Lift, hit, eat and repeat
Jackson Holliday added 10 pounds of muscle through offseason regimen
SARASOTA, Fla. — It would have been easy for Jackson Holliday to conclude after his 2023 season that he deserved a rest.
In his first full professional campaign, Holliday had a monster minor league season, climbing up the Orioles’ ladder and prospect lists at breakneck speed. He was still just a teenager — a stage in his life when many his age are studying for college exams.
But Holliday, who was far from a normal teenager, knew what a big leaguer is supposed to look like, and he wasn’t there yet. After all, he grew up watching his dad — a 6-foot-4, 240-pound force with tree trunks for arms — mash 316 career home runs in the major leagues.
So, Holliday, the sport’s consensus No. 1 prospect who turned 20 in December and got married in January, immediately set out to hit the gym hard and gain weight by adding muscle in pursuit of increasing his power, and the results are noticeable. Holliday has filled out his uniform, adding 10 pounds of muscle, he said, through an intense offseason training regimen consisting of heavy lifting, speed training and hitting — lots of hitting — at his home batting cage.
“I lift, I hit, I take ground balls, I hang out with the family,” Holliday said with a smile inside the clubhouse at the Orioles’ Ed Smith Stadium spring training complex. “That’s my day. That’s it.”
Holliday’s 2023 season was historic for a player his age — going from Low-A to Triple-A and putting up gaudy numbers at each step. On the season, the left-handed hitter posted a .323/.442/.499 slash line and stole 24 bases, but he only hit 12 home runs.
After lifting six days a week and hitting just as often, Holliday believes he achieved what he
set out to do. Now it’s time to compete for a job on the Orioles’ opening day roster.
“I’m in a whole lot better position than I was last year coming to camp, which was my goal,” he said. “I feel physically ready.”
The best way to summarize Holliday’s offseason progress, his trainer Jamie Blatnick said, is to look at the numbers.
Holliday began working with Blatnick, a former NFL player who is now the director of strength and conditioning at Middle Tennessee State University, after the infielder was drafted first overall in the 2022 draft.
His numbers in the weight room were OK for an 18-year-old but far from those of an everyday big leaguer. He was bench-pressing 195 pounds and squatting 275 pounds.
After a second offseason following Blatnick’s challenging workout plan, Holliday’s numbers haven’t just improved — they’re eye-popping. At 6 feet and 195 pounds, Holliday’s maximum lift on the bench press has jumped to 315 pounds. He can squat 455 pounds, deadlift 500 pounds and box jump 55 inches — more than 4 ½ feet.
“He eats it up,” Blatnick said. “He’s not a guy that wants to take any days off. He’s all in.”
Mondays were Holliday’s heavy lower body days, maxing out on a main lift such as deadlifts or squats and also doing so on a box jump variation. Wednesdays were his heavy upper body days; Tuesdays and Thursdays were lighter days with band work and circuits; and Fridays and Saturdays were speed days with lifts designed to engage his fast-twitch muscles.
In between those muscle-crushing workouts, Holliday spent even more time maintaining his flexibility, working on his swing and improving his defense at shortstop and second base.
“It’s hard, but that’s what I do,” Holliday said. “I just enjoy getting better at baseball, and that’s what it takes.”
“He was a pro before he was a pro,” Blatnick said. “Some guys will make excuses, but not Jackson.”
Blatnick said the “biggest hurdle” for Holliday was eating enough. The strength coach put the infielder on a meal plan with a daily goal of about 3,200 calories since lifting won’t lead to muscle growth or weight gain without proper nutrition.
“It would be noon sometimes and he’d told me he hadn’t really eaten yet. I’d be like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to eat,’” Blatnick recalls. “But he’s doing much better at it now.”
Holliday doesn’t need to look far to learn from someone who knows his way around the weight room and putting on muscle.
His father, Matt, a seventime All-Star with the Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals, provides that example for both Jackson and his younger brother, Ethan, a highly regarded high school prospect.
“I went to a lot of baseball games growing up. You look around and guys are big and strong,” Jackson Holliday said. “That’s something I knew I needed to get better at.”
Matt Holliday was impressed with his son’s “internal drive” to get stronger this offseason, noting how training to be a professional baseball player has become a year-round pursuit.
From strength trainers to nutritionists to hitting coaches, players today have more resources at their disposal than ever before.
“As you get older, you’re going to get stronger naturally … but you’ve got to work for it, train for it and put the sweat into it. It doesn’t just happen,” Matt Holliday said. “I don’t even have to tell Jackson that. He’s very self-motivated. He’s an observer. He’s a good self-evaluator.
“He’s seen it with his eyes. He sees players I played with or against that took care of themselves and played a long time, and he’s seen guys who had a lot of natural raw ability but didn’t put in the rest of it and their career sometimes came to an end before they probably should’ve. He’s got a good perspective on it.”
Last year, Jackson and Ethan bugged their dad to have a batting cage installed at their house in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Their property has a barn, and while Matt Holliday was “reluctant,” he gave in to his sons’ wish at the beginning of the offseason.
But “the barn,” as they call it, has developed into more than just a normal batting cage, as a Rapsodo hitting simulator was installed as well as a pickleball court — a favorite of Matt’s and a common warmup before taking hacks — a golf swing simulator and a lounging area with couches.
Essentially, it’s a baseball player’s dream.
“It’s one of those things you envision as a kid,” Jackson Holliday said. “Me and my brother thought about how fun it would be. It’s one of those things that you just talk about and it doesn’t ever happen, but it did actually happen. It’s cool for us to have it, and it was a great tool for us this offseason.”
The setup is so cool — even getting featured on MLB’s website and going viral on social media — that other professional players started visiting the barn to work on their craft. Big leaguers Joey Gallo, Matt
Carpenter, Nick Senzel and Jazz Chisholm as well as Orioles prospects Heston Kjerstad, John Rhodes and Creed Willems were among those to swing by the compound this offseason.
“The Hollidays have a sick setup out there,” said Kjerstad, who lives just two hours from Stillwater and visited the barn twice. “He doesn’t have to go anywhere, he’s got it all there.”
While there, Kjerstad got to witness firsthand his teammate’s work ethic.
“He’s one of the hardest workers on the team,” said Kjerstad, also a top 100 prospect in Baltimore’s No. 1-ranked farm system. “He gets after it every day. Also, for anybody to be where he’s at or to be in this locker room, you didn’t just get by off talent at this point. You’ve got to put your nose down and keep working. He has that for sure.”
Now, with the training of the offseason behind him, Jackson Holliday’s next goal is to win a job on Baltimore’s opening day roster. Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said there’s a “very strong possibility” that will be the case, but with a deep roster with plenty of veteran infielders, it’s far from a guarantee.
Either way, he is expected to make his big league debut sometime early in the 2024 season, and when he does, Blatnick believes that’s the worst version of Jackson Holliday the world will see.
“Shoot, he’s just 20 years old. He’s ahead of the game, but he’s got a lot of growth left,” Blatnick said.
“With the way he trains, he could be a guy that does his thing for as long as he wants to, and he’ll be done playing baseball only when he wants to be done.”