This past winter I had the unique privilege of working with Curtis Granderson as he was about to switch teams from the Detroit Tigers to the New York Yankees. Curtis graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has been a constant source of inspiration for all of our athletes here. In the past, he had come in and performed his own workout, which had been given to him by his strength coaches in the pros. However, when he came in this past winter, he said flat out that he needed to get stronger and faster and that he would do whatever it took to get there.

I’ve seen how some professionals train so I didn’t know what to expect. Curtis changed the way I view the work ethic of professional athletes. From day one, he busted his butt on everything I threw at him from the 5/3/1 system to short Prowler sprints. Not only was he working to better himself, but my other athletes would come in and see the way that he worked. He became a real life inspiration for them to push harder as well.

We had about 12 weeks to train around the holidays. I broke it down into three- to four-week blocks with a deloading week on the last week of each cycle. We stuck to the tried and true big three—the bench, box squats, and deadlifts. We also added in unilateral work and plyometrics for power. As we came to the beginning of the last cycle, we mixed the assistance lifts with a plyometric exercise. For example, we did dumbbell walking lunges with bounding and pull-ups (his least favorite) with medicine ball slams.

For speed work, we did a lot of short 10-yard sprints from various starts. With the Prowler, we also did a lot of short sprint work with lighter weight such as 10 X 15-yard sprints with 90 lbs on the Prowler and nothing going over 20 yards. This was all done after a sprint workout that was based on quality, not quantity.

In the end, his 10-yard sprint time went from 1.81 seconds to 1.65 seconds on a laser timer. His box squat went from 400 lbs to 455 lbs and his bench went from 225 lbs to 245 lbs. I eased off on his deadlifts because I didn’t want to put any undue stress on his hamstrings before he started in with practice. And I didn’t want to piss off George Steinbrenner by hurting one of his star guys before he even showed up.

Any baseball coach who says that lifting weights negatively affects your play has to look at this and change his thinking. If a player of Curtis’s caliber takes it this seriously, so should everyone else at the lower levels. As for the 5/3/1 program, I have received amazing results from all of my teams from baseball to wrestling. The bottom line is that hard work pays off. And maybe Wendler does know what he’s talking about.