Today I’m breaking down a full session of agility training for baseball athletes. Currently, the elite baseball players I work with are in the last month of off-season before heading off to spring training. That’s why I wanted to go ahead and peel back the curtains to share exactly how we’re progressing through change of direction…
Agility Warm-Up
Here’s a full warm-up I like to have my athletes go through before starting our movement specific warm up.
First and foremost, we start out this session like most others by focusing on some very basic movements to elevate the lower limbs. This helps us to fine tune these specific muscles and perform more quality work. Lateral work is great at working the hips while moving through the frontal plane. This also trains you to divert forces from leg to leg in consecutive movement.
- Lateral pogo jumps (both feet)
- Lateral power shuffles
- Ascending skater jumps
- Lateral alternating bounds
High Intensity Agility
Next we’ll get into some more high intensity / highly focused work. This is where we’re working on being able to elevate change of direction ability. These movements should be done at your maximum ability and require high levels of focus to get the desired work and outcome. This area of work is critical to reacting and making fast transitions with good footwork. Here’s what we did:
- Timed lateral shuffle x 5s
- Timed lateral shuffle w/ visual cues
- Lateral shuffle with tennis ball toss
- *Flipped* lateral shuffle with tennis ball toss
Final Progression for Agility
- Lateral shuffle to ball drop drill
- Lateral shuffle to sprint
You may have noticed going through this agility training for baseball how I start out by introducing simpler movements and then eventually progress into those more advanced ones. This might look like going from a stationary drill to a reactionary one where you’re working off a visual or verbal command. At the start of off season training, the focus should be on quality movement. As your spring training camp or early season approaches however, think about starting to add volume and increasing intensity.
Check out the full workout I did with my elite baseball athletes:
If you’re interested in getting a full agility training program for baseball or your other sports, be sure to check out the link below for top notch training sure to put you ahead of the curve:
