My boys got stronger. Their numbers in the gym went up. The problem? Their baseball performance didn't follow along the way I expected.
That realization sent me down a rabbit hole.
For a long time, I treated baseball like a strength problem.
Add weight to the squat.
Add weight to the deadlift.
Get stronger and watch the velocity climb.
Simple.
Except baseball isn't simple.
A swing happens in roughly 150 milliseconds. A pitch happens even faster. Meanwhile, most traditional strength exercises produce force over several seconds. That's why sports scientists became obsessed with rate of force development (RFD), basically how quickly an athlete can access and apply the strength they already have.
Suddenly things that never made sense started making sense.
Why does a relatively skinny kid sometimes out-hit a stronger teammate?
Why does a pitcher who doesn't look imposing throw harder than the biggest kid on the roster?
Often it's because that athlete can express force faster.
Not more force.
Faster force.
That's where plyometrics entered the conversation.
Pogo jumps.
Bounds.
Box jumps.
Medicine ball throws.
Broad jumps.
All of them teach the body to absorb force and then redirect it rapidly. Researchers generally refer to this as training the stretch-shortening cycle, the mechanism behind explosive movements like sprinting, jumping, throwing, and swinging.
At first glance, this seems like a slam dunk for baseball.
Baseball is explosive.
Plyometrics improve explosiveness.
Case closed.
Not so fast.
This is where a lot of baseball content online starts overselling things.
The best available research doesn't suggest plyometrics replace strength training. In fact, many studies conclude the opposite: athletes with higher strength levels often gain the most from plyometric work because they have more force available to express in the first place.
In other words, plyometrics may be the gas pedal, but strength is still the engine.
If the engine is tiny, flooring the gas pedal doesn't help much.
One of the most cited reviews in sports science, Markovic and Mikulić's review of plyometric training, found consistent improvements in jumping ability, sprint performance, and explosive power across many athletic populations. But it didn't conclude that athletes should abandon traditional resistance training. If anything, the evidence favored combining methods rather than choosing one over the other.
The same theme appears in baseball-specific research.
Several studies have found meaningful relationships between lower-body strength, rotational power, bat speed, and throwing velocity. Stronger athletes tend to throw harder. They also tend to hit the ball harder.
That doesn't mean strength automatically transfers to the field. It just means strength remains an important ingredient.
The transfer piece is where things get interesting.
What I suspect happened with my sons is that we spent a lot of time improving the ingredient and not enough time improving the recipe.
They got stronger.
No question.
But we weren't doing enough explosive work, sprinting, jumping, rotational training, throwing, or skill work to fully convert those strength gains into baseball performance.
That's a very different conclusion than saying strength doesn't matter.
Because honestly, if you look at high-level baseball players, they're rarely weak.
Professional pitchers and hitters routinely produce elite scores in lower-body power tests, medicine ball throws, sprinting, and jumping. The common denominator isn't that they skipped the weight room.
It's that they developed strength and then learned how to use it.
That's why our offseason is shifting.
Not abandoning strength.
Shifting.
We're keeping more of the focus on broad jumps, single-leg bounds, pogo jumps, box jumps, sprint work, medicine ball throws, and explosive movements.
But we're also paying attention to an uncomfortable reality from the research: most youth athletes benefit from a balanced approach.
A twelve-year-old doesn't need a sophisticated force-velocity profile.
He probably needs to get stronger, move better, sprint more, jump more, throw more, and stay healthy.
The boring answer is usually the right answer.
Another caveat worth mentioning is that a lot of plyometric studies are short-term. Researchers often measure improvements over six to twelve weeks. That's useful, but it doesn't always tell us what produces the best baseball player over a period of three, five, or ten years.
Long-term athletic development is messy.
Some of the best youth athletes specialize too early and burn out.
Others spend years building a broad athletic base before their baseball skills suddenly take off.
The research is much clearer on one point: young athletes who develop movement competency, strength, coordination, speed, and power together tend to be more successful than those who focus exclusively on a single quality.
Which brings me back to my oldest son.
He's naturally methodical. He likes structure. He likes precision. That's one reason powerlifting-style programs came easily to him.
Baseball keeps asking a different question.
Can you react?
Can you explode?
Can you trust your training and fire?
This winter we're going to find out if we've been spending too much time building the engine and not enough time teaching him how to drive.
Maybe the jumps help.
Maybe the medicine ball work helps.
Maybe the mechanics work ends up being the biggest factor of all.
That's another thing the research reminds us of: skill still dominates.
A perfectly designed plyometric program won't make up for poor pitching mechanics. A bigger squat won't automatically improve bat path. And no amount of athletic training can replace quality repetitions of the actual sport.
So that's the experiment this offseason.
Less volume.
Better mechanics.
More explosiveness.
Some strength maintenance.
And a healthy amount of humility about what the science actually says.
Because if there's one thing I've learned reading the research, it's this:
The argument isn't strength versus plyometrics.
The best evidence says the real answer is strength plus plyometrics plus skill work.
That's a lot less exciting than the internet wants it to be.
It's also probably true.
References
- Markovic, G., & Mikulić, P. (2010). Neuro-musculoskeletal and performance adaptations to lower-extremity plyometric training. Sports Medicine, 40(10), 859-895.
- Suchomel, T.J., Nimphius, S., & Stone, M.H. (2016). The Importance of Muscular Strength in Athletic Performance. Sports Medicine, 46(10), 1419-1449.
- Cormie, P., McGuigan, M.R., & Newton, R.U. (2011). Developing Maximal Neuromuscular Power. Sports Medicine, 41(1), 17-38.
- Szymanski, D.J., et al. (2007). Effect of Twelve Weeks of Medicine Ball Training on High School Baseball Players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
- American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand: Progression Models in Resistance Training for Healthy Adults (2009).
