I am always asked what the best mobility exercises for baseball players are. Many coaches, athletes, and trainers focus on just shoulder mobility for their exercises. You can create shoulder mobility by doing arm circles and exercises like that. Or you can learn how to develop powerful mobility to command speed and power each time you throw the ball. Also, prevent injury.

What is Mobility

Mobility is not just about moving around your joint or a body part. The purpose is to activate the neuromuscular movement pattern. So, for example, let’s take rotating your shoulder when throwing a ball. When you rotate, you want your core, obliques, lats, mid-back muscles, and posterior shoulder muscles to contract and stabilize for the chest to stretch. And vice versa occurs when the arm moves forward. When one muscle stretches, another muscle contracts to stabilize and move. That is optimal mobility.

Mobility aims to create an optimal or maximal range of motion. But mobility is an equation, not just a singular action. Moreover, it requires stability and alignment to mobilize joints properly—for example, your hips and spine or your spine and shoulders.

Effective mobility is much different than just rotating your shoulder. What I mean is, is your range of motion restricted or functional?

Effective mobility is based on posture, alignment, and stability. Think about it. If your spine has too much thoracic flexion, rounded forward, you lose the range of motion and mobility of your shoulders. Here is a quick example for you to try. Slouch your spine and round it forward. Now lift your arm. You can’t. Of course, this is an exaggerated example, but you get the point.

So, when you think about throwing, you don’t just throw with your shoulder joint. Instead, you use your whole body to throw with power. So why would mobility be any different?

Rules to Mobility

Never force your joints to move.

Breathe into the stretch of your mobility. When you stretch and feel tight muscles in your movement, inhale. As you inhale, hold your breath and stretch for 5 seconds. And when you exhale, the muscle will be more flexible and mobile.

Activate your core during your mobility exercises to strengthen the neuromuscular connection and maintain alignment.

Proper Mobility

Start with some hip stability exercises first to ensure you are better aligned and functional. Alignment and stability will optimize your mobility and transfer power, energy, and motion effectively through your body.

You want to start with the hips first because the alignment of the hips dictates your spine’s alignment, and the spine alignment determines neck and shoulder mobility. So, understand this before you start rotating your spine and shoulder around. If your hips are unstable and not aligned correctly, your spine and shoulder won’t be functionally effective either.

You can injure yourself by doing mobility exercises if not properly warmed up or aligned, especially from sitting around for a few months. Although the exercises may seem simple, joints need to have alignment to maximize the range of motion and move well and properly, or the limitation and restriction will injure them.

Four Awesome Mobility Exercises for

Baseball Players

There are different levels you need to train to enhance and boost your mobility.

These exercises work great because they incorporate alignment, stability, rotation, and mobility all

The Pretzel

The pretzel has its name basically from how it looks in the photo. First, to start, grab your foot and stretch your hip flexor. Once you have grabbed your foot, rotate so that your other knee is on the floor. That knee must stay on the floor as you rotate through the exercise. You can use your hand to support the knee. If the knee comes off the floor, then you’re not maximizing or optimizing the mobility of the exercise effectively.

Lunge Dow Rotation

Get into a lunge position and rotate from the left to the right side. For example, start with your right leg forward in a lunge position. Next, stay in the bent-over position and rotate the dow or the weighted bar left and then right. As you rotate to one side, ensure you can feel your back muscles, shoulders, and oblique contract. It’s best to hold the position for a few seconds to feel all the muscles working in the neuromuscular pattern.

Laying Down Arm Rotations

Lay down on the floor and squeeze your glutes. Contracting the glutes will reciprocate and contract your abdominals isometrically. To begin, inhale and then lift your arms above your head. As you lift your arms up, your palms will face each other. Exhale and bring your arms back down. As you bring your arms down, you want to rotate your shoulder joints, so your palms face up.

Arm Bar

With the armbar, you’re going to squeeze your glutes first. Again, you want to keep your glutes nice and tight because they will reciprocate to your abdominals isometrically. That’s going to hold and stabilize that position. Next, take your left or right arm and put it under you. As you rotate, take your other arm, and raise it up. You are trying to rotate that arm backward. You will feel all the muscles in your back, lat, mid-back, shoulder, core, obliques, and triceps all working.

To see these exercises and more, check out the attached video.

For more mobility training check out the book, The Balanced Body.