Posted by: Dave (nytino20@aol.com) on Thu Feb 1 07:24:19 2007

It's sad that most of you think weight training will make you "stronger" and in turn able to swing a bat faster or throw a ball harder. I hope I misread what you guys are saying. Weight training will train your muscles to do whatever exercise you are doing for longer. It's not a bad thing in sports training but if you want to hit the ball harder or throw the ball faster then you need to work on the "speed" of your muscles. How quickly they go from a relaxed position to a fully contracted position. Fast twitch muscle fibers and motor units are responsible for this. Now how much you can bench or shoulder press or squat OR how many TIMES you can do these exercises. Everybody knows that Force=Mass multiplied by Acceleration. Well most people forget the acceleration part. What good is having muscles that are primarily slow twitch and can squat/bench/shoulder press massive amounts of weight?? All that is doing is building mass and endurance. The "acceleration" part of the force equation is not even being touched. Isometrics has been proven to increase the "speed" of muscles by recruiting more motor units and primarily fast twitch fibers. Don't want to get too into that now. Just want to let you guys know that strength training and weights are definetley good. But what is better is training for "speed" or "explosiveness" by training your fast twitch fibers. Speed is the primary goal you are after. As long as you aren't 25 and swinging a 26 oz bat. If that's the case you need to beef up and be able to swing a 30oz bat and then work on your speed. Both is completely beneficial but isometrics are far overlooked if not looked upon at all.

Just think about football. When you watch football why do you see the 5ft 10 175lb kickers noted for their "strong" leg kicking a 50+ yard field goal?? Why aren't the true "strong" men (the linemen, you know the guys that can squat and leg press much more then a 5ft 10 175lb kicker/punter) doing the kicking for the team?? They clearly have the "stronger" legs. Well the answer is quite simple. The kicker/punters legs are MUCH faster.