Baseball Specific Speed training
When the PT Spiders club baseball team approached us to develop players' speed, explosiveness, and agility, it was an opportunity for us to learn about baseball-specific training.
After doing research, the following ideas emerged:
Baseball speed deals primarily with acceleration (0 - 10 m)
We needed to measure sprint times from 2nd base to home and home to 1st base, not just the standard 60 yard dash test.
The Pro Agility test works best for determining baseline baseball agility.
We tested all of the players in all drills except the pro agility (due to time constraints) in the fall.
Our first phase of training has focused on running technique, acceleration development, base running, and fundamental agility technique.
We are using the Freelap sprint timing system to capture acceleration data from 0 - 5m. The ability to accurately time every sprint effort is something that motivates each athlete and they like the immediate feedback.
To help players with their base running, we are using the figure eight drill. Agility development is done through the 3 cone shuttle drill and players do form running over 6" hurdles for running (and agility) technique.
The next phase will incorporate box jumping in place of running technique.