Weight lifting is appropriate for baseball and softball players, and weight lifting should have as its purposes improvement of on field performance and injury prevention. Lifting for what I call cosmetic (body building) purposes or to be the strongest guy in the gym will very likely cause problems for ball players. Performing workouts designed for other sports, such as football, also have the potential to cause problems for ball players.
One of the lifts over which there is some controversy in baseball circles is the bench press. This lift strongly targets the following muscles:
1) Pectoralis major and minor.
2) Triceps.
3) Anterior head of the deltoid.
All of these muscles are involved in throwing. Both pec muscles and the anterior deltoid help accelerate the arm forward during a throw. Contraction of the triceps causes the elbow to extend
while throwing. Clearly, it is to any thrower's advantage for all of these muscles to be strong and flexible.
The single best lift for strengthening these muscles is the bench press. I talk to many coaches and players, however, who say they avoid performing this lift. My question is, why? And the three answers I always hear are the following, or some variation thereof:
1) This lift can hurt your arm.
2) Someone (usually unnamed) said pitchers should never do this lift.
3) We do the lift, but only with light weights and high reps.
Clearly there is a lot of fear associated with this lift and ballplayers. I maintain this fear is largely unwarranted. Have ball players hurt themselves in various ways from incorrect weight training? Of course. But the fault is not in the bench press lift, it is in the way that training with this lift is employed. Following are my responses to each of these objections:
1) "This lift can hurt your arm." True. So can many other lifts. A key cause of injury with the bench press is an over-emphasis on this lift while neglecting others equally important. This leads to imbalances in strength and development.
An important key to maintaining a balance of strength between the chest and its opposite, the upper back, is to do at least as much work on the upper back as the chest. In fact, given the much larger size of the muscles in the chest area vs. the upper back, I'd further recommend doing two sets of upper back work to each set of chest work. Keep the rep ranges similar.
The amount of weight used between the chest and upper back will be quite different, of course. While I've seen a lot of 400 lb bench presses, I've never seen a 400 lb bent over row (an upper back/lat lift that is exactly the opposite of the bench).
A related idea some coaches and players advocate (that I do not!) is the idea of restricting the range of motion of the shoulder joint by not allowing the elbows to dip below the back when lowering the bar to the chest. This would be like doing a bench press while lying flat on the floor. The thinking behind this is that it can injure the shoulder capsule to lower heavy weights to this "extreme" point in the range of motion, so not taking the elbows below the plane of the back becomes a safeguard for this joint.
But is it? The late great trainer Mel Siff makes this important and interesting point:
"The shoulder joint is ballistically thrust much further back (extended) during sprinting and fast running than any form of barbell bench pressing, and for many more reps at a time. The force imposed on the shoulder joint under these conditions can exceed that experienced by the average recreational bench
presser, so does that mean that we should not forcefully swing the arms back when we run?"
And of course, baseball and softball players sprint a great deal during their games and practices, right?
Bottom line: the shoulder is made to take the force imposed by a full range of motion bench press. Balance your chest work with twice as much upper back work.
2) "Someone (rarely, if ever, named) said pitchers should never do this lift."
As near as I can tell, after years of conversations with coaches and players, this objection comes mostly from the "old school" mentality that lifting weights is bad for ball players. No doubt, improper weight training has and will continue to hurt baseball and softball players, particularly baseball pitchers. But the problem is not weight training, it is in poorly designed weight lifting programs.
Ballplayers, parents and coaches: do not take this issue of properly designed training programs lightly. I recently received an email from the father of a high school pitcher who is trying to recover from a torn labrum. As far as they can tell, the injury resulted from "excessive lifting for football." This young pitcher had a promising future when he sustained his injury - as a high school sophomore, he was clocked by the Phillies at 88 mph. Now he faces a very difficult re-hab process, and the prognosis
for recovery is not particularly good.
So, ballplayers - lift, but do a lifting program designed for your sport! Doing so will likely make you a better player while reducing your chances of injury.
3) "We do the lift, but only with light weights and high reps."
This approach is taken with the idea that if you're lifting lightweights, you likely can't hurt yourself. Or, that by lifting light weights, you won't get too big, thereby damaging your throwing ability.
Training this way, you also won't develop much strength that would be helpful to throwers. Both overhand and underhand throwers use the aforementioned rotator muscles. You want them to be powerful and flexible - but not necessarily big.
Strong and developed yes - huge and cosmetically impressive - no!
Lifting heavy weights (85-95% of 1 RM - max lift) for 3 sets of 2-5 reps is where this power and strength is developed. Doing sets of 12 or more reps will not produce the desired results. At the same time, lifting periodically at this 85-90% 1RM range will not produce big muscles (hypertrophy). There will be some growth, of course, but rep ranges of 8-12 are more effective for increasing muscle size.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Lifting in the 85-95% of 1 RM applies only to players of 16 years of age and older, due to issues with epiphyseal plate (growth plate) closure.
To illustrate, look at world-class low and middle weight Olympic and Power lifters. While they are obviously strong and well developed, their muscles are not particularly big compared to world-class body builders of the same body weight.
The same with lower and middle-weight boxers. Again, they are strong and well-developed, but few, if any of them would win a body-building contest contest.
Notice in my example I mentioned light and middle-weight lifters and boxers, not the heavier guys. This is because the athletes in these heavier divisions are obviously quite large - but this would likely be the case even if they weren't competing in their various sports. They're just big dudes, thanks to their genes.
The key is to do a well rounded, periodized workout which includes some heavy lifting. You can learn more about such a workout at this link:
http://www.BaseballFit.com/sc3.htm, or click on the "Get in Shape" link on the left side of the page at www.BaseballFit.com
To sum up: the bench press, performed properly and as part of a well designed baseball/softball workout, is an excellent lift for all ball players to perform.
