An easy way to think about acceleration is as the time it takes to get to top speed from the starting position, like the 0-60 time for a car. Even the fastest athletes on the planet typically take well over 20 yards to reach top speed, so this ability is especially crucial on a baseball field since most in-game efforts will be 30 yards or less in a straight line. This means training speed without acceleration is optimizing for a small portion of what will actually show up on field.
Acceleration Mondays
For this program we started our weeks with our acceleration focused day. The high intensity nature of acceleration work helps to stimulate the central nervous system after having one or two days off over the weekend but doesn’t require high volumes that will leave the athletes’ legs feeling trashed when there is still a full week of hitting, throwing, lifting, and running ahead of them.
Before getting to the actual sprinting, we perform one to two sets of select drills to help reinforce the postures, joint positions, and explosiveness we want to see when accelerating. These drills primarily included variations of broad jumps and resisted sprints.