Baseball and Softball Strength Training Program

There's no doubt that the weight room has found its place in baseball and softball programs.

These athletes should be training for strength, speed, agility, and power and they should do so all year.

I've developed a simple system to help you cover all these bases in a way that will keep your athletes moving and feeling their best.

• The strength training is broken down into 4 Primary Training Blocks:
  • General Physical Preparedness, Off-Season, Pre-Season, In-Season.
    • Each Training Block has multiple options as to how many days per week you would like to train.
      • See the Table of Contents below for more detail on this.

        

• Each block is then broken up into 3 Week Mini-Cycles.
  • Continuous rotation of exercises helps keep things fresh, and builds a wider foundation of strength in each movement pattern.
• The programs are written in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style.
  • The Main Lift of each session is given. All the accessory exercises are written as a General Movement Pattern.
  • This allows you to build the program in a way that can best fit your logistics (space, equipment, number of athletes, etc.)
  • See the image below for an example.

This example is Day 1 of the 4 Day Off-Season Program.

If you are a proponent of Olympic lifts, I have built in a place and progression for them.

You can see the main lift, A1 is given. The main lift rotates weekly and athletes will be attempting a rep max (RM) every training session.

Every other exercise you will then choose from the extensive Exercise Library that's included.

The programs all follow a Conjugate style of training. This means we are training for power, strength, and size simultaneously.

There are a few extra resources included that go with the strength training.

• RM Recording Sheet: to track player progress.
• Percentage chart: the main lifts are percentage based.
• Estimated 1RM Calculator Sheet: use a RM to estimate an athletes 1RM

In addition to the strength programming, I've included resources to aid in your speed training, agility training, and conditioning.

Everyone is looking for an edge, and a high quality training program is the thing that can take a young athlete to the next level.