Speed (and strength and agility) is not just an asset in football and soccer. Youth baseball athletes can greatly benefit from this type of training and Joey Greany, the assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Tampa Bay Rays, explains why and how in part 1 of this two-part interview.
Plus Rob answers the Question of the Week (35:12) about how to handle a team with no catchers.
In this 44-minute episode, you'll learn:
- what is the biggest strength training myth (5:52)
- what resisted sprinting is (9:17)
- what age a player can start doing resisted sprinting (10:18)
- a rule of thumb for adding weights to resisted sprinting (10:48)
- how much of speed is genetics vs training (11:03)
- what factors determine speed (11:43)
- how to train for speed in youth athletes (12:13)
- what running drills help develop speed (13:23)
- what an A-skip is (14:37)
- what a march is (14:56)
- what proper sprinting technique is (15:34)
- how to help train proper lean in sprinting (16:39)
- how to acquire the biggest speed gains (17:37)
- whether running more really makes you faster (18:34)
- whether kids stop gaining speed in high school (18:39)
- one tip for maintaining speed (19:13)
- how to use strength training to help speed training (19:31)
- what age is appropriate for strength training (20:30)
- how to know how much to increase (23:29)
- how often to do strength training (23:59)
- how to land properly in jump training (25:06)
- the importance of agility (25:48)
- how to train deceleration (26:01)
- how to train agility impactfully (26:37)
- whether ladder drills train agility (28:39)
- how to train agility impactfully (26:37)
- one drill to train reaction (30:22)
- why sleep matters (30:58)
- the difference in sleep quality (32:05)
- how much sleep youth athletes should get (32:28)
- proper breathing technique for staying calm (33:23)
- whether REM sleep is important (34:13)
- whether sleep deficit is real (34:25)
Resources and links mentioned in this episode
- Open Baseball Journal
- Effect of the count on batting results
- Subscribe to the YBE podcast on iTunes
- Subscribe to the YBE YouTube channel
Want MORE Edgy Info?
Never miss an article! Enter your info to get more practical, actionable youth baseball coaching info like this.
Are you a new coach? I have a free 15-day email course just for you, where I walk you through coaching a team for an entire season over the course of 3 weeks.