Strength & Conditioning with Coach Pat Armstrong

Baywatch recently sat down with Baysox Strength and Conditioning Coach Pat Armstrong to talk about his job. This is Armstrong's second season with the Baysox and he discusses what the strength coach is doing behind the scenes to help keep the players healthy and on the field.

What are your main responsibilities as strength and conditioning coach?

My main responsibility is to keep guys on the field and healthy, that's really the bottom line. That's the main part of what I do. What does that entail? First of all we lift at Sport Fit Gym in Bowie. Typically the lifts are geared individually toward the athletes needs, whether they have any sort of imbalance or weakness. For the most part these guys train strength exercises so we aren't afraid to squat or dead lift to gain strength. With that, there is also a lot of core stabilization and upper body work, particularly stabilization of the shoulder with pitchers. We also try to maintain flexibility and mobility so there is a lot of stretching and mobility work that coincides with the core work that they do. That's the lifting aspect and another part of what I do is the nutrition aspect. I try to give some guidance on proper nutrition habits - making good decisions as far as eating goes. It's obviously tough though because we go on the road a lot and these guys are exposed to fast food and a lot of the guys have trouble kicking that. We try to do the best we can with what we have available, so that is pretty much what I do away from the field.

What is the player routine for a home game?

When we are home, we will stretch out on the field. We will do what is called a dynamic warm up to get their blood flowing, their heart rate up, work up a little bit of a sweat and try to get their body ready for BP or long toss or whatever the case may be. Conditioning for pitchers will consist of long distance or short burst sprinting and some kind of plyo[metric]. We will integrate a lot of jumping, lateral and forward jumping, medicine ball work and things of that nature. I might work with the field players occasionally on conditioning, but their conditioning is really what they do on the field everyday. It's a grind and I don't want to wear these guys down. The idea is to keep them on the field. Some guys like to lift more than others - I don't force these guys to lift. A lot of them make the decision on their own to go and lift so that's how I juggle it. It's really based on how the athlete feels and I try to work with them; I don't push them to do things they don't feel comfortable doing because it's a long season and these guys get worn out. Anytime that you can get with them, you want to get the most out of it in a short amount of time so you aren't taking up a lot of their day and taking them away from BP and the other drills they have.

How does all of the training you do help to keep the players on the field and what types of injuries are you working to prevent?

With pitchers, the biggest thing is really shoulder health so they will do a lot of exercises with [Athletic Trainer] Aaron Scott and I take that and try to make it more complete. The act of pitching is the transfer of power from the lower body, through the trunk, through the shoulder and through ball release so really what we are trying to do is maintain all the moving parts in the body. We make sure everything is mobile; make sure the pitcher can go through their delivery in a fluid motion with no hiccups. With a pitcher, we maintain rotary stability - a lot of times with pitchers you hear about strained obliques. A lot of what we do is isometric core strengthening, a lot of core stabilization where they can have control over their trunk throughout their delivery. At the same time, we help maintain mobility in the thoracic spine so they are able to go through that range of motion without being restricted in any way.

As far as position players go, it's really the same thing with regard to preventing oblique strains from the swing. A lot of times that can be hit or miss depending on the ability of the athlete to rotate on their front side and whether or not any sort of muscular restrictions in their trunk allow them to get through that full swing without any pulls. Another thing with position players is we are trying to maintain their optimum strength levels so they are able to generate as much power as possible when they swing, but another part of that is running the bases. You see a lot of guys come up with hamstring injuries, which is why the weight training is so important to help keep those muscles strong while also maintaining flexibility. Those are pretty much the biggest injuries you see in the game nowadays so it's really just about keeping flexibility levels up to try and minimize the chances of a soft tissue injury as much as possible.

What is your favorite part of what you do?

My favorite part is just being a part of the organization. The last few years I feel like we have been in a culture change where we are gearing things toward winning at the big league level and developing players. More than anything, it's also the guys in the clubhouse - the coaches, the players and being part of that group. Those guys are a lot of fun and they are great to work with. A lot of them have responded really well to what I do. Part of my job is going out and playing catch of a regular basis and there aren't a lot of jobs that pay to do something like that. I'm a big competitor and I like sports so this is a really good fit for right now.