I’ve heard this comment from parents AND athletes since my first days as a Strength & Conditioning Coach.
There are 168 hrs in a week. Most of our athletes train 2 – 3 hrs a week.
Are you REALLY That “Busy”?
When I was in high school, I train ALL year, regardless of the season. Yet I remember MANY athletes were talking about summer workouts, as if they don’t train the other 9-10 months out of the year?
VERY strange…. aka LAZY.
Do you brush your teeth only when you have time or do you make this part of your daily habits?
That is what training is about. It’s something you LIVE. We teach our athletes to Live The Code: Honesty, Integrity, Commitment, Work Ethic
Honesty to others AND yourself.
Integrity – do the right thing, even when no one is watching
Commitment to excellence and becoming the best YOU can be
Work Ethic – Busting your ass to achieve your goals
As you can see, these 4 Codes rage against laziness, excuse making and lies.
Even during the heat wave, we do NOT back down or make excuses. That is what BUILDS champions.
Through the years, after hearing countless times from our athletes & their parents that their Coach doesn’t want them to “lift weights”, doesn’t want them to train with us, doesn’t want them to train anywhere else, etc. it starts to get annoying.
After all, kids are # 1, right? At least that’s what “they” say.
In sports, there are experts for certain areas. We bring in experts to The Underground to speak to the kids on nutrition, motivation & mental toughness and any other area we have an opportunity to get help from someone who can help make our athletes better.
That’s the bottom line. Kids are # 1. My friend and colleague, Eric Cressey, a world renown Strength & Conditioning Expert, wrote the article below and gave us permission to share with Undergrounders. HOPEFULLY, the Coaches who have threatened these athletes to never train anywhere else or that they should not train with us will read this.
Those Coaches are the people who need it MOST. BIG thanks to Eric Cressey for sharing and giving us permission to post at The Underground Strength Gym Blog….
Q: I really liked your blog article on Crossfit for Baseball, but I am curious what your answer would be to a baseball coach who is adamant players shouldn’t lift weights at all My son’s coach is 100% against it.
A: It’s tough to even know where to begin with this one, but here goes! I’ll begin with a quote from my e-book, The Truth About Unstable Surface Training:
“…resistance training exercises performed on stable surfaces have been demonstrated effective in numerous research studies with respect to improving a variety of athletic qualities, including:
muscular strength (5)
power (5)
aerobic endurance (53)
running efficiency (54)
anaerobic endurance (5)
rate of force development (66,90)
hypertrophy (5)
reactive strength (66,90)
agility (47)
These qualities transfer to improved performance in a variety of sporting tasks, including vertical jump (74), throwing velocity (79), sprinting speed (22), and running economy (53).”
(FYI, the reference numbers in this quote are directly from the e-book, so if you’d like the exact studies, please just request them below in the comments section)
Now, I’ll venture a guess and assume that your coach isn’t looking to manage a team that lacks agility, throwing velocity, sprinting speed, jumping prowess, and rate of force development. To be candid, even those who are stubbornly adhering to a useless training concept like long-distance running for pitchers can get closer to their chosen training effect (as silly as it may be) from lifting!
Further, research has demonstration that resistance training can improve endocrine and immune function, so players will get sick less often and feel better overall.
On an equally important note, remember that resistance training is one of the foundations of today’s physical therapy. Would your coach tell a physical therapist that resistance training as part of a rehabilitation program is inappropriate? I hope not! He’d be fired immediately by an athletic director for overstepping his bounds. So, along that same line of thinking, how in the world it is within his scope of practice to tell a kid that lifting is bad for him – either in terms of increasing injury potential or decreasing performance – is completely beyond me.
Throwing a baseball is the single-fastest motion in sports; you simply don’t decelerate those insane arm speeds without at least a bit of muscular contribution.
Also, don’t forget that ideal strength and conditioning programs encompass a lot more than just lifting weights. They includes good self massage work (foam rollers, etc), mobility training, sprinting/ agility/plyos, and much, much more. It begins with a detailed movement assessment to determine what stability or mobility deficits may eventually lead to injury. It may also be the only avenue through which an athlete learns proper nutrition.
The fundamental problem is that many baseball coaches think of terrible practices like this when they hear the words “lifting weights:”
Can someone please tell me how my “biceps will develop” with this? Only in this video does the biceps EXTEND the elbow. Yikes.
Ouch.
The main message here is that a lot of coaches think that lifting programs are either a) a waste of time or b) flat-out dangerous. Sadly, as the videos above demonstrate, in many cases, they’re correct in their assumptions.
However, eliminating lifting absolutely can really stunt the development of players and increase their likelihood of injuries. Throwing is dangerous when done incorrectly, and so are sprinting, fielding ground balls, and taking batting practice.
We don’t contraindicate those, though, do we? We educate athletes on how to participate in these training initiatives properly.
At Cressey Performance, each one of our pro baseball players lifts four times a week, throws the medicine ball 2-3 times a week, and does supplemental movement training 2-3 days per week during the off-season – and they continue lifting during the season (at a lower frequency and volume). This is true of both position players and pitchers.
Our high school and college guys get after it with similar frequencies as well, and we have middle schoolers involved in strength training programs as part of a feeder program as well. Business is growing, and more and more guys are being drafted and presented with college scholarships. Something is working.
Additionally, beyond just the direct training benefits of this system, there is something to be said for the camaraderie strength and
conditioning does for teammates on top of regular practices. The fact that kids actually requested this says volumes!
Hopefully, articles like this – and bright, forward-thinking coaches – will help to spread the word about what safe, effective training is – and where to get it.
3 Undergrounders Featured ABOVE as “Murderer’s Row”! Ray Jazikoff, Troy Heilmann, Anthony Ashnault
AMAZING updates going on for NJ athletes & adults of The Underground Strength Gym!
How can you NOT get excited!!??
If you’re NOT a member of The Underground you are quickly realizing that THIS is THE place to help you achieve the success you want. You want it? Then get after it!
If you ever wonder HOW we train, the best thing to do is to visit our you tube page and see our training videos.
If you REALLY wanna gain access to our coaching to help you become a champion then PLEASE, do NOT call and ask for a tour of the gym.
Touring our gym does nothing…. and, only takes 10 seconds. Through the years, EVERYONE now owns Kettlebells, free weights, sandbags, tractor tires, etc.
The tools mean NOTHING, it’s the coaching that brings the results.
In addition, we are very selective as to WHO we train. Affording our membership doesn’t guarantee entree into our program.
Your entry into our program depends on your efforts during our trial workout as well as whether or not you have been referred to us from an existing athlete / parent. Your character is THE difference maker in your success.This applies to our athletes AND parents. Unfortunately, we’ve removed some athletes from our program when their parents had issues with morals, manners and supportive behavior.
Here are some short clips of our athletes in action. As always, it’s harder than it looks. If hard work scares you, The Underground will not be a place for you. We simply can’t be good for everyone.
As you can see, we have a variety of athletes training here, from middle school / youth athletes, to high school, collegiate and olympic level athletes – they ALL work side by side.
If you’re ready to become a champion we’re ready to work with you.
Before we move on to what goes down inside The Underground Strength Gym, let me preface ALL of that “Stuff” so the parents and athletes watching our videos can see my friend, Ultimate Warrior, speak about what it takes to succeed. We think the same and that just might be TOO much for most of you. Too intense, expectations too high…..
If you don’t fit this mold and understand that success takes WORK, you do NOT belong here…..
We’ve got NO room for lazy athletes, rude parents or anyone who makes and / or enables excuses. Excuses are for those who cave in to the slightest pressure. At The Underground, you learn to thrive under pressure….
Athletes need specialized training, that’s a fact. But… before we get specialized, we need plenty of “generalized” work.
Why skinny 100 lb kids are being told by Coaches to do a power clean is beyond me…. “JUMP with the weight” they say, but…. the kid is too weak to JUMP, let alone perform a safe and proper power clean.
Once our athletes develop a level of general physical preparation we can begin specializing and adding speed / explosive power work to their training. But, TOO much speed work and we now move from Quality to quantity and you are NO longer building speed.
It’s dangerous when you have a little bit of knowledge and just throw it on the wall and hope it sticks. I feel bad for athletes who are forced to train under a coach who wants to make an extra buck “covering the weight room”. These kids get ONE shot to make it right, they deserve to learn from experts.
Before I continue I’d like to thank ALL the dumb ass, ego driven coaches who tell their strongest and fastest athletes to train LESS at The Underground when we helped them get to the top…. I own a Football but you don’t see me trying to start my own Football team, catch my drift?
Check out some speed and explosive work we’ve built our athletes up to doing, this is a Football player working side by side with a Baseball player…
