Baseball Tuts - all about baseball, tutorials, tuts, drills, and more

I’ll never forget sitting with an SEC coach and having him share with me that if I would have run a sub 7.0 60 yard dash out of high school, I would have been playing in the SEC. But I never thought it was possible. Coming from a small school in Pennsylvania, we never had any state of the art weight training equipment nor performance savvy coaches. I actually never began strength training until my senior year of high school and really didn’t know what the heck I was doing. So I lifted a bit, did what someone had read in a book and tried to get faster by following a several words of so called wisdom such as “run on your toes, stretch out your stride and pump your arms.” Have you heard those before? Unfortunately none of them had any impact on my 7.1 - 7.3 running speed at college showcases and professional team workouts. At this point, I thought I was as fast as I could be and that was it.

So how about college? One may think that by attending a Div I baseball program that I’d have to become faster, but you’d be surprised. Did I lift harder and more often that ever before … ABSOLUTELY. Did I become stronger … Yes. Did I train my body to become faster … ABSOLUTLY NOT. Did I learn how to run efficiently and effectively … NOPE. Yet, I can’t fault any of my coaches because I think they shared with me as much knowledge as they had to offer. So guess what, I left college running a 7.0 (with a tail wind) - 7.2 60 yard dash. I watched both 2nd team and 3rd team SS sign professional contracts and I (1st team SS) hung up my shoes. At this point I thought I had done all that was feasible to get faster and that I just did not have it in me.

So let’s get to the point. I knew I was not able to run a 6.5, thought I had trained hard enough to run a sub 7.0 and was almost ready to conceded that speed simply could not be taught. Until I met “G.” I was in graduate school, came cross G who was working with the Auburn baseball team as a performance specialist and decided to drop out to take one last stab at a life long dream of playing professional baseball. My friend G was an inspiration and would soon help me attain what seemed impossible. Together we analyzed my strengths and weakness and determined that I had a lot to work on, but also a lot of room to improve. I addressed my hamstrings, or lack there of (DK can attest). The hamstrings allow you to “drive” off of the ground and increase both ground impact and stride repetitions. I strengthened my core which allowed the energy I produced at impact with my stronger hamstrings to pass through my entire body and help maintain my posture. Most importantly, I learned how to run properly.  ”Heal under hamstring, knees up, toes up, keep your lean.” All verbal cues that G would critique me for and force me to practice day in and day out. After 10 weeks of strength and technique training to become faster… I ran the first 6.89 60 yard dash of my life. I did it! I broke 7.0 and with room to spare. Who would have thought that at the age of 24 I could have gotten 4 tenths of a second faster. G, I still owe you buddy!

Soon after, I signed a free agent contract with the Florida Marlins. When I reported to camp for the next 3 years I was in the best shape and the fastest I had ever been in my life. Not only did I win all of our fitness assessments at minor league camp, I was being told that I “HAD” to steal when I reached first base. I was pinch running late in games to try and steal a base. What an accomplishment! And to think that for so long I had been told that speed could not be taught. Oh baby, YES it CAN!

Related Posts