The other day, I broke bread with a very good (and very strong) minor league baseball player. Over the meal, we discussed lifting. He shared his off season routine with me, and I realized how much more efficiently players are training these days. They are far better educated than when I was a moppet, and it was quite refreshing.

I vividly remember a 1996 workout in Lakeland Florida with Craig Caballero, a Grand Canyon University product. He and I found the heaviest dumbbells in the place and pressed them as many times as we could. Then we curled with straight bar. After some tricep extensions and pulldowns, we called it a day. Our rep schemes had no rhyme or reason; we were simply trying to wear ourselves down and produce soreness in our beach muscles with as much volume as possible. Brilliant.

Now, this player at least is doing a sensible workout that is far closer to how repetitions work in a baseball game than what I considered training as a Tigers’ prospect in the mid and late 1990s. This young man spoke of a workout that I had never heard of, dubbed “clusters.” From breakingmuscle.com:

Cluster training involves using short, inter-set rest periods (usually ranging anywhere from 10–30 seconds), which act to allow us to do more reps with a heavier weight.

The young player broke down how he approached a cluster workout, using squats as an example. It’s simple, one repetition at 80% of max, then rest thirty seconds, then repeat. Total repetitions, ten. Each rep is powerful and explosive. Three rounds and you’re done.

Why would we ever train for baseball by doing twelve or fifteen repetitions in a single set? A hitter steps into the batter’s box, explodes once and then rests. It’s going to be 20 seconds before he has a chance to swing again, and it may be much, much longer. Clusters may not be the perfect way to train for sport, but they’re certainly better than anything I did to prepare for or maintain during a season. From poliquingroup.com:

Cluster training is primarily used to develop relative strength, which is the ratio of your strength to your body mass. It should be one of the primary methods of training for those athletes who want to be as strong as possible at the lightest possible bodyweight.

Granted, baseball players aren’t optimizing to be light, per se. If you’re just as powerful at a lighter weight, however, that outcome could prove advantageous.

I’ll keep playing with it and let you know how it goes. In the meantime, stay nimble.

Kap