How to Get the Most Out of Your Break

Recommended Plans for this Off Season

During a college player’s career there really isn’t much time off. Typically you get to campus as a freshman and jump right in the deep end of the fall season. For most this includes a tougher weight lifting plan, daily conditioning, competition to earn a spot against more talented players, learning a new coaching staff and taking in all the new information they need you to learn – you do all of this while making new friends, getting good grades and being away from home for the first time in your life. This is a tough adjustment for most. Once this starts the fall of your freshman year it feels like it is non-stop until the day you leave. The only exception is the Christmas break. It is important our guys take a break from school and see their families but we need our players to continue in their development.  Our program is centered around development so want our guys to get the most they possibly can out of their break. 

Christmas break can make or break your season. I have seen guys leave and take all the information we have been trying to help with and somehow figure it all out during this time on his own. On the flip side, I have seen players somehow back track and we need to start over when he returns.

For us, we emphasize physical improvement and mental improvement. One is not more important than the other. I thought it would be a good idea to include what I give to my players to my blog readers. I hope it helps…

john and jack

Physical Improvement:

Physically we ask our players to eat healthy, lift with a real plan and to run on their own. We want our players to be physically bigger and stronger each year they are at Wright State.   This will not happen if they take an entire month and just go sedentary. So this is top priority for our players over break. Do you have a place to workout, resources for healthy food, and a place to run?

Mental Improvement:

There is no better way to elevate your mental game than to actually get better at your craft – it is amazing how confident you get when you are really good. We ask our players to elevate their mental game by working on their skills. This is different than working in the weight room. You need a place to hit consistently, to take ground balls, to long toss, etc.  Too often a player needs to get better at pitch recognition so he works off of a tee all off season… this doesn’t make sense. Put your focus where it belongs and talk with your coach if you need to know what to improve specifically.

NC STate

Typical Off Season Mistakes

  • Sit around too much
  • Eat “home cooked” meals – that really don’t have nutritional value
  • Snack all day with foods that have no nutritional value
  • Take naps throughout the day
  • Stay out late with old friends – not always bad but it shouldn’t be a late night multiple days a week
  • Drink alcohol
  • Sleep in too late
  • Lift with no purpose other than to just say “I lifted today”
  • No running or just long distance jogging to say “I ran today”
  • Zero skill training or just hitting in the cage
  • Going off of someone else’s plan – a friend is also hitting or lifting so just doing the same thing he does

This is how players come back and put themselves in a horrible position to start the spring.  We really only have a few weeks before we are playing real games vs. real opponents. You have to improve during “break.”

Making a Plan:

To make your own plan for the off-season you have to first get some opinions from coaches on what needs improved.  There is a good chance if you sit and think about your work you can probably get pretty close guessing yourself but just to be sure sit down with a coach – they want to help this is their job.

I would attack creating a plan a few different ways:

  1. What do I need to develop offensively?
    1. Make a plan according to this. Because a need to improve X, I will put the majority of my cage time focusing on X.
      1. So lets say coach said you need to fix a mechanical flaw. The majority of my work would be in a controlled environment – dry swings, tees, front toss, side toss, etc. 
      2. If my mechanics a pretty sound then I would adjust.  I would do 10-20% of my swings in a controlled environment and focus on BP, machine work, Live ABs, etc.
  2. What do I need to develop defensively?
    1. Same as hitting plan above but put toward defense. 
    2. I like keeping track… kind of like keeping my own defensive stats.  Like with lifting, you should be able to see yourself improve as long as you properly track your information.  What gets measured gets improved.
      1. I need to get better at backhands so I will take one entire bucket at the end of my normal routine where I only backhand… each day I track how many out of the bucket I fielded successfully. 
  3. What do I need to develop in the weight room?
    1. Ask your strength coach for a program or create one yourself.  The important thing here is to do a bit of research and to actually do the program you created by keeping track.  At the end of the break you should see improvements written in a journal.
    2. Results happen from major lifts.  I always tell our players if you want to know what lifts are major lifts then just watch the people at your gym at home.  When you go to a “normal people” gym you see trends.  One trend is the major lifts are ALWAYS open.  You will stand in line for the tricep cables or the preacher curls but the squat rack is open.  This is why most people with a gym membership don’t look any different.
  4. What do I need to develop with foot speed?
    1. If your team measures how you run through the fall than this should be easy.  What are you running now? What are the drills you like that make you faster? Do these drills then actually run the sprints on a watch. Again, chart results.
    2. If you are working on building your arsenal then it is important to  develop your skills for different weapons.  Come back as a guy who can get a New School jump and not be vulnerable for pickoffs – I have seen it done on many occasions.  You know the drills you have been working on through the system, if not visit here.

Here is an example off-season daily plan for a position player along with some tips:

Mental focus: Have one great day today. Avoid thinking about the entire break and all the work you have to put in to avoid being overwhelmed. Have one great day where when you  go to bed that night you know you got a little better.

Lifts – hard lifts based on movements that include our big muscles as priority #1. I could write a ton on this but in an effort to keep in extremely simple –

  • Legs, Back, Chest, and Shoulders
  • We recommend splits based on how many days you plan on lifting. If every day we will divide these up and add supplementary lifts. If you lift 3-4 days then the lifts will be more of a total body workout.

 

Meals – We eat quality foods as often as possible based on what we are getting ready to do or what we just did. If looking to gain weight then add calories but still should focus on nutrient dense foods.  If looking to take off weight then do the opposite.

 

Skill work – We divide our work by what we need to focus on most.

  • If my hitting is behind I will spend most of my time on that
    • What do I need to work on?
      • Swing mechanics?
      • Approach?
      • Pitch recognition?
    • Defense would be next
    • Running would follow
      • Stick to baseball type running
        • Steal starts, acceleration work, etc
          • If you follow my system your players should have a good sample of drills they can use on their own.
        • It is good to mix in days through the week where they run distance or sprints with no focus on stealing but only a couple of times per week.

 

Sleep – limit the amount of poor sleep nights. This is typically the BEST time to do this since they aren’t in a dorm for a month.

 

8:00am wake up

 

We ask our players to not force sleep. Research shows that it is good to sleep a large amount but only when it is quality sleep.  We want our guys recovering from the work they perform each day. The best tools for recovering and seeing gains are eating and sleeping. This is important!

 Quality sleep

  • Dark room
  • No distractions
  • 8 hours of real sleep actually reaching REM
  • When it is time for bed you go to sleep – do not watch cell phone videos and TV during this time.

*tip – working out in the morning has shown to increase your sleep quality level

Check out this link for more tips:

http://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/how-to-sleep-better.htm

Non Quality sleep and things that cause poor habits

  • Sleep because of exhaustion – meaning straight from a workout
  • Waking up numerous times during the night
  • Alcohol assisted sleep
  • Sleeping pill assisted sleep
  • Forced sleep – meaning hitting the snooze and laying there trying to get another hour for 3 hours.
  • Avoid reliving stressful events while trying to sleep
  • Cell phone screens and computers while trying to sleep.

 

8:30 Eat meal 1 – Oatmeal and fruit bowl.

 

Meal 1 is a great time for a higher carb meal. Our athletes need energy and typically breakfast is the best way to fill our body quality carbs.

 

Easy Recipe: fill a bowl with dry oatmeal or steal cut oats (not instant oatmeal), run hot water over the oats, mix in berries, real peanut butter or almond butter, and top with raisins and cinnamon. Stir.

 

9:15 Workout 1 – weight training

 

10:15 Post workout Meal (or meal 2): We typically encourage a high protein meal along with simple carbs for recovery within 45 minutes of the completion of the workout.

 

12:30 Meal 3: Grilled chicken wrap

 

Easy Recipe: Grill chicken and sauté vegetables of your choice – usually onion, peppers. Add spinach (as much as you can fit) and put on a wrap & add a sauce that you like but be careful here – I recommend hot sauce but want to be careful of sodium levels.

 

2:30 Meal 4 – piece of fruit and handful of nuts

 

3:00 Skill work – Hit, Ground balls, sprint work

  • Tee warmup – deep tee, oppo tee, up the middle, pull
    • Front toss
    • Live BP
    • Machine Breaking Balls
  • Defensive work
    • Catch play
    • Roll drills to warm up
    • Close range fungos
    • Normal reps – keeping track of errors
  • Sprints
    • 6 tennis ball old school starts
    • 5 Sled drills or bands if you have a partner
    • 3 slow motion starts
    • 5 Old school steal starts timed – record the best 3

4:45 Meal 5

  • Protein source and simple carb

 

7:00 Meal 6

  • Homemade chipotle burrito bowl

 

Easy Recipe:

  • Black beans – cook and mash up to make it look like refried beans
  • Meat – chicken or steak cut up into pieces
  • Sautéed onions and peppers with ground cumin, Chile powder and cilantro to taste
  • Add salsa
  • Add spinach and lettuce
  • Mix into a bowl and eat.

 

9:00 – Meal 7 Protein shake

 

10:30 – dark chocolate and bed – check this link for why:

Benefits of Dark Chocolate on Skin, Weight Loss and Before Bed

 

11:00 sleep in a dark room and relaxed environment

 

 

I hope this helps.  Please let me know if you have any questions about it at the “contact” link.

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