Rob Barber

If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.  - Thomas J Watson

We’re all about success and winning. It feels good. We feel smart and the rewards are plenty.

But how you get there is much less appealing. It requires a lot of failure and loss along the way.

So how we respond to failure might just be something we want to learn; the skill of managing our losses or

Failure Management.

The ability to manage undesirable results by maintaining the necessary discipline so that the breakdowns are contained, correctly interpreted and even accepted with a peace of mind knowing that a larger plan is in motion.

It is an understanding that failure does not define or destroy the future. We make those choices.

Failure management rips the powerful core from failure and therefore circumventing its destructive force.

It takes that potentially negative energy and uses it as a refining power like no other.

Those who don’t regularly take risks challenging their aptitude can reduce the painful experience of loss. And even though it may be reduced, it can’t be avoided,

In the end however, they will never experience the euphoric power of true victory or cultivate the powerful instincts required to overcome devastation and loss.

Those skills only come from personal experience.

Corey Stenstrup – IMG Performance Institute

Many baseball players have on field routines and will workout to try and stay in shape but an often-overlooked performance element is the warm-up and warm down. They add tremendous value both in season as well as during offseason training. Overuse injuries and reduced capacity performance are very common if not the norm in baseball due to a demanding schedule. In my opinion a strategic warm-up and warm down can help buffer the negative aspects of a heavy playing or training schedule while also helping the athlete feel and perform better day in and day out. By helping your athletes structure a warm-up and warm down your giving them the tools they need in their routine to help maximize their performance. The following are some ideas I would recommend considering when structuring the routines.

The AD (athletic-dynamic) warm up they complete will be reflective of what activity they are going to do; pregame vs. pre-training are different, pitchers vs. position players are going to be different, and so on. The idea is to match the warm up to the requirements of the activity. This would include blending and sequencing open/closed chain mobility, active flexibility, dynamic transit series, and postural cuing/low level strength exercises. The net goal of warm up is to prime the body for all facets of activity…more specifically neuromuscular sharpness and tissue readiness.

Just as the warm-up is a multitier process so is the warm down and recovery strategies. Giving the body a jump-start on recovery and ensuring that the intended signal lingers in the body when exiting activity. To accomplish this I recommend a period of aerobic activity followed by some of the same things the athletes did before the workout just applied a little differently including; open/closed chain mobility, active flexibility, low-grade muscle action exercises and vibration plate use. Following this some aqua therapy including movement and/or cold bathes can be done. Compression is another means of helping to stimulate recovery; Under Armour has a line called “Recharge” which is designed to be worn following activity to provide compression to major muscle groups. Finally, later in the evening some light (mild) static stretching can be done.

You can see the difference between the tradition static stretch before and/or after you play and all the other techniques available to athletes today. Good habits are critical, the earlier you can teach athletes the right way to do things the more they will gravitate to it because they will associate value with it. There is not a one size fits all solution but by combining sound science with some deductive thinking you can create a pre-activity and post activity routine that will help the athletes in both the short and long term.

Take a look at some of the MLB athletes that train with me at IMG Academies in their off-season going through several elements of their warm-up:

A little known program helps the future stars of Major League Baseball, learn about the handling life away from the baseball field. Link