Getting in Fighting Trim

Revue de presse

Daniel Barbarisi, Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2011

An MMA Training Regimen Has Yankees' Russell Martin Poised for a Comeback

The toughest season of his five-year career had just ended prematurely due to a hip injury, and new Yankee catcher Russell Martin was looking for a way to bounce back.

After the Los Angeles Dodgers didn't renew his contract, Mr. Martin headed home to his native Montreal, and there the 28-year-old hit upon the training regimen that would transform his body and give him a new spark entering this spring training.

Photo ci-dessus : Russell Martin gets a few pointers from Yankees manager and former catcher Joe Girardi Thursday at the team's training facility in Tampa.

Mr. Martin reconnected with an old childhood friend, a man who had spent years in Thailand, kickboxing. Mr. Martin wanted to get stronger, more athletic, particularly in the upper body. The friend recommended that Mr. Martin try mixed-martial arts training, the kind that cage-fighters in the popular UFC use to batter their opponents into submission.

He remembered that an old Dodgers teammate, Rudy Seanez, had undergone MMA training, even getting in the ring and fighting on occasion.

"He wasn't skinny or anything. He was a big, powerful guy, but he would breeze through the exercises, and I would ask him, what do you do? And he said he trained with some of the MMA guys. He'd show me some of the stuff, and I said, man, that's crazy," Mr. Martin recalled.

He was intrigued. Mr. Martin didn't want to jump into a ring, but he wanted the kind of power and endurance that allows fighters to keep throwing strong punches deep into a fight.

Fortunately, his native Montreal is the home of one of MMA's top fighters, Georges St. Pierre, who holds the welterweight title in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Martin went over to the gym where Mr. St. Pierre trains, and sought out his world-renowned trainer, Jon Chaimberg.

Soon, Mr. Martin was in the gym six days a week, undergoing the kind of training that Mr. St. Pierre and his fellow fighters were doing. In contrast to traditional baseball workouts, MMA training focuses on high-intensity interval training to build explosive power, the use of medicine balls and ropes to build core and rotational strength and anaerobic endurance.

By spring training, Mr. Martin's body fat was down to 7 percent, despite undergoing minor knee surgery midway through the winter, and he sees an endurance and explosiveness in his spring training work that simply wasn't there before.

"We do sprints with short periods of rest, and it's really helped in that regard," Mr. Martin said. "We get in the cage and take 15 swings, and if I didn't do this stuff, by swing number 15, you're a little slower. But now, I'm not at all. I think it's helped me a lot."

His trainer, Mr. Chaimberg, saw a dramatic change in Martin over the winter.

"He came to the gym pudgy, looking like a real catcher. Now he looks like an athlete," Mr. Chaimberg said.

Mr. Martin envisions other baseball players gravitating toward MMA training as they see its benefits.

Every team is different, and the Yankee training staff is known as one of baseball's more innovative. But in general, Mr. Chaimberg said, baseball players don't work on their anaerobic power, which is what gives fighters their strength through long fights. He said baseball players often don't see how the endurance training translates.

"But there are hidden benefits to being more explosive, having some more power endurance, so that if you have a long at-bat, you're as powerful on the 12th or 13th pitch as you were on the first pitch," Mr. Chaimberg said.

Mr. Martin did not do any actual fighting or sparring. but he did watch the MMA fighters train, saw several fights and hung out with Mr. St. Pierre.

Now he has to translate that work into quality baseball in the hopes of reviving his career. By his second year, 2007, Martin was a Gold-Glove winning All Star with power, speed, and on-base ability. But he declined each year thereafter, and was non-tendered by the Dodgers this winter.

The Yankees signed him hoping for a buy-low candidate who could be the starting catcher until the young talent in the minors is ready, and so far they have liked what they've seen," General Manager Brian Cashman said.

Revue de presse publiée par Jacques Lanciault.