The TOP baseball routine that improves your skills & performance

Hey, team Alex here. Thanks for joining me. And in today's video, we're going to be talking about a routine that's going to improve your skill set and your performance on the field. We're going to be talking about strength and conditioning, strengthening your arms, strengthening your hitting, and strengthening your mental work up here, which is so, so important, especially at your stage and really every stage of life as we go. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout, and recruiter. And now what I do is I help high school athletes and their parents go through this college recruiting process. So if you're looking for help, feel free to reach out to me, email me, and we can talk as we go. But if you get anything from this video, please smash that, like, button that thumbs up right down here and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video helping you get better on and off the field and in this recruitment recruiting process. All right, let's get into it. One of the best things that you can do is prepare ahead of time. Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Don't have a poor week. So plan out your week seven days in advance so you can stick to that weekly routine. It's all about consistency, guys. All about consistency. Just stay consistent and stay disciplined to your routine. A great way to start with this is write out your ideal week or your perfect week. What does a perfect week look like for you from a strength and conditioning standpoint, from a throwing standpoint, from a hitting standpoint, and from a mental work standpoint? Write that out and then try to pair each week for a perfect week, your perfect routine week as you go. Let's talk about strength and conditioning. Very, very important here, here. Because the weight room, your strength and conditioning can solve a lot of the problems that you may or may not have. But most of us are trying to improve our metrics. Almost all of us are trying to improve our performance. And the weight room can help with all that. What do I mean? Well, if we get. If we are getting stronger in the weight room, we're getting more physical. That's naturally going to help our metrics, and it's all also going to help our confidence. As you get bigger and stronger and frankly, just look better, your confidence is going to build. And there's a huge correlation of confidence in your game performance. The more confident you are, the better that you're going to play. And I can't stress this enough. This is so important that you stay in the weight room over the summer and throughout the year, frankly, if you're playing games, you want to stay in the weight room. And guys, there are a lot, a lot of professionals and college players that work out the same day they're playing games. Check out Mike Trout. He talks about this and he has a YouTube channel or YouTube video about this where he works out four days a week. Okay. And by the way, that's as many days we want to be working out. Whether we're playing summer ball or spring ball or fall ball, whatever ball it is, we want to be in the weight room four days a week because we're not in the weight room over the summer especially, we're going to be losing weight, we're going to be losing muscle mass and we're losing all those that strength gains the muscle that we do have. We want to be in the weight room. Now, if you're playing a lot of games, you're playing seven games. Just at least get in the weight room and move some weight. You don't have to always go for strength. Ok, but let's talk about an ideal week for strength and conditioning. Again, four days out of the week, week, you want to at least be in the weight room or doing some conditioning. What could a week look like? Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, or maybe Monday, Tuesday off Wednesday, Friday, Saturday or Thursday, Saturday. Again, you want to make this the best to your schedule, the most ideal schedule that you can and you can adjust week to week, depending on maybe your games and your travel, etc. From. From there. Now, what is a good rep scheme in a set from a strength standpoint? Because we want to focus on getting stronger, right? Well, five by five, five sets of five reps. Ideally, no matter the, the, the body part that you're working out, that is a really good. And scientifically, that is the. One of the best ways to get strength is really working to a heavy set of five with good form, of course. Now, what could a week look like as an example of what body parts you are moving? Maybe Monday you are doing legs and core, okay, Crushing those legs, your quads, your hamstrings, your glutes, your hip flexors. Okay, Your calves, et cetera. From there, Wednesday can be your shoulders, chest and triceps. Okay, Hitting all three of those. And then maybe Friday you're hitting back and buys and core as well. Core is one of those body parts or that area where you could hit almost every single day. When I say hit, I mean workout. What about the fourth day? Fourth day, ideally you Would like to get some conditioning or sprinting in. Alright, Working on those quick twitch muscles which is so important in baseball, whether you're a pitcher or you're a position player, make sure you are sprinting. You could sprint 40s, you could sprint 60s, you can sprint 100 yards. Really, really good for you and your muscle development, but also your quick fiber muscles as you go through that. Now let's talk about strengthening your arm if you are a position player. So non pitchers here you want to be long tossing twice a week and throwing four times a week. Now this is in the thick of our spring, in our summer and even the off season, off season we want to make make sure that we are long tossing, each strengthening our arm. Now if you take this is a little caveat to this. If you take a break, whether it's after summer ball or after spring or whatever it is or after winter and you are going back into throwing, make sure you work your way up in distance. Do not just hop into long toss. But let's just assume, okay, it's an ideal perfect week, that your arm is good, ready to go. You want to be long tossing twice a week as a position player and at least throwing four times a week. So you could be long tossing on a Monday. All right? And then again long tossing on a Thursday or Friday. Give yourself some days in between of not long tossing, but still throwing in between. So you can long toss on a Monday and then take Tuesday off, throw on a Wednesday, long toss again on a Thursday, take Friday, Friday off and throw on a Saturday. That could be an ideal week. Now let's talk about pitchers. Okay, you want to be long tossing at least once a week, ideally is once a week the other day that you could be long tossing that is actually your bullpen or your game day. All right? So again we want to make sure that we are long tossing, especially in the spring and summer and having a good idea. Your coaches should be letting you know ideally when you're going to be throwing and you're probably going to have an idea when you're going to throw. So a good way to get your long toss in is long toss a day or two after you start or you throw and that way you know that you're probably not going to pitch anytime soon as far as your high school or summer. Now if you're in relief, you're going to have to feel this out as you go. But again, if you're in relief and you throw three or four innings, you know you're not going to Throw for a little bit as you go because your pitch count is going to be up. So maybe take a day off. But I've known pitchers that feel really good after they throw and that have long toss the day after they throw. But some also like to just throw lightly the day after and then long toss two days after their start. All right, just making sure. It could be three days again, but you might want to, want to be throwing two days after your start and then long tossing that third day again, whatever your ideal week is. And this can be all adjusted. So if you try something out, it's not totally ideal, adjust as you go. But you want to make sure that you guys are long tossing because that still is the best way to strengthen your arm. There's driveline out there with the, with the sand balls throwing against the wall that actually really, really like. But it's not ideal for everybody and it's not everybody can do that. Okay. But long tossing everybody can do. Let's talk about hitting. So position guys, we need to be hitting at least four days a week, ideally five, six, seven days a week. All right. T work, make sure you guys are hitting off the tee. Make sure you guys are doing some front toss. T work, it doesn't take anybody to be with you. You can do, totally do that on your own. Okay? So there's no excuses. If nobody could throw it to me. Tee work, guys. Again, the professionals work off the tee. Mike Trout hits off the tee before every game before his bp. You guys should be hitting off the tee as well. And then ideally, if you have your dad or a friend, they can front toss with you underhand. And then ideally, yes, you want to be seeing bp and of course in game, anytime that you can get guys to throw to you, whether that's bullpen and maybe it's a dry pin, meaning that you're not actually not hitting, but you're standing in. So if a guy, if you're in an indoor facility or somewhere outside and a guy's getting a bullpen in, hey, ask him especially have a good relationship with them or a coach around. Like, hey, if he wants a stand in. Because by the way, pitchers, if you are going and throwing bullpens, you do want stand ins, you want to hit her in there. Because again, that's about as close as you can get to a game. And that way you can kind of judge off where your pitches are, where you're throwing at, etc. So. But hitters use those bullpens to stand in and track balls and of course, if you get some live bullpens out on the field, meaning they're out there, there's really nobody behind them, they're throwing, but the pitcher has the catcher and you're hitting off of them. Again, hitting as much as you possibly can. That's the beautiful thing. Thing about hitting is you can hit again as much as you possibly can real quick on hitting, you can strengthen your exit velocity. I really like the Driveline program, okay? I'm not endorsed by Driveline or anything like that. I just really like what those guys are doing. But you can do underload and overload. They have a program for that. I don't think it's too expensive. But basically you get a lighter bat and you get a heavier bat and you have reps with that. And of course you get your normal bat, but it's working on. It's kind of like a strength, strength drill but for your hitting. And again, you're doing under load. So again, really light bat, heavy load, maybe with a weight on the bat and you're working, you go through a routine. It's going to help speed up your hands, speed up your wrist, strengthen your wrist, strengthen your forearm. So check that out. Lastly, let's talk about mental work. Maybe one of the most important things, things that you can be doing and that is underutilized through training, especially at high school and even college and even some professionally. But I know a lot of professional guys that do this is mental work. All right, Visualization, all right, what are you visualizing as a position player, especially hitting? Are you visualizing hitting a double backside meaning Oppo. Are you visualizing a double in the gap? All right, you're pointing pool, gap. Pitchers, are you visualizing your game outing and your first pitch, you're in the seventh inning, you're closing out a game, especially if we're in High School, etc. From there and make this as detailed as possible. Anytime you go out on the field and you're training, you're long tossing, you're throwing, you're hitting. Get a visual with how you're doing. Maybe it's part of your warmup. Okay. And make that part of your warm up. We did it with a lot of guys pre practice stretching, we had guys lay out in the outfield and they would visualize for a few minutes. Only takes a few minutes. And another thing that pitchers can do is have a shadow pin. You cannot be able to throw pins every single day, but you can do a shadow pin and you can do a shadow pin anywhere. What is a shadow pin is. Ideally, you would be on a mound, maybe it's in the bullpen, or even more ideally on a game mound. And you are going through your routine, but you're not actually throwing the ball. You're going through your motion, and it's lights about 50% if that. And you are visualizing how the ball's coming out of your hand. You're visualizing that back. You're visualizing it. And when I say visualize, again, your detail is possible. You see the ball that's getting thrown back at you, the catcher's thrown back to you, catch it. You do your routine around the mound. You. You do your routine, your breath work, you go into your motion, or actually even before that, you get the sign from the catcher. And again, there's no catcher there. You don't even have to have a ball in your hand. You can if you want, but you're not throwing it. And you're going through an almost slow motion, but you're visualizing yourself as you go through this. And again, you're just not throwing to protect your arm. But again, you're getting your mechanic work, getting out over that front leg, and you're getting your visualizing as we go. Visualize as much as you possibly can mentally. Put yourself in a game situation, Put yourself in a stressful situation, put yourself in a great situation. Put yourself in a situation of you failing, how you respond to that and how you respond later in the game. Do as much mental work as you possibly can because this can help you substantially in your performance. So, guys, I hope you got something from this video. Hopefully you could put together an ideal week and stick with that ideal week. And I promise you, you do that and you stick with it, it's going to prove your skill set, and it's going to prove your performance on the field. I'll see you in the next video.