Recommended Supplements for Baseball Players
Baseball season is here, and many of athletes are finding us in search of supplements to put their performance over the top.
Baseball players need to focus on the following attributes:
- Speed
- Strength
- Joint Health
- Mental sharpness
- Overall cardiovascular health
First order of business - your baseball diet:
Baseball players need to grow and maintain/repair their muscle every day. To do this, eat 1g (or more) of protein per pound of bodyweight each and every day. You can use whey protein shakes, especially post-workout, to make this number. This is proven on our whey protein studies page.
If you want to grow muscle and weight, start tracking your calories in www.fitday.com and find your maintenance calorie number, and then add about 500 calories of good, clean food. If you want to maintain your weight, then continue supplementing with protein and stay at your maintenance calorie number.
Now, on to the baseball supplements - These are all explained below the pictures:
| Daily Supplements (some are optional, see below) |    |
    |
|
| 75-90 Minutes Pre-Workout |  |
| 45 Minutes Pre-Workout |  |
| During Workout (optional) |  |
| Immediately Post-Workout |  |
| 20 Minutes Post-Workout | |
1 Hour Post-Workout | Eat! |
| Before Bed |  |
Daily supplements, taken after breakfast
- Multivitamins. If you are an intense competitor, take an extreme multivitamin. The recommended products are Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men or Universal Nutrition Animal Pak.
- Additional calcium and magnesium. Most multivitamins above don't have much of these essential minerals for your bones, and they are cheap.
- Fish Oil. This will help with heart health and joint health. We recommend Optimum Nutrition Fish Oil Softgels. Feel free to take these before bed if they give you any fishy aftertaste (they shouldn't), and put them in the freezer so that they last longer.
- If you have trouble focusing, consider L-Carnitine. L-Carnitine has been shown to help with ADHD patients, and it may help for your base focus as well. One Optimum Nutrition L-Carnitine 500 tab is all you need.
- If you are having joint problems, consider taking Cissus and Glucosamine Sulfate. We recommend USP Super Cissus Rx and Universal Nutrition Glucosamine Sulfate.
- If you're trying to lose some extra body fat (aren't we all?), take some CLA - We recommend 3 or 4 gelcaps of Olympian Labs CLA.
75-90 minutes pre-workout: Your preworkout meal, which could be a whey protein shake (35g is good). We recommend a scoop and a half of Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Protein Gold Standard.
45 minutes pre-workout - Your pre-workout drink:
Take one scoop of SuperPump 250 or some other nitric oxide powdered drink.
These drinks contain caffeine, which has been proven to increase mental focus. Do not take these products if you cannot handle caffeine while working out or playing. The nitric oxide benefits page will show some reasons why you can take these drinks.
Also note that most of these also have creatine in them. Creatine is great for baseball players - it grows muscle and helps with sprinting - see the creatine studies page for more info.
During Workout Drink:
You should drink water to stay hydrated during games and workouts. If you find yourself getting fatigued, consider sipping on an amino acid drink such as Controlled Labs Purple Wraath.
Post-Workout Drink #1 - Immediately after finishing:
Your glycogen stores are depleted and you need to start rebuilding. You need carbs, creatine, and amino acids to start the recovery process. While you can purchase these all separately, Universal Nutrition Torrent has it all covered for you, and tastes phenomenal.
Post-Workout Drink #2 - 20 minutes after finishing drink #1:
40g Whey Protein. Again, we recommend a scoop and a half of Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Protein Gold Standard.
An hour later, get your next meal going! Keep the food clean with healthy fats, protein, and non-processed carbs.
Before Bed
Never go to bed hungry - your body is asking for food and will become catabolic during your sleep - but don't eat too many late-night carbs either. Have a protein shake before bed. Casein protein digests slowly and can be used to keep you fuller overnight.
Some baseball players have asked about our Hormonal Supplements section. Thanks to Barry Bonds and a host of others, we all know that steroids, testosterone, and their precursors greatly assist in baseball. However, most people playing baseball are far too young to use these products, as they should only be used by people aged 22 and over. Additionally, there is a great chance that you will test positive and ruin your career. PricePlow does not recommend these products to any baseball player - if you need to grow muscle, stick with the natural methods above.