Offseason Strength Training

Preparing for Offseason Strength Training

Paul Reddick, Pittsburgh Pirates scout

This month we are going to continue our discussion about how to prepare for off season strength training.

As the fall season closes, as I am writing this on the 1st of November, most people tend to set their focus on preparing for the coming season. Last month I talked about getting mentally tough. Getting yourself in a strong mental frame of mind to begin training is very important. Now that we have done that and the season is concluded, the first thing everybody should do is take some active rest.

The body does need time to repair, especially after a long season. Some of the players that I work with have been playing consistently since March. This is a good time to give your body two weeks of active rest.

What is active rest?

Does it mean you sit on the couch, watch TV, and eat ice cream? No, that is not rest. Active rest means that you are just not playing baseball. You might be playing basketball, doing some light jogging, or maybe just have a light catch. Nothing too serious, just keep your body moving so that you are not stagnant.

After the two week period of rest, the first thing you want to start to do with your body is restore balance. Any hitting coach or pitching coach in the country will agree that at some point in the pitching or hitting delivery they teach balance. Balance is probably the most widely referred to position or point in any pitching motion or swing, but here is what happens with the baseball body. The baseball body is constantly put out of balance.

Let me show you...

Here is a test. Lay on your back with your arms out to your side and lock out each leg. Locking out means straightening out to no bend at all. You will need a partner. Have them pick up your non-dominant leg. In other words, if you are a righty, have them pick up your left leg and do a traditional hamstring stretch lifting your leg, lifting your foot up and over your belly button. Most people will be able to stretch probably at least to the belly button and some maybe 20 degrees beyond.

Now take your dominant side and see how far you can stretch it. Most people will be between 70 and 90 degrees. Either way, there will be at least a 10 degree difference between your dominant and non-dominant side. Most players have a greater than 10 degrees difference.

Now, here's a very simple question: if our body is out of balance, how do we achieve balance?

It is very difficult. The first thing we need to do in our first phase of training is restore some balance. That can be done with non-dominant side exercise or balancing your numbers with your exercise.

For instance, if you were going to do a simple leg extension exercise, 100 pounds on each leg would do nothing but keep the imbalance in place, but if you were to do say 9 reps of 100 pounds with the right leg and then 12 reps of 100 pounds with the left leg that would start to shift the imbalance.

Now, we are never going to get it totally balanced because the reason we got out of balance is because we are always moving to our dominant side. It becomes very difficult to keep balanced, but let’s say we are 10 percent out of balance. If we can reduce that to 5 or 4 or 3 percent, we are going to be more effective as a baseball player.

It is very simple, anything that you do for your dominant side, do a few more reps for your non-dominant side or just reduce the number of reps you do for your dominant side, kind of maintaining your strength on the right side while you build up your left. This can be used in any kind of traditional weight training or strength training program.