Your training should mirror the demands of your sport, but it should also mirror, to some extent, the expectations of your coach or organization.

Let’s take running as an example. Baseball is an anaerobic sport-requiring many short bursts of intense physical movement. Knowledgeable trainers, for this reason, are shifting their baseball players’ training away from the traditional long distance runs to more sprint training. Pitchers, who since the beginning of time have run long distance for conditioning, are also switching to and benefitting from this change in methodology.

So, as a baseball player, we should all run only short sprints all the time, right? I’ve written about this before here and Andrew Sacks has here. This way, we would be maximizing our training by not wasting time on superfluous exercise. Not so fast…

Now, I hate to put this out there, but “In-shape” is completely subjective. Great shape to one person might be mediocre to a seasoned athlete. And, where coaches are constantly making judgments of a player’s worth, the player often must bend to the coach’s will to insure he is held in good standing.

So, imagine doing nothing but 30-60yd sprints for an entire offseason, and then showing up to spring training to face a timed 4-mile run. How will you do? How will the coaching staff look at you?

Chances are, you will do OK, and your body composition and strength will be high enough to allow you to handle the run. But, you won’t do nearly as well as you could, had you done a little distance running intermixed with your sprinting.

This situation will be faced by many athletes as they approach spring training. Do you prepare in only the way that is maximally effective, regardless of how it might make you look, or do you train with some compromise to appease a subjective coaching staff?

“Coach, I know I didn’t do well on the timed run, but I promise you, my anaerobic capacity is through the roof.”

Where is that excuse going to get you if you’re trying to make it through a round of cuts, when the other guys looked better than you physically because they trained in an inferior method? It’s a tough question to answer.

I would like some comments with your thoughts on this matter, but I will leave you with mine: Train to make it onto the field first, then train to perform as best you can once on it.

Like I said, it’s all about perception in the coach’s eyes whether or not you are worthy of representing their team on the field. It’s irrelevant what tests they administer to make this conclusion, the bottom line is that you have to live up to them. So, If you need to prove that you’re in shape by running long distance, then you need to include some distance running into your program along with the good stuff like sprints that you know you need to do to improve. Maybe it’s just one distance run per week-who knows-but your first priority should be to make it onto the field by being impressive in whatever task you are asked to perform.

And yes, I am a firm believer that sprints are what a pitcher needs, and distance is counterproductive. But, is one long distance or maybe two short distance runs per week going to decrease your performance? I’m not so sure.