Posted by: Justin Ruth (juru76@hotmail.com) on Mon May 30 19:45:57 2005

> I am wondering what exersizes and how many reps you should do in the off-season to improve power?

I'm a 29 year old adult league player in Maryland. Never made it anywhere because I was a hard headed wild child who flushed a lot of opportunity down the drain.
But there is one thing I do know about and that is how to generate power from a baseball swing. And I don't know of to many ball players period that could generate as much bat speed as I could.

There are only a few things. I'll list them from least important to most important.

1. You have to be in shape cardiovascularly. Run, do arobics, what ever. Just have your lungs in a position to make the most out of the oxygen it pulls in. Oxygen makes everything else work better!

2. Don't be a power lifter. Although you want to have your big muscles in realitivly good shape, at the end of the day you will not need to be able to lift 500 pounds to hit a baseball 500 feet. Work on short burst of power, light weights and a lot of rps for those big muscle groups. Three things in baseball to work on, Running speed, arm strength, and Bat speed, none of which require you to lift more than 33-40 oz.

3. Most important. If you want to generate power in a swing 99.9 percent of that power is going to come from your Bat Speed. 99.9 percent of bat speed is generated from your elbows to the tips of your fingers. Do a lot of work on your forearm and hand strength. Concentrate a whole bunch of energy on this for about three months in the off season and then pick up a bat. You'll see what I mean. Believe me!!!

Let me know how you make out.