Today, I would like to talk to you about a great way to keep you in shape during the season or to work your Upper back. Whether you are out on the field, in gymnasiums where you are practicing, or in facilities where you do not have access to a workroom or some weights.

Now you see, during offseason most athletes would do some sort of conditioning. It might be in a fitness facility, at home or in gym and they do a decent amount of work.

Once the season starts most conditioning goes through the window because you do not have time to play with practice since there’s so many techniques and skills to train and strength conditioning is far from our priorities.

Now you want to try to maintain your fitness level throughout the season but it is hard because you do not have access to any equipment. Coaches will do whatever they can; like do push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, planks, lunges, wall sits, and the likes. These exercises will take care of the basics. Mostly pushing exercises for the triceps, upper shoulders, and chest. Some leg exercises as much as they can and just to extend the abs a little more.

However, the one key muscle group that’s missing in any of the outdoor stuff they would do or any of the conditioning you do outside the fitness facility, is the Upper Back. Yet, the upper back is one of the most crucial body part in softball because it involves a lot of throwing.

Any time there is an overhead throwing movement, it could be in racket sports or volleyball. Anytime you do over-head movement the upper back plays a crucial role because all of the decelerator of the arms, the one that slows down your arm or all of your upper back.

There is not a lot of way to train the upper back besides pulling or rowing movement.

One of the greatest tools out there that came to the market about six to seven years ago is called a Suspension trainer. The original suspension trainer is known as the TRX trainers. You can read more about it on Google.

Suspension trainers are a little bit more expensive now than they were the last few years due to its popularity. There has been a lot of knock-offs and other alternatives. Here’s one of those alternatives.

TRX is usually around $200. But you can also find suspension trainers like this one, which is just about $75. It’s very portable and can fit in a bag.

You can hook the suspension trainer to a door if you’re training inside. It also comes with a door hanker; and you can use it around a tree, at a fence, or anything. Just attach it to anything sturdy. It comes with adjustable length and it has handles if you want to suspend yourself.

You’re probably wondering what the heck can you do with this thing. It’s actually great. You can go to Youtube or Google for some sample exercises but now I’m going to show you some pictures of basic exercises that you can do.

Here is one exercise you should do all the time with a suspension trainer, it’s called a Low Back Row. The suspension trainer is hooked and then you just pull it towards your chest. So it’s like doing a rowing movement. It’s called a Suspension Row. This is a great exercise.

You can also do exercises on the Upper Back. An example would be, a Chest Press. It’s like an Inclined Chest Press. This exercise is very functional and trains the body the way it should be trained.

Here’s a great alternative for the crunch. The equipment is hooked and you place your feet on the handle while you are supporting your upper body.

You can also do more advanced exercises, like the Pistol Squat. This is a great exercise to build leg strength. Especially one leg strength, take pitchers for example.

Squat row, you can combine a squat and a row together.

Hamstring Curl and a whole bunch of other exercises. I’m just showing you a couple.

This is a deck of cards and if you’re looking for this it’s produced by FitDeck. Just go to Amazon and you’ll find it. This is, TRX Suspension Training.

As I said TRX, was the original inventor of suspension training. Now, there are whole accounts of different alternatives so you can go on Amazon or at your local sporting fit stores and ask for suspension trainers.

This one is a deck of cards that comes with a whole bunch of exercises. It has instruction and you can find a whole bunch of exercises in there for the different muscle groups.

Now, I just want to share with you the advantages of having this device. When I bought it two years ago, what we started doing was to bring it to the field and as part of warm up, it was one of the stations. People would do Rows, they would pull themselves up and down with this thing.

The great thing here is you can adjust the level of difficulty easily. If you put your feet further out you’re going to be almost parallel to the ground and lifting yourself up and down would be more challenging than if you’re in an upright position. So you can adjust to any position from parallel to the ground to upright (0 to 90 degrees).

These things are highly portable and they are a great tool for any softball player to train at home, at the gym, or in the gymnasium because you can just hook this up on a wall, on a fence, or anywhere there’s a pole.

It’s pretty easy to find a way to anchor this and use as suspension training device. Google things up, Amazon it, but suspension training is definitely the word to go for softball players when you want something portable and that is actually relevant to our sports.

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