Spring Training

I came to the realization a few weeks ago that the months of April and May were going to be rather lean when it came to Baseball Road Trips. I had plans to go to Albuquerque, but as my life outside of baseball became more hectic, I knew that I needed to stay local for the time being. I'm not fretting though because last year my self-imposed moratorium on travel actually made the experience of going on trips that much better at the end of the season. Still, I want to keep baseball on my mind, so I went to 42 last week, I'm going to do a baseball movie marathon at the end of this month, and I will be starting my own Spring Training tomorrow.

My coed softball team that won the league championship did not make the registration deadline. Luckily, I had joined a Men's League team through my work at the YMCA. Joining with a few other colleagues from here, we have joined a team that is being sponsored by some industrial firm in North Eugene. From what I have heard, this league is a lot more competitive than the coed league I played in last year. With this in mind, I decided to take softball to a new level and actually engage in a modified "Spring Training" to get me ready for the upcoming season.

I've never trained specifically for baseball/softball, so I did some research online on how a guy like me can improve my game. I still want to keep the essence of my game, base running and defense, but I want to improve on it. I believe that I can be legitimate top-of-the-lineup threat and get on base for my teammates to drive me in.

The first phase of my training is to build my base up. I plan on doing some track workouts from my days as an Oregon athlete. I'd like to build up my speed so that when I get to more technical aspects of training, like hitting the batting cages or fielding flyballs, I am in shape to make the most out of that training. I'm going to do base workouts of 200-400 meters interspersed with speed work at 60-80 meters. Every workout I do will start and end with strength exercises of situps and pushups.

After doing that for two whole weeks, I will begin to start hitting the cages once again. I need to focus on being that singles hitter, so keeping a nice and level swing, utilizing my long arms to drive the ball, and, hopefully, using my strength to add some power to the gap.

I have a little more than a month before softball season starts, and I think that is plenty of time to get myself into shape to play with the big boys. It will be a lot of hard work, but it will produce positive results in the end. If not, I at least have an activity to last me until my next Baseball Road Trip.

I will use this blog to keep a record of my training and update all of you on my development.

Always take on a 3-0 pitch ;)