Baseball Warmup Facts

Anyone who has ever played baseball knows the drill: show up to the field, throw on your spikes, take a light jog around the outfield, "stretch" in a circle and then throw. This whole routine eats up a good 30 minutes or longer, which in most cases is close to 25% of the entire practice!

This type of baseball warm-up has been around as long as the game itself but is it the best way to warm-up for a baseball game or practice?

Not even close and I'll explain why.

Baseball is a game that challenges the human body on many levels. Speed, power, explosion, endurance and flexibility are all needed to stay healthy and perform over any meaningfulful period of time. If you do not follow a proper baseball warm-up, geared at developing these qualities, your performance, or health, will soon suffer.

Most baseball practices utilize a static stretching routine at the beginning of practice. And that just means taking your body to a certain point in a stretch and holding it there for 15-30 seconds. Well, baseball is not a static sport. It's extremely dynamic.

Therefore a proper baseball warm-up consist of dynamic movements focused on increasing overall body temperature, along with temperature of each joint within the body to prevent injury and increase range of motion, and developing speed, power, explosion and the aforementioned range of motion.

Static stretching does not do this. Not to mention it's unbelievably boring and does not require much mind-muscle connection. Wait, did I forget to mention static stretching actually INCREASES the chance of injury and decrements power output? Tough to imagine but true and backed by scientific studies.

Dynamic baseball warm-ups are fun, challenging, force the brain to actually work (which in turn will increase baseball ability), increase athleticism and decrease injury risk.

Now for the best part … a properly designed dynamic baseball warm-up takes less than 10 minutes!

Not only will your players have more fun, become better athletes and decrease their risk of injury, but you will have 20-30 more minutes each and every practice to use on baseball skill work!

I do not think I need to explain just how efficient and effective this is.

Smart teams of all levels all across the world have adapted dynamic baseball warm-ups into their daily regimen. They all report better performance, less injuries and an overall better experience for the players. Hard to beat if you ask me.

The baseball warm-up also works great as a softball warm-up (or really any sport for that matter) to quickly get the players ready for action.

Some coaches (and players) are reluctant to switch to a dynamic baseball warm-up initially. But after they try it they're hooked! Most simply can not believe just how effective and efficient it is. And also wonder why they have wasted so much time on the traditional warm-up!

So my suggestion is to switch to a dynamic warm-up today. You'll certainly be glad you did!

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