Nutrition Tips For Those LOOOOONG High School Tournament Weekends

Tournaments! Weekend-long (sometimes longer) events where athletes play multiple games in one day with very short breaks between games. Definitely not long enough to get a solid meal in before the beginning of the next match. All of our baseball and volleyball players have, seemingly, an endless stream of tournaments during the club seasons; it blows my mind a bit.

Anyway, this can pose a problem when it comes to being able to fuel properly before/after games. The aim for this post will be to provide tips how to eat leading up to the tournament, during the tournament (i.e. between games/matches), and sample snacks to bring. One can make this a complicated subject (eat 23.5 grams of protein, 15.8 grams of carbohydrates, eaten during the half-moon's light for optimum performance), but it's not really. It's easier than tracking orcs through the plains of Rohan.

If you glean nothing else out of the post, glean this: EAT. REAL. FOOD. There's no magic bullet supplement that will enhance your performance any more than eating solid, real food regularly.

Leading up to the tournament:

For (at least) the week prior, ensure that your meals consist of REAL foods, that is, plenty of vegetables and fruits, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Conveniently, the same rules that appeared in the post  Eating for Strength and Performance, apply here. Craziness. As I've said before, if you fill your tank with crap, you're going to feel like crap, thus leading to performing like crap. Simple yes? We live in an age where technology makes our lives "easier" (though I would argue against a few of the more recent inventions) yet eating, the most basic human need, is over complicated. Our volleyball and baseball player (and all our athletes!)  will take their training to the next level if  if they just ate real food. Practical tips on how to achieve this below.

During the Tournament:

The length of the competitive day (6, 8, 10 hours?!!) will, to a degree, determine what types and how much food to bring. Obviously, longer tournament days will require more food than the shorter days. Here are three main points to remember when seeking foods for between games/matches.

1. EAT. REAL. FOOD. (notice a theme?) Don't go to 7-Eleven and pick up a Slurpee and whatever else they sell there. (You should NOT find body fuel at the same place you find car fuel.) Grab some fruit, make some sandwiches, and bring plenty of WATER. We'll go over a couple of beverages down below, but the number one liquid you should slurp: good ol' water. Divide your bodyweight in half... that's how many ounces (MINIMUM!) you should be drinking. If it's hot, and sweat is soaking your garments, drink your body weight in ounces.

2. Choose food that you know will sit well in your stomach. If you never eat peanut butter and pickle sandwiches (though if you don't, I don't know what's wrong with you. Try it. But not on tournament day.), don't pack them. The combination of nerves and high activity doesn't provide the best situation to try new foods. Pack food that you know you can handle (I also recommend staying away from a lot of dairy and highly acidic foods/drinks as both can lead to upset stomachs during intense activity).

3. Pack a cooler. I know it's extra work, but you'll be glad you did when you're able to chow down on healthy, delicious and filling foods while your friends are relegated to protein bars, candy, and who knows what other food they scrounge up.

Practical Solutions:

What does all this look like? Fill in your preferred food choice utilizing this general template. Think of it as a nutritional MadLib.

Breakfast:

1-2 fist-sized Protein source (eggs, cottage cheese, lean meat, Greek yogurt) + 1/2- 1 cup of Complex Carbohydrate source (fruit, oatmeal, whole grain toast, sweet potato, beans, any kind of vegetable) + 1-3 Tablespoons healthy fat (nut butter, real butter, olive oil, egg yolks, 1/2 avocado, nuts, pumpkin seeds) + at least 1-2 fist-sized serving of vegetables!

As an aside, I made cauliflower cream of "wheat" (and you know I love my cauliflower) the other day for breakfast. I tried this recipe and I just found this one. I think the second one would be a tastier option; the recipe I tried still had a cauliflower-y aftertaste. Maybe I needed riper banana or something. Anyway, this is an example a creative way to incorporate vegetables in tastier ways. And make them a DAILY part of your diet.

Lunch: 

1-2 fist-sized protein source + 1/2 cup/serving of carbohydrate* + 1-3 Tablespoons healthy fat + at least 1-2 fist-sized serving of vegetables!

Dinner:

You guessed it: 1-2 fist-sized protein source + 1/2 cup/serving of carbohydrate* + 1-3 Tablespoons healthy fat + (you guessed it) at least 1-2 fist-sized serving of vegetables!

Snacks:

The same composition as the meals, just take half the serving side. For example, a hard boiled egg and an apple would be perfect. If you want some ideas of various foods to try, check out my posts here and here for other, less publicized super foods that have a plethora of benefits to offer to the competitive athlete.

* the amount of carbohydrates will fluctuate depending on if you work out/practice that day or not (see linked post about performance nutrition for more information). Eat 1-2 extra cups of carbohydrates spread throughout the day if practice/workouts are on that day. The "carb-loading" tactic is not a good idea unless you're running an Iron Man. A huge pasta meal the day before a competition doesn't do much for you except make you feel really full and sick.

Here are some sample snack options that might do well during long tournament days:

- Fruits (always a great option) such as bananas, apples, oranges, kiwis, melon etc.

- Homemade granola (complex carbohydrate source)

- Trail mix- a healthy blend of nuts and seeds (to provide satiety) and dried fruit with maybe a little chocolate thrown in (because let's be honest, the M&Ms are the best part).

- Celery, carrots, sliced bell peppers, jicima slices (or any raw veggie) and hummus

- Hardboiled eggs (this is where the cooler becomes handy), deli meat, tuna fish, sardines (if you're ok with no one sitting near you while you eat)

- Sandwiches: meat/cheese or peanut butter variations

Beverages-

1. Water, water, and more water. Water is the oil that keeps the body's engine running smoothly. No water? The engine starts grinding and struggling, like Gimli over long distances, and eventually poops out entirely. Not a desirable result during a big showcase tournament.

2. Drinks like Gatorade and Powerade are ok, but don't make them the primary source of liquid. They're useful if there's copious amounts of sweating going on (to help replace electrolytes) but too often I see athletes downing multiple bottles, when really, 1 bottle should be plenty.

3. If there's a decent chunk of time between games/matches, chocolate milk is actually a pretty good option for providing carbohydrates and protein (both of which are needed after a workout). I don't recommend drinking if there's only 15-20 minutes between games as dairy can sometimes upset stomachs.

4. Soda = fail.

Do you see a pattern? By eating quality food throughout the week and during the tournament days ensures that your body has the proper fuel for competition. Matter of fact, eating this way ALL the time does wonders for your health and performance.

Think of it this way: leading up to the tournament, athletes practice and strength train to prepare their bodies to ensure they're ready to compete. Any coach would tell you that if you try to cram all those hours of practice in the day before the tournament, things won't work out so well. The exact same principle applies to nutrition. If eating nutritious food starts the night before, well, things won't work out so well. Be vigilant in your preparations and take care as to what goes in your body as diligently and enthusiastically as you practice for each tournament.

Powerful Hips for Power Hitters

Today we're going to touch on a topic that certainly doesn't warrant a prolix explanation, yet needs to be addressed regardless, as from time to time as I run into folks in the baseball/softball circles - be they coaches, parents, or players - who have been misguided in this area.

How does one improve the power of their swing, in order to make the ball fly farther and faster?

Just to clear the air, there are two primary components that must be capitalized upon: technique, and strength+power.

One can possess all the strength in the world, so much so that it makes Bane look like a utter weakling, but if they lack technique - timing of the swing, proper sequencing of the hips, shoulders and arms; hand-eye coordination to make the ball meet the bat at the precise location - then that ball isn't going to go very far, if anywhere.

Now that that is out of the way, let's look at the other side of the coin, strength+power. Which muscles in the human body are going to be able to harness and produce the most force, in the context of hitting a baseball?

The Hips!

With a capital H. Now, I can see some of you rolling your eyes, thinking, "Well, duh, please tell me something else that's painfully obvious...." but I had to clear this up given that (and I tell you true) I've had people approach me to say that it is the biceps and shoulders that posses the most potential to hit and/or throw a ball.

Excuse me while I go throw my face into a hornets' nest.

Let's all take a deep breathe, relax, and come to an agreement that the hips are indeed king when it comes to power production. To say that it's the shoulders and arms would be akin to saying that you can take a car with brand new, top-of-the-line tires, yet only a 200 horse power engine, and expect it to win a Grand Prix! Of course the tires are necessary to connect the chassis of the car to the road and have it go where you want to, but they aren't of much value without a powerful engine to move them, are they? The arms certainly have their merit in a swing, just as tires do in a road race, but they're both a far cry from the bread and butter we're looking for in terms of power output.

Just ask Miguel Cabrera, Jose Bautista, Bryce Harper, or any of the other big hitters currently instilling trepidation in pitchers all across the big leagues; I'm inclined to believe they'll concur.

Just watch the incredible hip extension+rotation during any number of Cabrera's home runs in the highlight video below.

So how does one develop these oh-so-important hips, to prepare them for prodigious levels power output and be the driving force behind smashing a ball into oblivion?

First, it may be prudent to discuss what not to do, as one can find an alarmingly high number of misguided training practices proliferating among the strength and conditioning programs of little league, high school, college, and yes, professional, levels.

Here's a blueprint if you'd like a sure fire way of attenuating a baseball players' force production:

• Perform copious volumes of long distance running.
• Do lots of high-rep, lower body work while in a state of fatigue. Walking overhead plate lunges across a gymnasium would be a perfect option here. Barbell squats in the middle of a circuit, even better.
• Undergo 300m repeats with only :30-:60 rest between each one. This will ensure that you never fully recover, and become increasingly mired down and slow throughout the season.
• Whatever you do, don't do deadlifts. They'll only strengthen your entire posterior chain and teach you how to put force into the ground.
• Instead of deadlifting, bench press three times per week. Putting the health of your shoulders and elbows in jeopardy is key so that you force your hips to pick up the slack.

Now, what TO do?

- Glute and hamstring work becomes your best friend, and anything that develops the posterior chain, for that matter. So, things like glute bridges, slider hamstring curls, RDLs, KB swings, a healthy dose of single-leg work, along with countless other options, are prime candidates.

- Deadlift, but keep the reps low and use plenty of rest between sets, for the love! This is power production we're training for, not an AMRAP contest at the Crossfit games.

Deadlifts are one of the best ways to develop the hips, just don't feel the need to be a hero and use so much weight that your form falls apart (which then shifts all the work away from your hips anyway, and instead fries your spine). And even though you may be using lower rep ranges - say, a set of three - this doesn't necessitate grinding out a three-rep max and continually using maximal loads. Keep the bar speed high, refine technique, learn to feel feel the hips powering the movement, and be amazed as you actually get stronger.

Strength is a skill, not a circus act; keep it as such.

- Squat.

- As I discussed in this article, baseball players need to get outside of the sagittal plane in order to maximize potential in a rotational context. Thus, the various lateral hops/bounds, and lateral single-leg variations will bode well for frontal plane development, and med ball work will take care of most needs in the transverse plane.

- Get the anterior core strong and stable, so that it can resist undesired motion and thus help the hips appropriately transfer force through the entire body

-Sprint! One of the truest forms of plyometric training one can perform, and your glutes and hamstrings will thank you for it.

Unfortunately, many coaches don't know how to administer a sound sprint training program. Keep the distance relatively short, the overall volume low, and rest long enough to be fresh for each sprint iteration. If it looks and feels like a mindless "get your sweat on" show, then that's all it likely is! At best, those "run till you drop" sessions will make you sweat a ton; at worst, they'll make you weak, tired, and slow.

There's no doubt that the hips are a critical, if not the most important, driving force of the musculoskeletal system for just about ANY athlete; hopefully this article helped to shed a bit of light on why baseball and softball players are no exception.

Should Baseball Players Olympic Lift? 5 Reasons Why Ours Don't

The snatch and the clean and jerk are amongst the most impressive feats a human being can perform.  These two events are so highly regarded that every four years countries from all over the world showcase their best lifters to compete for national pride in the Olympic games. Many of us have seen it on TV or YouTube: An athlete grabs a heavy barbell that's placed motionless on the ground, then creates enough tension throughout their body to break inertia and throw the barbell overhead with inhuman ease, speed, and fluidity.  This is a breathtaking display of the perfect blend of mobility, explosiveness, technique, and overall stability.

These “O-lifters,” when compared to athletes of other sports, are often associated with having increased numbers of type II muscle fibers, greater ability to produce power, superior vertical jumping ability, and greater levels of hypertrophy.

One may thus conclude that practicing these movements may lead to adaptations towards becoming a bigger, stronger, faster, more powerful athlete… and one would be correct!  Who wouldn’t want that?

Baseball is one of the most “power-based” sports around, due to the stop-and-go nature of the game.  Power is a key component in a successful baseball player, and each year SAPT excels at augmenting our baseball players ability to harness and produce power during their hitting, sprinting, and throwing.

Are the Olympic lifts a phenomenal tool to develop power and explosiveness? Absolutely. Is a strength coach wise to employ them with many of his or her athletes? Of course.

However, ask any of our baseball beasts how often they snatch, clean, or jerk during a training cycle at SAPT and you will probably find that the range of frequency falls between “never” and “0 times a week.”

Why? Well, here are 5 reasons why SAPT baseball players don't Olympic lift:

1. Plane-Specific Transference of Training Qualities

(Note: In general, movement is categorized into three different planes: sagittal, frontal, and transverse. Sagittal plane movement involves anything going front-to-back, without any involved rotation or leaning side to side. So, things like lunges, squats, sit-ups, deadlifts, sprints, box jumping, and Olympic lifts, all occur in the sagittal plane. Frontal plane movement examples include side lunges, side shuffles, and side raises. Transverse plane movement involves anything with a rotation component; a perfect example of this is the stroke Obi Wan used with his lightsaber to kill Darth Maul.)

To an extent, strength and power development is very specific to the plane of motion in which it is trained.  Sure, there will be a bit of carryover from one plane to another when it comes to transference of athletic qualities, but to truly maximize potential in a given plane, you need to train that plane, specifically!

Guess which planes of motion a baseball player remains in to hit, throw, and/or pitch? The frontal and transverse planes.

Now, guess what plane of motion the Olympic lifts exclusively take place in? The sagittal plane.

So, for the baseball athlete, how can they train outside of the sagittal plane in order to best enhance power production in the frontal and transverse planes? Which exercises will provide them the most bang for their buck, be time efficient, and have the most carryover to their sport?

It is here I argue that the answer doesn't lie with the Olympic lifts, but in med ball work and lateral jumping variations. These become an enormous asset to the baseball player; they are fun (few things beat throwing a medicine ball into a wall as hard as you can), fairly easy to learn, allow the athlete to demonstrate and forge power output in a concerted manner, and they're downright effective!

Here are just a few of the med ball variations and lateral jumps we use at SAPT. (We have over 30 variations in each category to cycle through.)

MB Cross-Behind Shotput

MB Cross-Behind Shotput w/Partner Pass

MB Heiden to Side Scoop Throw

MB Cyclone Overhead Throw to Wall

MB Hop-Back Side Throw

In-Place Heiden with Stick Landing

Single-leg Depth Drop to Heiden with Stick Landing

The options are virtually limitless.

Assuming they are already proficient in the sagittal plane - as one DOES need to learn to master that plane before attempting to train frontal and transverse, similar how one should learn to add and subtract before performing algebra - roughly 80-90% of the "power" development we utilize with our baseball guys takes place outside of the sagittal plane. The remaining 10-20% we will fill by having them perform sagittal-based movements such as KB swings, broad jumps, and speed deadlifts and speed squats.

2. Faulty Movement Patterns Overhead

Watch the majority of people put their arms overhead, and, if you know what you're looking for, you'll often find nothing short of a multiplicity of grody compensation patterns taking place along the entire kinetic chain. Yes, even in overhead athletes.

Tony Gentilcore has said that the majority of trainees must "earn the right" to press overhead, and I continue to nod my head in agreement with him. Watch someone press a bar overhead (or snatch or jerk it, as one would during an O-lift), and, using a classification system I learned in my college biomechanics class: their mechanics lie somewhere between poop and utter poop.

I hope it goes without saying that it'd be far from prudent to have these folks continually throw a loaded bar overhead at high speeds. However, the strength coach can't freak out about ALL overhead movements for the baseball player, as their sport does, in fact (get ready to have your mind blown....), necessitate them going overhead.

While we can certainly improve a baseball player's overhead mechanics by having them perform core stabilization drills, thoracic spine mobilizations, shoulder "corrective" drills, and improving lat length, there's still something to be said for doing a few, shoulder-friendly, loaded overhead activities to complement the corrective drills and give the athlete a chance to further ingrain solid overhead mechanics.

One of our favorites is the landmine press, as the neutral grip position opens up the subacromial space - giving the rotator cuff tendons more room to "breathe" - and the natural arc of the press grooves some nice scapular upward rotation. Not to mention, the core musculature has to work like crazy to keep the pelvis and ribcage in a stable position. I've yet to work with anyone - including myself, and I have a REALLY beat up shoulder - who has shoulder pain while landmine pressing.

Another option is to use the single-arm bottoms-up KB press, as many of the benefits of the landmine press still apply (scapular upward rotation, core stabilization, etc.) yet you get to train through an even greater degree of humeral elevation (flexion+abduction), and also receive some nice "reflexive" firing of the rotator cuff due to the kettlebell wanting to shake back and forth in your hand.

Both of the above exercises can be performed half-kneeling, tall-kneeling, standing in parallel stance, or standing in a staggered stance.

There are a host of other options as well, but the point is there are much less "dummy proof" methods of training the overhead position without resorting to a jerk or snatch. (Even though the O-lifts do look way cooler.)

3. Wrist and Elbow Concerns

To say the success of a baseball player's career is at least partly contingent upon the health of his wrist and elbow is akin to saying that Superman derives his power by absorbing and metabolizing solar energy from the Earth's energy; both are platitudes.

As Dan John aptly put it, the "Rule #1" a strength coach needs to live and breathe by is Do No Harm! 

To rely on Olympic lifts as the primary tool for developing the baseball athlete would make about as much as much sense crossing the the Atlantic Ocean in a one-man canoe. Or using a canoe of any size, for that matter. Could it be done? Sure. But do there exist other ways to accomplish the same goal, with a much lower risk of something undesired occurring in the process? You bet.

Given that, day in and day out, baseball players' wrists and elbows already take a wicked beating from pitching, throwing, and hitting, why compound the issue by performing lifts that stress those same bodily structures more than perhaps any other lift? Especially given that, as you saw earlier in this article, there exists a host of other training modalities one can employ to enhance athletic power.

Regarding the power and hang clean, most baseball players have a hard enough time even being able to comfortably get into the clean position for front squatting, without the mere position causing their wrists or forearms to scream, so why we would choose to add velocity and then CATCH in that position is beyond me. And, if we're discussing the snatch: the top, catch position places considerable levels of strain on the UCLs (ulnar collateral ligaments) of both elbows; if you follow professional baseball to any capacity, then you for sure know how important the UCL is to a baseball player. Tommy John Surgery, anyone?

One last point I'll add is that not only do you have the wrists and elbows taking a beating during cleans, but the AC (acromioclavicular) joint, as well, due to that poor fellow living smack dab in the middle of the barbell's landing zone. The AC joint is located just inside of the index fingers during the catch phase of a clean, and while professional Olympic lifters often "flow" into the catch phase with minimal impact, it's far from uncommon to find high school and college baseball guys literally slamming the bar onto their shoulder during the catch, as it can take years to make it a fluid transition.

Now, just because baseball players overuse their elbows and wrists, and we don't recommend the inclusion of cleans and snatches in their programming, does this mean they are to be babied, forever relegated to pilates as the most intense training they're "allowed" to perform? Don't be silly!

As demonstrated earlier, we use the countless other methods at our disposal for their power training, and then have them perform plenty of heavy lifting to develop strength, structural integrity, and throwing speed.

4. Sagittal Plane Dominance           

A typical training program for our baseball guys are rich with lifts such as squat variations, deadlift variations, lunges, glute bridges, step-ups, and the list goes on. Notice a pattern?  These are all movements that occur in the sagittal plane.  (We can argue about frontal and transverse stability components in the single leg exercises, valid points indeed... but let's save that for another day.)

The point is, although we dip into the other planes of motion, the majority of the work is sagittal.  Throwing in Olympic lifting variations just adds to the volume of sagittal plane work and takes time away from working the other planes of motion.

To build a properly balanced athlete, we have to save some room in the program for some work in the frontal and transverse planes which can include tons of variations of: lateral step-downs and step-ups, lateral lunges, single arm farmer’s walks, anti-rotation/pallof presses, prowler side-drags, jumping, hopping, and, as exhibited earlier, medicine ball drills.

5. Time

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I am going to have to bring up the token argument against Olympic lifting: It takes too long to learn.

When it comes to training competitive athletes, time is the major limiting factor.  With most of our baseball guys, who typically have 3-5 months of off-season training with us, we opt for a program consisting of exercises that don’t require such a significance prerequisite time-commitment for the learning process.  The price in time we must pay to proficiently learn and perform the snatch, clean, jerk, and their variations safely and effectively (as it doesn't do them any good to perform the lifts poorly) is often more costly than we care for.  Instead we use the modalities shown above in point #1, for supreme power development.

Another critical focal point we attend to for baseball power development is sprint work.  We spend a significant amount of time working on our athlete's sprint technique, stride length/frequency, change of direction speed and starting speed.

With such limited time (and not to mention recovery capacities; many of these guys are still in leagues or camps throughout the off-season) it is simply impractical to throw in the O-lifts into the mix.

If a baseball player never learns to snatch during his athletic career, does it really matter?  I’d be more concerned with his on-base percentage, runs, stolen bases, strikeouts, consistency, and health.