Youth Baseball Training

[heathenpride]

My son is interested in putting on muscle for the upcoming baseball season. He's eleven years old and skinny. I'm trying to get him to eat more and cleaner than he normally does.

Anybody have any tips on exercise to add strength that would work for a child of his age? Also, nutrition advice for a younger person would be great too.

Thanks

[lucia316]

Don't overcomplicate things for him. He's 11 and he's better off focusing on the game and mechanics at this age than his size or muscle. He's not in the throws of puberty yet, give it time.

If he wants to increase his size he needs to eat. He's skinny because he doesn't eat enough. "Cleanliness" is subjective and isn't wholly relevant to size. As for exercise, I wouldn't suggest weights yet. Have him do pushups, bodyweight squats, pullups/chinups, etc if he wants to "workout."

The reality is that working on the mechanics of his swing (before he develops crappy habits) and defensive drills will get him in the game more than his size. Remember Barry Bonds before he got big? I do, he was not the beast he was at the end of his career, but he could still belt the ball because he has amazing swing mechanics. Same with Griffey, Jr outside of the release at the end.

[whatwhat11]

[QUOTE=heathenpride;1488010721]My son is interested in putting on muscle for the upcoming baseball season. He's eleven years old and skinny. I'm trying to get him to eat more and cleaner than he normally does.

Anybody have any tips on exercise to add strength that would work for a child of his age? Also, nutrition advice for a younger person would be great too.

Thanks[/QUOTE

[kingmode]

At that age just let him play his sports. Dont try to force him into training and for gods sake no weight training...

watch this video:

[sowilson]

Strength training is fine for kids his age, assuming he takes direction well and can work out without goofing off. Do realize that teens, tweens, and preteens respond a bit differently than adults; namely they can develop strength with less load than we do. So instead of working up to max effort sets where you're at 85-92% of a 1RM for low reps, adolescents should work in higher rep ranges, lower sets, and therefore at a lesser load (i.e. 40-70%). The Mayo Clinic use to have a real nice PDF file that went through this but now they just have a couple of pages up on their web site http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-li...g/art-20047758. So strength training is fine, and middle school is a great time to teach proper form in lifting and then progressively overload at a reasonable rate. As the Mayo Clinic article suggests, band work can be very appropriate for young folk's. I would probably incorporate TRX routines along with some weight work in a routine for younger folk's. When my son was training for baseball, one of the groups he worked with (from a college baseball program) incorporated TRX and Kettlebell work with plyometric and weight work.

The real concern with baseball, especially for good, young players is overwork. Every baseball player, especially pitchers and catchers (or those who get substantial innings doing either) needs to take a couple of months off from throwing activities. Good players in climates where you can play baseball year around tend to play in multiple leagues and throw way too much, we see the results of this in the number of 14 year olds and younger have Tommy John surgery. Those kids need to skip fall ball and just not throw during football season. For those who live in northern climates where weather shuts down outdoor baseball from November to March/April players can injure themselves by overworking themselves to get ready for the season. This usually happens when people come back to training in late February. For northern players they should start doing indoor throwing sessions (especially in domes) starting in December so they can get into playing shape at a more leisurely pace .

[jonmd123]

He doesn't need anything special at that age - eat, lift with strict for, and repeat. As he gets older he can look at getting more specific.

Here is an related article I just wrote that you can check out:

http://www.stack.com/a/why-baseball-...-back-strength

[josephdanial]

One important fitness tip is to prioritize consistency over intensity. Establishing a regular exercise routine and sticking to it is more beneficial in the long run than sporadic, high-intensity workouts.