This is baseball?

Twenty eight-minute aerobics? Repeat 600 meter sprints with barely enough time to barf in between? Drawn-out jogging like the Kenyans? Cut-off scores and testing criteria for the mile run?

This is baseball. You want drag racers exploding on jet engines. Not a Prius brigade.

When was the last time you saw someone run a mile in a baseball game? Sure, use the mile run and other grueling events as a sporadic test of heart. See who wants it. Place an aerobic/endurance component into the conditioning of athletes with poor health and fitness. But do you think that the mile run is a valid gauge of baseball merit?

This is baseball.The diamond is a place where skilled and strong downright beats skilled and small. You want a bear, not a fox. Will various aerobics and distance running translate into a harder throwing, further hitting, more powerful athlete? This is baseball, where you’re interested in TNT, not kerosene.

Shouldn’t a shortstop train differently than a (soccer) mid-fielder? Do you really want your catcher to look like a cross-country star? This is baseball, where honed and complete athletes are not made from slothfulness or hot-dog eating between innings. For most young men and women, high intensity plyometrics, sprint training, and power training will provide plenty enough physical conditioning to get them through the ninth inning.

This is baseball, not basketball. But wait. Even in hoops, a recent research report found that only power performance tests (and not endurance tests) could identify elite from average basketball players (1). In other words, elite hoopers are no more or less aerobically fit than average players. But they are far more powerful. And if power is a primary factor in a sport like basketball, imagine how it applies to baseball?

And this is baseball.

What if all the overboard “getting in shape” was costing you far more than your time? What if (already) fit young athletes everywhere are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of developing strength and power? It seems that any one person; one human body, simply cannot be both a precision instrument of absolute power AND highly compatible for endurance events. What if your choice is a five minute mile OR a 500 pound squat; a perfectly lean 160 lbs OR a 90 mph fastball?

The primary purpose of another recent study was to determine if the sequence of endurance and strength training (in one workout) has any outcome on strength and power (2). Is it better to do endurance work followed by resistance training or vice-versa? After 12 weeks of training, they found that either sequence works equally well. Both groups improved on strength and power tests. Not exactly earth-shattering.

But that’s not all. For “control” purposes, the authors of the study had two additional groups. One of those completed only the endurance portion and the other completed only the strength/power workout. As would be expected, the endurance only group did not improve much in power tests. But the strength/power group improved far more than BOTH of the groups performing strength/power training before or after endurance training.

However it happened, well…(in the words of the authors) “If the development of strength and power is the priority of the training program, then concurrent power and endurance training is not advised.”

In baseball you want Metallica, not Clay Aiken.

"...Hammer comes crushing,
Powerhouse of energy
Whipping up a fury,
dominating flurry
Smashing through the boundaries..." -Metallica

Why not simply make your cut-off criteria the vertical jump or long jump? Why not gauge hip-torso power with total body resistance tests and upper body power with medicine ball throws? Or you could just keep going along with how it’s always been done in the past. Keep jogging and "toning."

After all, this is baseball.

1.) Physiological Testing of Basketball Players: Toward a Standard Evaluation of Anaerobic Fitness. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 22: 1066-1072, 2008.

2) Effect of Concurrent Endurance and Circuit Resistance Training Sequence on Muscular Strength and Power Development. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 22:1037-1045, 2008