MMA & Baseball

[GeneChing]

Sort of the flip side of the coin (or bat)

Yankees' Russell Martin credits Mixed Martial Arts-style workouts with helping him shed pounds
BY Anthony Mccarron
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Wednesday, February 9th 2011, 4:00 AM

TAMPA - It wasn't as if Russell Martin was preparing to grapple with Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell or his favorite Mixed Martial Arts star, fellow Montreal native Georges St. Pierre. Martin just wanted to train like them.

So the new Yankee catcher spent part of the offseason doing MMA-style workouts.

"I wasn't getting in the ring and fighting guys," Martin said, smiling. "It was how they condition, how they prepare. Just a lot of power endurance stuff, high-intensity work with short recovery times. It builds your cardio and you get in better shape."

Martin credits the training with helping to shave 15 pounds off his 5-10 frame, bringing him down to 215. After hip problems last year and offseason knee surgery, he knows he will have to prove his health.

Martin went to see St. Pierre, known as "GSP," to fight and spar in Montreal. "I'm a big fan of his," Martin said. "My trainer that I trained with this offseason, he's trained GSP, so he knows what he's talking about."

[David Jamieson]

GSP is a worldwide superstar.
So many pro sports love the guy and wanna be him it seems.
I mean, it's not like virtually all sports are not an alternative to fighting.

[GeneChing]

The top two posts I've cannibalized off the David Vs. Goliath thread (which became about Jose Canseco oddly). This needs it's own thread now.

Ballplayers training with mixed martial arts
Craig Calcaterra
Apr 13, 2011, 9:13 AM EDT

It’s all fun and games until someone takes their training out to the mound with them for a post-beanball donnybrook!

Mixed martial arts may be illegal as a competitive sport in some states, but several baseball players are incorporating its fighting methods into their training routines.

Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox, Brad Penny of the Detroit Tigers and Russell Martin of the Yankees have used the sport’s punches and kicks to improve their throwing and swinging. In addition to improving overall fitness, Martin said, mixed martial arts can make an athlete mentally tougher.

I never know what to think of these kinds of stories. I mean, I have zero doubt that this kind of training is beneficial because it sounds like hardcore stuff. MMA guys are certainly in good shape and anything that helps with strength, balance, flexibility and mental toughness has to be a good thing.

At the same time, I can’t help but smile at this, fully aware of the long and rich history of taking popular cultural phenomenons and turning them into workouts. As God is my witness I remember seeing a record/book set — this predated the era in which most people had VCRs — called “Disco your way to Health” or something very close to it. I’m sure there was a roller boogie followup. Not to say that MMA is so ephemeral as disco and roller boogie — it’s pretty established at this point — but there is something about all of this that makes me wonder how much money is being made off of this kind of thing, if not for the ballplayers, than at least for the common schlub in suburban gyms around the USA.

(thanks to Hannah for the heads up)

Not that the exercise industry is the worst offender. When it comes to exploiting the cultural zeitgeist for a quick buck, nothing beats the world of business book publishing. Seriously: if you can’t find a book that fits the pattern of “[latest trendy pursuit] Lessons for the Businessman” on the shelf down at the Barnes and Noble, you can assured that it either just went out of print or it’s currently being written.

But now we’re into another rant, so let us end this post by thinking about Adam Dunn in an MMA match.