“Summer Seventeen” has arrived, and with it another travel baseball season begins. The manner in which travel-ball consumes the months of May through August for high school-aged ballplayers is rapidly growing from year to year. Tournaments are proliferating and expanding, families are traveling further, the competition is ratcheting higher, and the scouts flock by the…
Recently I had a public conversation – or as I like to call, professional banter – on Twitter with a very reputable and credible private-sector strength coach. His questioning was of a post that I wrote for Driveline Baseball discussing common technical faults that I see in the Bench Press, and some suggestions for cleaning up…
A training session is only as good as the effort and belief committed by those implementing and participating in that training. For those who do not give the program full attention and effort, even the greatest training program ever written just becomes a collection of numbers and words. For this reason, among many others, strength coaching is so much…
Regardless of coaching situations – perhaps your high school team has a strength coach, perhaps the sport coaches must run it themselves – off-season training always seems to be a given. In the very least, most major sports observe some form of summer training, if not a program that encompasses the entire off-season. All too…
One of the hardest concepts to get across to youth athletes is the importance of age-appropriate training methods. If it isn’t advanced, complex, or professional-grade, it probably isn’t going to satisfy many initially. But, with a steady dose of patience and education, combined with a consistent message based on long-term development, eventually most athletes will jump on board…
There are many people involved with high school athletics who mean well. They have admirable intentions, yet their misguidance or misinformation renders them more of a liability than a resource for athletic and personal development. There are also those that are in it for all of the wrong reasons. Some may think they have good intentions, but are truly…
Note from the editor: We are very fortunate to have a great guest poster today. Coach Noel Piepgrass has a wealth of knowledge built through years of strength and conditioning experience, both at the high school and collegiate level. I’m very thankful that Coach Piepgrass is willing to share with us on this topic: training tips for…
Most strength and conditioning professionals have read the training manual Triphasic Training, have seen Cal Dietz – the writer of said manual – speak at a conference on the topic, or in the very least have heard of it. Without doing Cal the injustice of trying to fully explain his work, the general idea is to first…
The most common questions posed by young ballplayers and coaches alike all seem to be variations of the following: “What exercises are most important for baseball?” “If you had to choose just one exercise, which is best for baseball?” “Can you send me a baseball-specific program?” Likewise, other sport coaches and athletes aside from those in baseball ask…
My training programs, regardless of sport, are always built around a handful of staple or “fundamental” movements. These movements in large part include the squat, hip hinge, lunge (in all planes), and upper body push and pull movements. The order of those movement categories should be noted, as they are generally listed from most to least difficult…
Ryan J. Faer 