What Is The Fastest Way To Break In A Glove

Wilson Premium Glove Oil No matter you are buying a new baseball glove or making reusable the old one, you have to break-in the glove to make it game-ready. It’s a time-consuming process and you need to wait for a day or week depending on its leather.

Well, everybody hates to wait. A lot of people have questions that what is the fastest way to break in a glove? Or, is there any method that exists in the world? We answered this question for you practically by testing on our glove.

Yes, there is an easy method that you can follow to skip the waiting time. In most cases, it won’t take more than 12 hours to make it ready. We are going to teach you the step-by-step guide to the fastest way to break in a baseball glove method.

What You’ll Need?

To break in your glove you’ll need some ingredients. And these things are:

  1. Glove oil to softening the glove (We recommend Wilson Premium Glove Oil)
  2. A mallet for faster break-in (Check this wooden Hot Glove Mallet)
  3. Glove conditioner to condition the glove (We recommend Wilson Pro Stock Glove Conditioner)
  4. A fan to dry the glove faster.
  5. A soft cloth. (No matter clean or dirty but the cleanest one will be better.)

What Is The Fastest Way To Break In A Glove

So after getting these pieces of equipment this is time to do the actual work. So the break-in process depends on the types of your gloves. For the outfield, you may close your glove pinkier to the thumb. And for infield, you may be taking your fingers to your palm depending on the pattern you’ve purchased. So only you know how your glove will fit your hands. So let’s get started with the steps:

Play Some Indoor Catch With It

To soften the glove, first of all, you need to check how hard is the glove’s leather comes with. To check that, play some catch with it. Try to catch at least 50 fast and slow catches combined to measure its stiffness. After doing that you should get an idea about it.

Loosen Up The Finger

To make the break-in process faster you should loosen up the glove’s finger by unlacing it. Most people don’t do it because they don’t know about the benefit of it. They just apply glove oil on the glove and let it dry. But we always recommend unlacing the glove’s finger before breaking it.

Apply Glove Oil On It

It’s time to make your glove soften. Make sure you are using a good glove oil like Wilson Premium Glove Oil. Keep in mind that don’t ever use oil on your glove directly. There are two reasons not to do that:

  1. It will make your glove darken instantly. For those who care about the glove’s color, it’s something like a destroyer for them.
  2. It will take more time to make it dry. While we are talking about a faster process then we shouldn’t do something like that.

So how to apply it? Simple! Take a soft cloth and spray the oil on it. Then rub that oily cloth on the glove. Start from the padding of the glove and rub every part of it. Don’t overuse the oil on it.

Break Its Stiffness With Your Hand

After oiling, try to break in the glove manually by hand. The reason is it will make the break-in process much easier and faster. Wear the glove on your preferred hand and mold it as you want. How does it feel? Do you think you need to use more oil? If need, then apply more.

Pound The Glove With A Mallet

Now it’s time to give your glove a shape. Use a wooden mallet and start pounding it as harder as you want. Start from the padding of that glove. You can use a ball or your fist if you want. But it won’t be effective as a mallet. From padding to finger, cover every area of the glove while pounding.

Let It Dry For 12 Hours

Now check the glove manually. Is that glove got your desired shape? If yes, then you should leave it to dry for 24 hours. But at first, we told it will take 12 hours and now we are suggesting 24 hours?! Why?

If you dry the glove manually then it will take 24 hours to become game-ready. But you can skip the time to the minimum by using a regular table fan. Keep in mind that we are warning you not to use something like a heater or micro-oven.  The reason is the artificial heat will damage the gloves leather construction and reduce the glove’s life cycle. Even we don’t recommend drying it under the sun.

Leave it in a cool dry place under a fan.

Practice Some Catch With It

Check the glove after 12 hours and see it’s ready or not. If you think it dried perfectly, then relace the finger again to make it ready to play. Play some fast catch with it. In most cases, your glove should perform well. The more you play catch with it, the more it becomes friendly to your hand.

Conclusion

Take a look at this video tutorial if you got stuck in any situation.

This is the fastest way to break in a glove that hundreds of professionals recommended. We hope you liked our guide. Take care of yourself. Have a great day!

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