OK, I’ve got to start off by apologizing for something here.
The title of the blog post is “Train Slow To Be… Fast?” Maybe it should have been write slow to be…slower
I’ve been trying to get this post done for the last 2 weeks and life just keeps getting in the way 
Anyway, here you go:
I’ll admit it… I was wrong. I was dead wrong!
See, I’m about as stubborn as they get and for me to admit I was wrong about something is a pretty big event, just ask my wife
But on this one, I’d be doubly wrong if I didn’t admit it and explain the error of my ways. I’ve always been a fan of saying that if you train slow you will be slow. And I still think that it’s an honest statement. 
Think about it. If you are trying to improve your base stealing speed it makes no sense to go out for a nice easy jog. You are training your body by running at a slow pace in the hopes of increasing your ability to sprint at full speed for 90 feet.
Same thing goes for bat speed. I know I ruffle a lot of feathers when I suggest that swinging a heavy bat slows down your bat speed when used in the on-deck circle, but it makes no sense to me why anyone would want to program their central nervous system to move at a slower pace just moments before stepping up to the plate.
Now let’s step into the weight room. There are a ton of exercises that you can perform explosively in the weight room with obvious benefits to your speed development (note – when I say speed development I am referring to any & all speed – bat speed, arm speed, running speed, etc.). There are the Olympic lifts (cleans & snatches), plyometrics, medicine ball throws just to name a few. These movements are by their very nature explosive with obvious carry over to your speed development.
But at the opposite end of the spectrum there are brute strength moves which are very slow movements where are are grinding out the reps at a snails pace. Think of squats, deadlifts, weigthed pull ups, heavy rows, etc. This is where I used to make the mistake of thinking that I was slowing my ballplayers down because they were moving so slowly in the weight room. We would reduce the load so that they could continue to move the bar as a decent speed instead of grinding out the reps at a painfully slow tempo.
Then I remembered something that I studied way back in my college days about the contractile nature of muscles. Ironically this is something that I, as a strength & conditioning professional, deal with all day every day. Yet it’s almost so simple that it gets lost in the shuffle and 15 years down the road you smack yourself on the forehead because you can’t believe it’s been right there all along.
The contractile nature of muscles really consists of 2 simple concepts.
First is that each individual muscle fiber either contracts 100% or not at all.
Second is that each muscle fiber can only contract at one speed – full speed.
Basically, you can’t contract a muscle fiber part way and you can’t contract it slowly. It’s 100% rapid contraction or no movement at all.
Now let’s look at the mechanism of movement. Muscles contract one fiber at a time. Considering that each fiber is microscopic it sounds kinda silly to say that but when you get tens of thousands of fibers working together you can see how your body starts to move.
A motor unit is the technical name for 1 nerve in your body and all of the muscle fibers that it triggers through an electrical impulse. The more motor units your body triggers the more fibers contract and the stronger the resulting movement. 
If you are picking up a baseball your body will fire a few motor units. If you are picking up a baseball player your body will fire a lot of motor units. Your body is smart enough to know how many units to fire depending on the load to be lifted.
Your body is also smart enough to recruit the correct number of motor units for the speed of the movement. 
If I am throwing a baseball to my 4 year old son my body knows to recruit fewer motor units then if I am trying to sneak a fastball past a guy with 2 strikes & bases loaded.
The ball weighs the same.
The movement is practically the same.
However the speed of the movement could not be more dramatically different.
It’s all in the motor units…
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article where I’ll show you exactly how you need to manipulate your training in the weight room to get as many motor units as possible working as efficiently as possible in order to develop as much speed as possible.
Tags: arm speed, baseball training, baseball workouts, bat speed, Body, development, honest statement, pace, snails pace, speed, speed development, training for baseball, weight, workouts for baseball
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