Transferability

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

I started working with a 17 year old baseball player 3 months ago. He had very little experience with serious strength training prior to this. He was having a difficult time squatting so I had him focus on trap bar deadlifts. After a couple of months we worked in squats. During this time he was receiving PT treatment for shoulder pain. About 1 month ago he started actually trying to increase the load on his presses. Over three months, his TB deadlift went from 200 lbs x 5 reps to a 1RM of 500 lbs. His bodyweight increased from 150 to 160 lbs. Although he made progress in other lifts, the deadlift gains were the most significant.

Here’s the interesting part: 1 year ago he had his bat swing velocity measured at 64 mph. 1 year later, after training, his velocity increased to 79 mph. Measurements were taken at a private baseball facility. This made me think about the idea of transferability of strength training to sport performance. The deadlift is not all that specific to swinging a baseball bat with respect to the movement and velocity yet, in this case, improved bat swing velocity by 15 mph.

At what point is more specific strength training necessary? I should note that this kid has grown to really enjoy deadlifting and is fully convinced that it has improved his swing velocity.

2

I would actually argue that most untrained individuals who are involved in high velocity sports probably see a relatively big transfer from getting stronger to their ability to produce power, provided they don’t specialize only in heavy, slow, training and stop practicing their sport.

That said, a doubling of his trap bar deadlift strength in addition to a year’s worth of practice of sport (and other physical changes occurring in late puberty) helped put some MPH on his swing. That’s cool.

I don’t know that you can have too much strength that is specific to the sport or task provided you have the resources to train.