PBR Weekly Blog: Strength Training: Should A Baseball Player Lift Weights?

September 30, 2016

By John Vickers
Explosive Performance Academy

For insider information and scouting notes from the PBR staff during the 2016 spring and summer seasons visit the 2016 New England Scout Blog by clicking here.

Interested in attending a PBR New England event? Check out our schedule by clicking here.

Weekly Blog Rundown:

Week 1: Speed Training

PBR Weekly Blog: Strength Training: Should A Baseball Player Lift Weights?

I’ve heard it for years… Weight lifting stunts growth.

This has been found to be a complete myth and totally untrue. We have kids as young as 7 years old lifting some form of weights whether it be body weight or some actual weight. When someone questions me about a kid lifting weights and it stunting growth, my reply is always this:

“When you do push ups you’re doing 30% of your total body weight. A 100 lbs kid will be pressing 30 lbs. More than likely, that same kid will not be doing 30 lbs with dumbbells and will not be using a barbell. Also, while performing pull ups a kid will be pulling up their entire body weight. If that same kid were to perform lat pulldown, most likely, they would not be able to pull 100 lbs. Your muscles do not know the difference between pushing weights and moving its own body weight. It knows that there is a force it needs to react against to move it away from the body.”

You are much more likely to break a growth plate while playing a sport than performing an exercise in a well-rounded, fundamentally based strength program.

This takes me back to the question, should a baseball player lift weights?

Absolutely!

Baseball is a power sport. The formula for power is – Power = Force x Velocity with force being weight and velocity being time it takes to move that weight. This means that a baseball player must increase their strength in the weight room to increase their power.

What kind of strength do baseball players need?

Upper Body Strength
Lower Body Strength
Rotational Core Strength
Core Stability Strength

You can design a program how you would like but we always split our program into a 4 days split with 2 days being upper body and 2 days being lower body strength. Core stability every day and rotational core on a regular basis depending on the time of the year.

You increase your strength in each of these categories and you will become a much more powerful baseball player. If you have any questions about strength training or training in general, feel free to email me at [email protected] or visit our website at www.xplosiveperformanceacademy.com.