After a successful winter 22-8 varsity season, and 18-5 junior varsity season, the Lake Brantley baseball teams are back to prepare for their new spring season. Both JV and varsity are back and undergoing gruesome weeks of conditioning to prepare for their first games of the new season in mid-February.

Sports conditioning for anybody can be difficult and tiring, and baseball conditioning is surely no exception; with the players working out multiple days a week, for two to three weeks straight. With a series of anaerobic exercises (of, relating to, or being activity in which the body incurs an oxygen debt) including sprints on the football field, mile runs around the track, and of course, stadiums. In Lake Brantley sports conditioning, stadiums are easily the toughest and most dreaded exercise.

Stadiums are a running exercise used to strengthen the players’ legs and stamina; for stadiums, players spend 10-15 minutes running up the little steps on the side of the [home] football stands, walking across the top, walking down, and then walking across the bottom and repeating. After that, the players are given a short break and then they run up the large steps on the stands that is also done for 10-15 minutes. Then finally, the players have another break and then proceed to hop up the large steps to the top of the stadium 10 times. Undoubtedly a tough exercise, the combination of stadiums and all the other running activities can certainly make even the strongest player exhausted.

“Conditioning can be difficult and tiring because the coaches try to push to make us better and it can become tiring in that way also it’s not the easiest thing to do when it’s hot outside,” sophomore JV player Logan Wash said.

For many of the returning Lake Brantley baseball players, this is just another day on the job. The difficulties of conditioning is nothing new for these players and certainly not the coaches who have been doing this for years.

“Last year we did only stadiums in the start of conditioning but [during] the last few days we would do sprints on the football field. This year has been a rotation between running the track and doing stadiums,” junior JV player Bobby Ward said.

From an outsider’s point of view, the conditioning may seem excessive and unreasonable, but any player, and any coach will tell you that there is a method to the madness. This conditioning is not a punishment or a reason to make the players suffer, the coaches have a reason to push their players as hard as they do.

“The importance of the conditioning is to get our bodies in shape for the spring season so that we are physically fit to play our best, and [to] see who was putting in work during winter break,” Ward said.