Posts Tagged ‘training’





The start of the spring season for youth baseball is almost upon us, and high school and college baseball have been going strong for a few weeks now, so this seems like an appropriate time to talk about a few common problems that baseball and softball players can run into during the season. These are all fixable problems, but if left unchecked they can lead to injuries down the line, so it’s a good idea to get out in front of these issues and try to prevent them before they start.

Youth baseball players, especially those in their late tweens/early teens, may be at a higher risk of injury due to an increased load placed on their bodies during the season. Around age 12, these athletes start playing longer seasons on bigger fields, with additional demands from fall ball to consider as well. Also, these athletes typically don’t participate in good offseason training programs to prepare their bodies for this kind of load. When you take young, unprepared athletes and subject their bodies to a much heavier load than they’re used to, injuries have a tendency to occur.

However, we know that baseball players tend to suffer similar injuries/lose mobility/lose strength in basically the same areas, which means that we can be proactive and address these potential problems before they start, thereby greatly decreasing the likelihood that a baseball player will suffer an injury. To that end, here are 5 exercises/stretches you can do to keep yourself healthy throughout the season:


Note: This post is courtesy of NLSP intern Andrew Murcia. Andrew graduated from Penn State with a degree in exercise science and has been with us since December of 2015 assisting with training of all of our athletes, with a little help from DJ Khaled.


DJ Khaled Success


Greetings and salutations everyone,

Andrew Murcia here and I’m channeling my inner DJ Khaled to give you some major keys to more effective and efficient deadlifting.  So read and apply these tips carefully because THEY don’t want you to lift better, so we’re going to lift better.

The theme for today’s article is all about the setup for your deadlift.  The quality of your deadlift pulls is largely determined by your set up.  Compound movements like deadlifts are all about how much leverage you can exert over the bar.  In other words, you must control the weight rather than allowing the weight to control you.  With that said, here are some major keys to remember when we deadlift.


MAJOR KEY’s to Remember:


Occasionally we will see a rounding of lower back from some athletes at varying points of the deadlift.  This results from a lack of proper core bracing. This is one of the more common issues with beginners, and can be one of the more abstract/difficult concepts to understand.

Deadlift form





As I’ve written about before,  I don’t often include traditional speed and agility work such as ladder and cone drills in my athletes’ programs. There are two main reasons for this:

1) More often than not, strength is the more pressing issue.

2) Many athletes will improve their running speed and agility just by increasing strength.

Why You Should Prioritize Strength First

Strength is the most basic building block of athleticism, and for the most part, stronger athletes tend to be better athletes.

Renowned strength coach Mark Rippetoe wrote an excellent article on T-Nation recently about the importance of strength development for athletes, which included the following passage:



Terrell Owens was such a clown

Some athletes apparently require a lot more attention than others…


The Problem

There’s really no way to sugarcoat this, so I’m just going to go ahead and say it:  many strength and conditioning programs for girls aren’t very good. And this is a shame because it prevents many young women from fully realizing their athletic potential, potentially costing them college scholarships. For whatever reason, the majority of training programs for young women seems to be more oriented towards traditional “speed and agility” work, with less of an emphasis placed on overall strength and power training. So basically, lots of cones and ladders and TRX, and not a lot of squats and deadlifts. This is a mistake.

5 pound bicep curls? On a Swiss ball? Stop it.
