3-D Baseball Training

The sole purpose of 3-D Baseball Training is to study each individual's movement strategy in his or her intended task, sport, or activity. This can be baseball, basketball, football, tennis, etc. At the end of the day it's all just movement. What we commonly see with our athletes is that the SKILL of the sport is worked on exclusively but the FOUNDATIONAL MOVEMENTS that are necessary to execute the skill are left behind. If basic fundamental movement patterns are not conditioned and trained then the skill that is built upon the conditioning will never see its full potential.

This is VERY common with younger athletes and is the main reason why so many of them are getting injured. When the foundational movement are conditioned and strengthened not only are you preventing injury but also you are optimizing  performance and the execution of the skill or sport

There are three plains of motion that are used of the Baseball field and in life's movements, Sagital, Frontal, and Transverse. Why is it that we do not use them to train if we use all three of them? It's probably because we don't know how to do so. UNTIL NOW.

What if I showed you how to train in all three plans of motion with baseball movements and resistance behind it? Movements that can be not only be sport specific, but also position specific? The key principals to our workouts, is to be balanced, coordinated, flexible, and to generate maximum rotational power in all three plains of motion related to baseball.

There is a reason why a shortstop is more comfortable going to his right then his left. There is a reason why a batter can't hit an inside pitch. There is  a reason why a pitcher has arm problems. There is a reason why a catcher can't get to his left or right to block a ball. There is a reason why we have knee pains, hip pains, back pains.

As a Movement Therapist, I can help you with that. With the aid of video analysis of the client's movements in a facility as well as on the baseball field, we can make a player just as agile to his left as to his right. I can show a pitcher how to properly load the body to throw a baseball with out using all arm. I can show you how to properly use your body, as a whole, in all the functions of baseball. Thus, teach you injury prevention, which in turn, prolongs a baseball career.

Not only dose traditional training focus on one plain of motion, you are also balanced by sitting on a bench or a machine. As soon as we start using benches and machines on the baseball field then I'll train my athletes like that, until then NEVER. Don't get me wrong if we are in the OFF SEASON, and we need to gain some size and strength, then were doing traditional training, but if we're in season then it looks and smells like baseball training.

Now, what about the other two plains? By not training the other two plains of motion, the athlete takes on a non-athletic look to his movements. We neglect the other two plains of motion used on a baseball field. How is laying on a bench with dumbbells or a barbell going to help me with the other two plains? Answer is...it is not!

How this differs from traditional conditioning is the specificity of the movements based on the intended function, (i.e. Baseball), and with the individuals own needs, wants and abilities. Traditional conditioning is a cookie cutter program using canned exercise routines that were originally intended for bodybuilders and designed for bodybuilding. If your "Baseball Trainer" is training you in traditional lifting and your playing baseball at the time, he is not doing you a great service. It is not if you'll pull or hurt something on the  field, it's when.

Traditional conditioning was based on what we call cadaveric anatomy ( or table anatomy). This refers to how the body functions in a cadaver or on a table. All study's done on anatomy were based on isolation of muscles on a table to see how they work or CONTRACT against an artificial force or stimulus ( i.e. weight machine). Therefore all of the machines and exercises we see commonly in the gyms and strength and conditioning facilities are following these principles. Unfortunately as soon as you stand up and move around EVERYTHING changes. The body is no longer contracting against artificial stimuli; it is REACTING to external forces like gravity, ground reaction. momentum and movement.

If you agree to the principle that muscles are reacting and NOT contracting in isolation during ALL movements then you could say that most traditional exercises are putting the wrong information into the system. Why train a system that was made to react synergistically as a whole entity to isolate out all or the parts and contract to the MAX? It doesn't matter how old you are it does not make sense in the baseball world.