First Day Back at the Batting Cages and Learning How to Power Clean: I’ve Decided to Play Baseball Again

This week has been pre-work for the offseason training I’m about to start doing in preparation for the Spring baseball season and the Spartan Races I will be running.

I’ve been looking online for pre-made strength and conditioning programs I could follow and ended up finding a 16-week program that had just enough flexibility for me to fit into my schedule how I see fit, yet provided all the necessary information.

One of the key movements in the program (more like the first thing I need to perform) is a power clean. Now, I have no prior experience with olympic lifts. And the one time I did try to learn how to clean, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how I was supposed to extend my hips AND shrug at the same damn time before having to drop myself underneath the bar and catch it. The level of coordination to do all of that smoothly is ridiculous man.

Well, a friend of mine broke down the movement for me following the Burgener Warm-Up (note, the video is breaking down the snatch movement, but I’m following the same principles shown in the video — doing the motion in pieces for the clean). Doing the clean in smaller phases is no problem for me. But the moment I tried to do the whole motion together, I struggled hard.

Watch me learn how to Power Clean.

A big issue for me was, once again, the timing to extend my hips and shrug my shoulders at the same time. But I also realized that when I extend my hips, I need to bring my body in an upward position rather than a thrusting my hips in a humping motion (hopefully you guys can follow along with what I am trying to describe).

Regardless, as challenging as this exercise is proving to be, I’m enjoying the process of learning the movement.

So, offseason training hasn’t even technically started for me, but I’ve been doing a lot in preparation for it and improving and refining my skills as a baseball player. 

Now that I am around the sport more often from coaching younger kids (ages 3-10 years old), I can’t help but reminisce on when I was playing in middle school and high school and how cool it would have been for me to begin playing and receiving such quality coaching from a young age. 

I miss the sport. A lot. Hear my thoughts on the subject.

I regret not taking the time I had as a player seriously (as in putting more effort into being a better player). I became complacent with my skillset. Telling myself, “I’m not a good hitter, BUT that’s okay.” Instead of working my ass off to become a reliable hitter. Thing is, that required putting in the work outside of scheduled team practices and at the time, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice time chasing pussy or going to work to get money for some extra hours, by myself nonetheless, swinging a bat and getting my timing and hand eye coordination down.

Well, now I want to make up for all of that. Because now, I AM willing to put in extra hours working on my timing and hand eye coordination, by myself, to become a better hitter. I want to put my best foot forward while I still can because 10, 15, 20 years from now, I won’t be able to play this game anymore and I don’t want to look back saying “I should’ve did more” like I am now about high school ball.

So, my friend Emmanuel and I got to work and went to the batting cages and got to work!

Check some of my swings out.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no aspirations for MLB playing time or even Minor League, but I do feel like I can put up some competition in the toughest of adult leagues around the city here in New York… After this offseason anyway 🙂