Off-Season Speed Training for Position Players – Part 1
Welcome to the first installment of our four-part series on off-season speed training for Minor League Baseball (MiLB) position players. In this series, we’ll detail the speed training system we implemented this off-season and explain how you can adapt it to your own program.
The off-season for a baseball player should have multiple priorities that all reflect the end goal of getting the athlete prepared for his upcoming season. In this series, we are going to examine a very important component that should be found in every healthy player’s training: speed work.
(Note: For the sake of this series, we are referring to healthy position players—injured players or those on a return-to-play protocol should consult with their respective medical and performance specialists.)
Why is Offseason Speed Training Important?
Sprinting, Jumping, And Change of Direction Should Be A Focal Point During The Off-Season For Three Main Reasons:
1. Speed Improvement or Maintenance
We should always aim to make our athletes faster—or at the very least, keep them from losing speed in the off-season. Introducing sprints and other forms of high-intensity running early on helps ensure they don’t fall behind.
2. Beneficial Training Effects
Speed training yields a host of positive adaptations that carry over into other facets of performance, including:
- Increased tendon stiffness
- Improved body composition
- Enhanced central nervous system efficiency
- Greater fast-twitch muscle fiber recruitment
These qualities are crucial for sports where the ability to generate force quickly is a key indicator of success.
3. Reduced Risk of Soft Tissue Injuries
Sprinting is a frequent activity in both games and practices. If the body isn’t properly conditioned, the likelihood of hamstring strains, shin splints, and other injuries increases. While there’s no way to guarantee injury prevention, you can substantially lower the odds by preparing muscles, joints, and connective tissues for the loads they’ll face.
- Early Preparation Matters: If a player shows up to spring training (or preseason) without having hit max speed or performed high-intensity cuts since last season, both performance and physical readiness will suffer once workloads spike.
- Higher Workload Tolerance: Athletes who include sufficient speed training in their off-season typically handle the demands of practices and games better, experiencing less fatigue and fewer performance dips as the season ramps up.
Starting your program
Once an athlete has taken some time off after his season concludes and is ready to start his off-season training program, speed training can be introduced right away.
Considerations:
1. We need to build capacity early to tolerate volume and intensity later.
- The longer the period away from activity was after the season ends, the longer the reintroduction period to resuming similar levels of activity should be.
- Typically, one or two weeks comprising four to six sessions of rudimentary sprint drills (i.e. skips, shuffles, build-up sprints, tempo runs, etc.) will be sufficient before implementing true speed, acceleration, and change of direction work.
2. Regardless of how long the athletes’ offseason will be, we want to first introduce the base elements of speed work that will be the focus of the offseason, and then progressively build the volume and complexity of those drills.
- It’s very important to not increase volume too quickly, as this can overload the body’s tissues and lead to injury and/or excessive fatigue that hampers other activities like hitting, fielding, throwing, and lifting.
- Although the athletes are not in season and therefore don’t need to feel fresh every day, you still must consider that their overall workload is going to be as high as it gets all year when factoring in their sport-specific activities on top of strength training.
So, what’s an effective way to go about implementing an off-season speed training plan? Here’s how we did it:
The Weekly Training Schedule
Athletes at Driveline lift three times per week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In accordance with the high-low model of stress tolerance, we lined up the speed training to fall on those days as well, so that Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays can be lighter days where their focus is on skill work.
For our hitters (who are in the cages six days per week), this meant speed training would fall on bat speed training days. They typically reported feeling like they were able to rotate faster, compared with hitting after a briefer and more minimal warm up, and liked how primed and ready they felt getting into the cages after speed training.
Timing and Session Flow
Our pro speed group started mid-morning with a full dynamic warm up and a session that lasted 30-45 minutes. The guys would then have about 20 minutes afterward to switch gears and get ready for their hitting groups. Lifting and throwing (plus a break for food) would follow hitting.
Structuring the Week
The schedule for how we set up the week was as follows:
- Monday – acceleration
- Wednesday – nonlinear running
- Friday – change of direction
Dynamic Warm Up Details
The dynamic warm up took about 15 minutes and was very similar on each of the three days, with a couple small variances depending on the focus of the session (we will explain this more in-depth during the upcoming sections).
We’d start with some ground-based mobility and then progress to in-place standing movements mixed in with a variety of locomotive drills. Build-up sprints of increasing intensity and varied starting positions were sprinkled throughout the warmup, starting at around 60% effort and ending around 95%.
Transition to Jumping Exercises
After the dynamic warm up, we would incorporate jumping exercises that correlated with the primary focus of that particular speed work session and then get to work!
Looking Ahead
In Part Two, we’ll take an in-depth look at acceleration training: the drills we use, the coaching cues we emphasize, and the how’s and why’s of our progression systems.
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