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Joe Meglio Performance Enhancement Coach

Why Pitchers Should NOT Run Long Distance

As a college baseball player and strength coach, my biggest pet peeve is watching pitchers condition immediately following starts and in between starts. It amazes me that many coaches still believe that long distance running will increase stamina and help the recovery process. Pitching is a very fast and explosive movement.If you want to be fast, you need to train fast. If you train slow you will be slow!

Why Long Distance Running SUCKS

1. Will lead to overuse injuries because your joints take a pounding.
2. Very boring and monotonous
3. There is no lactic acid buildup after pitching
4. Trains the WRONG energy system-
5. Trains you to be slow

Solution

Conditioning for any sport is a matter of training the correct energy system and this has to do with the work to rest ratio and the physical demands of the sport. Pitchers perform a very explosive movement and then rest 20 seconds or so before they throw again. Since long distance running trains the aerobic energy system, and the phosphogen energy is the predominate one in baseball, long distance running has absolutely no carry over to baseball. Instead baseball players should train more like sprinters, not like cross country runners. Other than all out sprints, pitchers can perform hill sprints, prowler pushes, sled drags and battling ropes. These forms of conditioning are absolutely brutal and will build mental toughness.

Joe Meglio

Performance Enhancement Coach

Pre-Workout Supplements for Athletes

Before you read this post, make sure you read the truth about supplements. As a strength coach, it is my job to know about supplements and the effects they can have on training. Personally, I am not a huge fan of most supplement companies. Many of these companies promise ridiculous claims and have no science behind any of their products.

Why Most Pre Workout Supplements SUCK

When it comes to pre-workout supplementation, I do not recommend NO Explode or any products similar to it. For one, they have way too many ingredients in them. Out of the 100 ingredients, maybe only a handful of them actually work. The rest are just fillers used to mask the horrible taste of l-leucine and other ingredients.

My second issue with most pre-workout supplements is that they do not tell you how many mg or grams of a certain ingredient you are getting. Instead, they will often say "Anabolic proprietary blend 41,542mg" and then go on to list all the ingredients within that blend without telling you how much of each ingredient you are getting.

What Pre-Workout Supplement Should you use?

Advocare Muscle Fuel-A powerful blend of 28 vitamins,minerals, botanicals and other energy-producing intermediates. For more information on Advocare Muscle Fuel, please watch the video below.

Why I Recommend Advocare Muscle Fuel

1. States exactly how much of every ingredient is present within each serving

2. It is endorsed for FREE by 100's of MLB, NFL and world class athletes including Drew Brees, Jason Witten, Brad Hawpe, Thomas Jones and Michael Redd to name a few.

3. It is used in the majority of NFL locker rooms.

4. Back by Informed Choice which test for over 200 banned substances.

Please note that I would never recommended a product that I haven't used myself. Also remember that supplements are supposed to be used in conjunction with your nutrition.

For more information on how to order Advocare Muscle Fuel, please send me an email at megliofitness@gmail.com or drop a comment below.

How to Warm Up for Baseball

Let’s face it; baseball players have no idea how to properly warm up before a game. Think about what you see every high school and most college teams do before games. They will usually jog one or two poles and then perform 5-10 minutes of static stretches while also bullshitting about what they did last night. I am sure these same teams still have their pitchers running poles because it will help improve endurance. It amazes me that coaches still live and die by static stretching and long distance running. They serve absolutely no benefit to becoming a better baseball player and can actually lead to injuries.

A complete warm up includes soft tissue work, basic calisthenics, mobility work, and CNS work. For the most part, I avoid static stretching because it can actually increase your risk of injury and can reduce power output. However, I have actually found that certain static stretches can actually improve mobility including: hip flexor stretch, pyriformis stretch, lat stretch, and the sleeper stretch,

What does a baseball warm up look like?

After 5-10 minutes of soft tissue work with a foam roller and lacrosse ball, my athletes perform this exact warm up. When it is nice out we will go outside and perform a movement prep which includes various forms of running, skipping and jumping. We follow this up with a few minutes of static stretching to open up the hips.

Do you have a question related to baseball training?

Joe Meglio

Performance Enhancement Coach

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Fat Loss Workouts

You're a f**king beast!!! I've been using a lot of the stuff on your blog and its crazy. I can see if people do it like a bitch they get nothing out of it but i been doing the tabata and its nuts. Only question is should i do it before a workout or after a workout or as the main workout that day and how many times a week? -Tom Caputo

TC,

I am glad to hear that you are using my training methods and getting good results. For those of you have not checked out the tabata method, please check it out before you read this. TC, here are my answers to your questions.

When should you use the tabata method?

• You can use it at the end of a workout as a finisher. 1-3 rounds is plenty. I love to end every workout with a finisher.

• You can use it as a totally separate workout. Perform 2-4 rounds for a total of 10-20 minutes.

How many times a week?

It really depends on your goals.

• If you’re looking to cut body fat I would recommend strength training with compound movements 3 days per week and add in 3-4 conditioning workouts. Be careful not to do too much conditioning because it will limit your strength gains.

• If your goal is to gain muscle mass, I would recommend maybe 1 conditioning workout a week. While gaining muscle mass you should be focused on taking in a ton of calories to produce muscle growth. 1 day a week won't kill you though and it will help you stay in decent shape.

I will close this post out with 3 of my favorite conditioning drills.

Joe Meglio

Performance Enhancement Coach

Should Baseball Players Bench Press

There will always be an ongoing debate as to whether or not baseball players, particularly pitchers, should bench press. On one side, the bench press is the king of all upper body lifts and many people believe it should be included into every athletes training program. The haters believe that the bench press is not “sport specific” and that it will eventually lead to shoulder injuries.

My stance is that the bench press is a great upper body exercise for most athletes, however when it comes to baseball, the risk vs. reward is too great. There are more effective exercises that will give you a better bang for your buck. I don’t buy into the idea that the bench press isn’t “sport specific” because no exercise is truly “sport specific”. With that said, trying to imitate baseball motions, like swinging or throwing, with cable machines or other heavy objects will be detrimental to a player’s performance.

Instead of bench pressing, our athletes will perform a ton of pushups with medicine balls, chains, gymnastic rings and blast straps. They also perform dumbbell presses with neutral grips. My favorite presses for baseball players are 1 arm dumbbell presses and alternating dumbbell bench press. Pushup and dumbbell pressing variations are superior to straight bar bench pressing because they are more shoulder friendly, teach the scapular to move, activate the core more, and improve shoulder range of motion. Also pushups and dumbbell bench pressing are much less of a risk when compared to the bench press. They are much easier to learn, alleviate any shoulder problems, and you can also bump up the volume.






As power athletes, we still need to train heavy with low repetitions. To accomplish this goal we substitute max effort bench pressing with max effort chin ups. This keeps my baseball players healthy, while also getting them strong and teaching them how to handle their own bodyweight.

So does this mean that my baseball players never bench press? Not exactly, however we modify the regular bench press. Instead of using the straight bar, we will use a Swiss bar that allows the shoulders to remain neutral. This max effort movement is great for baseball players who feel like they need to bench press. In conclusion, while I believe the bench press is a great exercise for most athletes, when it comes to baseball players, there are more important training considerations to focus on.


Joe Meglio
Performance Enhancement Coach

Guinea Pigs Needed!

I am looking for 10 guinea pigs to test out my new muscle building program. The 10 people who are chosen will not actually meet with me for the training sessions but instead will be provided with a 12 week program, training 4 X per week. The workouts are geared towards getting you strong as hell. I am only looking for serious inquiries so please do not email me if you are not looking to get strong as an ox or are afraid to get “too big”. This program is for the serious athlete/lifter that is dedicated to getting bigger and stronger and is looking for a serious program to get them there. It is far superior to the training programs popularized in bodybuilding magazines because those workouts are geared toward the steroid using bodybuilder and those workouts offer little to no benefits for hard gainers, athletes and the average.

Here are the minimum requirements:

1. You must be willing to learn and try new exercises out. If you do not plan on following this program to the T, this is NOT the program for you.
2. You must be healthy. Aches and pains are okay, we are all banged up from time to time, but if you are dealing with any injuries I cannot accept you.
3. You must read my blog on a daily basis. How do I know your reading it? My readers often connect with me and ask me questions and provide me feedback. If you do not connect with me or provide feedback, I will assume you are not reading it. This serves as an educational tool to expand your knowledge of training and understand why I do things the way I do.
4. You must be able to train for 12 uninterrupted weeks for at least 3 X a week.
5. In order to track your progress, you must be willing to take before and after pictures and you must be willing to do perform some indicator lifts to track strength progress
6. You must be willing to invest $50. I will be constantly connecting with you to help you along the process and make sure things are running smoothly. I will be dedicating my time to ensure that you are getting everything you need to be successful. The $50 investment is than $16/month. Remember this includes program design, nutrition and supplement design and anything needed to help you succeed.
7. You are participating in this program because you live too far or have some other legitimate reason why you cannot train with me in Staten Island, New York or Edison, New Jersey.

Serious inquires only! If you are interested, email me at megliofitness@gmail.com . Please include your name, age, and a brief background on your training history and 100 words on why I should choose you. I will only be accepting 10 guinea pigs for this new program and all decisions will be made by April 30. Those who are selected will be notified by April 30.

Joe Meglio
Performance Enhancement Coach