Road To 90: Weight Training
“Don’t get too big, you'll lose mobility and not be able to throw” is something else I heard along with being told I will “grow into my velocity”. Now I’m here skinny, throwing 80poo. Sadly, the strongest I’ve ever been was my senior year of high school when I was 18. I knew I couldn’t produce any force from my legs anymore, let alone my arm. So the goal was to create a good strong base once the off-season started and progress into getting as strong as possible.
To create this good strong base, I started with a hypertrophy workout for 6-weeks right after the summer men’s season was over. Hypertrophy allows for the muscles to grow in size and/or mass. An increase in size and mass should increase the potential for force the muscles can produce. Workouts during this time had a lot of single-sided, excentric, and high-rep exercises. Here is what they consisted of:
This was a grueling time. Doing single-sided or high-rep exercises can be quite a task as 20 reps of anything frankly sucks. Making myself do these workouts four days a week was a task on its own. So when push came to shove it was easy to skip a day and do just 3 days in one week. I’ll be the first to say I could’ve done better and I could’ve pushed myself some more. However, considering my bar is low when it comes to gaining strength, this was not a waste and I did see some gains. I just could’ve done more. But the goal of creating a base and getting my body used to lifting again was accomplished. My mound velo at the end of this phase ticked up slightly, but the consistency was way better. Something to be said for being strong enough to repeat certain, movements over and over again.
Time to move on to the strength phase.
Not too long ago Driveline Baseball released a free 6-week strength program that is supposed to pair well with pitchers going through a velocity phase. Perfect. I loaded that baby into TRAQ with a few minor tweaks based on the available equipment. When I added the workouts to the calendar, you’ll see (to the right) that the strength workouts go on the same day as the highest intent/volume days throwing-wise. I think there are benefits for post-throwing recovery (I can go into detail, but not here), but it comes down to recovering the next day. When you lift or throw, you are taxing the CNS and its ability to recruit muscles. If you lift on a recovery-throwing day, then you aren’t giving your CNS a full day off to recover. Understandably, this may be hard to do as it means dedicating 2-2.5 hours to training in one day, but you are getting more relaxing days in between.
Anyways, this strength workout was 3-days a week just like the higher intent/volume throwing days. With those days stacked on each other, I went to work. Now at this time, The Lab had only one small, puny squat rack with no safety bars, an old bench press and barbell, some TJ max med balls and kettlebells (proudly still in use), but somehow, plenty of weight. I made it work, but with a lack of safety or the ability to do things right because I was improvising, I was unable to really allow myself to go to the next level. But help was coming on that end…
Maybe I wasn’t able to really push myself, but I was working out more consistently and better than in the last phase. The only problem is that I knew there was another piece, or two. The first one is mobility. Now I was still finding my way on what was really limiting me, but it usually came down to my back (t-spine) and hips. So I started attacking both with various exercises, sometimes overdoing it or not doing enough. Some weeks I’d get a good 4-5 days of mobility and some other days 2 or 3. This is the boring work that actually takes a bunch of focus and concentration to do right. So between the experimenting and lack of consistency, I was setting myself up for something bad.
That happened the week before my next mound velo which was
During my movement prep and warmup, I was doing some Tuck Jumps to get ready to be explosive. And then it happened. I tried to explode up a little higher, tuck my knees up more and my back tightened up. Now, this isn’t new to me and one of the reasons I knew I needed to take mobility seriously, but this was frustrating.
Once I felt the tweak, I just kept chugging along before things stiffened up. This seemed like the right move at the moment as I hit some all-time PRs along with some marks that I haven’t seen in a while. However, in the long run, this did not turn out well as my mound velo the next week obviously suffered.
My plan from here was to just keep going. I was going to change to another strength gain template from Driveline (this one is a pre-loaded program in TRAQ) and get after the mobility. My back took its time healing though so I started honing in mobility instead. I’m not sure I even did one workout from that template. But this started something new as the “Road to 90” idea was cooking up.
About a week after the disappointing mound velo, I decided I just wanted to truly get as strong as possible. At The Lab, we were getting in some new squat racks and equipment so the motivation was there along with the ability to do things right. So all I was going to do was Squat, Bench, and Deadlift three times a week. Day 1 would be 4-5 reps of the big three paired with explosive exercises. On Day 2, I would do 8-10 reps paired with a more traditional auxiliary lift while day 3 was 2 reps paired with mobility. This hit all areas while keeping the focus on getting strong.
I loved the first week of this program. However, come week two, my body was taxed. This proved so when I hurt my shoulder jumping. A sure sign my body didn’t like how much stress I was putting on in with these intense 3x week workouts. This is when I took a break from throwing for a bit while thinking ahead to the adjustments I needed to make when I started throwing again. Here’s the program I executed until my baseline mound velo:
This is really only the first half of the program. For the last 2 weeks of the program (3 & 4 if 4 weeks; 5 & 6 if 6 weeks) switch the “Big 3” from 4-5 reps to 2 rep maxes. I’m a big fan of how this one turned out. I don’t know everything, but from what my body is telling me, I am on the right track. To keep some power movements involved, I added in these two med ball workouts that were done before the strength work:
Now just to figure out mobility, which is looking good now.
Mobility
This has been the big issue culminating in what happened on my pulldown day. What has limited me over the last couple of years has mainly been my T-Spine (upper back around the shoulder blade area) and my left hip. They both have gotten tight over the years from various minor injuries I never fully took care of.
So I found a bunch of back and hip mobility exercises and went to town. Yanking my hips and spine into range of motion and not really thinking of actually being mobile. Sometimes I did a full spread of way too much making my back sore in the process or doing half of it and not being fully loosened by the time I threw. A couple of times I even did some random stretches and movements. This was not good, but what it did was allow me to experiment with what my body truly needed. I even found a couple of key videos (thanks Dean Jackson) discussing the problem I had with some other warmup fixes. Just like the strength workout I ended on, I started figuring out what hit the spot. Below you can find the movement prep day I do before throwing along with the recovery mobility for the day after. Recovery is a longer list, but that is because I don’t do every single one of them. It’s more of a pick list so I can choose what is right for my body that day. On recovery days, I also like to ride the stationary bike for 20-30 minutes keeping my heart rate at 120-130 bpm.
Some of the names are made up because I am not sure what to call them. I tried to make them as self-explanatory as possible. A couple of my favorite additions were the Barbell Pivot Pick and PVC Pipe Wall Hip Twist. Both a definitely made-up names, but they specifically translate to what I am trying to accomplish on the mound with my hip/torso separation and rotation. I plan on going in-depth a bit on those with some video posts as I want to make them a regular part of some of the athletes’ warmups.
These two warmups will be my money maker. Heck, I already am feeling so much better, and executing the warmup isn’t so strenuous anymore.
Nutrition/Supplements
The last thing I want to touch on that pertains to weight training is nutrition and supplements. As I started to really go after strength gains, I knew there were some supplements I was going to need beyond just eating properly. I mean making sure I am eating enough calories a day will go a long way for me, but here’s what else I started taking:
Fish Oil- joint and bone health; I’m putting a lot of stress on them and I am getting older (1 serving in the morning)
Vitamin D3- no sun this time of year and also has physical/mental health benefits (10,000 IUs in the morning)
Creatine Monohydrate- most researched supplement for strength gain; natural and helps when training with heavy loads, performance, recovery, and muscle strength, endurance, and growth (light load with 10g for 1 week then 5g 30-min before workout or recovery)
Protein- help muscle recover and build after breaking them down (post-workout/recovery)
Pre-Workout- trying to find a good one, but something to expand blood vessels and help nutrients flow to active muscles (20 min before workouts)
Glutamine- helps with muscle soreness and recovery (1g before and 1g after a workout; might need more?)
Somedays it feels like a lot, but with a set schedule on when things are taken, it becomes second nature. When your body starts feeling better and you see the gains, then you don’t think twice. However, nothing beats eating good quality food throughout the day. That’s the #1 supplement.
Going Forward
From here it’s easy. The week after my baseline mound velo, I will run myself through a couple of experimental tests. One involves testing shoulder and grip strength while the other involves a few different jumps. The jumps are used to evaluate power production and strength. With that, predicted throwing velo is generating help giving a better sense of where training economy should be applied. My gut is telling me I am going to need to continue focusing on strength gain. If that proves true, I will start the new “Big 3” workout over and go for a full 6 weeks. These results will be found in the big breakdown of the full assessment.
Time to lift big and be mobile.
