"Getting Athletes to the Next Level"

The Bombers Bunker is Troy, New York's newest elite baseball and softball training facility. This 18,000 square foot training center contains six fully turfed hitting/pitching tunnels, turf skills area, HitTrax Baseball Simulator, and a swing analysis media room. A fully equipped indoor and outdoor workout center is also available for athletes to develop strength and conditioning skills 7 days per week year round. Whether you're an elite athlete or a player looking to excel in the sport you love, the Bombers Bunker can get you to the next level.

Bombers Bunker 70 102nd Street Troy, NY 12180

518-953-0777

With the off-season winding down, many players are wondering how to maintain the strength they put on during the off-season. Here are seven simple but effective ways to maintain strength during the baseball season.

1. Maintain Body Weight.

Here at USA, we spend all off-season putting 10, 15, and sometimes 20 pounds on athletes to help increase their ability to produce force. Sports are won by those who exhibit greater Rates of Force Development (RFD), and, the limiting factor for many youth athletes is the ability to produce gross amounts of force. A larger person has a better chance of producing force. If your mass is decreasing throughout a season, maintaining the same levels of force production will be difficult.

Make sure to consistently weigh yourself during the season. If you tend to be a guy who struggles to keep weight on, make sure to bring food with you to the field and stay properly hydrated. Sneaking in extra calories pre- and post-practice, in addition to occasionally having something to eat mid-game, could go a long way in maintaining body weight. 

2. Consolidate Stressors.

This is a fancy way of saying to make your harder days focused on building yourself up and letting your easy days be focused on recovery. If you’re at the field six days a week, a seventh day of rest might be exactly what you need, instead of hitting the gym on day seven. Try and sneak in weight room sessions on the same days that you have extensive on-field work. All stress is stress. For example, a position player who is on his feet for 2+ hours a day six days in a row probably needs the seventh day to rest and would get a much greater benefit from stacking lifting weights on top of a few of the harder days during the week. Know that if you’re not taking care of your recovery modalities (through sleep, nutrition, lifestyle), your body’s ability to absorb and adapt to stress will be diminished.

3. Appreciate Micro-Sessions.

While a majority of off-season lifts will take 60-90 minutes, this doesn’t mean that in-season lifts need to as well. There’s nothing inherently wrong with hitting 3-4 20-40 minute sessions throughout the week. This ensures that the quality of work will be higher; in fact, the quantity of work for four 30-minute sessions might also be greater than just trying to blow it out on the gym the one day you have a dedicated 90 minutes. A typical 30-minute session could be as follows:

A1) Deadlift or Squat, 3x3
A2) Arm Care, 3 sets
A3) Core, 3 sets
B1) Single-Leg Exercise, 3 sets
B2) Upper-Body Push, 3 sets
B3) Upper-Body Pull, 3 sets

By switching to a tri-set format and making the session full-body, you can sneak in extra work and still finish the above session in under 40 minutes. In fact, even getting in two sets of all of the above multiple times a week will probably have greater carryover than going several days between sessions just so you can wait to get in the typical 18-24 set range that we hit during a mid-offseason session.

4. Understand the Difference Between Soreness and Progress.

Not all strength training sessions need to be tough or need to make you sore to create progress. In fact, if you’re constantly sore during the season, you’ll be limited in your ability to output the highest levels of power that you can achieve. Simple ways to avoid soreness from in-season lifts include not including brand-new exercises – the novelty of a new exercise will create more soreness than one you’ve recently done - and avoiding high amounts of eccentric stress. For example, a Bulgarian split-squat is a great exercise, but a step-up might be a better in-season choice because it provides far less eccentric stress. Not all lifts need to be heavy grinders, either; in fact, maximal strength is the training quality that will have the longest carryover in terms of the amount of times you need to hit it just to maintain it. Issurin’s Residual Training Qualities chart claims that Max Strength will stick around for periods up to 30 +/- 5 days, which means you could theoretically hit Max Strength qualities 1-2x/month and maintain them. A simple action item to scale this would be to take your main lift and hit it within different zones on the force-velocity curve in different weeks: In week 1, go heavy (near absolute strength), in week 2, work on strength-speed, in week 3, work on speed-strength, and just rotate it. The weight room shouldn’t beat up your ability to play the sport during the season.

5. Don’t Waste Valuable Energy on Needless Extra Reps.

To add on the point I outlined in #2, your body doesn’t know the difference between fatigue created on the field and fatigue created in the weight room. If you’re a position player, know that the extra 100 swings you decided to take after practice are going to hinder your body’s ability to adapt to stress you want to add to it in the weight room. When it comes to extra on-field work, pick and choose your battles. We know that fatigue is the enemy of motor learning, so if you are sacrificing quality of on-field technique work because you feel like you need extra reps, you might be just getting worse at your sport. Keep the quality of all swings, throws, and fielding reps high and near the speed of sport if you want them to have carryover. If only the amount of reps that you NEED to take are applied, then you’ll have much more time and energy to get some strength work in.

6. Choose the Right Conditioning Modalities.

We know that baseball is an alactic-aerobic sport. The average work:rest ratio amongst pitchers is close to 1:20 (delivery takes less than 2 seconds, average MLB time in-between pitches last season was 23.8 seconds). The average work:rest ratio for position players is generally far greater given the lack of action they’ll take part in compared to the pitcher. If you’re training for baseball by applying long-distance running, you’re essentially training to be less efficient at the time demands the sport requires. This topic is covered widely in previous articles (here and here) on this site, but it is still amazingly prevalent within the baseball community. To layer on top of the points I made above, you’ve sapped the adaptive capacity of the individual for something that has nothing to do with getting better at the sport. In short, keep your speed work fast and keep your rest time focused on recovery.

7. Maintain Needed Mobility.

While this one may not directly relate to strength as much as a few of the others, it’s important to understand that if you are losing mobility you need to perform your sport at a high level, you now have to choose between spending time gaining that mobility back or maintaining strength. Force, power, RFD, speed, and all the other physiological qualities for which we train are only as good as your ability to use them on field. Simple strategies such as having a daily mobility routine as part of pre- and post-practice can save valuable time that you can use towards increasing the physiological qualities that I mentioned above in the weight room. Five minutes before and after every on-field session can save valuable time later in the season when overuse-related mobility concerns start to arise, not to mention, they’ll keep you healthy and on the field throughout the season.

If you want to train with Team USA at Uncle Sam Athletics this season, email us at tcbombers@hotmail.com, and we will send you more information.

Coach Jamie

Champion's Events will be holding their annual "NY State Top 100 Tryouts" at the Bombers Bunker this weekend for players ages 11U, 12U, and 13U.  Players ranked in the Top 100 will be invited to compete in the NY State Junior Elite Games for 11U, 12U, and 13U players in August of 2019. You can view all information on this event and register online here:

https://www.championsevents.org/top100

Bombers Bunker Baseball Academy in Troy, NY built its reputation servicing serious athletes who want to become elite level baseball players. With a desire to expand services, they added HitTrax to their facility in 2016. The addition of this technology allowed them to build upon their training program, focusing on elite hitting instruction. Advanced metrics such as exit velocity, launch angle, and point of impact are heavily utilized in the program for immediate feedback to the player and verification that adjustments are producing desired results. To further enhance the value of their program, Bombers Bunker added a gaming component using the HitTrax Online Gaming feature (w/ SyncPlay). This feature allows Bombers Bunker to connect with other HitTrax facilities and play a full 7-inning game in real-time. SyncPlay is the innovative method that allows both teams to bat simultaneously, eliminating any downtime while keeping the excitement level high. With SyncPlay, a full 7-inning game can be played in 30 minutes. At The Bunker, workouts are held every weekday from 4 to 8pm, and they have connected with Perfect Game to provide real time games vs. other facilities with similar training times. All locations arrange for 4-5 players to breakaway from the team workout at each 60 minute interval. Over the course of the 4 hour time period, each group will play 2 full games, allowing the players to take “game time” at bats, practice situational hitting, while injecting competition into their training regimen. 

The Bombers Bunker has added an 80,000 square foot outdoors training area complete with Turf fielding area, 70x30 pavilion with turf ground and three pitching mounds, and six batting cages for year round use in addition to our 20,000 square foot indoors facility. Just another reason to make the Bombers Bunker your home for Baseball or Softball training. 

The Bombers 18U Showcase team wins the Chip at The Rock, in Chester NY.

The Bombers 17U Showcase team went undefeated at the 2017 Prep Baseball Report "East West Battle" to claim the NY state Championship. 

Location: The Bombers Bunker

70 102nd street Troy, NY 12180

All age groups 9U through 18U will hold tryouts by request as needed. Call Coach Jamie to make arrangements 518-244-0757.

The Bombers Bunker Group workouts will run from Saturday November 3rd through Sunday March 31st. Group workout times are as follows:

Saturday 10:15 a.m.

Sunday 10:15 a.m.

Wednesday 7:30 p.m.

Workouts will be held at the Bombers Bunker Training Facility

70 102nd street Troy, NY 12180
 

Bombers Bunker
70 102nd Street 
Troy NY 12180

"Prep Baseball Report NY"

State Rankings by Position and Graduation Year:

2018 3B Joe Kosowsky ranked 1st.
2018 2B Andrew Inglee ranked 3rd
2018 1B Mike Siano ranked 7th
2018 SS John Decker ranked 14th
2018 2B Nate Poag ranked 18th
2018 C John Wheeler ranked 26th
2018 CF Jordan Peltier ranked 30th
2018 RHP JT Lopez ranked 37th
2018 C Lee Gnau ranked 49th
2018 RHP EJ Birch ranked 63rd
2018 RHP Griffin Racey ranked 90th
2018 RHP Zach Snyder ranked 93rd
2019 SS Julian Thompson ranked 12th
2019 C Kyle Vachon ranked 12th
2019 RHP Matt VonHolten 26th

2020 OF Alonzo Barrett 27th

2020 OF Jagger Suriano 33rd

2020 RHP Ethan Simard 43rd

The Tri-City Bombers are proud to call the D-1 baseball field at "U-Albany", and the turf field at "Lansingburgh High School" our Home Fields.

Click on the icons above to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or email Coach Jamie for more information on the Bombers.

TOP 25 • 8U

PAST 90 DAYS

TOP 25 • 10U

PAST 90 DAYS

TOP 25 • 12U PAST 90 DAYS RANK

TOP 25 • 13U

PAST 90 DAYS

TOP 25 • 15U

PAST 90 DAYS

TOP 25 • 16U

PAST 90 DAYS

TOP 25 • 18U

PAST 90 DAYS

"HITTRAX / PERFECT GAME" WINTER LEAGUES AT THE BOMBERS BUNKER

Perfect Game is partnering up with HitTrax to set up indoors winter leagues for all facilities with HitTrax online. The Bombers Bunker is a HitTrax Facility, and we will participate in "The Perfect Game" Winter League.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE:  more information to follow   

Teams will consist of 5 players each at all age groups.                                                    

COST: Ages 10U through 18U to be determined

The Bombers would like to welcome the "Electric City Bombers" Softball Club to the Bunker this winter for indoors training and strength and conditioning. For more information on the Electric City Bombers, or to schedule a tryout just click on the link below: