Baseball Training


Are you looking to become a better baseball player?

You’ve come to the right spot

Here at BaseballTraining.com we will share baseball training tips, programs and information to help you become a better baseball player.

Showing up for your baseball games and practices will only get you so far.

The best baseball players in the world are constantly training to improve their game, and our goal is to help you learn how to train like a professional baseball player so you can become the best player you can be.

Baseball Training Articles

Why is Strength Training for Baseball So Important?


Baseball is one of the most popular sports in the United States today, and seemingly every kid plays it growing up. When you have this large of a population and talent pool going into a single sport; you get baseball.

Genetic freaks,

Huge salaries and bonuses,

Huge crowds,

And legendary gameplay, dating all the way back to the 1800’s.

These reasons, among many others, are the reason it’s earned it’s name as America’s Pastime. Also for these reasons, there is fierce competition in order to make it into the more competitive environments in baseball, or be that “stand out” player that everybody on the team depends on to make the big moves and pull out the win.

This is why baseball players in the modern world have to properly strength train. Not only that, they have to properly strength train for the sport of baseball. Showing up to practice, playing during the season, and doing some hitting in the offseason will only get you so far.

For the very talented athletes, it can get them very far; but they will still never realize their true potential in this set up.

For the “middle of the road” type of athlete, this type of schedule will not take you far. This is where self-awareness becomes such a key component towards your success. If you know in your heart you aren’t a genetic freak, you have to admit that to yourself and commit to the process of becoming the best version of yourself. Trust me, I’ve seen plenty of mid-tier guys from a natural ability perspective become the top players on their team through hard work and proper training.

Here at BaseballTraining.com, we focus heavily on the training you need to become the fastest, hardest hitting, best conditioned, most agile and explosive athlete you can possibly be.

How do we do that?

Training for baseball specific performance.

Too many guys out there take free-workouts from magazines that comprise mostly of bodybuilding training. They do it for the right reasons; they do truly want to be better at baseball, they want bigger and stronger muscles, and they want a leaner physique. These things are all great, but they should be accomplished through baseball specific weight training and training programs.

Want to know why the most jacked looking guys aren’t always the best hitters, runners, or most conditioned?

Because you need to train for the sport of baseball, and not just train for the appearance of professional baseball players. Two extremely different programming strategies from an exercise physiology and nutritional standpoint.

It’s not a bad thing if you have done some bodybuilding, crossfit, or powerlifting routines. Some training is a million times better than no training as they are all going to provide additional strength and muscle mass that can prove useful in the game of baseball. The problem with those tactics though is that it won’t fall in to baseball specific performance, baseball specific pre-hab/rehab, or what you should be doing during both the in-season and off-season. They require different training structures due to their differing priorities.

Moreover, these popular forms of training, or just simply doing what you saw in a magazine or doing what you’re friends are doing, are not periodized in a way that is going to optimize your development long term. You need to take a step back, look at the big picture of your scheduling and control how you are going to get from A to B, instead of do a bunch of programs and hope you get there.

Now you don’t have the time to do all the research behind every aspect of periodization, strength qualities, strength curves, biomechanics, recovery, physiology, biochemistry, nutrition, supplementation, program design structure, proper muscular balance among many other things. You’re a baseball player, your schedule is probably already completely full of school and/or work, plus the insane time commitment required which includes all your practices, scrimmages, hitting, conditioning, lifting, game scheduling, etc.

So I can totally get why many guys simply opt for a program they saw online or in a magazine, learning it all is overwhelming and you just want to get in the gym or play baseball.

This is where we come in.

Take our blueprints with you to the gym so that you can accomplish everything that you want to accomplish in this sport and if you have the time, check out our videos and blogs which will be packed full of baseball specific performance tips to make sure you’re being guided in the right direction.

In fact, I would actually highly recommend sifting through all of our content because the current state of the industry is in a place where I can’t fearlessly recommend you go talk to your local personal trainer. In all honesty, most of them know jack shit about training or fueling the human body. They get a weekend certificate and then call themselves experts, it’s a real mess.

Everybody reading this right now, provided they are over 18, can become a personal trainer this weekend if they want to. Yeah you read that right, this weekend. It takes two days and clinics are run everywhere. So when choosing a trainer in your area, choose wisely and ask for credentials, testimonials, pictures, and who they have worked with or been mentored by. They should also be able to show you your ideal periodization for the year and explain why it’s the best thing to do for baseball performance.

Beyond the obvious benefits of weight training such as improving your strength and power, here is an additional list of benefits you can enhance through proper strength and conditioning for baseball:

• Improved bat speed
• Harder hitting
• Faster sprinting
• Elite conditioning
• Optimal mobility for top speed and agility
• Pre-hab exercises to prevent injury
• Total body structural balance to optimize power output, energy efficiency, and injury prevention
• Career longevity
• Increased muscle mass
• Decreased body fat
• Energy system specific baseball conditioning
• Explosiveness

When you have these characteristics, you can then practice your skill with a greater training quality which is going to lead to you being a better player. On top of this, all of these new tools are going to give you the most important tool of all; confidence. When your mind is right and you have the physical tools to match, you become a force to be reckoned with.

To sum it up, there is no such thing as fitness, the question is always “fit for what?”

Strongman competitors are lean and muscular, but would they be good baseball players?

No.

But would you be able to call them unfit? Also, no. The question always is, fit for what?

The same can be said for marathon runners, just because they are in incredible aerobic condition, it doesn’t mean they would be able to handle the repetitive anaerobic-alactic output you need to have in baseball.

Different sports have different requirements based on a wide variety of human performance indicators, so to be a better baseball player, you better train for exactly for the sport or else your efforts in the gym could be going towards non-inclusive components of what’s going to help you out on the field.