5 Absolute Musts For Having An Injury Free Baseball Season – Baseball Injury Prevention Program

Written By: cjp108

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April 28, 2014

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Posted In:

• Baseball Strength and Conditioning
• Hitting

**Full Disclosure – I have made product suggestions in this blog post with links to
Amazon. If you purchase any of these items I will receive a few pennies… literally.
I am not trying to trick you or sell you on anything. I am just providing you with insights
into what I did during my career.**

Okay, now that we got that out of the way… Here. We. Go.

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The first step to having a consistent season is staying injury free, just ask Grady Sizemore.

There are a ton of injuries that happen that are “freak” and largely out of your control, like tearing
your ACL or separating your shoulder. You can work your tail off to be strong in your muscles
around your knees and shoulders, but that doesn’t guarantee you won’t have a freak injury.

Fortunately you can have a massive impact on preventing many injuries that shelf players
for up to 6-8 weeks, like a hamstring pull or oblique strain.

Here are my 5 Absolute Musts for Having an Injury Free Season

1. Eat for performance

One of the biggest cliche’s I heard from nutritionist over and over again is the analogy about filling your car
up with garbage and expecting it to run perfectly.

Your body works the EXACT same way. If you want your body to perform like a well oiled machine then you
have to fill it up with premium gas.

A properly distributed diet is HUGE for long term success because of the length and grind of the baseball
season.

Do you know the exact foods you need to be eating on a daily basis for maximum performance?

How many calories you should consume based on your height/weight?

These are questions you MUST know the answer to especially if you are a player who
struggles to add or maintain weight.

I’ve never had problems gaining lean weight because I know exactly what I need to eat,
when, and how much.

Your diet is just as important as getting in the cage and taking swings. It takes work just
like every other part of baseball.

Here’s a great place to start researching your sports nutrition

====> Sports Nutrition Books

2. High Quality Sleep

Every athlete should get at least 8 hours of quality sleep per night. I would recommend getting closer to 10 hours of sleep
per night for maximum recovery.

This is going to mean getting to bed EARLY. If you want to make your dreams a reality then you will have to make sacrifices
along the way.

For you to be able to do this that means you are going to have to manage your time extremely efficiently.

For example, if you know you have a test next week then study every single night for 25-30 minutes so you don’t have to study
for 2-3 hours the night before the test. This was always REALLY hard for me to stay disciplined on but it was a huge habit that
helped me dominate college. Develop it now.

Here are some more tips for getting high quality sleep.

• Turn Off The EntertainmentTurn off the TV, Video Games, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, 30-60 minutes before you go to sleep.

• Develop a pre-bed time routine.

Take a shower, brush your teeth, read a book, etc. Just do the same thing every night
before you go to sleep.

• Don’t drink caffeine 12 hours before bed time.

Put the NO Explode, C4, or Assault down. You don’t need it. Create your own mental energy
to motivate yourself.

It’s much more powerful to learn how to motivate yourself than to take some magic potion
to get you going.

• Don’t Text Before Bed.

Especially that special someone. Just tell them you are going to bed 30 minutes before you actually
do.

• Take a natural sleeping aid to help with recovery

This was one of the biggest things I noticed gave me high quality sleep after
a trainer at Mississippi State suggested it to me. It’s called ZMA and helps you
get a deeper level of REM sleep which is huge for the recovery process.

You can pick some up here. This was made in Twinlab’s NSF Certified for Sport Lab
which means that all the ingredients are verified to be sure there are no PED’s.

Always stay squeaky clean 

3. Get on the Foam Roller

Here’s a link to a full article that will explain it much better than I ever could. 

http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/what-is-a-foam-roller-how-do-i-use-it-and-why-does-it-hurt

You can pick yours up right here and get started ASAP

 

4. Use a Stretch Band after every physical activity.

Using an elastic stretch band is a key to getting a great stretch after a workout, game, or practice because
it allows you to place as much pressure as you feel you need and without a partner.

It’s extremely important to make a habit of stretching after you are done working out to maintain flexibility
and prevent injuries from occurring.

There is always a debate about how much stretching really matters from a scientific standpoint. As a player it always
gave me the confidence to go 100% whenever I was as flexible as I possibly could be, especially after I missed 20 games
my sophomore season in college from a hamstring strain.

If you don’t have one, I highly suggest picking yours up right here ===> http://amzn.to/1flbNUK

5. Supplement Your Diet with Protein

http://amzn.to/1hHg5Ey

The best kind of protein you can have is found in regular food (Chicken, eggs, steak, pork, etc) but I’ve always found
it extremely difficult to get enough protein throughout the day through these sources. Especially during school or when
I was on the go it was always easier to have a ziplock bag full of protein, dump it in a shaker, and mix it. You can crush
it between classes pretty quickly.

It fills you up, helps your body recover, and keeps muscle on your body.

Here was the exact kind I used while I was playing at Mississippi State and in the minor leagues.

Pick Up Your Protein Here ==> http://amzn.to/1hHg5Ey

Again, these are suggestions and many more products exist than I have included in this blog post. This is what I found worked
for me the best to stay healthy throughout my career.

Keep Swinging,

Coach Powers

What if?

Today's guest post comes from current Cressey Performance intern, and former D1 college baseball player, James Cerbie. -EC

What if?

It’s the age-old question that has haunted athletes and competitive people for ages.

What if I had done this? What if I had done that? What if I hadn’t been stupid and done ?

Unfortunately, these questions will never have answers. It’s impossible to go back and revisit what could have been. Rather, we’re left to look at the now, learn from our “what if” moments, and share our new understanding with another generation. That is where I now find myself.

I’m in the middle of my internship here at Cressey Performance, and to say I’m greeted with the “what if” question on a daily basis would be an understatement. Everyday I get a glance at how we train and prepare athletes, and get to reflect on how I was trained and prepared.

And just to bring you up to speed, I’m speaking to the training and preparation of baseball athletes. I’m currently 24 years old and spent approximately 19 of those years playing baseball. It was my greatest passion growing up and I devoted countless hours to my craft. My hard work eventually paid off as I got to play Division 1 baseball at a great school (go Davidson). But, nevertheless, it’s impossible to wonder what could have been if I had known what I know now.

Here are 6 things I really wish I would have known, or done more of during my baseball career, courtesy of my experience here at Cressey Performance.

1. Get assessed.

I’ve always been a good athlete. That’s not to toot my own horn because I have my parents to thank for that more than anything; it just is what it is.

Because I was always a good athlete, however, I believe certain aspects of my training got overlooked. Number one on that list being an assessment.

Not once, throughout my entire athletic career, did I ever get assessed.

If I got injured or came up short on a certain task it was just chalked up to being an athlete:

“James…these things just happen. You’re a good athlete and getting injured is just a part of what you do.”

Oh really? A stress fracture in my back, multiple hip flexor strains, a pulled quad and a host of other injuries just happen for the sake of happening? Sorry, but that answer always frustrated me. What I really heard was:

“James…you keep getting injured but I really don’t know why.”

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that getting injured is a part of sports. Here’s the difference though: there are fluke injuries that pop up on the rare occasion, and then there’s being “chronically” injured which entails always being nagged by one thing or another.

Throughout my collegiate baseball career, I fell in the “chronically” injured category and would constantly be met with suggestions like:

“Oh, your hamstrings are tight. Just stretch those bad boys a couple times a day and that’ll help.”

“Oh, your hips are tight. Just stretch that and things should start feeling better.”

For those of you who haven’t tried the “stretch it because it’s tight” routine, let me save you the time and effort: it doesn’t work. There’s far more to it than that.

I don’t want to start sounding like a repetitive drumbeat, so let’s get to the point: you need to be assessed. It’s the number one most important thing you can do; it’ll help you stay healthy and take your performance to the next level.

I’ll use myself as example.

The first time I met Eric was about a year after I stopped playing baseball. Having heard great things about him, I visited Cressey Performance for a one-time consultation. Here’s an excerpt from the email Eric sent me, highlighting my “problems.”

“1. Your sit in significant scapular downward rotation, and your humeral head dives forward whenever you extend or externally rotate. These are super common in overhead throwing athletes, and you just took them a step further by also becoming an overhead pressing athlete! You simply don't get enough upward rotation when your arms elevate - and that's a big thing we'll address with these warm-ups.

2. Getting upward rotation and good overhead motion is also heavily dependent on building up anterior core stability. You're extremely lordotic and heavily overuse your lats to not only pull the spine into extension, but also take the scapula into depression/downward rotation. When lats are this overactive, your lower traps don't want to do their job. So, core stability closely relates to shoulder mobility and stability (not to mention breathing patterns and a host of other things). You could also see how your anterior weight bearing negatively affected your squat pattern, and why that counterbalance made so much of a difference.”

He actually talks about some of these issues in this video:

In short, here were my issues:

- I was incredibly extended with an obnoxious amount of anterior pelvic tilt
- I had crazy overactive, short and stiff lats
- Lower trap strength equivalent to that of a 7-year-old girl
- A 6 pack that meant nothing because my core was actually really weak

Cue epiphany.

I finally had answers to my seemingly endless list of injuries throughout college. Almost all of them could be tied back in one way or another to the list above and here’s the frustrating part: nobody had ever looked at these things before or had ever written me an individualized program to address them.

I was merely given generic “athletic” development programs that fed into and compounded my dysfunction.

Moral of the story? Get assessed.

2. Movement comes first.

I always equated problems with strength. I thought strength could solve any deficiencies I had and approached my training likewise. Looking back, I now realize how dumb that was.

More times than not, especially as you get older and advance from level to level, it has far less to do with strength and far more to do with how well you move. Like Gray Cook says, “Don’t layer fitness on top of dysfunction.”

Well, I layered a whole bunch of fitness on top of dysfunction.

This happened because one, I was never assessed, and two, I was incredibly stubborn. The thought of taking a step back to work on movement quality irked me like no other.

“I can squat over 400 lbs. Why am I going to go do goblet squats with an 80 lb dumbbell?”

This was foolish, and something the coaching staff at CP does an excellent job of handling. Because Cressey Performance puts every client through an assessment, they know what a client needs to work on and how to do so properly. Many times, this means taking a small step backward (from the client’s point of view) in order to take an enormous step forward.

Unfortunately, most athletes are like I was. They want to always push the envelope and the thought of taking a step back is almost insulting.

Dear athletes: Please change this attitude.

I can’t harp on the importance of movement before strength enough. Do what you need to do to make sure you move well before you worry about building up strength. Your body and your career will thank you as you stay healthy and reach the highest levels of performance.

3. Focus on the little things.

It’s often the little things that get overlooked the most. These are things like prone trap raises, breathing patterns, soft tissue work and your posture outside the gym. They aren’t sexy and are, to be quite honest, boring.

It’s these boring and non-sexy items, however, that make a big difference.

Putting your full attention into the tiny details of arm care, how you breathe, how you stand, and how you often you foam roll will make the difference between being good and being exceptional.

Luckily, the athletes at CP have a staff that understands this and harps on it daily.

4. Do more single-leg work.

There were few things I hated doing more than lunges, single leg RDLs, split squats, step-ups…really any single-leg exercises. I hated them because I sucked at them.

Tell me to do something on two legs and I crushed it. Put me on one leg (especially my right) and I turned into Bambi on ice.

Okay, so it wasn’t that bad, but it definitely wasn’t my forte.

Instead of forcing myself to conquer this deficiency, I merely found ways to implement as much bilateral work as possible. Seeing as the vast majority of baseball, and pretty much all sports for that matter, are played on one leg, this wasn’t the smartest decision. I would have been far better off doing like we do at CP and hammering single-leg work.

Not just doing lightweight, high rep sets though, but getting truly strong on one leg:

Ultimately, I believe a lot of the success CP baseball players have is because they are forced to get strong on one leg, while most people take my approach and only get strong on two.

Side note: that’s not to say CP athletes don’t get strong on two legs, because they do.

5. Get outside the sagittal plane.

Oh…the beloved sagittal plane.

 

Visit most weight rooms and you’ll see people living in the sagittal plane:

Squatting…sagittal plane
Deadlifting…sagittal plane
Box jump…sagittal plane

And the list could easily go on. Most sports (and life for that matter), do not comply with this North-South straight-line orientation; they are lived in multiple planes of motion.

Just think through the complexity and mechanics of throwing a baseball. All the things that need to take place to ensure a ball is thrown at the correct velocity, with the right spin and the right trajectory to bring about the desired result. It’s pretty amazing stuff when you consider the minute details.

Here’s another cool little tidbit of info: power development is plane specific. Just because you can generate power in one plane doesn’t mean you’ll do so well in others.

Yup…you guessed it. I missed the boat on this one also.

At CP, however, they get outside the sagittal plane, and do so often. First on this list is medicine ball throws.

They use a lot of different medicine ball throwing routines to help their athletes develop power in the transverse and frontal plane. A great example of such an exercise is the rotational med ball scoop toss:

Second, they implement exercises like the 1-arm kettlebell lateral lunge and heiden:

Lastly, they use off-set loading on exercises; this provides a rotational component to the movement because the body has to resist rotating towards one side vs. the other. A good example of such a movement would be a 1-arm 1-leg kettlebell RDL:

Although this barely scratches the surface when it comes to exercises used by Cressey Performance and the importance of training outside the sagittal plane, I hope it has given you a good frame of reference.

6. More doesn’t equal better.

There’s a time to push it and a time to back off. Being an in-season athlete is not one of the “push” times. Many coaches, however, forget this and continue pushing their athletes as if nothing has changed.

If you read Eric’s blog often (which I hope you do) you’ll know he says, “You can’t add something without taking something else away.” I really wish that quote could be plastered on the walls of weight rooms around the country.

When the volume of swings, throws and sprints picks up because you’ve started the season, then you have to start taking something away.

Having been lucky enough to spend the past few months at CP, I’ve gotten to witness this first hand. As pitchers begin entering their competitive season (when they’re obviously throwing more often), you see a change in the program to reflect the increased volume outside the weight room.

Medicine ball throws are scaled back, if not eliminated completely. Lifts move towards a two-day per week full body structure, and extra movement days are limited.

As an athlete, it’s easy to forget how everything you do adds up. Every swing, every throw, every sprint and every lift leaves traces in your nervous system. And, although you may be awesome, your body can only handle so much. I understand the desire to get in and work hard, but you have to remember that a lot of times, less is more.

Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, this barely scratches the surface when it comes to things I wish I would have done differently. As opposed to dwelling on that, however, I’d rather write and share my experiences with coaches and athletes so they can avoid making the mistakes I did. Feel free to post questions or discuss your own experiences in the comments section below.

About the Author

James Cerbie is a certified strength and conditioning specialist and USA weightlifting sports performance coach who is Precision Nutrition Level 1 and Crossfit Level 1 certified. He has been blessed to work with athletes from the middle school to professional level, including powerlifters, Olympic lifters and Crossfit athletes. Cerbie gets no greater enjoyment than seeing people improve, succeed and achieve their goals. He’s the owner of Rebel Performance and currently works as a strength and conditioning intern at Cressey Performance. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.