Be sure to share this post with any & all coaches that you might be “friends” with on facebook by clicking the “Like” button up above!

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Ok, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the smartest guy in the world.  Well, maybe my wife would be the first to admit that for me, but I’d be a close second

But at least I’m not this guy!

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the high school football team in McMinnville, Oregon and their “rare syndrome” that sent 19 members of their team to the hospital.  If you haven’t hear about it, go ahead and crawl out from under your rock and let me Google it for you and you’ll see every search result on the first page talking about it.

So, let’s take a closer look at the story as it’s being presented in the national media:

First, the team took part in an “immersion camp” held by the new first year coach to get them prepared for the upcoming football season.  This camp had portions that were conducted in a wrestling room with temperatures reaching 115 degrees.

I don’t care how much water you are drinking (or not drinking because water is a “sign of weakness” according to some coaches).  If you are in a room that is even 90+ degrees you will dehydrate, let alone the 100-115 degrees that has been reported!

And of course, the media is jumping all over the fact that the hospitalized athletes had extremely elevated levels of creatine kinase (CK) so creatine supplementation must be to blame, right?  Well, I guess that makes perfect sense UNTIL you actually crack open a book and do a bit of research!

An athlete that takes creatine as a supplement will show slightly elevated levels of CK in their urine.  These athletes had up to 1000 times the normal level!  If an over the counter supplement could result in that type of increase there is no way that it would be legal…

But one thing that has not been mentioned is a condition known as rhabdomyolysis… why not?  Because that would mean that the coach was a bonehead that worked his athletes right into the emergency rooms!  And because nobody knows what rhabd-whatchmacallit is?!

So what exactly is rhabdomyolysis?

Well, according to Wikipedia, Rhabdomyolysis is:

“the rapid breakdown (lysis) of skeletal muscle (rhabdomyo) due to injury to muscle tissue. The muscle damage may be caused by physical (e.g., crush injury), chemical, or biological factors. The destruction of the muscle leads to the release of the breakdown products of damaged muscle cells into the bloodstream; some of these, such as myoglobin (a protein), are harmful to the kidney and may lead to acute kidney failure. Treatment is with intravenous fluids, and dialysis or hemofiltration if necessary.”

“The most reliable test in the diagnosis of rhabdomyolysis is the level of creatine kinase (CK) in the blood. This enzyme is released by damaged muscle, and levels above 5 times the upper limit of normal (ULN) indicate rhabdomyolysis.”

“Compartment syndrome is a clinical diagnosis (i.e. no tests conclusively prove its presence or absence), but direct measurement of the pressure in a fascial compartment may be used to assess its severity.”

And the causes of rhabdomyolysis?

“Recognized physical causes for rhabdomyolysis are:^[1]

• Traumatic compression of muscles: crush syndrome (e.g., in earthquakes), car accident, confinement in a fixed position (e.g. after a stroke, due to drunkenness or in prolonged surgery), physical torture or abuse
• Obstruction of blood supply to muscles: arterial thrombosis (blood clots forming locally) or embolism (clots or other debris from elsewhere in the body), clamping of an artery during surgery, generally reduced blood supply in shock or sepsis (due to any cause)
• Excessive muscle strain or activity: extreme physical exercise (particularly when poorly hydrated), delirium tremens (alcohol withdrawal), tetanus, prolonged seizures or status epilepticus”

So it sounds to me like these kids experienced an extremely high intensity workout with poor hydration levels or they were all in a serious car accident or earthquake…

Let’s stop beating around the bush here and trying to place the blame on a supplement that has a track record of being safe and instead call out the coach who put these kids in this situation.

We know they were in a 115 degree room, but what were they doing?  What did the workouts consist of?  Was there water or an electrolyte drink available? Let’s focus on the real root of the issue and not some innocent supplement that the athletes may or may not have been taking!

Sorry to be on my soap box about this, but with all of the great information available at your fingertips for training young athletes there is absolutely no excuse for something this stupid to happen to these kids!

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Jake Chapman is a Co-Founder of Showcase U and a former professional baseball player of 8 years. His passion for helping student-athletes and their parents stems from a very unsatisfying experience in his own, personal college recruiting process. This blog includes helpful dos and don’ts, personal stories and anecdotes, and heartfelt advice to families looking for ways to help themselves.

Technorati Tags: recruiting, rules to live by, scouting, travel baseball

Hey Guys,

I hope you are doing well and enjoying what’s left of the summer!  I just enjoyed my 11^th Anniversary weekend with my wife changing diapers on our 2 month old and potty training our 3 year old… What can I say, I’m a hopeless romantic

Anyway, I received a great question via email the other day and I wanted to share it with everyone instead of responding privately because I think it’s something that most coaches struggle with.

The question was:

How do you combine the anaerobic, aerobic and strength training In Season
with the techniques-tactical?

Well, let’s get the simple part of the answer out of the way first… we don’t do aerobic training in-season… or pre-season… or off-season… so we don’t have to worry about fitting a 30 minute jog of bike ride into our training/practice sessions.

Now onto the fun stuff, the anaerobic and strength training.

We incorporate at least 5 minutes of high intensity anaerobic work into just about every practice session & weight room workout.  These are circuits or primarily body weight exercises (sometimes medicine balls) that can be done anywhere and all you need is a stop watch.

If you’re a member of BaseballStrength.com you can see a few of our more advanced curcuits (cables, barbells, & dumbbells) here.

Arrange your exercises as follows:

• Explosive Power (Squat Jumps, Split Squat Jumps, Medicine Ball Slams, Sprints, etc)
• Lower Body Strength/Endurance (Speed Squats, Alt. Lunges, Rotational Lunges, Med Ball Overhead Squats, etc.)
• Conditioning Drill (Mountain Climbers, Jumping Jacks, Jump Rope, Ladder Drills, Cone Drills, etc.)
• Upper Body Strength/Endurance (Push-Ups, Medicine Ball Throws, Pull-Ups, etc.)
• Full Body Conditioning (Squat Thrusts, Burpees, Up Downs, etc.)

Each exercise combined with its rest period will take 1 minute.  5 exercises = 5 minutes and you’ve got a great anaerobic workout completed.

The work:rest times will vary depending on the age & conditioning level of your ballplayers.

Begin with the shorter work:longer rest and progress to longer work:shorter rest according to your guys abilities.

Work:Rest

(poorly conditioned)

20sec:40sec

30sec:30sec

40sec:20sec

50sec:10sec

(very well conditioned)

Now let’s talk about In-Season Strength Training for baseball players.

One thing that I absolutely can not stand is when guys tell me that they are too busy with games & practices to get into the weight room.  That’s like saying you have to far to drive to fill your car with gas.  It just doesn’t work and something is going to break down!

I’m not suggesting that baseball players need to spend a few hours in the weight room each day.  In fact, the opposite is true.  I have my guys in & out of the weight room in 30-45 minutes with our warm-up & cool-down included.

Our weight room time is focused entirely on 2 things:

Recovery & Progression

The first thing that our guys do is take care of their muscles with the foam roller & light stretching (10 minutes).  Once the muscles are cared for we warm them up with some movement drills geared toward either acceleration or agility (5-10 minutes).  Now that we are warmed up we get busy with a circuit of 3 exercises focused on strength & power (low reps, heavy weight) for lower body, upper body pushing, & upper body pulling (10 minutes).  Then we finish off with another light stretch for 5 minutes and kick them out of the weight room.

The lifts that we do are all big compound movements where you will get the most bang for your buck.  We do a lot of lunging (forward, backward, lateral, walking, dumbbell, barbell, you get the idea .  With all of the variations it’s easy to keep the guys interested in the workouts.

Our upper body pushing is really anything that you can think of other than shoulder presses.  We do shoulder presses off-season but not in-season.  We also favor dumbbells over barbells for pressing movements for a few reasons.  First, they allow your body to move more freely.  Second, they encourage right/left symmetry.  Third, they are a lot faster than having to load/unload/change weights on a barbell.

Our upper body pull is always the opposite of our upper body press.  We look at the angle of the press and pull in that same path.  If you are going a flat press (bench press, push up) we will do a rowing type movement (DB row, seated cable row, inverted row).  If our press is an incline we will do more of a vertical pull (pulldown, chin up, pull up, etc.).

We also vary the grips on our upper body from pronated to supinated to neutral grip to change the shoulders involvement in the movements.

I hope that helps give you some insight into what we do with our guys during the season.  To be perfectly honest, I just kinda brain dumped my info here and it all makes sense to me, but if you have any questions, comments, or snide remarks don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments section down below.

If you haven’t joined BaseballStrength.com yet you’ve got 2 options.  First, you can simply fill in the form on the top right side of this page for our completely FREE basic membership…

or

You can click here to get our 3 best selling DVD’s shipped to you for FREE with full access to our Platinum Elite program with over 400 pages of done-for-you workouts, videos, articles, interviews, a discussion forum, and much much more.

Technorati Tags: in season training, in-season workout, training for baseball

Baseball is a game played with nine players on each side who each occupy a spot in the batting order, while the pitcher puts the ball into play by throwing to the catcher. Play baseball by learning about the positions and rules from a baseball instructor in this free video on baseball tips and tricks.

Expert: Mickey Hiter
Bio: Mickey Hiter played baseball at Lipscomb University.
Filmmaker: Dimitri LaBarge

Duration : 0:3:42

Read the rest of this entry

Technorati Tags: baseball, baseball bats, baseball gloves, baseball mitts, baseball pitches, catching baseballs, hitting, pitching, playing baseball, throwing baseballs

From http://GetWrestlingStrength.com

A wrestler going through a portion of his wrestling workout using an exercise called the Barbell Man Maker.

For wrestlers, we need to call it The ‘Beast Maker’

Here are a few options a wrestler can apply this exercise to his wrestling workout for improved performance

- Perform the exercise for 20 seconds on / 10 seconds rest for 6 minutes total to simulate a wrestling match. College wrestlers can crank for 7 minutes.

- Perform 5 x 5 with 30 – 60 seconds rest after ea. set

- Peform the exercise for 15 seconds on / 15 seconds off for 10 – 15 minutes.

Check out hundreds of wrestling workout videos and get your FREE Video of a Underground Wrestling Strength Workout, by signing up at http://GetWrestlingStrength.com

Enjoy and feel free to share with wrestlers, wrestling coaches and parents / friends of wrestlers and those involved in Wrestling.

Lead from the FRONT!

–Z–

Recommended Resources:

http://GetWrestlingStrength.com

http://UndergroundStrengthManual.com

http://UndergroundStrengthGym.com in Edison, NJ

Key Words:

wrestling workout

wrestler workout

wrestler strength

wrestling training

zach even – esh

nj wrestler

nj wrestling

wrestling strength & conditioning

wrestling conditioning

Duration : 0:1:16

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Technorati Tags: clean and press, edison, nj, overhead press, training for nj wrestlers, underground strength coach, underground strength gym, underground workout, underground wrestler workout, wrestling strength, wrestling workout, zach even - esh