What's up softball players! Dan Blewett here I'm joined by coach Andrew sacks
owner of prime sports performance here in Baltimore Maryland he works with tons
of softball players baseball players and to college professional so today we're
going to talk about in season training some do's and don'ts kind of from both
of us does it beep obviously we both do this for a living so today we're going
to give you some of our best tips things to avoid things to definitely include in
your regimen so you can have a productive in season because there's
definitely ways that you can make yourself more fatigued just make it
harder on yourself or do the wrong things and end up injured potentially so
we'll help you avoid those today remember if you knew the channel
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notified as soon as they release all right so coach what's the first thing
you got for us so I think the first thing you want to focus on when it comes
to in season training is maintaining your strength levels usually that's
going to be the first thing that goes during the season especially if you're
not following a lifting program typically with my baseball and softball
players I recommend that they do probably like two maybe three lifts a
week focusing on big compound movements that's things like squats deadlifts
lunges things like that keeping the volume relatively low so maybe three
sets of like three to six reps not doing anything for high reps like 8 to 10 is
probably a little bit too much that's gonna take a long time to recover from
typically I try to have my players do things where it's it's gonna be
challenging for them enough to have a strength stimulus but it's not going to
be enough like to tear them down so usually if we're doing a set of 3 on for
example on a deadlift I'll tell them to kind of pick a weight where they can do
the 3 reps and it's hard but they still have one to two reps left in the tank
once they're done they're set yeah it's really easy especially for athletes who
work hard to feel when they get to in season if they have to continue to do
the exact same volume where you can really get run down now you're running
down the base is slow or you're throwing slower you're hit
slower it doesn't make you lazy to do things the right way in season you
definitely need to scale back a little bit while still doing heavier weights
where you can maintain your strength so absolutely you might at first feel like
oh I only did five reps and it wasn't super hard I'm not exhausted leaving the
gym that's normal for in season training so don't forget that it's actually
preferable for in season training you don't want to feel bad when you leave
the gym you wouldn't feel good typically yeah it should build you back up and
help you recover and keep your strength that you work so hard to build all
season without fatiguing you and and ruining for you for your game all right
what do you out next one thing I try to avoid missing this goes for baseball and
softball players is doing a lot of long-distance running especially if it's
going to be kind of like intermediate level intensity softball is a sport
where we're not doing a lot of long-distance slow movements we're doing
like short explosive movements followed by a relatively long recovery time so if
you're a pitcher you throw a pitch that's one explosive movement followed
by about 10 12 15 seconds of recovery so if we're doing sprints it's usually best
to try to mimic what we do but the energy that we use in a game situation
now that said if you don't have a very good aerobic base you can probably
benefit from doing a little bit of long-distance running to improve your
recovery but you don't want to do so at the expense of strength and power which
if you do too much long-distance running it can have a negative effect on
strength and power so your pitching velocity could drop your batting power
could take a hit your running speed it's all about kind of finding that balance
between what's gonna keep you healthy and helping you recover versus what's
gonna be too much and what can actually have a negative effect on it yeah so to
piggyback on that fall another thing that's really popular is doing this
group conditioning where you might do you know a bunch of jumping jacks in a
row then like 30 bodyweight squats are a bunch of split squat jumps that stuff
and you can feel it like weight on your legs that stuff has its place usually in
the offseason but if you're doing team conditioning like that or or maybe
you're trying to really get in shape and and do some of this crazy conditioning
it can make you slower during the season so be
careful with stuff like that as well so distance running that we can have the
wrong effects I think anything you know and like a little bit of moderation is
okay but as you said more sprinting is definitely the way to go well what else
you got I think a big thing to avoid especially for pitchers is going to be a
heavy forearm training in season I know that softball pitching people tend to
get a little bit more aggressive with pitch counts and they don't worry so
much about rest as it was with baseball pitchers but if you're doing a lot of
forearm exercises in season that can actually put a lot of stress on the
forearm muscles and if you're pitching under a fatigued state that's gonna have
a pretty big negative effect on your fastball velocity and same with if
you're throwing overhand if you're a position player you don't want to be
throwing with fatigue forearms if I don't want to be hitting with fatigue
forearms either because you won't be able to put as much velocity and your
swing as you would otherwise so typically we'll try to avoid doing a
lot of forearm work during the in season program well maybe do one day a week
where we'll throw in some like some wrists extensions or curls or deviations
or rotations we're always going to do those on dates where they're not
immediately followed by a game so we don't have to pitch or play with our
forearms in the fatigue state okay yeah and I know for me even on the baseball
side I felt that my velocity would drop as a pitcher if I did too much rehab
even for my forearms between starts so definitely good advice there what do you
think about explosive exercises should be we be doing tons of plyometrics
during the season I know they're really like a hot topic but our plyos good
during the season or not I think it kind of depends on what your role is on the
team I think if you're a starter especially you really don't need to be
working on explosiveness during the season and you're already getting so
many swings and throws and Sprint's at practice and games that I don't think
like I mean you could take what 200 swings and
practice Raisa Lee so if you're doing three sets of six like the medicine ball
through is in addition to your 200 swings you just took I don't know if
that's gonna make an appreciable difference for you typically and then
there's always going to be time constraint creating it's easy you don't
have a lot of time to get done what you need to get done so the plyometrics the
med ball throws that's usually stuff that I'll take out in order to
prioritize strength training during that time periods again you're getting a lot
of throws a lot of swings and those are plyometric exercises themselves if you
really think about it that way so you really don't need to be adding anymore
to what you're already doing typically yeah I think it's it's really common
everyone wants to get faster and jump higher and and increase their lateral
quickness and all that stuff which is really important for softball but at the
same time just like if you're a basketball player would you just spend
all your training time doing more jumping if you want to jump higher no
you would do stuff that you don't do in the game swinging and and sprinting in
the hole for a ground ball to shortstop you know going after a bunt and making a
throw to say those are all explosive fast agile quick basically plyometric
movements like you said that you're getting in the game so remember that
your game counts in this whole grand scheme of all the training and just
exercising to do your sport counts as exercise so you need to do things you're
not getting on the field like the heavier barbell work they have your
strength training if you don't get that if you only do speed and agility in your
in your training and then you're only doing essentially speed agility on the
field you're never getting that heavy strange ring and now all the work you do
in the offseason goes down the drain yeah all right one more what do you got
what do we got one more thing to avoid let's see I guess the obvious thing to
avoid is not training at all I mean this is pretty well borne territory by this
point I feel like everybody should know this but you have I feel like they need
to here together in season training it should always be a priority I can speak
from personal experience when I was in high school I would train really hard
throughout the entire offseason I would get bigger I'll get stronger I would be
faster but then I would stop lifting during the season because I was afraid
of making myself too tired or I didn't have enough time or whatever other
excuse you could make for yourself by the end of the year I would be weaker I
would be slower I would throw with not as fast and icy with athletes
that I train now the kids that continue to train throughout the entire season
they come back and they're ready to kind of hit the ground running and they can
keep gaining and they can what I'm looking for
yeah you want to keep making progress they don't wanna go I worked hard in the
offseason that I lost it yeah then I worked hard then I lost it you want to
continue I worked hard then I kind of plateaued
because it's the season but then I worked hard again and you just keep
making more progress instead of having to take yourself out of a hole that you
make for yourself every in season yeah I think athletes that really want to play
in college and beyond you'll see they'll have that kind of continuous improvement
athletes that aren't like maybe super into play at the next level you see the
Train fluencies and then stuff and then train for season and stuff but if you
want to be one of those athletes that plays at college and beyond possibly you
have to get the training to make sure you get your best possible level when
you finish high school and then when you finish up and finish college rather than
having to start everything over again yeah so final thought to wrap up with is
if you're not training someone else is it's not to say you should be going
seven days a week because you shouldn't there's always a time to do more do less
throttle up throttle down and change what you're doing
smarter rather than working harder but if you're not training at all in season
there's a girl who is and she might be vying for that same spot on some team so
it's always someone out there who's putting in more work than you are and
that shouldn't make you frustrated and and drive you insane because you can
definitely drive yourself but there's always someone better than you doing
something else that you're not but remember just be motivated by the fact
that all of us in the United States are vying for the same college scholarship
spots so if you're not putting the work someone else is all right Thank You
coach sacks for the the good tips thank you for having me
I'll put is if you want to follow him on Instagram social media Twitter I'll put
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the channel and we'll see you here next week