Baseball is one of America’s favorite sports, along with football, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer. It has been around since the early 1800s, which makes it unsurprising that the sport has become a family tradition. The basic concept of baseball is taught to kids at a young age, often through throwing balls and playing catch.
When children start manifesting their liking towards the sport, they join little leagues and compete against other kids in the spirit of friendly competition. Some families spend their weekends at the ballpark, eating hot dogs and watching their favorite teams crush their rivals.
It’s safe to say that baseball is America’s favorite pastime, and it should come as no surprise that many aspiring athletes choose to pitch and bat instead of shoot hoops or throw touchdowns. The baseball field welcomes everyone; you can choose to be a pitcher, catcher, hitter, or fielder.
But to become a good baseball player, you will have to exert effort into training. The phrase “practice makes perfect” might be cliché, but it is true. The more you train and practice the sport, the more you will become a better athlete. Find out how you can train more efficiently through these tips below.
Pitching Accuracy
A great baseball game always begins with the perfect curveball. No matter how many times the ball is thrown over the course of the game, the pitcher should achieve varying throws based on tweaks in velocity, hand position, movement, and of course, the pitch trajectory.
But speed isn’t everything in the art of pitching. If any quality could be considered the most important, it would be accuracy without a doubt. Any player can throw a ball with great speed, but not everyone can throw a perfect ball that disrupts the hitter’s timing every single time.
Calculating the speed, velocity, and trajectory of the balls being thrown can make accurate pitches possible, but that often takes too much work. Luckily, you can use a baseball radar gun to do all those for you—capture the ball’s movement, calculate its speed, and measure the time it will take before the ball hits the target.
When you have collected enough data to act as a basis for your strategies, you can develop better and more accurate pitches. This way, you’re not only training to throw curveballs and speed pitches, but you’re also learning about the science that comes into play as you pitch.
Swing Motion
To counter the perfect curveball, a hitter needs to calculate the speed and time it will take before the ball reaches its bat. This will allow the ball to ricochet from the bat and into the air because a moment too soon or too late can cost the hitter the entire play.
Besides the timing, the hitter should also know how to vary the power of their swings and use the centripetal force. Hitting the ball isn’t only dependent on the strength of the arms; it requires the stimulation of the whole body to properly swing the bat with enough hitting power to propel the ball into the air.
This motion can be challenging to practice in an open field with a human pitcher because you will have to take their ability to sustain consistent pitches into account. People can easily get tired, but a pitching machine won’t. Such a machine can provide you with accurate pitches every time over a set duration.
Training in a batting cage with a pitching machine can allow you to focus more on your swings and movement. And because the pitches have more accuracy, you can recognize the pitch, calculate the velocity, and generate enough power to create the perfect hit.
Running Speed
Strength training to build stamina is just as necessary as training for agility when it comes to running. Any physically fit person can run in quick bursts without a problem. But to sustain the act without getting weak in the knees or struggling to breathe is a different matter altogether.
You can undergo various speed training drills to increase your agility, but remember to build your strength, stamina, and endurance as well. This way, you will have the ability to run across the field and past all the bases without breaking a sweat.
With a good conditioning routine, you will create more muscle mass to hone your strength, endurance to sustain fast sprints, as well as optimized mobility for speed and agility. Training how to run fast doesn’t stop the moment you cover enough ground on a limited time frame because it’s an unending cycle.
Baseball, like every other sport, is something that you train for so you can become a better player. You don’t just pick up a bat or throw a ball and expect to become an athlete; it takes hard work, perseverance, and willful determination to excel in the field of baseball.
