Baseball instruction has become too much like Dance Choreography. It takes away from the player's natural athletic ability.
A huge mistake most people make is they believe you are who you are. In fact the baseball instructional world is actually taking a pro active part in holding many of our players back. Baseball instruction has become too much about "mechanics" and "looking good", and not enough about being good. You have to understand there is a huge difference between having good mechanics, and being "mechanical" or robotic.
Our philosophy at Fastball is to draw out the natural athleticism in each individual athlete.
We believe you should look and be athletic throwing the baseball, and hitting the baseball. Athletic over mechanical, and movement or robotic. When you become too mechanical, you fail to use your natural athletic ability, and you become a victim of trying to conform into one coaches ideal mechanical model. Instead, you should bring your athleticism to the swing, or throwing and pitching motions.
Becoming More Athletic and training to become a great mover as it directly relates to baseball-softball.
Our system is geared to challenge each player beyond his or her current ability level. Regardless of what the current ability is right now. This means training players to become more athletic. The more athletic we are the easier it is to move. The easier it is to move, the easier it is to pull off high level mechanics that require you to become a great mover.
Where most people screw up in strength programs, is they fail to understand that in baseball strength is only as important as your ability to move.
Rotation, for example, is critical. Rotation is a power source but is often limited when players are doing strength training. Getting strong, and improving performance don't always go hand in hand. Your strength training has to relate to how you move when you throw, hit, and run. The strength has to applicable to the sport. Every sport is unique in a sense of which kind of strength you need. We are really good at combining strength with movements.
Training The Right Energy System
The Baseball and Softball Energy System is very specific to the sport. Many people make the mistake and assume that because somebody plays multiple sports, that it means they are more athletic than others.
This is NOT the case.
I have had many 1 or 2 sport athletes who have had way more athleticism than those 2 or 3 sport athletes.
Consider Energy Systems -
In baseball and softball, the average play is over in about 5 seconds. In basketball, you need to train for cardio for running up and down the court. Cross-country you need cardio to survive the activity. The same with soccer. We train our players in the same energy system required to play the sport.
Baseball requires a quick burst.
Examples-
It takes less than 1 second to swing a bat.
It takes about 2 seconds to deliver a pitch.
Catchers - 2 seconds to throw down to second base.
Ground ball hit, the infielder dives, and pops to his feet and throws to first. (Done in 4 seconds)
Double in the gap? 8-10 seconds.
The sport requires you to go from rest to explosive back to rest again. Our power building program builds in this system. We train almost 100% of the time inside the ATP-CP system.
We train our players to go from rest to explode in everything they do. We then add improving the ability to move and improve strength.
Baseball is a quick twitch, explosive sport with a lot of down time in between.