By Sal Marinello

The May 2007 edition of Muscle & Fitness magazine, features a cover story article that details the training regimen of the best baseball player on the planet, Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals.

This is the worst regimen on the planet, and is totally inappropriate for an elite athlete like Pujols.

For years the sports/fitness media has allowed this kind of nonsense to pass for performance training, be it Barry Bonds’ or Terrell Owens’ program, but it is amazing that a new generation superstar is following a program that is so woefully unsuitable. The program that Pujols follows is wrong on every single point and violates every established principle for designing a performance-training program.

Chris Mihlfeld, described in the article as being Pujols’ “full-time personal trainer and training partner,” designed Pujols’ program, and these two have been together for 10 years. Mihlfeld coached Pujols at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City, and he has worked with Albert ever since.

The article highlights the program that Pujols follows - a “high-volume, body builder style” program - and we’re told, “this high-intensity approach is designed to prepare Albert’s muscles and joints” for the season “while also adding some long-ball clout to this already flawless swing.” Um, no.

With the exception of the correct description of this program as being “high-volume” this statement is wrong on all points. Actually almost every statement made in support of this program is incorrect, and I’ll get to them in a bit.

“High-volume, body builder–style” programs cannot address the complex needs of athletes, regardless of the level of competition, and by definition a program cannot be both high-volume and high-intensity, as there is an inverse relationship between these two variables. As volume increases, intensity decreases and there is no way around this. A program isn’t “high-intensity” by virtue of a person’s subjective opinion that a program is by some definition “hard.”

Bodybuilding has nothing to do with athletics since there is nothing remotely related between this style of training and the demands of sport.

Baseball is a sport that requires that its players be able to move quickly and explosively. This training program runs counter to the nature of baseball and is counter productive to Pujols’ baseball training because this program is teaching Pujols to move slower and less-explosively.

It’s a good thing that Albert is blessed with natural ability.

Mike Romano, a National Strength and Conditioning Association Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and USA Weightlifting Certified Coach who has trained athletes of all levels for 20 years, is surprised that a player of Pujols’ stature would follow such a program.

Romano says, “As a former body builder (Romano competed professionally) I know that this kind of training is inappropriate for any athlete at any level. Not only am I surprised that this is being presented as Pujols’ workout, I can’t believe that he actually follows this program.”

Every paragraph in this story contains a statement that is incorrect and can be refuted with evidence from the field of strength and conditioning.

In the first paragraph of the story we’re told that Pujols puts in “two-a-days at the gym, sometimes completing more than 36 sets worth of exercise in a single session.” For the uninitiated – or for readers of M&F – this might sound impressive, but when you look at the make-up of this routine all this means is that Pujols is wasting a lot of time in the gym.

To keep this item as brief as possible I will use the first day of this workout for examples, but every day – every workout - of this program contains faulty design elements and ignores the basic principles of program design.

Monday is chest, biceps and traps day. There’s no valid reason to ever break up the body into these small pieces, but this breakdown is particularly bizarre.

During Albert’s Monday morning workout he completes 6 sets of 6 exercises with a repetitions scheme of 20, 15, 12, 10, 8, 8 for each. The 6 exercises are flat dumbbell bench press, incline dumbbell press, machine fly, EZ-bar curl, seated dumbbell curl and alternating hammer curl. There’s that “impressive” 36 sets.

After taking a break from this diet of iron to partake in a similarly inappropriate cardiovascular workout, Pujols is back in the gym for his second helping of iron. In the afternoon the Cardinals’ slugger does Smith machine shrugs and dumbbell shrugs in the same set/rep scheme as the morning session, and some medicine ball crunches and jump rope.

This is classic body builder junk and displays a complete lack of understanding of how an athlete’s body works and needs to work. From the program design standpoint there is never a reason to split a workout into 2 daily sessions, as anything that is truly worth accomplishing in the weight room can be accomplished in one session. When you consider that all Albert does in the second session is some shrugs, this split session is even that much more absurd.

Another classic body builder blunder is to break the body down into component movements rather that provide compound, ground-based exercises that allow the body to work in a manner similar to the conditions experienced in competition. There is no imaginable reason to perform the exact same amount of sets and reps for the chest and biceps, especially when you consider the differences in the relative size and function of these groups.

Almost one-third of the exercises in the entire program are for Pujols’ arms, which is counter-productive and a waste of time. It’s no wonder that Pujols’ has been battling a chronic elbow problem for the past 3 seasons.

Robert Stephens, CSCS and a Director of an NSCA Performance Center who has worked with Division 1 scholarship and Olympic athletes says that this program would have been fine for Pujols when he was an untrained kid. “Anything is better than nothing,” says the Atlanta-based Stephens.

But Stephens adds, “Eventually Albert will start to have adverse effects from this training such as loss of range of motion, joint problems from wear and tear, muscle imbalances, muscle pulls and tear, etc. There is no mention of explosive training, core training, ground based training, multi-joint and multi-dimension training.”

When you consider that Pujols missed almost a month of the 2006 season from an oblique pull and had a hamstring issue late in the season, as well as suffering from the cranky elbow, some of the adverse effects might already be rearing their ugly head.

There is certainly no reason to follow the descending rep scheme from 20 to 8 reps that is used in almost half the program. Different rep schemes require that different energy systems within the body are used to fuel muscles, and performing this wide range of reps in the same workout is counter-productive, and doesn’t address the needs of any energy requirements.

One of the major principles of designing an effective training program is to use ground-based, multiple-joint exercises. This means machines and isolation movements should be at a bare minimum. With the exception of the EZ-bar curls, every exercise in Albert’s Monday morning session is performed either sitting down or lying down.

This program consists of 3 ground-based, multi-joint exercises out of about 60 total weekly exercises. Pujols spends way too much time using machines and sitting and lying down during his workouts, especially for an athlete. The body can’t be prepared for activities that occur with feet on the ground, by lying and sitting.

David Githens, CSCS a strength coach with 17 years of experience says, “I find the number of exercises and the volume of sets performed to be excessive. If this program contained the proper exercises you would cut the workout in at least half and actually achieve more benefit.”

Which goes back to my initial comments about how a program can’ t be both high-volume and high-intensity. To really train with high-intensity makes it impossible to complete anywhere near 36 sets in a single workout. A true high-intensity workout consists of no more than 12-16 total sets, including warm-ups, with exercises that incorporate large muscle groups and result in 100% maximal oxygen consumption.

There are more statements in this article that need to be addressed.

We’re told that “on a heavy leg day” Pujols and his trainer “were banging out sets of 10 on the leg press with nearly 1,200 pounds.” There is no good reason for any athlete to do leg presses, let alone do them with this much weight. To utilizing the leg press in a training program is to ignore the need for athletes to perform ground-based, multi-joint, explosive, three-dimensional movements. To have an elite athlete grind out sets with 1,200 pounds is pure folly.

Working in a leg press – or Smith machine - forces the body to move in a manner determined by the machine and puts unnatural forces on the muscular-skeletal system, especially the back, hips and knees. Adding this kind of crazy weight to the formula is a recipe for disaster.

Towards the end of the article we get this passage, which reveals just how little Pujols’ trainer understands the process of training an athlete for sport.

“Mihlfeld’s off-season boot camp is so intense that Albert sees the regular season as his only real ‘downtime,’ training-wise. ‘The baseball season is like an off-season for me because it seems easy compared to what Chris and I do to get me ready for 162 games or more.’ Adds Mihlfeld: ‘The philosophy is to maximize his performance by teaching his body how to perform while fatigued.’”

This is wrong on all counts. You don’t prepare the body for a sport like baseball by tearing it down in the off-season. There is no basis in science or common sense to make this assertion.

The concept of rest and recovery has been lost on these bodybuilding-style trainers and this is where the taint of drugs affects legit guys like Pujols. The modern philosophy of bodybuilding routines is predicated on the fact that the competitive bodybuilders who design, follow and reap the benefits from these high-volume programs are on drugs that help them to grow. Without drugs, professional bodybuilders and their programs would garner little attention.

However this misapplication of principles is leading countless athletes down a counter-productive path. Pujols asserts that this program has helped keep him from breaking down, but the reality is that last year he suffered a severe oblique injury and has had a recurring elbow problem. As performance coach Robert Stephens said above, over time this kind of program will give Albert problems with regard to wear and tear injuries.

The high-volume of this program, particularly all the arm work, can certainly be blamed for some of Pujols’ elbow woes. All of the wear and tear that comes from all the sets and reps will definitely put unneeded stress on joints and connective tissues. And it’s no wonder that Pujols had an oblique problem last season given the lack of explosive, multi-joint movements at the expense of machine-based machines that are included in this program.

Mihlfeld says that he’s trying to maximize Pujols’ performance by teaching his body how to perform while fatigued. This is another statement that runs counter to both science and common sense, and reveals how bodybuilders don’t understand the workings of an athlete’s body. There really isn’t any objective evidence that shows that training to fatigue will increase muscle size and maximum strength, and by extension improve performance.

In a paper titled Athletic Performance Development published in the NSCA’s Strength and Conditioning Journal by Michael Stone, PhD, CSCS, Steven Plisk, MS, CSCS and others, in conjunction with Appalachian State University, Yale University Athletic Department and the USA Weightlifting Development Center, Stone writes “that training to failure offers no particular advantage,” and research suggests “that training to failure or beyond may lead to over training.”

Stone also writes that it is “obvious” from the data that training to fatigue is not an efficient way to increase muscle size and strength gains.

All the hyperbole surrounding how much weight a person can lift or how many sets that they do in a workout is meaningless, especially in the context of an elite professional athlete’s training program. Over the past 20 years there has been an incredible advance in the understanding of the workings of the body and how to best prepare for the demands of sport while improving performance, but unfortunately there are still athletes and trainers that haven’t been paying attention.

Hopefully, the worst that will come from these programs is that athletes will just have wasted a lot time. However, when you look at the kinds of injuries that have been experienced by baseball players over the past several years you have to wonder if these programs are hurting guys more than they are helping.