Top 5 Exercises You Can Learn From Baseball Players

Last Updated on April 26, 2024 by Ryan

Whether they’re playing baseball at the highest levels or just in local leagues, baseball players always want to be in their best condition. Always looking to find areas where they can get a competitive advantage over opponents, players aim for high performance on the baseball field, which requires fast and explosive movements.

Some of the best exercises used by baseball players help ensure two things – you’ll increase your explosive rotational movements, and you’ll strengthen your muscles to lessen your chance of elbow and shoulder injuries.

Baseball players need a strength-based exercise routine that ensures they build muscle without necessarily looking like bodybuilders. They need strong, athletic bodies to exercise movement as required – whether that’s batting, pitching, or chasing a ball in the outfield. 

The best baseball workout routines help the body by:

• Increasing explosive power.
• Providing a full-body workout.
• Increasing spine mobility.
• Increasing shoulder and ankle mobility.
• Ensuring that no unneeded pressure is placed on the shoulders, as they already take enough pressure during a game. 

Baseball Workout Exercises

The list of exercises below is not an exclusive list of exercises suitable for baseball players, but it does include our five favorites. If you perform these exercises regularly and correctly as part of your workout routine, you should see marked improvements in your overall fitness.

1. Prone Planks

An athlete’s body is only as good as their core. A strong core ensures everything else works effectively. You need to ensure you are regularly doing prone planks (and increasing your length of prone holds regularly.) A strong core is the foundation for building strength elsewhere. A great pitch or a strong swing needs a strong core. You need this to ensure proper power transfer whenever your body rotates. A weak core impedes explosiveness, and you won’t perform at your best. Improving your core will have the biggest impact on your athletic performance. 

2. Rotational Cable Row

Whether you are batting, pitching, or doing a similarly related motion, the rotational cable row is our next favorite exercise. It has benefits for both. Effective pitching and batting require effective hip rotation as well as power. The rotational cable row improves both. It helps with rotation and boosts your upper-body strength. You should add this exercise to your regular workout routines.

3. Alternating Lateral Lunge

The alternating lateral lunge benefits both pitchers and batters because it can help correct muscular imbalances. It also helps with the efficient transfer of power from one side to the other. However, this exercise is especially popular with pitchers, as it’s a strength-based exercise that effectively mimics muscle usage and power transfer in the pitch delivery.

4. Mini-band lateral walks

Power transfer and shifting weight is not only incredibly important in baseball but also generally. We’ve touched on it with every exercise mentioned here. Mini-band lateral walks are another great exercise for this. Another benefit of this exercise is that you can do it anywhere with minimal equipment. You can get a set of bands (like the ones at Victoremgear) and take them anywhere. Add them to your gym bag and take them with you when you travel. Booty bands can be used for plenty of other exercises too and help with butt exercises, glute exercises, and hip activation. 

5. Sprinter Starts

As well as power transfer, our other focus in this article has been on explosiveness. This exercise focuses on explosiveness and acceleration. Acceleration is important if you’re at bat, if you are running between bases, and if you are fielding in the outfield. You want that explosiveness to get between bases and chase down balls in the outfield. But once again, this can be applied to so many other things!

Baseball Exercise Takeaway

These five exercises are our five favorite exercises to improve baseball performance. However, you can also add these exercises to your other workouts, and you cannot help but notice improvements if they’re performed correctly.

Major League baseballers have expert fitness coaches and trainers. They also have all the time in the world to work out. If you’re trying to combine baseball with full time study or full time work, you probably need to balance your exercise with baseball training, your work or study, and probably family time.

If you don’t have time to do research and you want some extra exercises to add to your fitness routine, check out the two articles mentioned below. They may contain some of the exercises mentioned in this article but they also contain some others that you can add to your routine. 

• Aspirational Celebrity Workouts to Add to Your Routine Today
• 7-Step Beach Body Workout to Get in Your Very Best Shape