How To Make A Weighted Baseball? [Expert Opinion]

At a Glance: You can make a weighted baseball at home with easily accessible materials. Be sure to start light and give yourself enough time to ramp up to avoid injury.

Practicing with a weighted baseball is an excellent way to improve your batting abilities and muscular strength. It helps improve your throwing technique and serves as a training aid for players competing in other sports.

Weighted baseball training programs help athletes finish their swing and square up the baseball. Many pitchers may enhance velocity by utilizing weighted baseballs, but those with weak throwing mechanics risk injury.

Using a weighted baseball is a great way to introduce your child to baseball or to train professional baseball players.  It’s a fantastic training aid for enhancing muscular endurance and strength.

You may make your own weighted baseball at home or buy a ready-made one. Just be sure you follow the directions properly to avoid injury!

Making A Weighted Baseball

If you want to play baseball and find the conventional ball too light, you may buy a weighted baseball at your local store.

Alternatively, you can learn how to make a weighted ball and make one right at home!

Weighted Baseball Making Process

I’d advise purchasing a weighted baseball from a store if you need one for professional training, but if you’re a novice who wants to play at home or with your friends, keep reading.

Here’s how to make a weighted ball.

All you need is a roll of duct tape and a sharp tool to penetrate the baseball.

• Drill a hole in the center of the baseball.
• Then fill it with any heavy material, such as cement, plaster of Paris, or grains.
• Then cover the entire ball with duct tape.
• Layer it with the tape at least two or three times.

And there you have it, you have a nice weighted baseball without spending too much money.

How Much Weight Should I Use?

Start light and work your way up for the best results with the weighted baseball. The weights of the pack I recommend range from 6oz to 12oz.

To avoid injury, it’s a good idea to start light. While this may seem obvious, you’d be amazed how fast ego-driven players grab the heavier ball, only to discover that their arm is aching with pain the next morning.

A player cannot afford to suffer unnecessary injuries on the field. So leave your ego at home plate, and train intelligently rather than harder.

Can You Use Weighted Baseballs For Hitting?

While using a weighted baseball for hitting is not as common as throwing one, it’s gradually becoming more popular.

People never really gave it a chance until they discovered that using a weighted baseball for hitting offered a few benefits.

Here are some ways a weighted baseball helped players:

• It helped certain players who couldn’t get their hands through the plate.
• It allowed players to strike all the way through.
• It significantly improved the player’s arms stretch and follow-through long after the bat had left the ball.
• Using weighted baseballs for some soft toss warmups significantly increased bat power, possibly due to improved wrist strength.

What Are Weighted Baseballs Used For?

Weighted baseball training programs help athletes finish their swing and square up the baseball by matching the bat planes to the pitch planes and making contact in the center to the lower area of the baseball.

You get quick visual and bodily feedback when you don’t hit a weighted ball squarely. The ball will feel lighter at contact and fly off the bat with essentially no travel distance.

Looking at the top of the ball equals a weak ground-out, while looking at the bottom of the ball is equivalent to a pop-out.

Are Weighted Baseballs Safe?

If you’re a baseball coach trying to improve your players’ arm strength or an ambitious major league pitcher looking to improve your arm power, weighted baseballs are an appealing option. Although weighted baseballs are gaining popularity, it’s a good idea to investigate their safety before using them.

So, how safe are weighted baseballs? It is safe to use weighted baseball to condition the arms, as long as you throw it from a distance of 6 to 15 feet. Throwing farther may cause rotator cuff and arm tendon injury. As a result, many major league baseball organizations oppose weighted baseball training.

Weighted-ball training methods may be harmful to people who already have shoulder and elbow issues. Although other studies have found no higher risk from weighted-ball training methods, their methods and results have been restricted and occasionally conflicting. Swinging weighted baseballs exerts extra pressure on the elbow and shoulder. Recent studies on the safety and efficacy of weighted baseballs, back this up.

Another study comparing a six-week conventional weight ball training camp with significantly heavier weighted baseball camps found that players who used heavier weighted balls had faster pitch velocity but also suffered from more injuries.

The researchers underlined that the latter program was less demanding, with a lower throwing number (total number of tosses), and a lower throwing frequency (number of throws per day).

Prioritizing high-velocity training strategies in youth training, like with weighted baseballs, may be connected to an increase in the frequency of young players undergoing Tommy John surgery, with 15- to 19-year-olds obtaining the procedure at a far higher rate than any other age group. This is a devastating injury that puts a promising young player’s future in jeopardy. With young athletes already prone to injury, having effective and time-tested training methods is critical.

In short, weighted baseball training methods may improve pitching velocity but also increase shoulder motion, elbow stress, and injury rates.

Are Weighted Balls Good For Pitchers?

Many pitchers may enhance velocity by utilizing weighted baseballs, but those with weak throwing mechanics risk injury. So try your hand at it if you’re physically capable of handling a heavier ball, but allow time for improvement. It takes roughly six weeks of weighted ball training to observe a change.

How To Make A Weighted Softball

Some of you may be new to this, but making a weighted softball is not that tough.

You’ll need a ball and some finishing nails. 6d-2″, or 8d-2.5″, or even 10d-3″ nails will do nicely.

• Soak the ball in water for a few minutes.
• Use a hammer to drive the nails in until they’re flush with the seams, or punch them in further to a level where you will barely be able to see them.
• Add as many nails as you want to achieve the desired weight. Be sure to add them in a symmetrical pattern.

 The nails will not affect your grip on the ball.

FAQs

Conclusion

Using a weighted baseball for hitting is gaining popularity. Weighted baseballs are neither intrinsically “dangerous” nor “safe.” The key is to recognize how they contribute to player development and physical preparation and work on reducing associated risks. This piece, we hope, is a start in that direction.

Reference:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232216387_Effects_of_Baseball_Weighted_Implement_Training_A_Brief_Review
http://coachbillpeterson.com/is-weighted-baseball-training-dangerous-for-pitchers/
https://baseballboom.com/weighted-baseball-safety/
https://www.stack.com/a/weighted-baseball-drills/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7930148/
https://www.woodbat.org/
https://www.oatesspecialties.com/index.php/taptm-weighted-baseball.html
https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2010/10/weighted-baseball-training-a-get-started-guide/
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-make-a-weighted-baseball
https://elitebaseballperformance.com/are-weighted-baseball-velocity-programs-safe-and-effective/
https://www.baseball-fever.com/forum/general-baseball/baseball-101-coaching-fundamentals/3516460-diy-weighted-baseballs
https://baseballdevelopmentgroup.com/2016/03/weight-baseballs/