Jake Wald (@Jake_Wald) played collegiate baseball for George Washington University and then went on to have a 9 year pro career. He played at every level of the San Francisco Giants minor league system and finished his career in 2010 with the Arizona Diamondbacks. After briefly coaching college baseball, Jake joined Positive Coaching Alliance and is now the Business Development Manager, overseeing Chapter Expansion.

In high school and college sports, athletes love to life weights and get stronger. Here, Wald advises athletes to make sure that these weightlifting exercises are beneficial to improvement in a sport and are not detrimental to athletic success. Often, weight training makes athletes bigger, but not better.

For instance, pitchers that do heavy bench presses get huge arms, but lose flexibility that is necessary for pitching. As Wald points out, while that's great for beach muscles, it isn't helpful for pitching careers. It is important that athletes are aware of how weight training is benefiting, or not benefiting, their sport.

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