Author Archive
October 1, 2011 | 
Author Having nothing to train for makes for difficulty in getting motivated. I’ve set goals for myself in some big lifts this offseason, and I decided to rub these goals in my friend, and trainer, Andrew’s face. We compete in tests of ability and strength when we are together, and I texted him last week to ensure he knew how much better I am soon going to be. Here’s how the conversation went:
Dan: Just a warning – I’m gonna be squatting 450, deadlifting 500 and jumping 33 inches by Christmas. Be prepared to be physically dominated via YouTube.
Andrew: By Christmas? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard you say
Well, the competition is on, though with a catch – we will be competing only in the vertical and broad jump. The reason I am posting this is because both of us are going to provide you with our methods of reaching these goals and thusly humiliating the other. Both trainers, we are going to employ all of our tricks to get the big weight moving. I’ve squatted 390 (ass-to-grass, of course) as a 1RM in college, deadlifted 425 two years ago, and jumped 28 inches at my best in college. Never have I trained specifically to increase those numbers, but that’s just where my personal records stand. Andrew is, as we always have been, basically the same. He has historically jumped one inch higher, squatted about the same and deadlifted a little less than I. He’s a hair better in jumping, I’m a hair better deadlifting, and we’re about even in the squat. We’re a good matchup to see who can gain the most advantage on the other by way of a specific training plan, of which you’re going to get a peek… Read the rest of this entry »
Currently, myself and a handful of my athletes are involved in the “Fall Eating Challenge.” What is the fall eating challenge? Well, it’s a challenge that I made up. I make up lots of stuff – I’m my own boss and I do what I want.
Basically, the problem that we are addressing with this challenge is “little person syndrome,” otherwise known as “Hey, put on some damn weight.” I have some very strong kids working out with me, but they just aren’t going to apply the force they need to the baseball, softball or volleyball without some added muscle mass. There’s a lot to be said for being strong, but when it comes down to it, Force = Mass x Velocity. You can tell me that Tim Lincecum throws gas all you want, but 99% of guys his size simply will never be able to produce the power that he does from his little frame. Most big leaguers…BIG.
It’s that time of year when many of my trainees and I are settling in to a season without competition. Competitive season puts such a strain on the body that it’s difficult to work out as regularly, and it can be hard to keep a strict, healthy diet. When I come home from my 100 game pro season, I’m as weak as I am all year, and usually about 5 lbs fatter to boot. My goal for myself and my athletes in our first month back in the gym is to shed the newly gained fat, regain muscle size that we’ve lost, and regain a high capacity for work. This method is also great for anyone trying to put on muscle as fast as possible.
Easing into things is overrated – I prefer a 1 to 2 day max break-in period, after which we are hitting it 100% in an effort to regain general strength as quickly as possible. The way we do this is by challenging ourselves in a mix of exercises that I categorize as:
- Low-external weight, high-rep
- Conditioning circuits and complexes
- High-Intensity, high-yield Read the rest of this entry »
Bart Simpson once sold his soul on an episode, and felt awful until his sister, Lisa, bought it back from him. I don’t necessarily believe that I have a soul, but I do know when intangible things inside me hurt. That intangible something inside me hurt every time I was pulled from a game this summer. Unfortunately I got shelled a lot, and every night I went home with a hole in my heart and a pit in my stomach. There had been better times.
I had failed on the mound much more often than not all the way up until my first season of pro ball. After that first decent year of pro ball, in which I went 6-7, 3.90, I had sort of forgotten how it felt to really struggle. Any bad outing I may have had in 2010 was usually followed by a good or series of good outings, effectively whitewashing the bad ones.
But this year, I hit a major roadblock when I signed with Fargo of the American Association. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Things Really Good Hitters Do….it’s my newest article for Cornbeltbaseball.com!
I’ve had the privilege of pitching to and under some very smart people this summer. My catcher, Todd Jennings, has AAA experience and has caught some very big name Major Leaguers. My coaches have given me lots of instruction in becoming a more intelligent pitcher, and pitching to my strengths.
I got a little dugout demonstration that I thought was very insightful, a great visual presentation of why some pitchers can throw effective high fastballs and some can’t. I downloaded a nice sketch App from the Mac App store so that I could give you a beautifully crude rendering of a pretty simple, but important concept.
“Barry Zito made 100 million dollars throwing high fastballs.” Why was he able to do this? Because his big-breaking curveball starts high and breaks sharply down low, and looks like a high fastball out of his hand. Thus, when he drops it in for strikes consistently, he can freely mix in fastballs high in the zone that deceive the hitter. They chase balls up that would get hammered if thrown from the hand of a slider/sinker type pitcher. Here’s how it looks:
Everyone needs to know a little bit about Jason Carter. Now, I am a lucky trainer in that I couldn’t really tell you who my hardest working athlete is. I had a tremendous group of guys and girls who gave incredible efforts each and every day, and who are still busting their butts at my gym in my absence. But, Jason needs some special recognition, because I could not be more proud of him.
Jason just graduated from Central Catholic High and committed himself to trying to walk on at Lincoln College, which was his school of choice for reasons beyond baseball. Lincoln has a good baseball program, but Jay had gone previously unnoticed by their coaching staff. Discouraged, I urged him to continue his hard work, and to control the things within his power. He could have given up like many will during this transitional time, but he receded into his training, busting his butt in my swelteringly hot gym and running 400m sprints around a blazing hot track. Not many athletes put in this kind of summer work, and he did so not knowing if he would even get a payoff.
As he continued to push and push, his pitching prowess started to increase. His fastball is now exploding, and he is always sending me messages about his performances. They were steadily improving, despite the fact that he didn’t get as many opportunities to pitch his Senior year as he would have liked. It would have been way easier to bow out, get an education and move on from baseball, than to sprint balls-t0-the-wall around a track on 100 degree days. Jason’s that kind of guy. The fastball and slider now have more life than ever, and he’s got the guts to throw them hard and down in the zone.
I got a message the other day – “7 innings, 11ks against a team with a record of 17-2. Got a call from Lincoln after the game, and they offered me a scholarship.” I couldn’t tell you how happy this made me, to see a kid reach out and take what he wanted, all through hard work. He has earned every penny of that scholarship money, and he will be a leader on that team. “A Resolute Man Will Find A Way” – these are words that were passed on to me by a professor in college, and I have had many great young athletes grab hold of them this past year; Jason is one of them.
I have two graduating seniors from Central Catholic High who are going on to play baseball in college. Jesse Heaton is headed up north on a scholarship to St. Scholastica, and now Mr. Carter is signed on a scholarship to Lincoln College in Illinois. Jay and Jesse train together, so look forward to big things from both of them. Here they are featured under the squat rack…
Jesse and Jason push each other, and are a great team of elitely-conditioned, dedicated athletes. It’s an honor to now wish both of them good health (hard workers don’t need luck) as they head off to play in college.
Anyone who has been around the game has heard managers, pitching coaches, fans and players all gripe about a common enemy: the walk. I wholeheartedly agree that walks are destructive to a team’s chance at winning, but I question the old adage that “walks almost always score.” I question this not because I want to convince pitchers that walking hitters is OK – it isn’t – but rather because it doesn’t make sense to me that simply because a batter reached base via four balls, he becomes more of a threat to come in to score. There have to be other reasons that allow walked runners to score at a higher frequency, if in fact they truly do score more often. Let’s reason our way through this in conjunction with a few common stats to see what conclusion we can come up with. Read the rest of this entry »
An athlete’s state of mind when in competition greatly affects how he or she performs in sport. Those who enter competition fearing defeat and negative outcomes welcome just that – defeat.
To the aggressor go the spoils. In all sports, the dynamic of the game is largely and decisively influenced by the confidence and aggressiveness of competitors. Those who believe, TRULY believe, that they cannot be beaten, steer their bodies with such a swagger. They instill fear and timid action into their opponents while breeding courage and strength.
Ask any sports psychologist about the power of positive thought, and he or she will tell you that it is utterly essential. Creating images of victory in the mind allows an athlete to see success and know success is not just possible, but probable. Yet, these thoughts must be truly believed for them to take root and grow into on-field confidence.
“Psyching” oneself up for competition is a common practice of athletes, especially in the modern days of the iPod. Heavy Metal and the aggressive beats of many genres of music are absorbed prior to games in an attempt to boil the blood before battle. Does this practice work? Is this as far as is necessary for one to go to ensure he is full of mettle by time gameday arrives?
I believe that creating permanent changes in on-field behavior start with positive thought and visualization in an athlete’s downtime. These thoughts must be realistic, take into account the athlete’s specific skillset, and be frequent and intense enough to elicit a legitimate physiological response.
If you don’t feel flustered, angry, hormonal and aggressive after visualizing your performance, then you’re not sufficiently setting yourself into the experience, and it won’t overtake you when you enter competition. You’ve got to use some of the behaviors that your body already instinctively uses when in peril. Let’s explore some of these things that you can do, while sitting around, to legitimately increase your physical performance via a confident, aggressive mind.
You Don’t Want to Be: Dr. Jekyll
You DO Want to Be: Mr. Hyde
I made the analogy of colored dye to a young pitcher the other day when discussing his practice habits. If his old habits represented red dye, and his new mechanical adjustment represented blue dye, and he had a cup of red and a drop of blue to add to a bucket of water, what color would the bucket turn?
He answered red, to which I told him that he had to dilute the old by practicing the new mechanics as much as he could, until, over time, his mechanics changed. The more you practice, the more the new overtakes the old.
That being said, I got some photographical confirmation that I had improved my mechanics via the energy angle, but not quite to the degree that I had hoped. While the change is clearly visible, I more or less diluted my old mechanics with new, averaging the two together and finding myself in the middle. Yet, I’m ok with this, and it represented the best I could do given 4 months of practice and thousands of throws doing it. Check out the photos and see for yourself where I ended up.
A snapshot of the old…
Chances are, you’re wasting your time with bench press and it’s variations. In my gym, we use push up variations for upwards of 90% of our “pushing” exercises.Why? Because I’m not going to bother using external weight with a trainee who hasn’t yet mastered his own bodyweight. Thing is, push ups are so versatile and effective at building upper body strength that I find little reason to ever go away from them – and I nary find anybody who has mastered all that the push up has to offer.
I’m going to break this article into two sections – the “progression” section and the “cool versions of the push up” section. Read on!
Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs; Cadbury Creme Eggs; Peeps. What do all of these have in common? Easter Candy.
Why we revel in consuming chocolate effigies of garden-dwelling rodents and the candy-coated unhatched offspring of Cinderella’s little friends (why else would eggs be blue?), I will never know. But, I do know this:
They are delicious.
“Honey, the eggs were right in the basket last night where I put them…”
The deadlift is awesome. If you’re not using it in your strength training routine, well, then shame on you.
Does your trainer at home know the little exercise tweaks that can make an exercise safe or unsafe for a baseball player?