Guy Leahy

When the weekend arrives, many of us rush outside to participate in outdoor activities, such as golf, softball, hiking and tennis. Unfortunately, we don’t often take the time to physically prepare ourselves for these endeavors. This results in strains, sprains, and other injuries you spend the rest of the week recovering from.

How can you avoid becoming a wounded weekend warrior? Let’s use baseball as an example. Baseball, like any activity, emphasizes certain actions over others. Baseball players utilize muscles which rotate the hips, lower back and trunk. There’s also quite a bit of shoulder flexion, extension and rotation. Explosive power is used when throwing, swinging a bat, or sprinting to first base. A little bit of stamina also comes into play, especially during those inside the park home runs! Once you recognize the actions a particular sport demands, you can tailor your training to match those actions. With baseball, you’d place emphasis on weight training exercises for the shoulder, lower back, arms and hips. When lower back/abdominal exercises are performed, some twisting movements should be included. How much strength training is needed to improve your baseball performance? Not much. 1-3 sets per body part, for 8-12 repetitions to volitional fatigue (which in English means until you can’t do any more), is plenty. Give yourself a 1-2 minute rest period between sets, and allow at least 48 hours of rest before you work any muscle group again.

If you run or jog, incorporating periodic sprints, either outdoors or on a treadmill, will help with base and field running. Such interval training can be performed 1-2 days a week. Because baseball often involves throwing, sprinting and catching from awkward angles, adding some flexibility exercises to your program may help to reduce injury risk. Any stretching exercise should be static, and held for at least 30 seconds, before either repeating or moving on to another muscle group. Adding some sport-specific training during the week will help you enjoy your Summer weekend activities all the more!