LSU Baseball’s Strength and Conditioning Coach, Chris Martin, flipped the script on his journey and started in the major leagues before moving to the college level.
“I was overseeing all of the training for our injured players,” Martin said.
“Basically Major League through the DR. Guys who are out for more than two weeks, they would typically come to the Florida complex, train with us, rehab with the Physical Therapist, do their strength and conditioning with me, and then go back to whatever team they were with.”
During his time with the Astros, Martin redesigned their “Return-to-Play” protocol, which originally allowed injured players to return to the game after they could successfully throw from 45 feet.
“It wasn’t just, ‘Hey, we’re trying to just get you back out to the field and hopefully it’s good again.’,”Martin said. “It was, we’ve got 12 plus months at times here to kind of redefine your career. And if the player was willing to buy in and go to work, a lot of them saw some really good performance results.”
After spending six seasons with the Astros, Martin was happy where he was at. He had no intention of leaving his job. That was until he got a certain phone call, that changed everything.
“There’s probably a handful of college jobs that I would have picked up the phone for, but LSU is probably the one that if Coach Johnson calls, you pick up the phone and you hear what he has to say,” Martin said.
After moving to LSU in the fall, Martin wanted to make a difference outside of the weight room, and to a wider audience. LSU allowed him to achieve that goal.
“When I was in the professional side of things, things were kind of very buttoned up, almost very secretive,” Martin said.
“Nobody wants their secret sauce to get out. I’m a little bit less hands tied in terms of what I can and can’t share here.
“And so, if I can post content out there that a high school player is going to see and maybe take a little bit, or a high school coach, high school strength and conditioning coach is going to take something from and then go help out 50 athletes.
“Then I think that’s a positive thing for the field of strength and conditioning in the game of baseball in general.”
Although Martin had plans to stay in the majors, at least until he was 30 years old, he loves having the ability to shape college players into potential MLB players. His main two goals for the Tigers are to help them win more National Championships and to shape them for Major Leagues.
