Interview with NSCA Member Barry Heyden

On October 25, 2000 the NSCA conducted a live interview with Barry Heyden, the Director of Conditioning for the New York Mets Baseball team. In the following interview, Mr. Barry Heyden answers questions relating to the Mets success, and gives away some trade secrets on how his conditioning program is unique.

Barry Heyden is a long time member of the NSCA, and is certified through the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS).

We want to thank Barry for taking time out of the World Series to participate in our first ever interview.

Interview

Q. Barry, what strength and conditioning component of the off-season—i.e. weight training, agility, plyometrics—do you feel is most important for the success of a baseball player?

A. It’s hard to pick out the most important one of all those. But our off season conditioning program includes every one of those components. We stress each one as important. If I had to pick out only one I would have to go with … we kind of combine agility and plyometrics together in our off season for all the players. So I’d say explosive movements are the most important for baseball.

Q. Which of your players is most dedicated to the strength and conditioning program on a year-round basis?

A. We have a lot of dedicated players—a lot of veterans that are dedicated too. The ones off the top of my head would have to be:

Al Leiter—very dedicated.
John Franco—is one of the most dedicated I’ve ever seen, and it’s great to have him leading the way for the other younger guys to follow him.
As far as position players, Ricardo Alfonso is very dedicated and consistent.
Benny Agbayani is very dedicated.
Mike Piazza is very knowledgeable and dedicated too. What makes him different from the others is that he’s a catcher. He’s out there day in and day out. Catching takes its toll as far as being fatigued after the game. He’s really consistent with a good core. We call it the core abdominal (lower back, hips, and hamstring program) we really focus on these with him. He really does dedicate himself in the off season! He does a really good job of getting his body in shape before he comes in. And then during spring training he does a really good job too.

Q. Your team seemed to get stronger as the season progressed—was that by design?

A. We really don’t go for the guys to get stronger by design. What we are designed to do is try to maintain the strength, prevent a traumatic drop off and I think what happens is you see other teams drop off, we maintain our strength throughout the season. It’s not really an increase of strength; it’s an in-season maintenance program. To keep the players on the field.

Q. Does each player have an individual strength and conditioning program designed specifically for them?

A. What we have is a core group of exercises that are safe. We always go with safety first. That’s our #1 principle. We try to make it fun too. We have guys that come to our team from different organizations … we try to introduce our exercises or modify their exercises that we think might jeopardize them getting an injury. We think safety first; we adjust and adapt the program within our group of exercises to meet the needs of each player. We work with each individual differently. In Baseball you have different positions, you have guys that are playing all the time, you have guys that aren’t playing all the time. You have starting pitchers who pitch every 5 or 6 days. Then you have relief pitchers who never really know when they may be getting into the game. We really adjust according to each person’s needs.

Q. Are there any aspects of your strength and conditioning program that are unique?

A. Yeah! I think we have some unique principles that we do here that’s really worked—especially with our pitchers. We’ve been really blessed and kept our pitchers healthy here the last 4 years and throughout the season. I contribute that to achieving an upper body program that we have all our pitchers on throughout the whole organization … not only major league, but also minor league level. The tubing program is excellent. This helps them to maintain their strength, increase flexibility, and also brings blood into the muscle. It flushes the muscle tissue out after they throw. And we’re able to do that anywhere when we travel. If we don’t have access to a weight room, then the clubhouse or locker room—anywhere we have a little bit of space we take our tubing with us and that works out great.

Another aspect of our program we focus on is the flexibility of the hips and lower back. What we do is the majority of the guy’s stretch individually with us and we focus on a manual hip program. We really focus on the hips; strong hips are crucial in baseball. And keeping that area strong. The lower abdominals fall into that category as well. We really focus on the whole mid section too. The abdominal and lower back benefit with a medicine ball program that we have the players doing.

Another aspect of our program we really focus on is the scapular exercises for the upper back, latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, and trapezious muscles and posterior rotator cup. We really focus on that. We try to keep those muscles balanced and we try to keep the scapula in the correct anatomical position. Keep it balanced.