EP86 Olympic Lifts for Baseball, Swinging at the First Pitch & Lifting After Baseball

Are olympic lifts good for baseball players–are they worth the risks? Should players swing at the first pitch of an at-bat? What does lifting look like after a baseball career comes to an end? These questions and more are answered on Dear Baseball Gods 86.

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Dear Baseball EP86 Full Transcript – Olympic Lifts for Baseball Players, First Pitch Swinging & Lifting Advice

You’re listening to the dear baseball gods podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn advanced concepts in baseball. Explain simply I’m here to guide you on your baseball journey and help you paddle through. What’s now an ocean of misinformation, guru wisdom, an overly technical diamond babble.

Welcome back to dear baseball gods. So today’s topic is, uh, the Olympic lifts for baseball. So if you’re unfamiliar, obviously the, the power clean is well it’s actually not technically technically an Olympic lift. It’s a variation, but the Olympic lifts are the snatch. And the clean and jerk. So those two are the ones you’ll see again in the Olympics.

You know, guys trying to throw and gals, trying to throw hundreds of kilos over their head. And it’s an incredibly impressive, explosive lift. Uh, it’s a fascinating thing. I, I love actually watching slow motion. Um, clean and jerks and snatches, um, on one TV, like the Olympic lifting is it’s incredible how fast and strong and explosive these athletes are, but Olympic lifts get thrown into their own separate category.

Um, and it’s sort of, uh, it’s sort of a misnomer. So a lot of people think that Olympic lifting is this really important thing. And that plyometrics in general. Which Olympic lifts are not plyometrics, but, uh, these explosive type exercises. And that’s, I think what people, most associate, um, power cleans with as being explosive, that they’re essential to being a good athlete.

In reality, uh, these exercises are only essential to Olympic lifters. Now, this is what I want to impress upon you today as a, as a parent or an athlete, or as a coach, all of these exercises that you’re going to do in the weight room are exactly that they’re exercises. So even though the Olympic lifts seem to have like the separate category where it’s all, you’ve got to do the Olympic lifts.

You don’t have to do the Olympic lifts. And here are a couple of things that me and my former business partner, some of the reasons that we didn’t do Olympic lifts, um, with our athletes. Number one, if you have a younger population and they’re not Olympic lifters, like they’re actually not. I mean, how many kids you have in a school who are actually like competitively doing Olympic lifts.

Very few. So they’re very technical lifts on their own. They’re hard to do properly. They’re easy to do poorly. Anyone can do a crappy, a power clean. I mean, it’s not that difficult, but they’re really difficult to do and nuanced to do them extremely well. And the Olympic lifters that you see on TV, you know, every four years on the Olympics.

They’ve been doing this, that’s the, their sport, that’s their sport, trying to be as efficient and powerful as possible. And, uh, it’s, like I said, it’s a really fascinating and technical lift. Those who are really good at it, um, devote their lives to it essentially. And so it’s not this thing that you can just learn in afternoon.

And so in small group settings, It’s very difficult to teach it. And it’s very difficult to keep kids safe, especially younger athletes safe doing it. So this is a really tough teach for one or two instructors in a group of six to 10 or more. So to really have it be a safe environment because these lifts you’re throwing barbells over your head, elbows are getting thrown back.

Uh, you know, CrossFit now is, um, they’re getting more and more UCL tears. I’ve gotten emails from CrossFitters and these are real. I’ve gotten emails from CrossFitters saying, Hey, I tore my UCL. I got Tommy John surgery. Uh, from lifting. Can you help me, you know, give me some advice with the rehab, which is crazy, but there is a definite torque and stress that flows through your elbow when you’re doing these power cleans.

Because if you look at the, at the video of it, You have to have a significant amount of elbow, um, range of motion and just, it goes against, it puts you in this valgus position. The valgus position is the way your elbow goes backwards. So you see that gross position. When P when pitchers throw that’s, uh, in the valgus position and you get put in that position when you power clean, uh, I wouldn’t do a clean and jerk, which is the same thing.

Um, so. That’s a really big concern, just the technicality and the potential for injury, throwing barbells over your head and moving really heavyweights, explosively up and down. Um, you know, these are technical lifts and so you have to really ask yourself, can I really teach kids to do this the right way?

And be safe about it in a small group environment, whether I’m in a high school, weight room or wherever, um, and more often than not the answer is no. And so then when the question is, okay, this is a really technical lift. It has a potential to be very dangerous. Um, can I do this with my team in a group setting?

You know, and then the question is why choose this one over other exercises that can build power that can build strength that can build explosiveness that are maybe not as dangerous. And that is the key question. And that is the, my key issue with the Olympic lifts. The Olympic lifts are dangerous.

They’re highly technical. But they’re also very effective strength and power builders. Okay. So I’m not saying they’re not effective cause they are. Um, but they’re very technical and they require a lot of supervision and a lot of safety measures. So in the, in most strengthen, uh, sports performance facilities, kids are gonna be working out in small groups.

And so really it comes down to this one question. If your son gets injured, doing a Olympic lift in a small group, and you come in, you ask the trainer, you come and ask me, Hey Dan, my son got injured. You know, the barbell dropped on his head as he was doing a snatch. Um, was this lift absolutely essential for him to be doing, to be the best ballplayer he could be?

And the answer is absolutely not. It’s absolutely. It’s a no. And that was always our test as strength coaches in our facility are these lifts absolutely essential for player to get to their goals. Uh, considering the safety aspects, the technicality aspects, all these other aspects is this the best intersection of safety and bang for the buck performance.

And so that was how we always chose our exercises. And because of the way we did our business, um, and small groups and the age of athletes, we were more in the middle school and high school age. It was always a no, as far as choosing power cleans or these other variations of Olympic lifts. And they’re not that many variations.

There’s the power clean. There’s the. The clean and jerk is the full there’s a snatch. And there’s a lot of variations in between the train, certain portions of those Olympic lifts. But. You know, in general, there’s a lot of different ways. I’m not going to go into them. Cause it doesn’t matter. At this point, there’s a lot of different ways to train power, to teach, train speed, to train explosiveness, to do all those things without, uh, the safety issues and, and having to teach over and over and over and put so much time into doing this one, lift correctly.

Again, learning Olympic lifts properly can be a sport in itself. It’s not just like a. Three weeks and they’ve got it kind of thing. You know, it seemed like that on the surface. Cause every football program in America is doing power cleans, but most of those kids are doing very crappy, very poor power cleans and the power clean is not an Olympic lift.

The power clean is a variation. It’s, it’s the first part of the, of the, the clean and jerk. You have to clean the weight and then you have to shove it over your head and press it over to extend your arms fully. So the power clean is just a half of an Olympic lift and it’s done poorly by most players, usually just using their arms.

Not really getting their body beneath it. And so then they’re really getting the full benefit out of it. So I want you to think critically about all the things your kid is doing, or if you’re an athlete listening to this you’re so all the things you’re doing and why, and ask yourself. What’s the risk reward.

Another one that we didn’t do was box jumps, jumping up a box, only demonstrates the current jumping ability you have today. It doesn’t train for you to learn, to jump higher. It doesn’t teach your force, your by do that only trains effort and shows how high you can jump and how high you can pull your knees up to get on top of a box.

But the re the risk of doing box jumps, especially really high ones are very, very severe. We’ve seen kids peel the a M you’ve seen this all over the internet. It’s only happened one time in our gym because we didn’t have kids do box jumps, except one college athlete came back and he said, Hey, they had me do box jumps at college.

Do you guys mind? If I do them here? We’re like, okay, you’re an adult, you know, that’s fine. He, and he literally missed that day and peeled like a half an inch of skin off his shins. It was disgusting. Not to mention just peeling, you know, missing the box and, and hitting your shins on it. But also if you just barely don’t make it, and you’re 40 inches off the ground, you fall backwards, you could catch yourself on your elbow, shatter your elbow, your wrist hit your head on the ground.

There’s so many risks for box jumps. That again, if a parent said, Hey, you know, my kid tried to do this, you know, challenging box jumps. She could barely only jump 30 inches. And she tried and she missed and she fell down and she hit her head. She got a concussion. Was that absolutely worth it? The answer is of course it’s absolutely not.

And so again, those are the questions you should be asking yourself as a coach, as a player, as a parent, when you’re doing these different lifts, there are no essential lifts. Absolutely. There are no essential lifts. The deadlift was something we also felt was too unsafe and required too much of our supervision and time to teach properly where we did easier exercises, easier variations of the deadlift that were.

Just as good and much easier to learn and teach and safer. So, uh, this is an important, is important topic. I don’t think Olympic lifts are like a really hot topic today. I don’t think they’re really, um, I don’t think this is really super controversial except maybe in the football world. And of course, I know a lot of baseball players are subject to doing the football teams, a weightlifting program, which can be problematic.

But again, it just in the vein of giving good advice to parents and coaches and athletes who are trying to do better and trying to learn. You just really always have to ask yourself this one question, which is, is this lift is central to my career and there’s absolutely no exercise that’s ever essential to your career.

It’s about finding the right exercises for you and learning how to do them properly and getting stronger over time and working hard in the weight room.

Alright, so today’s 92nd mindset is for hitters. And it’s a question. It’s should you swing at the first pitch? This is the thing that really irked me, uh, being a youth baseball coach. I’d hear it all the time. I hear from my own dugout guys get really excited. Like, Hey, we gotta start jumping on them. The East throwing a lot of strikes.

We’re falling behind. We gotta jump on them and swing, you know, swing on the first pitch. And I get that. I get that attitude where if you’re starting to fall behind the count, you’re taking too many pitches. You should be aggressive. Sure. But for a professional hitter. So when he really understands his craft and what he’s trying to do, he’s never considering the count to much extent at all, as far as whether he’s going to swing it or not.

All he’s going to consider really is can I drive this pitch? Whether it’s, Oh, and it’s the first pitch, if it’s right down the middle and it’s, he can drive it, he should swing at it. If it’s three now and you know, three knows a little bit of a different, a different count situationally, but if it’s three in one, And that pitches where I can drive it, then I should absolutely swing if it’s three and two and I can drive it, I should swing if it’s two and Oh, and I can drive it, I should swing.

So that should really be the only mindset for any hitter. So now yeah, if your team is being really tentative and they’re nervous, guys, don’t really hard. And they’re just like taking first pitch taking, taking the second, second pitch. As a coach, urging them to be more aggressive early is certainly good advice.

But saying that, Hey guys, we’ve got to start swinging the bat on that first pitch. He just toss it in there. Just because the strike doesn’t mean you should swing at it just because it’s on the outer third of the plate. And it’s a called strike. Doesn’t mean it’s hittable doesn’t mean you can drive it.

So it’s never about, uh, really the count. It’s never about those types of like, Hey, we need to be aggressive or less aggressive. It should always be for a kid who really wants to be a professional type hitter. Can I drive this pitch? It’s yes or it’s no. And if it’s yes, swing and go get it. If it’s no, then you should take it.

Even if it’s a strike and you can’t drive it, take it. Because chances are that is going to make it a mistake somewhere in that, in that a bat and give you a pitch that you can drive. And when you get that pitch again, whether it’s the first pitch or the last pitch or the 17th pitch, you need to drive it.

And that’s what really good hitters do you talk to someone about like Mike trout? He’s not discriminating. He’s not taking Oh, facile is just because he likes taking it off. Asshole. He’s not driving. Oh fast. I was just because there’s nothing inherently better about a baseball being thrown towards the plate on any given, uh, given count.

It’s always the same pitch being thrown. It’s a, the count is just like this, this environmental kind of a trait. So really your mindset should be, can I drive this pitch? And that is completely separate from the count you should separate your mind from the count in that regard that. It doesn’t matter what the account is.

If you can drive it, go get it, swing it, smash it. If you can’t drive it, take it. It’s not your pitch. Wait for the next one. Now again, if it’s Oh two and you really need a battle and you can’t strike out and you can’t drive a pitch, they need to foul it off. Right? So obviously there’s some caveats to that.

But again, this is more of the decision rather than there should never be a policy to swing on a certain count. Because you don’t know what’s coming and the pitch, this coming might not be a pitch you can drive. And so you don’t want to just say, all right, I’m going to go up there and swing at the first pitch.

And then that first pitch is on the outer third of the plate. And you grounded, you grounded the shortstop because you couldn’t drive it. That’s not what you want to do. So don’t get into this hyper aggressive mode where you’re just swinging. You’re going up there assuming you’re going to swing because of the count.

Make sure you see the pitch analyze whether it’s a ball or strike and whether it’s a pitch you can drive or not.

Alright, now it’s time for our listener Q and a portion of the show questions from the pious pious means to be devoutly faithful. And if you’re devout to the game of baseball, then you’re exactly the kind of person I want to hear from. If you have a question you’d like answered on the show, please email a voice recording to hello@danblewett.com AU.

Okay. Our question today comes from Zach. Hey, Dan, it’s Zach from Makena, since you recently retired from baseball, I was wondering, do you still work out? And if you do, how do you find motivation without a season to work towards? Thank you. All right. So I’ll convince, uh, Zach, Zach, and I know each other, uh, and he submitted this question.

And I have struggled with fitness after I retired, mostly because I ran myself into the ground while I was playing heavily burned myself out. And so it’s a good question that. Number one, I always recommend for parents and athletes that they should be lifting because they want to, and they should be, uh, they should start their lifting journey.

Cause once you start really doing strength and conditioning, you’re not going to stop until you retire. So if you’re not ready to start that journey at age 12 or 13, then you shouldn’t start at, you should start when you’re really motivated as an athlete because you want to do it. And because you realize that it’s necessary for you to be your best burnout is very real.

This whole, you know, there’s like a grinded out culture where it’s like no days off. And I was a player that took no days off before it was popular, to be honest. And, um, it eventually did run me into the ground. That happens to everyone where they’re just like, get off me, like get off me, wait room, like get off me barbell.

Like I just, I can’t, I just, I can’t with this anymore. And so that was me when I retired, I made it kind of funny YouTube video about it. Um, but it’s, it is a genuine question about. Burnout and how we can avoid this as athletes, because there are a lot of bitter pills that we have to swallow taking care of our arms, our flexibility, doing rehab, when we’re injured, uh, the strength training, the running.

There’s a lot of stuff that you have to do. That’s not super fun and it’s pretty honestly downright tedious. Um, that will again, burn you out over time. So. You know, for me today, uh, without speaking in generalities, speaking specifically to me, I’m now comfortable again, going on runs like three, four days a week.

Uh, but I’m still trying to get back into like the weight room and care about lifting again, because I don’t have this prize, which was chasing, you know, my baseball dreams for so long. Like. The amount of weight I lift in the weight room. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. And I don’t have this, uh, insecurity where I have to compare my strength and my muscle size to other men.

Like I know what kind of man I am. So I don’t have that insecurity to drive me in the weight room either, which I know drives a lot of people. I do want to be healthy. So running, um, makes me feel better. Like my lungs, my heart rate, my stroke volume of my heart. Those are all really positive benefits that I get from, from running.

And I run like 30 minutes, like three or four times a week, sometimes a little more. Uh, I also walk probably 15, 20 miles a week in the city. Um, but as far as like getting back in the weight room and getting a barbell in my hand, it’s just, it’s just something I hate. I absolutely still hate it. And I’m trying not hate it.

Uh, but it’s hard and I’m also trying to fit it in to my schedule better because I don’t want to fit in because I hate it. So there’s not a concrete answer. Uh, that is. Overall my answer, but it’s, it’s a tough thing for a lot of athletes that, uh, retire their relationship with, with strength and conditioning changes, it changes forever, and they have to find a way to, to do fitness for Fitness’s sake.

Not because they want to hit a ball harder and be great, but because they just need to be healthy and look the way they want to look. One of my, uh, childhood idols, Ken Griffey jr. I saw him for the first time, a couple months ago, he did an interview and he’s very overweight and I just was shocked and I’m not shocked because a lot that happens with a lot of athletes because, but I mean, he was just like the specimen.

I mean, such an amazing athlete. And when I think of kangaroo, jr. I think of him in his prime and then to see him like that, it’s like, wow, like that’s not, I don’t know that person. And so, uh, that’s just a topic for another day, but it’s a very real thing that athletes get burned out. And it’s a very real thing when athletes you’re tired that they’re there.

Relationship with fitness changes forever. And it can be really tough to sort that out, both from a physical and psychological standpoint. So good questions, Zach, um, and probably a bigger topic for another day.

Well, that’s it for today’s episode of dear baseball gods. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while improving your baseball IQ. By one of my books were enrolled today in an online pitching course, sign up for any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code baseball gods, just for being a listener.

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