I’ve been reading up on appropriate distances for pitchers to run in the preseason when I came across two articles by Eric Cressey. Eric is an accomplished trainer who works regularly with baseball players. What I like about Eric’s approach is that he justifies his stance with science and facts which, in the Blogo-sphere, is relatively unusual.

In the hiring of Dr. Marcus Elliot, the Seattle Mariners have a new found commitment to changing the way they condition their athletes. Dr. Elliot is the founder of the Peak Performance Project and longtime advocate of using sport specific exercises to optimize performance and reduce injuries. The Mariners are committed to the point that they disassembled their weight room and replaced the equipment with modern machines that meet the specifications of Dr. Elliot.

A link to an article here from NPR discussing the trend to Major League Baseball teams hiring staff nutritionists.

Baseball is known as perhaps one of the most inactive sports there is-by this I mean you don’t really have to be a top athlete to actually be the best at the game! Compared to other games there is far less activity and running! However strength is crucial in this game!

There is no arguing that one of baseball’s biggest attractions is “the long ball.” That’s right, hitting home runs is exciting. Even though this is an exciting part of the game there is a lot that goes into being able to do it. It takes technique, bat speed, and power. As a strength and conditioning specialist I have included 2 hard-hitting drills, no pun intended, in this article to help you to achieve these necessary traits. Kettlebells are a great way for a baseball player to develop incredible power and tremendous bat speed.

Here is a list of some of good high protein foods for the weight lifting ball player.

It’s November, it’s cold, and it’s time to move the work from the diamond into the weight room. Most teams should be hitting their stride pounding the weights and we can start to look at some tweaks that can be used to our advantage and enable us to get the most out of our time in the weight room. The lifting routines are established, now let’s be smart and get a little extra help in our training by paying attention to what we are eating.

A quick recap of (in my opinion) the best basic baseball exercises.

If you can’t throw you more than likely can’t play baseball(unless your Chuck Knoblauch), so we need to take care of the throwing muscles in the arm. We get most of the throwing strength from the rotator cuff muscles so it is imperative