Olympic Lifts and Baseball

A little introduction for myself,

I am 16 year old baseball player, always looking to improve my knowledge of strength training. I am a frequent poster on the MH fitness board, and I have read countless articles on this site.

Currently I am doing the Home Grown Muscle series,which can be found here:
http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article/0,6916,s1-1-0-0-199,00.html

Right now I am in the final two weeks of phase 6. This is the first phase that has included an olympic lift, albeit as a hybrid lift (power clean/front Squat/Push Press), and I have noticed improved hip rotation on my swing.

I was thinking of maybe switching to a different routine, that is more geared towards athletic goals, than a hypertrophy routine. I was researching CT’s book, and I noticed that one of the things included in the book is a 12 week program for learning the olympic lifts. Would this be beneficial for training for baseball? If not, can anyone point me in the direction of a more favorable program?

Also if anyone has a review of CT’s book, I would love to hear anyone’s take on the book.

Thanks in advance,

~Silent

CT’s book would be a good choice.

I would recomend O lifting for baseball.

You should place emphasis on core work.

Also work on explosiveness.

Most importantly, always hit and throw. Otherwise you will throw off your motor patterns as you get stronger.

Im glad you are intrested in improving your game at 16.

I definitely will be buying CT’s book in the near future. I know I wont be disappointed, especially with the quality of CT’s articles here at T-mag.

Right now I do have an emphasis on core work, or atleast the abdominals right now with phase 6 of HGM. An Ab circuit is done before all the other lifts in the routine, it consists of:

Hanging Leg Raise
Swiss ball oblique crunch
Cable Crunch
Plank

I hope to use CT’s oly lift routine in conjunction with some of the ideas in 21st century core training by Mike Robertson.

Can anyone give me a review of CT’s book?

there is a very good post about baseball stregnth and conditioning in the powerlifting-strength sports section under the topic of “thoughts on conjugate periodization” you should read it…big martin

Inreasing your strength/power is always great for baseball. However, if you are going to do olympic lifts i suggest you get an experienced person to teach you and that you don’t learn from pics in a magazine or book. You only get one throwing shoulder…fuck it up and you can forget about baseball. When i train baseball players im very carefull about having them do olympic lifts, and most times would rather have them just doing explosive high pulls instead of having to “catch” the weight. Even better might be do start reading up on the Westside principles, those guys generate a lot of power, and box squating is easier to learn than power cleans.