Are You Ready to Lift Weights Yet?

Baseball workouts by Matt “Wiggy” Wiggins

Why are correct baseball workouts so essential?

As you know, baseball is a fairly technique-intensive sport. In other words, having proper mechanics can make or break you as a ball player.

Many trainers try to replicate sports in the gym. They come up with all kinds of goofy exercises that supposedly simulate various aspects or motions of the sport itself. Now, while making sure you target certain musculature is a good idea (e.g. - having your pitchers doing various shoulder strengthening, Range of Motion, and prehab exercises) and even certain types of training (why anybody has baseball players jogging long distances I'll *never* know...when are they ever gonna do that in a game?), trying to actually replicate the sport itself is downright stupid.

At best, it wastes your time. At worst, it will take the proper mechanics you have now and goof them all up.

(I once saw a trainer who'd devised a contraption where a guy would grab a rod like a bat, and practice swinging it like a bat, only the rod had rubber tubing attached to it from the wall, and would create resistance as the player swung the "bat". What a mess. Who knows how many guys came out of an off-season of training with a totally jacked up swing after that.)

Strength & conditioning (S&C) training should be about general qualities - making you stronger, faster, more explosive, increase the overall amount of work you can do, etc. Then your actual baseball practice is where you apply that newly built strength, power, etc.

Wanna be a more powerful hitter? Go get more powerful in the gym. Then spend time in the cage. Apply the first to the second, and I guarantee that ball is gonna go further.

But, does that mean you should automatically just join the nearest gym and get to work? Not necessarily.

First of all, you want to make sure you're doing the right kind of S&C program. But that's another discussion for another time. (And don't count on the local gym trainer to have a good program for you - while there are some exceptions, most local gym trainers are simply clueless.)

More importantly though, you need to make sure that you're in some sort of shape before you hit the gym.

For example, a buddy of mine runs a local sports performance facility, and he's got a group of middle school baseball players that have been coming into his place for a couple weeks now. He's been running them through some fairly basic footwork and speed drills a couple times per week.

The first thing most of these kids asked my buddy the first session was if they were going to be lifting any weights. And the answer was "no". When they asked why, my buddy had them go through the first part of their workout - some basic bodyweight exercises. This part of the workout was nothing crazy - some pushups, squats, situps, etc.

Most of these kids couldn't even do 20-30 free standing squats (no weight added) before they had to stop and rest.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that. They were just kids, and they can work on it. Something like that wouldn't take that long to increase anyway. But if you can't do over 20 free standing squats in a row, you have no business lifting weights. Build some basic strength and control over your body with calisthenics before you hit the gym.

Kinda like my dad used to tell me when I was growing up and wanted to start working out - if I couldn't do a good pushup (which I couldn't at the time), I had no business trying to do bench presses.

If you think you wanna start lifting weights, but aren't sure you're in shape enough to yet, try just doing some pushups, situps, and squats, all in a row. Do them each day, and add a few reps every few days. Don't be afraid to rest a little, then keep going.

Once you can crank out 50 pushups, 50 situps, and 100 squats with no rest, you should be ready to hit the gym hard.

Matt "Wiggy" Wiggins has been training for over 16 years, has written books, and published many articles on the subject. To find out more about his cardio workout and workout plans that don't need a gym, machines, or even make you run, check out www.workingclasscardioworkout.com. If you're an MMA fan, he also has MMA workouts available for your MMA training.

More reading on baseball workouts.

ADD TO YOUR SOCIAL BOOKMARKS: Blink Del.icio.us Digg
Furl Google Simpy Spurl Technorati Y! MyWeb