Gabe Kapler, the recently hired Director of Player Development for the Dodgers (check out my past story welcoming him to the team,
here), is just starting to make his mark on the team. He'll be tasked with assisting our young farmhands as they rise up the ladder with an eye towards Los Angeles, and one of his goals will be to preach the gospel of healthy living and consistent work in the gym.
As evidenced through a twitter exchange on New Year eve, Kapler is clearly ready to get to work. Check out the exchange between Joc Pederson and Gabe Kapler below.
You gotta love that Kapler is ready to lend a hand, and it's even better to see that Pederson is ready to listen.
BTW, this entire exchange had my brain thinking about a certain meme. Check out my creation below.
UPDATE: I thought I'd add the following article written by Gabe Kapler on his website in early December. Via
Gabe Kapler on his personal website Kaplifestyle, "Working Smart: Speed and Power." Gabe suggest that endurance training makes no sense for Baseball players.
While my mentor was correct that strengthening the heart muscle is good
for us as human beings, he was off with his assessment that the training
makes sense for baseball players. The longest distance we will ever run
on a baseball field is 360 feet, perhaps a few more if we factor in
angles on the rare inside the park home run. As an outfielder, if I’m
manning center field and run from gap to gap, north or south or a combo
of the two, my distance will never be longer than 100 feet in any
direction. If I was a cross country runner training for a 5 mile race,
would I train by sprinting 35 yard blasts? Of course not. So, as
baseball players, why do we seek out training that’s actually breaking
us down?
Endurance training has also been shown to decrease muscle fiber size,
muscle strength, and muscle power, all of which are detrimental to a
baseball athlete (4).
Instead, we should be optimizing for speed and power in short bursts.
