If you’re someone that’s looking to become more agile on the diamond next spring you came to the right place! Below I put together a list of five things you can do to improve on-field agility for this upcoming baseball season!
1. Get Stronger
You absolutely MUST possess adequate strength in order to overcome inertia, decelerate, and re-accelerate in another direction.
2. Improve Acceleration Technique
I believe there’s a very close correlation between an athletes ability to change direction and accelerate. With that being said, start implementing drills that focus on improving your ability to accelerate. Below I included one of my all-time favorite exercises you can start to implement in your training to improve your acceleration technique – heavy ass sled drags.
3. Improve Ability to Decelerate
To improve your ability to decelerate you should spend time on improving eccentric strength. By improving eccentric strength your enhancing your ability to stop, and change direction more rapidly without the potential dissipation of elastic energies.
4. Incorporate Chaos Drills
Utilizing chaos drills is a great way to improve on-field agility because the drills will simulate the athlete in a chaotic (unpredictable) environment. The same environment the athlete is going to be faced with on the field playing their sport.
5. Practicing and Playing your Sport
In my opinion, the BEST way to get more agile at your sport is to play your sport. Think about it… every play on the diamond is unpredictable. For example: reacting to the ball hit, reacting to a pitch if you’re a hitter, etc. The more comfortable or competent you get playing your sport the more agile you will become.
