By guest author: Barry Lovelace
Baseball is a great sport. After all it is the great American past time. From little league to the big leagues people love to be a part of it. In addition to the serious baseball athlete, many people enjoy baseball as a recreational sport. No matter where your interest in baseball lies, I'm here to tell you that you can see great improvements in your game with sports specific exercises.
Baseball, like all sports, requires unique strengths. Each position puts a specific demand on the body. To properly train your body you need to prepare it for those demands. That is the concept behind sports specific training. This type of training mimics the planes of motion and position an athlete encounters and then adds resistance and balance challenges. Sport specific training enhance baseball specific strength needed for hitting, and core strength and flexibility needed for grounding and pitching.
Much baseball coaching and training is spent on game skills and drills. This is incomplete. It doesn't matter that you know what to do if you are not fast enough or agile enough or have enough power to do it. Generic workouts do nothing to help you on the baseball field. Think about the bench press for instance, an exercise that many baseball players perform. A bench press is designed to build strength and size in the chest. It's great to have a strong chest but think about the game of baseball and game situations that are faced. Where would a chest press help? It would not. You want to perform exercises that train you to hit with more power, throw with more power, run with more explosive speed off the plate and most of all build the core strength that is required for every move on the field. These are just some of the skills that are developed through my baseball specific workouts.
Another reason that sport specific training is important for all athletes is that it trains the body as a whole, which is how it is used during a baseball game. In other words no time or energy is wasted doing bicep curls or shoulder presses, instead the entire body is challenged in creative and effective ways that specifically work to improve the skills needed for baseball.
The importance of core strength, which is vitally important for stability and strength, can not be underestimated. The core is the body's powerhouse and the source of all of its movement. A strong core equals a strong athlete, it's that simple. Whether you realize it or not, your core is involved with all athletic movement, providing you with power, balance and stability. The strength, or weakness, of your core will dictate how easy or difficult it is for you to play your position on the field.
When you are moving through your baseball game you are using your body in its most functional state, in other words, as a whole. You are using your lower body and your upper body together; you're throwing, twisting, hitting, running and sliding. The list goes on and on. Your core is the basis for all of this movement and once again the strength or weakness of that core will dictate the ease in which you move on the field. Baseball players often find themselves in an unstable environment, like landing on one foot or throwing from an awkward position. You need balance, your balance comes from your core; a strong core equals good balance.
Here is a perfect example: Think of the shortstop diving for a grounder and then springing up to throw it to first, all while twisting and virtually in mid air. Can a situation be less stable? The power to make that play must come from the core!
If I sound passionate about baseball training, well, I am. I see the results first hand every day. Hundreds of athletes that I have trained enjoy incredible results and it is very exciting. I encourage you to add core training and sport specific training to your routine. Anyone can do this type of training and frankly, most people prefer it to boring and repetitive gym workouts. It can also be done in much less time than traditional workouts because the movements are so incredibly effective.
Barry Lovelace is an internationally recognized fitness professional specializing in athlete training and created Core Power For Baseball, a complete core training workout specifically for baseball players.
Core Power For Baseball
Email Barry at: barry@barrylovelace.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_Lovelace
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