With football season now officially over, loads of sports fans are now turning their attention to the fact that pitchers and catchers “reported” this week, signifying the start of spring training and a new Major League Baseball season. Truth be told, most college programs will have already started their seasons – and many high school programs will be playing official games – before the big leaguers start having regular season contests.

Unfortunately, with the start of a new season comes injuries…and lots of them. In fact, according to researchers who examined MLB injury statistics from 2002 through 2008, professional baseball players are 10.6 times more likely to get injured in April than they are in September. In other words, they are far more likely to get hurt because they haven’t prepared adequately for specificity than because they’ve had too much specificity.

Think about that for a second. By the time September rolls around, most MLB players have logged 150 games between spring training and regular season play. On a regular basis, they’ve fouled balls off their feet, gotten hit by pitches, made 100 slides, attempted dozens of diving catches, and sprinted full-tilt when they aren’t warmed-up thoroughly after standing around doing nothing for a few innings. Pitchers have logged hundreds of innings, in some cases, and catchers are sick of squatting for hours on end. Yet, guys are dropping like flies in April, when they’re supposed to be the most fresh.

Huh?

There are four legitimate reasons that this is happening.

First, rosters expand in September, so teams can easily keep a guy with a minor injury on the roster without putting him on the disabled list, which would make him “officially” hurt. However, this doesn’t explain why August injury rates are still dramatically higher than April’s.

Second, the weather is colder – which means it’s tougher for guys to stay warm and loose during early season games. This doesn’t explain the high injury rates we see in spring training, though, as all games take place in Arizona and Florida.

Third, guys may be ramped up too quickly. Too many swings or throws in a short period of time may be the problem – but this really isn’t something that can be changed, as guys need to become game ready, getting their timing, coordination, and mechanics down cold while they’ve got proper coaching at hand.

Fourth (and this is the main message of this article), guys simply aren’t preparing correctly in the off-season with their baseball strength and conditioning programs. They may not be showing up with the right mobility and stability in the right places, or they may simply be waiting too long to start throwing, hitting, or sprinting. This happens all the time at the high school, college, and professional levels.

In the high school ranks, kids may be winter sports athletes, and not pick up a ball until a week or two before tryouts. Or, they may have just lifted weights all winter, but not done enough sprinting or mobility work.

In the college ranks, some athletes will skip throwing and hitting altogether over winter break – and then wind up with issues when they return to campus and ramp up quickly to prepare for the start of the season.

Finally, in the professional ranks, many players simply wait too long to start baseball activities. You can lift all the weights you want, throw medicine balls, sprint, take yoga classes, and participate in any of a number of other general training modalities, but nothing prepares you for being in baseball cleats and hitting, throwing, taking ground balls, or shagging fly balls for hours on end – and doing so every day of the week. It’s why I encourage our professional baseball crew to always get started on these things well in advance. Guys might start playing catch as early as Thanksgiving, start hitting off a tee in early December, and start working on defensive drills when January rolls around. And, we’ll do movement training – sprinting, change of direction drills, ploys – throughout the off-season. We don’t add everything at once; instead, we gradually introduce a more and more baseball-specific stimulus as the off-season progresses so that nobody gets surprised when they show up to spring training; it should feel like a breeze.

So, with anywhere from a few weeks to a few months of your off-season remaining, make sure you’re not just getting bogged down in the weight room. Keep in mind that you lift weights to stay healthy on the field and improve performance, not just for the sake of lifting weights. Look for more and more specificity in your programming with increased participation in baseball activities – but not so much that it becomes a “too much, too soon” scenario. And, keep an eye out for the media reporting on loads of hamstrings, hip flexor, adductor, and oblique strains in the months to come, as it’s a sign of the season!

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