Functional Training: Building Upon Nutrition

Functional Training: Building Upon Nutrition

We just put on our hitting clinic and had a great turnout of youth athletes. Many of the questions we received from the parents were about what we can do to strengthen our young athletes without weights. In our last post, we talked about nutrition and the importance that it has on athletic development and how it impacts the CNS. Nutrition will be the foundation of strength development regardless of the age of the athlete. A coach I had in college constantly repeated the phrase, "Success is built in the kitchen," and I never really understood that until recently. What my former coach meant was regardless of how hard we train or how serious we are in our drill work, none of it matters if we don't have nutrition figured out. So, before jumping into this post, be sure to go back to the post on nutrition.

Below is a picture of the strength training pyramid we use at Utah Rotational Athlete Training. We set the foundation as broad as possible so that we can build on top of it with high stability. Just like building a home or structure, the better the base, the more sound the building overall.

 

In this post, we are going to focus on the base of the pyramid. "Pre-Hab" work is about making sure we don't run into injuries. This level will focus on speed, endurance, coordination, stability, and utilizing concentric, eccentric, and isometric types of movement. This level can vary between footwork with ladders and cones and linear or curved sprints. Change of direction is also a must in this phase. But, the most critical aspect of this phase is building stability in movement. Our coaching manual goes much more in-depth on all these aspects. See this article on the importance of building resilience and strength (lumbopelvic control) for injury prevention in baseball.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25159541/

How do we build this stability? The easiest way is to use the ArmCare app. It will give you the essential training you need to develop balance and strength throughout your body. If this is not something you are interested in using, then I would recommend using the general Watkins Back Program. If you can build up to a level 3 in his free program, you will be more than stable and strong enough to build skill on top of that foundation. The Watkins Program will focus on double and single leg isometric, core work through concentric and eccentric training along with adding in light dumbbells and resistance. While doing the Watkins Program is a very good starting point custom training is where you get a large amount of progress. Thankfully ArmCare gives that custom training. It is also where a lot of our large velocity increases at West High have come from due to the fixing the imbalances the athletes have. Also, as a general rule of thumb, the younger the athlete the more they need to focus on bodyweight and resistance band training as opposed to weight training. When an athlete is showing balance and comprehension in movement I personally like to add in a weight vest before moving onto weights. I will recommend a weight vest at the bottom of the post as well.

While this post is not an all-encompassing view of training, it is a good starting point to get you seeking your own solutions. If you need help we are more than happy to help you along the way. Our goal is to keep kids playing as long as possible and as healthy as possible. Feel free to reach out with any questions you have. Thanks for reading.

Weight Vest: https://amzn.to/3OK0idK

ArmCare/Crossover System: www.armcare.com

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