College softball lifting program

We discuss the importance of off-season training as well as how to program your workouts during the summer travel season. Let me show you a few of my favorite exercises taken directly from The Softball Strength Training Manual that are most critical for your development as a player!

We want our softball athletes mastering the basics of strength training so they feel comfortable and confident on the field! Focusing on exercise technique, movement and coordination, here are few of my favorite softball training exercises to help with your overall athletic development! Then, the lower body rests while the upper body works.

This is what we want in a good softball workout! The takeaway is that when we pair exercises—which is a large piece of good workout program design—we should be looking to keep the body active while giving each muscle group adequate rest between sets. Periodization is a simple but effective tool that helps athletes progress toward their competitive season and their goals. For more on periodization, check out this excellent article that contains summaries and links to lots of research.

This phase sets a good foundation to make phase 2 easier, but is, again, usually not very long or is mixed in with the hypertrophy phase for most athletes who are already relatively active.

This phase can last as long as it needs to — for an athlete who needs to put on a lot of muscle, a hypertrophy phase may last a significant portion of the year until that goal is achieved, with adjustments made to accommodate the season approaching.

But it wouldnt make good sense to spend too much time on other phases when muscle size remains the most important goal. The strength phase is important because it puts all of that muscle to work. Rather, we want fast, strong, powerful athletes and so changing reps and sets and exercises helps accomplish that.

The goal is to use lower weights and move the weights as fast as possible, to train the central nervous system CNS to become faster and more responsive. Undulating periodization takes elements from the phases above not in a strict phase configuration, but rather going in waves from month to month, week to week or another scheme.

An athlete might be on a plan that undulates from strength to hypertrophy every month, alternating until some desired goal or metric is achieved. The theory behind it is that weights can be increased from the benefits of each training block — the athlete gets bigger in month one so she can lift heavier weights in month two, then returns to hypertrophy where she lifts even heavier weights for higher reps. It could look like the following in a simplified example:. After months one and two, the athlete is now significantly bigger and stronger.

So months three and four look like this:. This above example is simplified, but hopefully it shows what undulating periodization looks like on a basic level. Personally, I prefer a hybridized model that contains elements of both, and of course tailoring it to the athlete and their needs is always best. The nice thing about online softball workouts today is that they are easily customized, compared to the pen and paper programs of the past. In most workouts, sets will contain exercises with a range from reps.

Within a 3-repetition range is usually suitable to accomplish the goal in question in the hypertrophy phase.

Somewhere between accomplishes the same goals as 10 exactly, 11 exactly, or 12 exactly, so giving ranges for exercises is often a sensible thing to do, provided the player is working hard.

This is because as weights get heavier and repetitions get lower, we need more sets to make up volume. Rather, one progresses to strength rep ranges when a sufficient base of muscle size has been built, AND the athlete is capable of lifting heavier loads safely, with good form.

For exercises like jumps and plyometric exercises which teach the body to decelerate itself faster, and thus increase power output , we use a similar scheme of sets and reps to those found in a strength phase:. Doing sets of 4, 5, or 6 can be enough to cause fatigue that makes speed training less effective. Additionally, finding a balance for young athletes is important to keeping them interested and not feeling burned out over a long training career.

That might look like this:. This workout above is six exercises with a total volume of 20 sets 4 exercises x 3 sets and 2 exercises x 4 sets. Tack on a warm up at the beginning and some injury prevention work at the end, and this would fill out an hour-long workout just about perfectly.

This set volume is tolerated well by most people without causing undue fatigue or overtraining, and is enough to produce a significant training effect. Some exercises are safer than others and require less coaching to be safe than others.

Especially for a coach who has to supervise an entire weight room full of athletes, having a softball strength and conditioning program that is easy to coach while still being very safe is essential. Remember that pretty much any exercise can be very safe or very dangerous depending on the appropriateness for the athlete, the coaching and the environment.

Here are some breakdowns of exercise safety, along with the amount of coaching required to help players stay safe while doing them.

Rowing exercises are inherently very safe, so safety here comes down moreso to the body positions the athlete is in. Here are the terms and conditions of the program: This program is designed to prepare incoming college freshmen athletes for their collegiate weight room experience by including exercises such as squats, deadlifts, push ups, pull ups, presses.

The first phase of this program focuses on flexibility, core stability, and strength training competence. The program follows a 3-day workout rotation. The program assumes the athlete will be playing tournaments on the weekends.