Baseball Hitting and Grip Strength

In order to understand baseball hitting and grip strength, you need to understand a few basic things first. There are many different areas of your body and your game that can be trained and honed in order to improve your baseball hitting performance. One of the most overlooked and the least understood is your grip strength and your forearm training. Master this crucial element and you'll be amazed at the difference in results that you see on the field.

When you look at a player crushing the ball all over the park, generally they can have all kinds of body characteristics. You might find a tall and slender slugger or you might find a short, stocky guy or a guy that seems to be nothing but a stack of massive muscles. The one thing that all of these hitters will have in common however will be strong, potent and quick wrists and baseball hitting grip strength that enables them to really make the most out of every swing.

Therefore it's of the utmost important to learn how to improve your baseball hitting grip strength and your forearm strength as a whole. It can make the difference in your performance.

You're probably thinking to yourself, well I already do forearm curls, what else do I need? That's the mindset and incorrect information that so many athletes today are dealing with. In truth, forearm curls aren't going to provide much of a boost to your baseball hitting. You're targeting your muscles in isolation, and you’re doing so in a way that might slowly build strength but will fail to build true functional baseball hitting grip strength and ability on the field.

Increasing baseball hitting grip strength

When you really want to increase your baseball hitting grip strength it's time to overload those muscles with heavy weights and use compound exercises and strength training movements in order to really stimulate muscle growth. That means performing the classics like dead lifts, power cleans, snatches and more.

These are some of the same exercises that you should already be using to help build explosive, functional strength all over your body. By targeting more than one muscle group at a time, they effectively lead to more muscle growth in less time, increase the release of muscle building hormones and help your body learn how to function as a unit instead of a series of independent muscles.

That's one of the keys when it comes to baseball hitting, because you really need your entire swing to be working as a whole. You need your core muscles, legs, arm and back all to be synched up throughout your swing so that you can unleash as much power as possible.

So if you want to train your body to function together, why are you wasting your time in the gym doing isolation exercises like forearm curls and biceps curls? Replace those with some of the compound exercises above, and additionally, use heavy weights on other exercises and in other routines as well to boost your forearm and baseball hitting grip strength.

If you're looking for an even harder challenge then try wrapping towels around the bar for some of these exercises. You can perform dead-lifts this way or you can perform pull-ups by gripping a pair of towels as well. Various other rows and lifts can be completed in this fashion as well, and you will really be blasting the muscles in your forearms as they struggle to maintain their grip and grow bigger and stronger than ever as a result.

You can also try other specific training techniques such as rope climbing, rock climbing, rope pulling and much more. You'll be hitting your forearms in new and effective ways, and you'll be working them in conjunction with other major muscle groups at the same time.

Forget about what you thought you knew about baseball hitting grip strength and forearm training for baseball hitting and stop doing all of those forearm or wrist curls. Instead, load up with heavy weights and utilize compound exercises to work out your body as a unit and to force your forearms to respond. Increase difficulty by using towels and by performing other unique exercises as well and at the end of the day you'll be stronger and better prepared than you ever have been before.

And because this type of grip training isn’t in isolation, you’ll also be working movement patterns and developing strength that can translate on to the diamond!