ESPN.com posted a nice short video today that details Manny Ramirez’s approach to his workout and training this off-season. You’ll see some movement drills, sprinting mechanics and instruction, as well as a number of rotational drills and exercises.
Aside from all of the drills and exercises, here is one quote I found particularly interesting:
Everything in every sport really boils down to rotational power.
Stack TV has a series of hitting, workout & training video clips featuring Evan Longoria from the Tampa Bay Rays. These cover aspects of his baseball specific workouts in the weight room that target power development through the lower body and core muscles, as well as training the upper body for stability. Just as important to the training, especially considering the daily repetition and long duration of the baseball season, is his mindset of taking quality reps in each area in order to maximize the training effect of his effort.
The Bratt Bat has been around for a long time and if you pay attention you can probably see one in the on-deck circle of most major league baseball teams. Although Bratt Bat’s are traditionally used as a warm-up device, I think they can also serve a purpose for learning specific areas of the swing, such as rotation and swing path. Even though these heavy weighted bats are out of the suggested range for use with standard overload-underload bat speed training, they still can be an effective tool for teaching mechanics that generate power and increased bat speed.
This video clip is of a college player who was looking for a way to improve after a redshirt freshman year at a Division I baseball school. I’d say he figured it out! This is one of the most drastic improvements I’ve seen in such a very short period of time. Bat speed work with overload-underload bats, reaction and timing training, several different drills for rotation and swing path…we did it all:
Bob Alejo is the strength and conditioning coach of the Oakland Athletics. This video from the strength power hour is from the 2007 NSCA sport-specific conference and he gives some baseball training tips, drills and exercises that address these areas of hitting:
I am trying to use my larger muscles more when I swing and I thought perhaps you had some type of specific drill with a medicine ball or some weight that would help develop my rotational strength.
Check out this post I made on Resistance Training for Batspeed. The article in there covers a lot of basics about general, special and specific training for bat speed. Each of the protocols referenced there were used successfully with high school and college athletes.
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