Baseball Opinion

Planning your high school football workouts can be very difficult. There are literally thousands of exercises to choose from, so, how do you know which to use? Aside from the basics like Squats, Deadlifts and Bench Press, how do you choose?

Well, you need to select the exercises that are best for making your stronger and faster on the football field. Your football workouts should ALWAYS strive to make you stronger, which, in turn, makes you faster.
The Power Clean

I realize that not including the Power Clean in an article about football training of any kind is a right bit of sacrilege, but, they simply weren’t in the top 9. I am not, however, anti-Power Clean. In fact, if used correctly, they can add a few slabs of muscle on the upper back and traps and increase explosiveness.
However, two things need to be taken into account:

1. Can the Coach actually teach them?

2. Where and how will you place the exercise?

Now, the Power Clean is NOT that complicated. It’s just not. Anyone with half decent athletic abilities will be able to pick it up quickly. The bigger problem is, many guys just have no idea how to teach them. I suggest either taking the USAW Club Coach or Sports Certification course (you’ll learn a lot, even if you’re pretty experienced), finding an Olympic Lifter to teach you, or, getting Jim Schmits’ Olympic Lifting Manual and DVD.

Once you know how to teach it, it will only take a session, max, to have an athlete learn how to do them.

Second, where and how do you use the Power Clean to help increase speed and explosiveness.

An intelligent athlete must always consider all the demands that are placed on his or her body, both at the present time and over the course of a year. There are limits to what the body can recover from, so it is important to find the correct amount and type of training and sports participation throughout the year.

Your sports season is the time when it is most important to have your athletic abilities maximized. Thus, it is necessary to schedule your training around your season. The general rule to follow is at the beginning of the off season, focus is put on strength training. Improvements in squats, deadlift, etc. lay the foundation for improvements in athletic movements. As the season grows nearer, the focus progresses toward the speed and of the spectrum, exercises like hang power snatch and plyometrics. Sport-specific skill work is also increased. Obviously, planning should be different for different sports. For example, a sprinter only needs one skill, a skill that never changes. A couple months is enough time to fine tune sprinting technique and reach a high level again, so not much sprinting is necessary in the early off-season. On the other hand, a basketball player needs to develop hundreds of different skills. Much more time is required for basketball skill development, and extended time away from the sport is generally detrimental to performance.

The three main differences that make a composite bat outperform an aluminum or wood bat have to deal with trampoline effect, swing weight, and vibration.

Trampoline effect has to do with what happens to the bat and ball when they collide. Manufacturers can vary the stiffness of the barrel of a composite bat which can increase or decrease the speed the ball comes off the barrel when hit. Making the barrel softer decreases energy loss and in turn increases the speed the ball is hit. An easy way of looking at this is whether the ball gives or the bat gives when contact between the two is made. The ball is what gives when hit by a hard surface like aluminum or wood. The ball giving instead of the bat reduces the energy created by the pitcher and batter and slows down the speed in which the ball leaves the bat. A composite bat can be made stiff at the handle yet softer at the barrel. This softer barrel enables the wall of the bat to give instead of the ball which helps maintain the energy created by the pitcher and batter.

Swing weight is a term used to describe how heavy a bat feels when you swing it instead of the weight the bat actually is sitting still. Manufacturers can lessen swing weight when dealing with composite by making the center of gravity closer to the handle. This increases bat speed which in turn increases the speed the ball comes off the bat. A simple way to compare this is to swing any bat by the handle and then turn it around and swing it by the barrel. This is a little extreme but you can see how moving more of the weight closer to where you hold the bat makes the bat much lighter to swing.

Is vertical leap ability genetic? This is a very common question and it’s not a fun one to answer. The truth is genetics do play a significant role in the vertical jump and athletic ability in general. Look at 12-year old kids. Some are athletic. Some are not. Obviously their varying genetic gifts make a difference. This is a painful realization, because those who are naturally gifted have to admit they did not have to work as much as other people for their abilities, and those who are not gifted have to accept that they can never be the best leaper or sprinter in the world.

There are a number of physical traits that contribute to athletic ability and are influenced by genetics. I’ll discuss them in no particular order.

1. Body type. A long, thin body with long limbs is great for jumping and running. Because the tallest people are often not the most athletic, people tend to be unaware of this advantage. When a longer body segment is rotated with the same speed as a shorter segment, the end of that segment covers more distance, meaning that more velocity is generated. In a jump or a sprint, this means that more height is achieved or more ground is covered. As for a thin body, that’s just a matter of weight. The less weight on your body per inch of height, the better off you are, at least from a physics standpoint. Obviously, you need muscle mass to be able to generate powerful movements, so you don’t want to be as thin as a rail. Unfortunately, your body’s build is not something you can do anything about. You can be muscular and lean, but you may still be short and stocky.