Here's an interesting quote from USA Today:Look at the way home run production has fallen this season to a 15-year low, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. There was an average of 2.01 homers per game this season, down from 2.04 last year and the all-time high of 2.34 in 2000. (Hello, Barry Bonds.) As a comparison, it was 1.78 in 1993.This season's home run leaders were Philadelphia's Ryan Ho [...]

I have not been posting as frequently because I am on my annual fall college tour. I started out at North Carolina State on August 28 working with both Track & Field and Swimming. Very enjoyable visit catching up with Rollie Geiger, an old friend and competitor from my college track coaching days back in the Pleistocene era. Then off to University of Michigan for women’s swimming. Then a “wond [...]

As an athletic development coach how often have I heard the lament – How can you prepare us you never played the game? I have heard that more times than I care to mention. Personally I think one of the worst qualifications for being an athletic development (S&C coach for the uninitiated) is to have played the game, especially if you were a star at the sport. This goes back to my first days as a [...]

I started working with the Venice (Florida) High School Baseball team. We did a few basic tests, taught the coordination phase of the warm-up (I use that that to evaluate basic movements’ and aptitude for fundamental motor skills) and then taught a couple of 3D stretches. The coaching staff is committed to a systematic approach for a whole year, just like girls volleyball, this is the only [...]

As some of you may know, I'm an avid reader of DIGG. I love the semi-random mix of tech, social, and political news that is pushed to the top. Well, I was checking it out this morning and there was a story that caught my eye about steroids gone bad. Given the current spate of drug-related track news that seems to have eclipsed the actual performances on the track, I figured this might be a good d [...]

Slogging is not in the Oxford dictionary so don’t bother looking it up. It appears all the time disguised as training, usually included as integral part of warm-up or disguised as aerobic work. I am beginning to think it is a disease. It consists of thousands of very percussive negative foot contacts ambulating very slowly. Slogging is slower than jogging, hence the term slogging. Yesterday [...]

Why was congress having a hearing on drug use in baseball? I did not watch it, I was traveling all day, I would not have watched it if had been home. The commentary that I heard on the News Hour last night made it sound like a soap opera, which it is. I could not but help but think that with all the issues that we have in our country today, why is congress wasting their time on this. Don’t [...]

Last night in to this morning was snow and ice nonstop..... there's a 'code red' on the military base where I work which means that I'm not even allowed to report to work. Very nice! This has given me the time to watch Roger Clemens crucify himself in his Congressional testimony. Here's a brief (and almost certainly incomplete) list of the evidence damning the guy to PED purgatory:In José [...]

I read this quote yesterday from Japanese player Kosuke Fukudome, who will play for the Chicago Cubs this year. Despite what many American hitting gurus think it is not the hands! Strong powerful legs and core, this guy gets it:“I was explaining to them that if you told a man to stand on his hands for a day, he couldn’t do it,” Fukudome said. “But if you told him to stand [...]

Perhaps the most annoying thing with youtube are the performance coaches posting box jumps with garbage form and pointless heights. Box jumps done high enough prove that you are good with getting your knees up not getting your COM (center of mass) projected off the ground. Usually this leads to a landing that looks like the cover to Moby's play album.My suggestion is land like a front squat with [...]