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New York Yankees Win 27th World Series Title
The New York Yankees have won their first Baseball World Series title since 2000 beating Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday, 7-3.
“They persevered and they were determined, a lot like the ’98 team” Yankees Manager Brian Cashman
The team played excellently together and proved that their fitness regime and baseball training skills are certainly top notch and more than capable to keep them on top of their game.
The Yankees have a large team of coaches that specialize in each key skill in the game: Kevin Long for Batting, Dave Eiland for Pitching, Mick Kelleher for First Base, Rob Thomson for Third Base, Tony Pena for Bench and Mike Harkey is the Bullpen Coach.
Yankees Strength and Conditioning
Dana Cavalea is the Yankee’s Strength and Conditioning Coach. He ensures that the team follow a strict regime of functional strength training to improve pitch performance to its maximum potential while avoiding overtraining.
Cavalea’s says that the key element to ensuring that the Yankee’s fitness levels are kept to their maximum is create the most efficient training program possible without wasting time or overtraining. His slogan for training is simply:
“If we train SLOW, we will be SLOW! If we train FAST, we will be FAST!”
Baseball is not an aerobic sport so getting the team doing 2 mile runs to test their cardiovascular ability is not the way to ensure they are fit for a ball game. Baseball is an anaerobic sport and requires sprint training and strength training. In fact, Usain Bolt’s training is far more relevant to baseball than jogging / running workouts. Short, powerful workouts which build functional athletic muscle that is geared to short bursts of intensity.
“In order to make a conditioning program as sport-specific as possible we need to analyze the sport. In the game of baseball most actions are short, quick, and explosive. Usually the work: rest ratio in baseball is about 1:3. For instance if you are in the batters box and swing, the anticipation of the pitch and then the swing might take a total of 15 seconds and then you would have between 45 seconds and a minute off before the next time you set in the box, creating a work to rest of 1:2-3. So when devising a program, one option might be to mark off a distance of about 30-40 yards and have the athletes sprint out at full speed and hold a timer to see how long that run takes. After you get the time, the rest would be 2-3 times that.” Dana Cavalea.
So the key to training a baseball team is to ensure that they have functional strength training and do sprint interval workouts. These workouts produce the physical attributes that are needed on the ball park. In some ways baseball training is similar to soccer training – sprint intervals and some functional strength training. Never overtrain – Bruce Lee warned about the dangers of overtraining, and his teachings are still as valid today as they were when he was teaching and writing about martial arts training.
As for the specific strength training, then the answer is compound weight training – squats, lunges, bench press, shoulder press, deadlift, curls and rows. Work the whole body so that all the muscles learn to work in unison. This is what created athletic strength and power.
Dana Caveala’s site: www.mlstrength.com
New York Yankees official website: newyork.yankees.mlb.com
Ref: Cavalea, D. (2009, May 4). Conditioning For the Modern Day Ballplayer. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
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