Training Philosophy

Performance training goes beyond being bigger, faster, and stronger. It’s about increasing your efficiency and abilities with respect to the sport specific movement. Speed, strength, agility, and power are by products of a well-designed performance program.

Improving Your Position

Prior to focusing on more targeted strength qualities, an athlete must ensure they are achieving optimal positions throughout their movements that will translate to the field.  This will allow the athlete to get into a loaded position and get out of that position in an explosive manner. The ability to load and explode is critical to a quick and efficient movement.  If the athlete is not in or doesn’t know the proper position to exert and absorb force, they will not be efficient and able to maximize their energy transfer.  We review the athlete’s mobility, stability, and muscle activation to determine if the athlete is in the proper position and if necessary retrain the body to learn the optimal position. This will be achieved by:

  • Teaching correct alignments such as hip-knee relationship, shin angles, and proper posture.

  • Enhance the optimal body position for baseball/ softball. The body works like a rubber band, but muscles must be in optimal position to stretch or the rubber band effect will not be maximized.

  • Progress toward sequencing to combine multiple motions.

  • Learn how to move efficiently and safely in baseball/ softball task like running, jumping, rotating, and throwing.

Optimize Your Strength Qualities  

There are many variations of “strength” that the body can display.  Strength goes beyond the traditional views of adding muscle mass or lifting greater weight.  Those are just two of the ways that muscles can be trained, but the way the body moves is more complicated, especially as we teaching our body to be more efficient in its athletic movements.  At Starters we focus on the specific strength qualities displayed on the field.  By observing the movements that are displayed on the diamond, we can isolate the specific strength qualities that will elevate your baseball/softball game.

The Strength Qualities we analyze are: 

  • Rate of Force Development (RFD) - How fast and with how much force can your muscles create movement without a stretch reflex

  • Eccentric Ability - How well does your body work like a rubber band

  • Yielding Strength - Stability strength, your ability to resist/absorb force

  • Reactive Strength - A muscle’s ability to go from a stretching action to a shortening action (absorb and transfer force)

Transfer to the Field of Play

At Starters we train athletes who strive to be better in baseball/softball and we ultimately measure success by their improvement on the field. In training we will test, analyze, measure, and push, but it is all with the intent to improve your play.  Our goal is not to create workout warriors, we are creating more athletic and stronger athletes that will make it easier to succeed on the diamond.  For this reason, the Strength and Development staff stays in constant communication with the skills staff to understand what areas of improvement the athletics are working on in their skill work in order to design the optimal program for each athlete. 

 

Year-Round Training 

If you are training to be better during competition, you have to train year-round.  At Starters we believe in-season training is critical to enhance offseason gains and ensure all your hard work translates on the diamond.  At the start of every in-season session we test and evaluate the athlete’s nervous system fatigue so that we can prescribe the optimal amount of intensity, volume, and recovery for the workout. The goal is always the same, to improve performance (not just maintain) and reduce the risk of injuries.   Our in-season programs are vital for helping to reduce the risk of injury due to the overuse of movement patterns performed during the season.