As part of his lower-body circuit, Arizona Diamondbacks 3B Ryan Roberts performs a Standing Calf Raise, Weighted Box Jumps and a Single-Arm, Single-Leg RDL.
About the Video
Ryan Roberts tells the importance of having lower body strength as an athlete. Ryan goes over some strengthening moves that include calf raises, box jumps and single-leg RDL's to improve his performance on the baseball field.
TRANSCRIPTS
Ryan Roberts: In baseball and in sports in general, your legs are going to be huge factors in performance whether it be hitting whether it be fielding a ground ball you're trying to get your feet back underneath you. All that type stuff, keeping
agility in your legs and power is everything.
Explosion from base running, all these movements from point A to when I turn to point B, all that explosion comes from leg and
core and everything. So I'll go to like a basic calf raise and that is stabilization in your calves, but not a ton. What I concentrate on here is really getting on top of my toes as much as I can and once I get 10 then I'll go ten fast.
I'll try to do like four things with different areas of my legs now hip, calf and
hamstring and I'll try to do more of like an explosion up on something which will be these box jumps right here. Then I'll do a light stretch on both of them just to keep the rotation of movement through my muscles and then I'll do it again.
I'll work on full
squat, so get it as close as I can. I want to work on going up rather than out. I want to keep my chest up and I want to my legs and everything in line like I'm doing a normal squat here. From here what I'm thinking about doing is moving my arms back to shoot myself in the air, up on my calves as high as I can go and then I land up here.
Landing on the box I just like if you jump up in the air on the ground. You basically just want to land and you want to absorb the impact, you want to land soft. The weight just ads more explosion. When you take the vest off your body is used to carrying more weight and explosion so obviously whenever you shed the weight you're going to be faster and have more explosion.
Your hamstring and groin is what a lot of people pull. Those two areas have been prone to injury a lot. So strengthening those and getting those strong and as mobile at the same time as you can is going to prevent that. It's basically concentrating on one thing and that's my hamstring. I want to keep the weight stable, Chest up and I want to balance and leave my chest, try to keep my head up as much as I can. So I'm just going to try to hold the weight as steady as I can, go down and back up. Trying to go down as slow and as smoothly as I can and then when I come up just try and hold my posture.
Basically you want to keep your toe in the direct line that you want to be in. Something that helps me is I keep my chin up and that helps me keep my chest up. You don't want to have this leg straight. You want it slightly bent. Just calf raises sometimes aren't enough, you need to stabilization in your ankles and everything. Stabilization can strengthen your ankles and calves and it's going to not put any more pressure on the legs whenever you're running the bases.
For more with Ryan Roberts, check out his
Core Circuit 
