In professional sports, winning is the North Star that all organizational initiatives are aligned to. A significant portion of the variability in wins in the MLB can be attributed to the daily availability of talent, meaning the athletes are not injured. The other obvious factor of putting together a winning team is the acquisition of talented players. While some organizations have the means to simply buy the best talent, a mid-size market team like the Colorado Rockies depend largely on acquiring younger (cheaper) talent and developing both their skills and physicality in the minor league system. The Strength and Conditioning Department is aligned to both of those organizational goals; responsible for developing physical performance as well as keeping athletes available to play throughout the season.
With those goals in mind, the major challenges that the department faced were:
Philosophy Alignment
Strength coaches at each affiliate are subject matter experts and bring their own training philosophy to their programs, but with the frequent movement of players from affiliate to affiliate the athlete experience was inconsistent, leading to buy-in issues and unpredictable results.
Staff Turnover
Minor league strength coaching jobs are very demanding and typically offer lower tier pay, making transiency high as coaches look to move up the ranks. Without a strong organizational philosophy, affiliate teams can be left to start their performance program from scratch every year.
Time Required for Individualized Care
Individualized programs are necessary to address the unique strengths and weaknesses of each player, but the long assessment protocols and creation of custom training programs made that task unsustainable.
Learn more about how the Colorado Rockies’ high-performance team anchored their organizational philosophy with technology in order to:
“We weren’t even looking at the injury-prevention side of things originally...The results we’re getting back, honestly, they’re amazing.”