Fitness standards

Commencing this spring, we introduce fitness testing for all Tomball Kings players, with objective standards that vary by age.

Beginning with the 2024 spring baseball season, we will implement physical fitness standards for all players on Kings rosters, from ages six through eighteen. Meeting these standards will help our players perform at their best, avoid injury and illness, and obtain lifelong health benefits.

Prior to season commencement, we will evaluate players across each of seven events:

  • Sixty-yard dash
  • Standing broad jump
  • Strict-form push-ups
  • Elbow planks
  • 300-yard shuttle run (12 repetitions x 25 yards)
  • Mile run
  • Seated heel reach

Taken together, these events will help our athletes assess their speed, power, strength, explosiveness, muscular endurance, aerobic and anaerobic conditioning, flexibility, ability to change direction, ability to cope with lactic acid build-up and muscular fatigue, and mental resilience, against objective standards.

We have developed these standards over a period of many months, through evaluations of Kings tryout results, class results, and post-season evaluations; Perfect Game data; data from Presidential Physical Fitness Program testing that goes back over sixty years; and, international research performed in academic settings.

Though we have chosen each event to serve a specific baseball purpose, the evaluations will help our coaches and parents understand where each athlete stands in relation to peers within the Kings organization, prior Kings players, youth baseball players across the United States, and young people more generally.

In turn, these evaluations will help us shape our future training programs, both in service of our competitive baseball aspirations and to help each of our student athletes achieve high levels of physical fitness and athleticism as boys and young men that will serve them throughout their lives.

The 2023-2024 academic year will serve as a phase-in period for these standards. Based upon what we learn, we may alter the events and the standards themselves for ensuing seasons, to maximize their effectiveness for our athletes.

We have designed the standards to be challenging, but well within the reach of every player who earns an invitation to a Tomball Kings roster, provided that he trains reasonably diligently to meet them prior to season commencement.

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We will provide training guidance at no cost to all of our student-athletes that, if followed, should enable all of them to be successful.

Players who are unable to meet one or more of the standards prior to commencement of spring competition will receive additional assistance during spring training and practices to help them meet or exceed all of standards as quickly as possible. Because this would take up valuable training and practice time, we ask each player to please train in advance to meet all standards before the season begins. Again, each player will receive help from us in doing so.

Standards

Please see our 2023-2024 fitness standards in the table below. A key follows the table, with an explanation of the headings and values.

Age 60 SBJ PU 300 Plank Mile Flex
6 12.000 50 7 111 0:30 12:00 T / F
7 11.800 52 11 108 0:35 11:30 T / F
8 11.250 57 13 103 0:40 11:00 T / F
9 10.500 58 15 98 0:45 10:00 T / F
10 9.990 60 18 93 0:50 9:30 T / F
11 8.750 65 23 88 1:00 9:00 T / F
12 8.600 71 25 85 1:10 8:30 T / F
13 8.550 72 30 82 1:20 8:00 T / F
14 8.500 76 32 79 1:30 7:40 T / F
15 7.990 80 35 76 1:40 7:30 T / F
16 7.800 83 37 74 1:50 7:20 T / F
17 7.500 85 45 72 2:00 7:10 T / F
18 7.400 90 50 70 2:10 7:00 T / F
  • "Age" is the player's actual calendar age, in years.
  • "60" refers to the player's time in the sixty-yard dash, in seconds.
  • "SBJ" refers to the player's leaping distance in a standing broad jump, measured from starting heel point to ending heel point, in inches.
  • "PU" refers to the quantity of strict-form push-ups the player performs, in one set.
  • "300" refers to the player's time in the three-hundred-yard-shuttle run, in seconds.
  • "Plank" refers to the duration of player's elbow plank, in minutes.
  • "Mile" refers to the player's time in the mile run, in minutes. Coaches may substitute a 1,600-meter run, which is slightly shorter, at their discretion.
  • "Flex" refers to the player's ability to wrap his fingers about his heels while on the ground in a seated position, with feet straight in front of him and knees touching on the ground. Evaluations are either "true" or "false."