By Bob Alejo, CSCSD, RSCCE
Baseball players don’t need “baseball-specific” lifts. They need training that develops the physical qualities required to play baseball at a higher level.
There is an important distinction. The weight room builds athletes. The field builds baseball players.
Strength training should not attempt to duplicate the swing, pitching delivery, or other baseball skills with added resistance. If an exercise looks exactly like a baseball skill, it may be doing a poor job of both strength training and skill development. The purpose of the weight room is different: develop the physical tools.
Train the Qualities Baseball Requires
Baseball requires athletes to accelerate, sprint, stop, change direction, rotate, throw, swing, jump, absorb force, and repeat these movements throughout a long season. Effective strength and conditioning programs develop the physical qualities underlying these actions: Strength → Power → Rotational Power → Speed → Durability
A trap-bar deadlift can build lower-body strength. Explosive pulls and jumps can help convert strength into power. Medicine-ball throws can develop rotational power. Sprinting develops acceleration and speed. None of these exercises needs to look exactly like baseball to improve qualities that contribute to baseball performance. Train the adaptation – not the appearance of the exercise.
Strength Is the Foundation
Strength provides the foundation from which many other physical qualities can be developed. Stronger athletes have the potential to apply more force into the ground, accelerate more effectively, jump higher, throw harder, swing faster, and better tolerate the physical demands of training and competition.
But strength is not the final objective. A baseball player doesn’t win because he has the best trap-bar deadlift. The lift is a tool, not the goal. The goal is improved athletic performance. That’s why strength must eventually be expressed through increasingly faster and more explosive movements. Build strength. Convert it to power. Apply it to baseball.
Don’t Confuse Training with Practice
This is where the distinction between the weight room and the field becomes especially important.
- Train strength in the weight room.
- Train baseball on the field.
The weight room develops physical capacity. Practice teaches athletes how to apply that capacity to hitting, throwing, running, fielding, and other baseball skills.
General strength does not automatically make someone a better hitter or pitcher. It gives the athlete more physical resources from which baseball skills can be developed. The field and batting cage then provide the environment where those qualities are integrated into baseball-specific movements.
Let Baseball Skills Remain Baseball Skills
Trying to make every strength exercise look like baseball can compromise the training effect. A hitter doesn’t need to perform a heavily resisted imitation of his swing to develop rotational power. A pitcher doesn’t need to attach resistance to his arm and reproduce his delivery to become stronger.
- Develop strength with strength exercises.
- Develop power with explosive exercises.
- Develop speed by sprinting.
- Develop baseball skills through quality baseball practice.
Each has a specific purpose. When each is allowed to do its job, they complement one another.
Build the Athlete First
Young athletes especially should not be rushed toward highly specialized training. Teach them to squat, hinge, push, pull, brace, rotate, jump, land, accelerate, decelerate, and sprint. Develop movement quality first, then progressively add strength, power, and speed as they mature and demonstrate readiness.
The objective isn’t to create young weightlifters. It’s to develop stronger, faster, more powerful, coordinated, and resilient athletes who can become better baseball players.
The Takeaways
- The best exercise isn’t necessarily the one that looks most like baseball.
- The best exercise is the one that develops the physical quality the athlete needs.
- Keep strength training and skill training in their proper roles.
- The weight room builds the athlete.
- The field develops the baseball player.
- Quality coaching connects the two.
Train the physical qualities in the weight room. Then give athletes the practice, instruction, and repetitions necessary to express those qualities on the field.
Train strength in the weight room. Train baseball on the field. When both are done well, both become more effective.
About Bob Alejo
Bob Alejo, CSCSD, RSCCE, has spent more than four decades working in elite strength and conditioning and athletic performance. His career includes 12 years as Director of Strength and Conditioning for the Oakland Athletics, where he was responsible for year-round physical preparation throughout the Major and Minor League organization, including during the Moneyball era.
Alejo has also served as Assistant Athletic Director/Director of Strength and Conditioning at North Carolina State, Director of Strength and Conditioning at UC Santa Barbara, and strength and conditioning coach at UCLA, where the Bruins won 25 national championships during his tenure. He later served as Director of Sports Science for Power Lift.
Alejo was a member of the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London U.S. Olympic Teams as strength and conditioning coach for beach volleyball players Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser, helping prepare the pair that won the 2008 Olympic gold medal.
He holds ASCA Level 2 Coaching Accreditation, the NSCA’s Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist Distinguished (CSCS*D) credential, and Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach Emeritus (RSCC*E) status.