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3 Pillars for Enhancing First Step Quickness

As a driven high school baseball player with hopes and dreams of playing college baseball your attention is constantly being directed towards sculpting yourself into the quintessential 5-Tool player. The 5-tools below are skills of the game that scouts are looking for in potential prospect(s) to help give their teams the greatest opportunity to compete and ultimately win a national championship.

    1. Your running speed & overall athleticism
    2. Your throwing strength & accuracy
    3. Your defensive skills
    4. Your batting average
    5. Your ability to hit for power

The intention behind this article is to hone in on the first tool…. SPEED, and answer the question “WHY?”. Why is speed such a sought-after tool for scouts and offer you 3 things YOU can do to develop this skill. Continue reading “3 Pillars for Enhancing First Step Quickness”

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What are the Most Common Pitch Movement Issues… And the Fixes

pitch movement

Having observed hundreds of pitchers on our Rapsodo Pitching camera during the past several years, it’s fair to say that there are a few tendencies that most high school and collegiate pitchers exhibit. While every pitcher is different with their skillset, we generally tend to observe similar opportunities for improvement in pitch movement.

In this first of three articles… Continue reading “What are the Most Common Pitch Movement Issues… And the Fixes”

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Post Pitching Arm Care Routine for Pitchers

A comprehensive arm care program for pitchers should be a part of every athlete’s routine.  Although most pitchers think of the warm-up when it comes to arm care, a post pitching arm care and recovery protocol is just as important. We often get asked about arm care after a throwing session.  Basically, it should involve 6 exercises that can easily done in less than 25 minutes and its primary purpose is to help restore lost mobility during an outing.  Here’s a quick summary: Continue reading “Post Pitching Arm Care Routine for Pitchers”

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How to Build a Baseball Throwing Program

baseball throwing program

Over the past few years, we have had hundreds of baseball players, specifically pitchers come through our facility. While they come in all shapes, sizes and technical ability, they all are looking to do the same thing, how to throw a baseball harder and do so safely working with a baseball throwing program.  So, while this article is about how we build throwing programs, it’s important to highlight that the body has its own language and agenda, and you cannot learn it by only learning 3 or 4 words.  You certainly can’t do it by slapping together some throwing drills with long toss and pull-down days. Continue reading “How to Build a Baseball Throwing Program”

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Creating Lower Half Stability to Create Upper Half Mobility

Last week I posted a “before and after” shot of a proprioceptive drill that I use with our athletes to train anchoring the lower half in order to create a more stable platform at the hip and to actually allow the athlete to “feel” what we are attempting to train during a common throwing drill that we use with most of our throwers. It received such a great response that I decided to explain it in slightly more detail. You can view the post here: Continue reading “Creating Lower Half Stability to Create Upper Half Mobility”

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Speed Training for Baseball Players

Speed Training for Baseball Players

Doesn’t matter the sport, everyone wants to be fast. Unfortunately, not everyone is, but everyone can surely get faster. This comes down to a few key principles, and it’s not just about running a faster baseball 60 yard dash. In this article, we’re going to review speed training for baseball players, position-specific speed and some of the techniques we use here at RPP to get our guys more explosive, so they can run faster on the field.  Here’s a brief outline:

    1. Basic Topics on Speed Training
    2. The Warm-up
    3. Linear Acceleration
    4. Lateral Acceleration
    5. Lateral Change-of-Direction

Let’s get into it…. Continue reading “Speed Training for Baseball Players”

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Pitching Biomechanics: Front Foot Landing Can Make Difference!

A pitcher’s foot position at foot strike can provide a solid foundation to facilitate both knee extension and efficient transfer of energy. Foot strike is the moment a pitcher’s front foot makes contact with the ground and is the starting point of energy transfer up the kinetic chain. This energy is ultimately transferred to the ball at release, with efficient energy transfer being aided by the pitcher releasing over a firm front side. A firm front side provides lower body stability for proper upper body positioning through release. This stability is achieved by extending the front knee from foot strike to release and is why knee extension angular velocity at release is correlated with pitching velocity and an important metric to examine in pitchers.

Continue reading “Pitching Biomechanics: Front Foot Landing Can Make Difference!”