Baseball Workout For Top Speed, Agility, and Hypertrophy
My baseball have athletes have started trickling back in the gym. And, like every season, in their first month, I working on rebuilding their foundation. During the season, they’ve been throwing and swinging on one side of the body. This has most likely facilitated muscle imbalances.
Additionally, like in every sport, they’ve probably lost strength, muscle, and power during the season.
In their first month of training, I work to build from the ground up again so they can ultimately become stronger, faster, and more explosive than they were last season.
Below, I want to share one of their baseball workouts. In this baseball workout, we’re working top speed mechanics, agility, and packing on some functional muscle.
Here we go:
Baseball Speed
1. High Knee Run
The high knee run is a foundational speed movement. It has the athlete running in a way that he pops the thigh while keeping the toe flexed. The idea is that this leg action will translate to top speed mechanics.
2. Butt Kick Run
Here’s another foundational speed movement. It’s simple, just flex at the knee joint and kick the butt, keeping the thigh slightly angled forward. This will be progressed in the next movement to teach the athlete proper ground contact and leg action.
3. High Knee/Butt Kick Run
The third foundational speed drill combines the above two. Here you want to pop the thighย and scratch your hamstring. This teaches the athlete proper take off and touch down mechanics.
4. Tempo Run
For this, we’ll put together the mechanics we worked on in the previous three speed drills. To perform this speed drill, you’ll need thirty yards. The first five yards are allocated to acceleration. Once you hit that five yard mark, you’ll stay as tall as you can and step over your knee with every stride.
You’ll keep this pace for 15 yards, then decelerate. Keep your form as natural as possible while keeping those cues in mind.
Baseball Agility Drills
1. Short Lateral Shuffle
This is a basic baseball agility drill. Here, you’re going to set up three cones 2.5 yards apart from each other. Start at the middle cone and shuffle to one side, then shuffle to the far cone, and end at the middle cone again. Make sure your feet don’t cross, or get too close together.
2. Pro Shuttle
For this baseball agility drill, you’ll set up three cones five yards apart. Start straddling the middle cone and sprint towards the cone to your right. Decelerate and sprint towards the far left cone. Decelerate again and sprint through the middle cone. This is a technical drill, and one that I’ll make a post about in the future.
Baseball Strength Training
1. A. Back Squat
The back squat is a simple bilateral movement that’s a great builder of absolute strength. In their first month back from training, I’ll have my baseball athletes perform high reps of back squats to build muscle and structural integrity.
1. B. Banded Squats
The banded squat is a great accessory move for baseball players, as it activates the glutes and small muscles in the hip. These muscles are usually inhibited by tight hip flexors. It takes a voluntary effort to turn these muscles back on.
2. Walking Lunges
Walking lunges are a basic unilateral exercise to build strength and muscle in the lower extremities. In this workout, I’m using the lunge to build work capacity. I’m having my baseball athletes perform 10+ reps each side to do so.
Core Stability for Baseball Athletes
1. Banded Walks
This is an advanced core stability move. It actually combines an anti-rotation with overall core stability. It actually applies right to a sprint, because when you sprint, your body naturally wants to rotate. Here, I’m teaching my athletes to resist that rotation.
Where to Find More Baseball Workouts
To find more baseball workouts like this, you can check out Baseball Power Program.
It’s the same approach I use with my professional ball players to help you:
- Steal more bags
- Throw with more velocity
- Swing with more power
- Become a better fielder
And a whole lot more.
You can read more about it here:
Get 24 Weeks of Baseball Power Workouts
