homemade equipment

Slosh pipe.....easy to make, breaks up the routine, and a tough workout.

I've made a lot of stuff:

- Tires like you said for pulling and hitting w/ bat
- Plyo boxes (plywood)
- Medicine balls (basketballs w/ sand)
- Gymnastic rings (nylon straps and PVC or rope)
- Use "horsemat" for rubber gym type flooring
- Rig a galvanized pipe for pull-up bar
- Almost anything will work for obstacle type cones
- Agility ladders from straps and paint stir sticks

Honestly, you can DIY almost anything if you know what you want it to do. Also, it is amazing what you can do with just "body weight" exercises such as lunges, pushups, burpees, etc...

Great suggestions; to one I would add "jump rope" (obviously, this would ideally be a quality piece of rope). If I were the Emperor of baseball training, I would decree that any player that wanted to play infield would jump rope for at least ten minutes a day.

Oh, and sand bags. We use them all the time; very unstable to hold and they can be used for multiple exercises. Great for building the grip too!

Rice Buckets for forearm and grip strength.

Old Volkswagens are good.

car tires to throw around.

I am going to make a dirt pit to do my lifting on for the sake of surface training

I made all kinds of work out equipment for my son.

1. Rice bucket: To me the 5 gal rice bucket is one of the most effective methods of building the forearms and wrists. I would place money in the bottom from time to time to make it "rewarding". Keep lid on bucket to avoid spills and critters.

2. Weights on a broomstick windlass: Use a broomstick with about 4ft of strong 1/4 inch nylon rope and "wind" the weights up and down with your hands. (about 5 lbs)

3. Ball/rope/pulleys/weights: Sounds complicated but really isn't. I drilled a 1/2" hole in a baseball, glued a 1/4 nylon rope in the hole and attached two pulleys to the ceiling of my basement. One pulley in the center of the room and one where the wall and the ceiling meet. The rope would go thru the pulleys and on the other end of the rope I attached a 5 lb (I think) lead weight (plumbers lead). I then attached 6' of 4" PVC pipe (capped off on the bottom) to the wall directly below the pulley where the wall and ceiling join. I placed about 3 inches of sand in the bottom of the PVC to deaden the sound as the lead went to the bottom of the PVC pipe. My son could then go thru the throwing motion (slowly) holding the ball (which pulled the rope) with the lead weight being pulled up via the pulley system --- I know you at the contraption but his velocity peaked at 94 mph.

4: Pull up bar: I have 10ft ceilings in my basement that allowed a 1 1/2 inch galvanized pipe used for full range pull-ups.

5: Hitting/pitching net: I installed a net that covered one room in the basement floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Winter or summer it got a lot of use for the soft toss hitting and/or throwing into the net. I could also raise the garage door and he could throw from a greater distance from outside into the basement net.

Fungo

Rice Buckets are great...good thing people are mentioning that.

Another thing you could do is install a thick rope (if you have the room) and do rope pull-ups.

Another thing is building your own agility ladder. No need to spend 50 bucks on a ladder you can just as easily make on your own.