We all know that baseball is a great sport for the body and mind. There are so many benefits to playing baseball that can help your body out. America’s favorite pastime is better for you than you thought it was. TheBaseballReviews dives into the health benefits below.
Coordination
Yes, we all know that baseball is great practice for your coordination. After all, you have to learn how to swing a bat so that it lines up perfectly with a baseball that is thrown 60 feet away. Since this task is pretty challenging, your coordination is that much better for everyday tasks.
Baseball practice continues to teach players how to have better coordination. When I played baseball, my coaches always had practice techniques that helped with my hand-eye coordination. Some of the practice techniques that we practiced included hitting small whiffle balls, hitting with one hand, or hitting with different stances.
Also, the coordination aspect of baseball lived in my cleats as well. Throughout the years of playing baseball, there was a certain way to run around the bases that was taught. Knowing how to micromanage your feet, including knowing the right types of cleats to wear, was a large part of running the bases correctly.
Cardio Training
You might think that baseball doesn’t have a lot of running involved in the sport. All you see is that you have to get to each base, then stop. Or maybe you see that the fielders just have to go to one point to catch a ball. There is much more to it than just that.
In order to be the best you can be at baseball, you have to be fast. Sure, all you have to run most of the time it is 90 feet to first base, but the hard part that you have to train for is to be faster than the fielder. The faster you are, the more times you’ll get on base. I remember this one kid on my high school team just hit grounders to shortstop, but he was so fast that he would get on base every time. If you didn’t know, it is a suicide mission to hit a grounder to the shortstop.
In order to get faster, the player has to practice running over, and over again. Most of this training is sprinting, but a lot of baseball training has to do with long-distance running so that you can run for longer. If you hit a double but burn out when you get to first base, there’s no point of being fast.
Therefore if you really want to be fast in baseball, a lot of cardiovascular training is involved. If you want to get there quick, fast, and in a hurry, you can’t burn out after its over. You have to be ready for the ball to come to you again, or if the coach gives you the steal sign.
Muscle Training
Baseball requires some muscle training to throw the ball faster or hit the ball harder. There a lot of other confounding variables that lead to a faster throw or a harder hit, but one of the main ones is the muscle that you have.
You can see serious baseball players training like bodybuilders sometimes, because of the muscular advantage they will have.
Baseball focuses on a lot of core muscle groups, which is one of the most tedious to train. Some of the other muscle groups that baseball players try to work on is the chest and legs.
During your swing, it is best and most taught to push the bat out towards the ball. This movement uses a lot of chest muscles. Legs are one of the most overlooked muscle groups since people think baseball is all upper body. The legs are like the base, and if you don’t have a base everything else falls. The leg group of muscles is very important to baseball because of the power they generate in your swing and making long throws.
Another muscle group worked in baseball is the forearms. The forearms are used to grip the ball or the bat handle tight. Gripping the ball tight is used when catching the ball, especially as a catcher. A catcher hears the phrase “squeeze the ball” too many times when playing baseball. Forearms are also used in gripping the bat tight, which provides a lot more control. Sometimes the grip you have on the bat decides if you pop-up, or hit it over the fence.
Just Being Outside!
Nowadays we see more and more kids wanting to just play video games or watch Netflix inside. Little do they know there is a lot of a health benefit to being outside.
One benefit is catching some rays. No matter what temperature it might be outside, there is still an opportunity to absorb some vitamin D from the sun. Getting vitamin D makes you feel happier, productive and increases mental health. All of these things are huge benefits to just being outside.
Another benefit is to have some fun while exercising the muscle groups that I explained above. If you sit inside without any activity, you are prone to more injuries and decrease in muscle mass every second you are inside. I always encourage kids or teens to go out and play baseball, instead of playing it on the PlayStation or Xbox.
Social Benefits
All of the best friends that I have today, I have met through baseball.
Baseball is a sport where you have to act as a team to win, and one player can’t carry the team if no one else is up for it. This is why it brings kids closer together and lets them experience some positive fun as a group.
Also, since everyone is on a team, this is a source of networking in order to make you a better person as well. One of my best friends was on my baseball team in middle school and he was the most outgoing person I knew. Just by going to games and playing a fun sport together made his personality rub off on me. He also introduced me to his friends whom I never had in my classes or on my team, but we all became great friends and I still see all of them today.
Seeing all of these great people play, it made me want to be like them. This is another awesome social benefit to baseball. You want to get better just because of the natural feeling to try to be like the best kids on the team. After experiencing this first hand, I started to get better grades in school, the desire to be stronger and the friends to make me better. You know what they say, surround yourself with successful people and you will become one.
Overall, the social benefit of baseball is one of the most powerful health benefits, since it molds you into a better you.
Conclusion
Overall, the health benefits of baseball are overwhelming, and can really mold you into the best you that you can be. All of the physical aspects are amazing, and the social benefits are awesome as well.
If you’re on the fence about playing baseball let me tell you this, the health benefits are outrageous, and anyone who just tries can achieve a better person that they were before playing baseball.
