, I've got to make fun of myself as well," he said. "I've seen it all. Some guys want to take a comical approach, others need something that's going to get them all fired up for 10 seconds. It doesn't matter, really, as long as it's clean."
The final word
John Foreman, the Altoona Curve's Director of Creative Services, is in charge of determining if his player's requests are indeed "clean."
"Even if a clean version of a song exists, that doesn't always mean it's necessarily ballpark appropriate," said Foreman, who handles nearly every aspect of the team's walk-up requests. "If I'm able to, I'll edit out [offending] words myself, or maybe ask the player if we can start at the second verse instead of the first."
Foreman previously worked for the Class A Short-Season State College Spikes, and he notes that players at that level were far more likely to change up their choices throughout the season.
"I think that maybe, at this level, the fans are more likely to identify with a player through what song he's chosen," he said. "A lot of people in the crowd, not to mention gameday employees, know who's coming up before they even hear a guy's name. As soon as they hear the song, they know exactly who it is."
And as for what those songs might be, it really depends on the player's background.
"You definitely see more rap and hip-hop than anything else, but the guys from Texas are more likely to choose country, and the guys from Latin America are going to go with Latin music," said Foreman.
What it all adds up to is an increasingly entrenched part of the ballpark experience, one that Drucker summarized thusly.
"Knowing a song is coming can help you focus, and some guys do think it gives them a little something extra," he said. "It's a nice routine to have, as long as you don't go too crazy with it, and something that the fans can relate to."
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.
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