Here's some training rationale and philosophy as applied to more advanced athletes at GoWags. Much of this is beyond the younger set and the half-committed. Stay tuned for a later word on youth training.

Come on back. To the left, past the waiting area and netting, to the strength/conditioning area. See it all from one spot - some iron and tubing, boxes, medicine balls, and appropriate measuring devices. Notice the lack of luster, expansive fancy chrome machines, saunas, smoothie bars and TVs. Notice that there's no good place to sit and rest, much less machines where you sit and exercise.

M.O.

In every way, we're about performance, not appearance. Even if we had the time and money for the appearance of standard "fitness centers," we still would give you something different. Oh sure, you may get abs. But only because strong abs enable higher heat and a quicker bat.

Equipment

No amount of fancy equipment or fitness gimmicks or the perfect training program will substitute for long-term, routine hard work. And not much equipment is required to get 'er done. If it takes a huge gym full of people and fancy chrome machines to make you deliver the goods on any one of them, so be it. But don’t think that those things are essential to progress. Running from exercise to exercise all over the gym is a lot easier than creating new limits.

Program Design

There are thousands of ways to train; hundreds of them good ways to train. None of the effective ways are easy. The body is connected; it's one piece. We're after performance, not bodybuilding, and attempt to "isolate" muscles only when there's a good reason to.

While Olympic Lifts (power cleans, etc.) are good ways to train for peak power, these are technical exercises. While they run a slightly greater risk of injury, they run a much greater risk of you spending too much time just learning how to do it correctly, and not enough time in hard training and skill practice. There are better, simpler, just-as-effective ways to train for peak power.

It's Not Confusing

We're not looking to "confuse" your muscles. The current fad among gyms and trainers is "muscle confusion." In short, the concept of muscle confusion is to constantly change your exercises and sets and reps and other training variables so that you never go through the same workout twice. It's suppose to keep you from over training or getting stale.

Do you imagine that this “confusion” (not adapting to any one thing) is MOST effective for sports performance, where the name of many games is brute strength (force) applied to a specific skill set? If you're an athlete, and have come to knowledge of key components related to your sport, why in the world would you want to "confuse" your muscles?

Sure, your muscles will be sore when you put them through something new each time. But continual muscle soreness is not a good indicator of intelligent and effective progress toward sport-specific goals. Muscle confusion stands in the way of you truly delivering the goods on an intense and challenging exercise - then doing it again, even more next time.

We'll worry about you getting "stale" when you...get stale. A little higher, a little faster, a little more iron on the bar...tracking progression in key exercises IS the beginning and end of training for athletics.

Knowing

At GoWags, you will not have a new routine each day that you train. No, you will know what's coming. You will often dread it and look forward to it, simultaneously. Knowing what's to come, you will be able to focus and immerse yourself in effort, and therefore, perhaps truly train.

You will actually recognize uncharted territory, because just last week (or so) you went hard, and stood inches away, gasping. You know the price for going there. It always hurts to go hard as hard as you can.

I'm talking about the good hurt, not injury. We have designed our program to be as simple as possible while accounting for proper variation, balance, and breadth to cover all bases. We prefer not to use big scienc-y-sounding words like mesocycle and periodization. Our training is based on research literature, personal experience, and the preferences of the designers - coaches, athletes, and academics.

Measurement and Competition

The training here is not a sport itself. I can jump higher and "bench throw" more than our current top athlete. But Danny D. can throw 95mph and I can't. Improved sport performance means something: ERA, slugging percentage, put-outs, and stolen bases, result from a primed "engine" and specific technical skill. We treat the training itself as competition because it naturally makes the athletes (and the trainers!) train harder.

Objective measuring sticks and periodic testing allows for honest appraisal. You are held accountable for improving upon your own scores, not your friends or rivals. We have a basis to evaluate progress and make changes. We believe all this will transfer to the diamond, but only the diamond will tell.

In The End

You come here to be a better baseball player. You receive individualized, focused goals, incentive, and accountability built into the system. By the end, it's highly likely that you're game will improve. But you'll certainly discover far more than that. It would be a shame if baseball is all you get out of The Back at GoWags.

Soon to come...

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