Weight Training for Baseball Players

Even if you are a budding young pitcher, taking good care of your arm with graded training and playing is an essential strategy for longevity.

Comprehensive training programs for individual sports are often “periodized." That is, they are broken into three or four phases over the year, with each phase concentrating on a particular fitness attribute. For professional sports that utilize weights in their training — which is most these days, each phase has different objectives and each successive phase builds on the previous one.

A year-long baseball weight training program could look like the program outlined below. (Season cut-offs are based on the American baseball season.)

EARLY PRESEASON, JANUARY TO FEBRUARY

• Players are preparing for the season and starting to build up after the layoff.