Buy in with Baseball: Embed Testing into Their Training

The Big Takeaway 

• Embeding testing into training allows coaches to collect quality data while maximizing their time.

The Pitfalls of Pre & Post Testing

Pre- and post-testing has been a staple process within strength and conditioning since the field's inception, and for good reason. As practitioners, we need to show objective improvements in relevant qualities (body composition, speed, jump height, strength, etc.) depending on the time of year, training phase, and the athletes we are working with. With that said, there are some unfortunate realities of this standard model that, thanks to new technologies, can more easily be mitigated.

To a certain extent, pre- and post-testing assumes that progression happens predictably and linearly. We place stress on our athletes in the form of training over 4+ weeks, leading to an adaptation that is realized during our post-testing session. But we work with humans, not robots. Adaptation can be far from linear and predictable, and training is not the only stressor that our athletes experience weekly. Whether it is stress from life, lack of sleep, improper fueling, or hectic sports practice schedules, all of these factors impact our athletes' ability to perform. With this in mind, we can start to see the downside of the traditional pre- and post-testing model. It is easy to miss actual improvements from training due to these inherent fluctuations in performance. In addition, it makes it difficult to track trends in performance that can be used to modify the individual or group's training from microcycle to microcycle rather than from phase to phase.

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Beyond this, it can be challenging for athletes to see the value in testing days as they relate to their sport. For example, a baseball athlete may not fully understand how movements like a countermovement jump or a trap bar deadlift carry over to their throwing or exit velocities. This can lead to a lack of buy-in and intent, making the data lower quality.

This is where viewing testing and training as one and the same can have a massive impact on your program. If we leverage practical and readily available technologies to track performance in real-time, we can effectively get a “testing” data point multiple times throughout the training week. It also makes pre- and post-testing days obsolete, allowing for two or more additional training sessions. This is extremely valuable for coaches who have limited time with their athletes throughout the week (2-3 sessions), inconsistent attendance, or limited time to drive adaptation (4-6 weeks). It is a bonus if the movements measured are easily relatable to the primary actions in baseball, like rotational and overhead medicine ball throw variations.

How Synergy Coaches Leverage Output for Medball Training

Synergy Performance Rehab is a Tampa-based performance and rehab center for athletes of all levels. They value data on their athletes and use this information to inform their training. Because of this, they do a large amount of testing and profiling with their baseball athletes, always relating metrics back to what matters most: performance on the field. But they don’t just test for the sake of testing:

“If we’re going to perform any test, we must get something out of it. It has to influence the program. Information leads to intervention,” says Synergy founder Shawn McDermott.

To maximize data and minimize impact on the program, Shawn and his staff decided to objectively measure things that were already in their athletes' programs and related to performance in their sport. This included core stability, upper extremity mobility (for pitchers), countermovement jump, strength, and rotational power.

Check out a highlight of Synergy Performance Rehab’s embedded testing:

Rotational power is often included in baseball athletes' programs because of its dynamic correspondence to movements like hitting and throwing. This often leads to a high level of buy-in and intent from athletes. With that said, it can also be a challenging movement to objectively track performance. Over time, coaches have used radar guns, hand-timed how long balls were in the air after release, or measured how far/high athletes could throw. While these methods can be effective, they can also be very time-consuming and error-prone. This is where Output Sports came in and gave them the ability to measure what mattered.

In addition to tracking jump height, joint range of motion, and bar velocities, Output also gave Synergy the ability to objectively measure the peak velocity of various medicine ball throw variations. Additionally, Output automatically stored that data, making profiling their baseball athletes a breeze on the back end.

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Since implementing Output, the coaches at Synergy have been able to embed a large majority of their testing into their baseball athletes' training, leading to high levels of buy-in and driving competition within the group. They’ve begun to track progress in rotational tosses and overhead slams weekly. They use this information to see how their athletes are progressing in a pattern more specific to the sport of baseball and to monitor how their athletes are recovering from the stresses of training, practice, and life. They then use the data they have collected over time to make training modifications. They have also found that embedding testing has led to athletes training with more intent than they have in the past. Using the leaderboard function, it is easy to see every athlete's performance in real time during the training session. This leads to competition for the fastest peak velocities of the day, which ultimately leads to better adaptation from training.

Wrap-Up 

If you’re a coach looking to maximize testing with baseball athletes there are two things you should borrow from the staff at Synergy Performance Rehab:

• Embed weekly testing into your athletes training session 

• Objectively measure movements that are easily relatable to the sport like rotational and overhead medicine ball throw variations

If you can do these things you’ll be well on your way to collecting high quality data on your athletes!