How to increase bat speed and power is a topic that gets a lot of attention and interest from our baseball players. Today, we’re going to review 6 topics and related exercises and workouts for the weight room that are paramount if you’re looking to increase your bat speed: Continue reading “How to Increase Bat Speed in the Weight Room”
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”
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-throwing and recovery protocol is just as important. We often get asked about arm care after a throwing session (for pre-throwing routine click here). It involves 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 “What is the Best Arm Care for Pitchers after Throwing”
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”
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”
Hip shoulder separation in pitching is a major contributor to efficient pitching and hitting mechanics, and a big piece of the puzzle to all things velocity. In this article, we are going to review the relevance of several metrics on hip shoulder separation in pitching using motion capture data charts as follows:
Continue reading “An Analytical Guide on Hip Shoulder Separation in Pitching”
Whether we’re talking about throwing velocity on the mound or exit velocity at the plate, improving and better utilizing ground reaction forces with a lead leg block is paramount. Training the lead leg to both produce and accept force will help to create a stable base and facilitate hip and torso rotation up the chain. Continue reading “How to Create A Better Lead Leg Block”
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 “Knee Extension Angular Velocity… Your Landing Can Make Difference!”
The lead leg block is the act of slowing down your body’s momentum with your lead leg at landing. In biomechanics, deceleration and the lead leg block can be represented by peak changes in angular velocity. Think about your car. The gas pedal represents your drive leg at the start of the pitching delivery (power output) and the brakes represent your lead leg’s role at foot contact (power absorption and transfer of force). Let’s cover this in three parts:
Continue reading “Putting on the Brakes to Throw Gas… What is Lead Leg Block?”
On any given day you can log into your daily feed on Twitter and scroll through a plethora of verbal grudge matches between strength coaches, pitching/hitting coaches and movement gurus arguing. Yes, arguing and criticizing each other’s ideology about athletic performance and how to improve it. These verbal assaults are usually fueled by the fact that one individual’s concept, theory, protocol or whatever you choose to call it may not line up with another’s. In other words, “it’s different”. For those of you that have the insight to be able to “discuss” and not argue, this blog is not targeting you, however you may want to come along for the ride. Continue reading “How to Increase Athleticism… Develop Efficient Movement”
