Should Baseball Players Bench Press

There will always be an ongoing debate as to whether or not baseball players, particularly pitchers, should bench press. On one side, the bench press is the king of all upper body lifts and many people believe it should be included into every athletes training program. The haters believe that the bench press is not “sport specific” and that it will eventually lead to shoulder injuries.

My stance is that the bench press is a great upper body exercise for most athletes, however when it comes to baseball, the risk vs. reward is too great. There are more effective exercises that will give you a better bang for your buck. I don’t buy into the idea that the bench press isn’t “sport specific” because no exercise is truly “sport specific”. With that said, trying to imitate baseball motions, like swinging or throwing, with cable machines or other heavy objects will be detrimental to a player’s performance.

Instead of bench pressing, our athletes will perform a ton of pushups with medicine balls, chains, gymnastic rings and blast straps. They also perform dumbbell presses with neutral grips. My favorite presses for baseball players are 1 arm dumbbell presses and alternating dumbbell bench press. Pushup and dumbbell pressing variations are superior to straight bar bench pressing because they are more shoulder friendly, teach the scapular to move, activate the core more, and improve shoulder range of motion. Also pushups and dumbbell bench pressing are much less of a risk when compared to the bench press. They are much easier to learn, alleviate any shoulder problems, and you can also bump up the volume.






As power athletes, we still need to train heavy with low repetitions. To accomplish this goal we substitute max effort bench pressing with max effort chin ups. This keeps my baseball players healthy, while also getting them strong and teaching them how to handle their own bodyweight.

So does this mean that my baseball players never bench press? Not exactly, however we modify the regular bench press. Instead of using the straight bar, we will use a Swiss bar that allows the shoulders to remain neutral. This max effort movement is great for baseball players who feel like they need to bench press. In conclusion, while I believe the bench press is a great exercise for most athletes, when it comes to baseball players, there are more important training considerations to focus on.


Joe Meglio
Performance Enhancement Coach