Frank Catalanotto: What is the Proper Pre-Season Hitting Prep?

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Baseball season is right around the corner. If you haven’t started, now is the time to transition into baseball-specific training. You should now take the focus from off-season training to preseason workouts.

During the first part of the off-season, you should have taken some time to rest and let our body heal from all the wear and tear of the long baseball schedule. Then, you go on to building back some muscle that the body may have lost during the season. This muscle-building phase during the off-season is so critical. If you don’t take it seriously, your body may be more susceptible to break down. The off-season is when you focus on becoming a better athlete; incorporating workouts that include strength, power and speed. Six to eight weeks before the season, your focus changes. This next phase of the off-season becomes more about baseball. The hope is that the gains you made in the off-season will enhance your performance on the field.

From this point forward, you should focus on hitting skill work. The skill work can include some or all of my favorites. Hitting off a tee, one arm drills, front soft toss and live coach pitch batting practice from about 30-40 feet away. The tee work allows you to take your time, get loose and focus on every little part of your swing. Make sure to move the tee to different locations of home plate. You should feel the swing working in unison before moving on to one arm drills. The tee is a great place to get that feel.

The goal of one arm drills is to get each arm working properly before putting both hands on the bat. If each hand is taking the correct path and is short to the ball, you know you can move on to soft toss.

Soft toss brings in the timing element. Making sure your swing has the proper rhythm and timing is very important. Be certain that your hands are getting loaded as the flipper is taking his hand back.

As a hitter, getting the timing down can be difficult especially at the start of the season. As you get closer to your opening game, it is important to track bullpens and to see some live pitching. Tracking bullpens means standing in the batter’s box (with a helmet) when one of your team’s pitchers are throwing a bullpen session. Don’t swing. All you need to do is try to pick up the ball out of the pitchers hand as quickly as possible and track it all the way in to the catchers glove. This allows you to see the ball at nearly game speed without having to swing the bat. No pressure. It allows the hitter to focus, use his eyes, time the pitch and ultimately gain some confidence. No one really likes getting in against that hard throwing pitcher during practice after that long off-season without facing a pitcher. This is a good way to ease into it. If you don’t have pitchers that are throwing a bullpen session that day you could always have a coach throw tennis balls firmly from a shorter distance. This will allow the hitter to get used to the game speed of the pitcher and not worry about getting hit with the pitch.

Just because the baseball-specific training has started, doesn’t mean that you stop exercising. It’s important to continue agility drills, running and core workouts throughout the pre-season.

Good luck as you prepare for the upcoming season!