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Elementum nulla turpis cursus. Integer liberos kusto euismod aene pretium faucibus ...
Elementum nulla turpis cursus. Integer liberos kusto euismod aene pretium faucibus ...
- Why Core Exercises For Baseball Are Important
- The Best Baseball Core Workouts
- The Benefits of Good Balance and a Strong Core
- Rotational Push Up – The simple rotational push up is a good way to build upper body strength and core stability. Complete a push up as normal, then once your arms are fully outstretched rotate your torso and extend one arm up towards the sky. Return to the normal position and then do the same on the other side.
- Oblique Crunches – Lie on your side with your knees on top of each other and slightly bent. Perform the “crunch” motion as you would normally, but focusing on the muscles down the side of your torso. Hold for a sec at the top of the crunch before slowly coming back down. See here for more info.
- Cable Rotation With Physioball – Cable rotations are a good way of mimicking bat motion. See the video below for perfect form:
- Catching - Stand on the board and as someone to throw the ball to you. Try to catch the ball and throw it back without losing your balance.
- Rotating - Stand in a balanced position, facing forward with your knees slightly bent, and then slowly rotate at your hips, keeping your legs in place but twisting your torso.
- Hitting - Once you are confident on the board, you can start to practice hitting while balanced on it.
- Improves your rotational power - The twisting motion that is so important to both pitching and hitting is improved by having strong abdominal muscles that allow you to explosively turn your hips.
- Improves power transfer - A strong core enables you to efficiently transfer power from one part of your body to another. This is particularly important if you want to improve your batting average, but it will also give you great acceleration and sprint speed.
- Prevents back pain - According to spine-health.com “strong back and abdominal muscles can help heal most types of back pain, especially the most common form of back pain caused by soft tissue injury or back muscle strain.” Proactively building these muscles before you sustain an injury will help to prevent back pain altogether. Even a slight niggling pain can damage your confidence and have a serious impact on your performance.
- Improves Posture - Web MD states that “The best way to improve your posture is to focus on exercises that strengthen your core”. This has the added benefit of taking with pressure off your spine, further reducing any risk of injury. Good posture also allows you to stand tall, with confidence, which can give you an important psychological benefit in any sporting encounter.
- Flattens stomach - Strong core muscles are a key part of achieving the flat stomach that most people strive for in their exercise regime. Looking and feeling good can provide a real boost to self-confidence, which you can carry into your game.
This is a guest post from Rob Smith, owner of 500CalorieFitness.com, a site that promotes the benefits of intermittent fasting and regular exercise as part of a well-rounded, healthy lifestyle.
If you’re a serious ball player then you need a great baseball core workout as a part of your strength training program. There’s no two ways about it.
Taking time to build the muscles around your abdomen and lower back will improve your core strength and stability, which will ultimately help you pitch faster, hit harder and sprint quicker.
In this article we’ll look at:
More...
Core Exercises For Baseball - Why Are They Important?
Baseball conditioning drills at the amateur level are often too focused on cardio exercises, and long distance runs. This type of workout doesn’t replicate the types of movements you’ll encounter during the game, and will do little to improve your performance.
Focusing instead on different exercises that build strength will have a much greater impact on all elements of your game.
A strong core will improve your balance, and as Ryan has said before when it comes to your batting stance, "balance is your best friend."
Preventing Injuries
Core exercises are also really important for injury prevention.
According to ESPN, straining the oblique abdominal muscles is one of the most common and problematic injuries that pitchers sustain.
A good baseball core workout will help to ensure that you don’t have to sit out the important games through injury.
The Best Baseball Core Workout
Change up your workout with a selection of the exercises below and you’ll notice the difference in no time.
Bat Speed Exercises
Medicine Ball Exercises For Pitchers
Medicine ball exercises are very effective at building core strength and are a great way to mimic the motions involved in pitching, but with increased resistance. This increased resistance is the key to building the strength that will boost your speed.
This video shows a selection of different exercises with the medicine ball for pitchers:
Balance Drills For Baseball
Balance Board exercises are an excellent way to improve your core strength, your mental focus and of course your balance.
Once you’ve come to grips with the basics of using a board you can start to introduce exercises that will help to improve your game. For example:
There is no need for a purpose built baseball balance board, so you can experiment with the different types of boards and see what works for you. Many of the manufacturers talk specifically about how their products can be used for baseball training including:
This specific type of core and balance training also has the added benefit of improving your hand eye coordination, which is essential for both batting and fielding.
Pictured: The StrongBoard Balance
The Benefits Of Core Training
There are several important benefits of the baseball core workout that will also help you in your everyday life:
Over To You...
Many of these exercises can be done regularly in the comfort of your own home, and including them in your fitness program will benefit your everyday life, not just your baseball performance.
If you want to take your game to the next level you need to look beyond the traditional strength and conditioning exercises. Including a baseball core workout in your regime, will help you build the balance, stability and explosive power you need to propel you to success.
It really should be simple - how to hold a baseball bat, that is.
And, generally, it is simple, especially if you've been playing the game for a while. Most people don't give it that much thought. "Grip it and Rip it", they say.
But, lately, there's been two schools of thought on the proper way to grip a bat. And it seems like no one can get on the same page.
More...
Box Grip vs. Door Knocker Grip
Let me just get this out of the way before breaking these two different grip styles down: Either way is fine. In my opinion, it's more about a level of comfort than anything else. And if you're getting the results you desire, than there's no problem.
So, let's not get too stressed when discussing the pros and cons of both ways to hold the bat.
However, if you feel as though you're not hitting the ball as hard as you could be, you may want to consider something as simple as switching the way you hold the bat. Okay, here we go...
"Box Grip"
As you can see, the reason this style of holding a bat is called "box grip" is that it resembles a box with both pairs of your knuckles forming the sides.
This grip is very common among players of all ages and skill levels, and it's often the grip that feels the most natural.
This is the bat grip that I had for the majority of my playing years.
And honestly, it's the grip that you'll see the most often in video and images of professional baseball players. Especially the power hitters. This grip may be your best option for generating the most power from your swing. And power is good.
It accomplishes this because it promotes more torque through the swing by keeping your back elbow up, plus it's harder to roll your wrists over during or before contact. It accomplishes this because it makes it easier to keep the palm of your top hand facing up when making contact. That's all good stuff during swing mechanics.
But power isn't everything, and you may find that you prefer a different bat grip.
"Door Knocker Grip"
This bat grip gets it's name from the way your "door knocking knuckles" line up vertically on the bat handle.
I had not heard of this style until I was in my twenties. But one of my teammates started praising it as the "correct" way to hold a baseball bat.
I'm not sold on that, exactly, but I gave it a try. And I liked it.
It's a very comfortable grip that keeps the bat handle close to your fingertips. It gives me a lot of bat control, which for a contact hitter like myself, is key.
And that's who I feel this grip is more beneficial to - contact hitters. It gives you just a tiny fraction more of bat control, which could be the difference between a ground ball to second base, or a line drive up the middle.
As I said before, either one of these grips is acceptable, regardless of whatever else you hear on the internet. Experiment with what feels more comfortable to you. You may find that somewhere in between these two grips is what works for you. So be it.
The Most Important Things To Remember When Holding A Baseball Bat
Regardless of which school of a bat grip you fall under, there are some things that all coaches and players will agree on when it comes to how to hold a baseball bat.
Keep the Bat out of the Palms of Your Hands
If your baseball bat is buried in the palms of your hands, you are strangling it! Stop you murderer!
Actually, the only thing that you're murdering is your batting average.
Because when your bat is being held that deep in your hands, you're making it very hard to make the split second adjustments necessary to barrel up a pitch that can be breaking any number of ways or headed for any number of areas in the strike zone.
Letting your fingers control the bat allows you to have much better bat control.
Keep Your Grip Loose
Much like the aforementioned tip, keeping a loose grip on the bat improves bat control, but more so it increases bat speed, which increases power.
Loose muscles are fast muscles - and when it comes to a baseball swing, there are a million fast-twitch muscles involved in making the bat whip through the zone.
Next time your on the field, or in the cage with a tee, do this little test and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Take a hack while holding the bat as tightly as possible.
Then take a hack with as loose of a grip as you can (without losing grip of the bat obviously).
Notice a difference? Of course you do. The ball should jump of the bat when you're holding it loosely as opposed to merely thumping lifelessly off the bat while over gripping it.
Your batting grip will naturally tighten as needed as your swing progresses. Just keep it loose at the beginning of your swing and you'll have a much quicker bat.
How To Hold A Baseball Bat - What The Rest of the Internet Says...
eFastball.com has a great breakdown on this exact subject. It's full of lots of quotes from players and coaches - some of which are quite contradictory.
Check out this video from Antonelli Baseball
And, lastly, this video from Don Mattingly, which flies directly in the face of what many baseball experts on the internet preach when it comes to holding a baseball bat.
So Which Grip Do I Use?
Well, believe it or not, if you couldn't already tell by my lack of a true position on the topic - I use a grip slightly in between the two. Which I suppose is a grip that has been referred to as the "Rings Grip" elsewhere on the internet.
Which style of grip do you prefer? Leave a comment and let us know!
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