Baseball Workout Exercises

Baseball is America's national sport, with thousands of professional games played every year. There are also thousands of amateur leagues, where excited and enthusiastic players get a chance to play the game they love. To improve your skills for these league games, you should try some simple baseball exercises, which vary depending on your position.

  1. Strength Training

    • Proper strength training is vital to all baseball positions, whether it is the catcher, pitcher, fielder or a hitter. Building strength in the arms will give you more powerful and accurate throws and building strength in the legs helps them have more stamina in running. Improve shoulder strength with rotator cuff exercises. Start by performing a full can raise. Stand straight up and hold one weight in each hand. Slowly squeeze your shoulders together. Lift the weight to about a 45 degree angle and slowly drop the weights back to your side. The anterior raise is the same, except the weights are lifted as high as the shoulders. Try wrist curls to build strength in your arm. Hold the weight in your hand and keep your arm straight out. Slowly curl the weight upward using only your wrist. Leg strength exercises include jogging, sprinting and squats.

    Pitcher Exercises

    • Pitchers should do some shoulder, wrist and arm weight-lifting. Building strength in your arms gives you the ability to throw harder and longer. But don't overdo it. Becoming muscle-bound can work against pitching velocity. For a drill to gain accuracy, take the mound and practice throwing at a strike-zone sized net behind home plate. The fielding requirements of a pitcher are also important. Have a teammate hit you some grounders and popups and practice covering first base on balls hit to the first-base side.

    Catching Exercises

    • Catcher is arguably the most important non-pitching position in baseball. These catching drills should be used by catchers but can also be adapted for use by other infield positions. Focus on improving the agility, framing, blocking, throwing, fielding and receiving abilities. For example, jumping rope in full gear will get you used to moving quickly. Squat turns, where you squat, jump and performs a quarter turn in the air accomplishes the same goal. Use a pitching machine to give you receiving practice. You can also use the pitching machine to improve blocking abilities by shooting the ball low. Improve your throwing and fielding abilities by setting up targets at each base and quickly catching the ball and throwing to the target.

    Hitting

    • Improving your hitting skills will improve your game and help you win. Work on the shoulders and arms regularly to improve their strength. However, you must also work on the hips, as hitting requires rotating the hips. You should also work on reaction speed. You can also use regular stretching exercises such as yoga to keep muscles loose and flexible. Hitters can benefit from going one-on-one with a pitching machine and running the bases. Reaction speed can be boosted by doing wind sprints.