With roughly a month left of the off-season (in the Northeast), we wanted to put together this checklist to help players maximize this time of year.
1. Stay committed to the weight room & your nutrition.
While it’s essential to prepare for the season and get more skill work, you can’t ignore the hard work you’ve done to become bigger, faster, stronger this winter.
Check out some nutrition tips here.
2. Re-evaluate your skills and metrics coming out of the off-season.
If you’ve executed your off-season development plan, you should have made progressions throughout your skillset.
Coordinate with your coaches, trainers, or other trusted baseball resources to understand where your game now stands relating to the college recruiting process.
See where your game stacks up on this metrics grid our staff put together (click here)
3. Based on that evaluation, if you’re ready to communicate with college coaches, work on creating a skills video.
Here are 3 simple tips to help you with that process (click here).
4. Research schools that you’re interested in and are appropriate for your level of play and academic standing.
5. Contact those schools and include the following information:
Provide the link to your skills video.
Mention your name, HS grad year, position, GPA, test scores (if applicable), and attach your HS schedule.
Keep this outreach concise.
6. Watch college baseball! Whether in person or games streamed online.
It is an excellent opportunity to learn more about the programs you’re interested in playing for in the future.
Focus on these two questions:
Does your game fit at that level?
Does your game fit the style of play for that program?
7. Plan your in-season lifting program.
Once the season gets underway, your time will be limited, so plan now what your strength programming will be during a week while balancing practice and games.
It is imperative that you do maintenance lifts at a minimum of 1-2 times per week.
Check out this video from Nunzio Signore at RPP Baseball about this subject.
We know the recruiting process can be stressful, but these steps should put you on the right path heading into the spring. Most importantly, we highly encourage you to focus on competing each day for your HS program, being a great teammate, continuing to do well in the classroom, and enjoying being back on the field playing the game!
If you have questions or want to talk about recruiting, email me at sam@collegesportsadvisors.com.
Good luck this season.
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