Mariners: Weights? We Don't Need No Stinking Weights
Now that the Olympics are over, and ice dancing disappears forlornly into a Russian crevasse until 2014, it’s time to turn our attention back to man sports like baseball, where you hit things and spit and crotch grab.
In Peoria, AZ, the Mariners have started pre-gaming for a season some expect to be a return to baseball’s A-list. So as we caught up on what the team has been up to while we were distracted by, er, curling, we were surprised to discover Step one in their comeback training regimen was to apparently throw away their weightlifting equipment.
We found this odd for a couple of reasons. first, baseball is a sport where people are so obsessed with muscles that they shoot steroids into their asses until their nuts vanish. second, even our personal trainer subjects us to enough weight to make us quiver like a girly man, despite the fact that a) we are not a professional athlete, and b) we are paying him.
Turns out, the M’s have found a guy with a different approach. He is Dr. Marcus Elliott, inventor of the Peak Performance Project or “P3″ program, and last week the club appointed him as their new Director of Sports Science and Performance. Essentially he’s the team’s new Billy Blanks.
Elliott divested the club of its weights because, in short, his P3 method builds strength with targeted exercises and movements, rather than traditional weightlifting like bench presses or machines.
We were skeptical at first since this sounded an awful lot like that P90X thing we see on infomercials. but Elliott’s Web site says P3 has been proven on Olympians, the new England Patriots and Utah Jazz. the Mariners are the first pro baseball team to use it and, for their part, seem to be warming to it.
Times’ baseball writer Geoff Baker went behind-the-scenes in the Mariners’ now cavernous weight room, wherein Dr. Elliott waxed poetic about P3 with highly technical phrases like “thoracic extension” and “kinematic sequence” and “baseball player”. He also pulled out graphs to explain his methods, and we believe a man with graphs, even if we have absolutely no clue what they mean.
We should mention the workout program is forward-looking and mandatory only for minor league players, while the current major leaguers can choose to adopt P3, or stick to the workouts they’ve already developed.
One guy who says he’ll stick to his own training routine is Ken Griffey Jr., who bought a $21,000 exercise bike supposedly capable of burning 2,400 calories an hour. We’re not sure how that exactly works, but with that kind of power it’s probably capable of stealing part of your soul too.
As for the players who latch onto this new age P3 workout, how’s that for a “fuck you” to mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, A-Rod and everyone else who juiced and almost killed baseball. The Mariners don’t even need weights anymore. You know where you can stick it.
Mariners: Weights? we Don't Need No Stinking Weights