Baseball Workouts: 10 Exercises For Speed and Power

Whether you’re a seasoned player looking to refine your skills or a newcomer eager to dive into the game, understanding the importance of baseball workouts is crucial.

Today, we’re walking through the top exercises for baseball players to improve their strength, stamina, and explosive power. 

We’ll look at a few of the movement qualities and key components you should be training for as a baseball player. We’ll also provide an overview of what main muscles or types of strength baseball players use during a game. 

So, get ready to step up your training and hit a home run with your workouts!

Top 10 Exercises For Baseball Players

On the diamond or off, here are a few baseball exercises you can add to your workout routine as a player to hone your physique. 

1. Pull-Ups 

Pull-ups are a great all-around strength test that lets you build up your arm and back muscles. These are specifically a fantastic move for your lats (latissimus dorsi, the largest muscles in your back). 

Although we associate baseball with using more arm strength, strong lats and rotator muscles in your back help you get the necessary torque to throw a proper fastball. 

How to do Pull-Ups: Hang from a bar with your palms facing away from you (overhand grip). Pull your body up until your chin clears the bar, then lower yourself down slowly.

Baseball Benefits: Pull-ups build upper body and grip strength so you get better bat control and throwing velocity in a game. 

Pro-Tips: Want to know how to get better at pull-ups? For beginners, working on pull-up negatives, resistance band assisted pull-ups or even chin-ups for biceps to develop your strength first can all be great progressions for this exercise! 

2. Sprint Starts 

How to do Sprint Starts: From a low athletic stance, explode into a sprint for short distances (10-20 yards).

Baseball Benefits: This exercise improves acceleration and speed, which is crucial for baserunning and fielding.

• Pro-Tip: If you have access to starting blocks, use these to push off of as you start your sprint. 
• Focus on workshopping your stopping time as well. Being able to put the breaks on a sprint effectively is something that many athletes fail to train for, but it can help your agility in a game. 

3. Side Shuffles 

A good side shuffle will serve you well in baseball and other sports, like soccer or football. The ability to transfer your weight quickly lets you “stay on your toes,” so to speak. It’s an attacking position for many sports. 

How to do Side Shuffles: Start in an athletic stance and shuffle sideways without crossing your feet. Keep yourself at a medium-low height, like you are doing a half squat as you shuffle. 

Baseball Benefits: This exercise helps develop your lateral quickness for defensive movements and puts you in a position to strike, too at a moment’s notice. 

4. Medicine Ball Swings

The obliques and muscles along your sides are one of the key training areas for baseball. 

Why? 

Strong and well-developed oblique muscles give you better rotational capacity through your midsection. The motion you make when swinging a bat or throwing a ball requires a twisting movement from your waist. 

This exercise helps develop strength for that. By performing it weighted, you can help build strength in these muscles, too. 

How to do Medicine Ball Swings: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Swing a medicine ball from one hip to the opposite shoulder in a rotating motion.

• Pro-Tip: Swap out your medicine ball for a kettlebell if you prefer or if it’s all you have on hand. You can also use a dumbbell. 
• As a warm-up, you could also do this move unweighted to wake up your side muscles. 

Baseball Benefits: Increases rotational power for stronger batting and throwing.

5. Wrist Curls

Strong wrist and grip strength will help you release the baseball more effectively when you throw. A proper flick of your wrist helps with the point in your throw where the ball leaves your hand. 

If you want to put a spin on it or gain more ball control, wrist curls will help you build up and articulate the muscles in your wrists and forearms. We can apply this to swing technique for batters as well. For catchers, the wrists can also take an impact if the ball is travelling quickly. 

Basically, all players on a team should have strong wrists! 

How to perform: Hold a dumbbell in each hand with your palms facing up. Isolate only your wrist muscles, curling your weights upwards, then lower them slowly.

Baseball Benefits: This exercise strengthens your wrists so you have better control of your bat and the release in your throws.  

6. Dumbbell Curls 

How to do Dumbbell Curls: Hold a dumbbell in each hand, palms facing up, and curl the weights towards your shoulders.

Baseball Benefits: Builds arm strength for more powerful throws and swings.

7. Classic Push-Ups

The push-up is one of the ultimate strength tests. In fact, men who can do the 40 push-up challenge (40 push-ups or more in one go) are 96% less at risk of contracting cardiovascular disease. 

How to do Push-Ups: Come to a high plank position, keeping your body straight from head to heels. Lower your chest to the ground, then push yourself back up.

Baseball Benefits: Improves upper body endurance, which is important for consistent throwing and batting performance.

8. Plyo Push-Ups 

How to do Plyo Push-Ups: This is the same as the standard push-up, but it involves pushing off the ground forcefully enough to lift your hands off the floor.

Baseball Benefits: Works the explosive quality of your movement and generates upper body power. This can boost your throwing and hitting strength.

9. Speed Throwing 

How to Speed Throw: With a partner or using a net, practice throwing a baseball at your maximum effort for a few throws. Focus on your form and speed.

Baseball Benefit: Practicing your throws gives you better arm speed and power for faster throws and more efficient pitches. 

10. Broad Jumps

This is one of the best exercises for empowering lower body muscles, which can lead to sprinting speed and acceleration.

How to Broad Jump: Stand tall with your feet shoulder-width apart. Push your hips back and bend your knees to lower your body into a squat. Then, swing your arms forward and jump as far as possible. Focus on propelling yourself forward rather than upward.

What Qualities Should Baseball Players Train For? 

Knowing which qualities are more important for a good baseball player can help you choose better exercises for your success.

Explosiveness 

Being able to start from a static position to accelerate into a run quickly is crucial for baseball players. 

During a game, you need good athletic reflexes. 

The ability to react quickly to any situation with explosive movement— being able to jump, catch, run, or throw the ball in the blink of an eye— is an asset to any baseball player’s game. 

Unlike, for example, marathon running, which requires steady-state action and largely follows a predictable course, you never know what to expect in baseball, yet you need to be prepared for anything! 

Because of the nature of the game, training for explosive moments should be a key focus area. 

Strength 

Although it may not be as visually obvious as in wrestling or weightlifting competitions, baseball players need to be strong. 

Did you know that the average MLB fastball flies at a speed of 92-93 miles per hour? The average batting swing speed is also an astonishing 72 mph. Giancarlo Stanton of the New York Yankees even bats up to 80+ mph! 

To be throwing or swinging this fast, you need some serious arm and shoulder strength, as well as rotational strength from your core. 

Lateral Movement

Side-to-side moves are a real-life game scenario that you’d see in most popular sports. Baseball is no different. 

The ability to quickly shift weight and shuffle from side to side lets baseball players edge out another player to reach a base first or slide onto home base in the nick of time. 

Stamina

Finally, in a real-game scenario, you need to be able to sprint, usually in shorter bursts. 

Top baseball players have incredible reaction times and can propel themselves into action quickly to run or chase balls or other players. This requires strong stamina and good cardiovascular endurance. 

FAQs

How do MLB players get in shape? 

Baseball players may not always look the most shredded. There’s a stereotype that these guys are “flabby” or less athletic than top-level players in other sports. 

This could not be further from the truth! 

In professional baseball, MLB players need to maintain a high level of cardiovascular health for optimal performance on the field. 

How they do this is by incorporating both strength training and short-stint bursts of cardio like HIIT workouts or treadmill training to get their heart rates up. 

This combination of training modalities lets top MLB players be more well-rounded athletes on and off the pitch.  

How many days a week should baseball players exercise?

If you’re playing high-level or professional baseball, you need to hit the right balance of training both on and off the pitch. 

As a general rule, during your season (typically late March/early April to late September/early October), you want to spend most of your time training on the field, simulating the exercise that you would get in a real game. 

Spending 3-5 days training in the gym with the rest of your time devoted to training on a baseball pitch is a good training plan for most competitive or pro baseball players.  

Why do baseball players have big glutes? 

Why do you see so many of the top guys in the MLB rocking thunder thighs and, let’s be honest, some pretty ideal butt shapes? 

It doesn’t hurt to look good, but most top baseball players get bigger glutes and hamstrings from training explosive power moves: one of the key principles around baseball training that we mentioned at the top of this article. 

To be able to sprint, steal bases, or squat down slightly to generate power for a pitch or a throw, you’re directly working the glute and thigh muscles. 

Home Run Roundup

Good baseball training is a combination of real-life gameplay like scenarios reenacted on the pitch and quality exercises in the gym. 

For field baseball workouts, you want to be training for qualities like explosive movement and stamina. This can be done through a running program that incorporates sprint starts combined with a bit of steady-state cardio to improve your overall lung capacity. 

On the strength side, we want to hone in primarily on a few areas: arm strength, shoulder strength and core strength, in this case, particularly your rotational ability. 

By mixing and matching these exercises, focusing on strength training in your off-season and sprints and on-field exercises during the season, you can help to hit your baseball workouts out of the park!