I have worked with and observed a lot of softball players over the years.
I have come two main conclusions about most players:
1) They love the game and want to get better
2) They have serious deficiencies in their conditioning which hurts their game big time.
A lot players will try to workout and coaches will try to implement some form of conditioning in their practices.
However, to be honest, most of what’s done is useless or ineffective.
Why?
It’s random. A couple of speed drills here. A couple of power exercises there. Add to this a set or two of push-ups and sit-ups and you might have one of these “ramdom” workouts.
Don’t get me wrong. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
But..if your workouts are random, your results will be random and that’s if you get any results at all.
You see, there HAS to be a progression in what you do.
First – you gotta build a foundation of muscular endurance, learn the basic mechanics of speed and agility and develop a base of aerobic fitness.
Second – you MUST get stronger before you do explosive work and start working on your speed system and not waste too much time on the aerobic system.
Then, you develop explosive strength (power) and speed, agility, and quickness because your body is now ready it.
The problem is that players and coaches will do speed drills and power exercises without a proper foundation of strength and endurance!
It’s like building a house. You must start with the foundation, then you build the walls, the roof comes next and you finally do the interior after.
Well, doing random exercises without a proper progression is like building the roof, then trying to do the interior without first building a solid foundation and erecting the walls!
You see the problem?
Now, I know players and coaches have good intentions when they do that but if you don’t follow the proper physiological progression to build a fast and powerful body – you are most likely wasting your time!
Not building your body by using the proper progression means no or limited results and you might actually hurt the body.
That’s where most of those overuse injuries (i.e. tendonitis, shinplints) comes from.
It’s the lack of a proper foundation and of a proper progression that leads to those nasty injuries that will hurt your game for a very long time. You know like me, these injuries just don’t go away easily!
So.. you must develop…
muscular endurance, muscular strength and muscular power in that order.
aerobic endurance, speed endurance, speed and agility in that order.
Any other way will NOT work.
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