When you train as many pitchers as we do, often times common themes begin to emerge. One such theme is the types of pitching mechanics issues that we observe often in pitchers. Well, here they are, along with some things we do (barring any glaring mobility issues observed in the assessment) from a corrective standpoint both in the tunnel and in the weight room to address them.
Continue reading “What are the Most Common Pitching Mechanics Issues?”
When I first started training, I like many others believed that if we just keep improving absolute strength our athletes would continue to get bigger, faster, and stronger. Fast forward to many years later, and I can tell you with a great degree of confidence (and experience) that most metrics crucial to sport such as speed, explosive ability, and change of direction can only be improved for about the first year simply by increasing absolute strength, as in getting stronger, by utilizing big compound lifts under high load. However, Continue reading “How to Create the Best Prescription for Power”
There is certainly no shortage of band exercises for pitchers. There are actually so many that it can make your head spin. We use several baseball band exercises as a part of our pre-throwing routine and over the years we have refined them down to what we believe to be the min / max of what you should be doing. Continue reading “Which are the Best Band Exercises for Pitchers”
It’s no mystery that one of the keys to successful pitching is a consistent release point. While I do believe that the term “repeatable delivery” is a bit of a stretch, and that many times inconsistency in your arm slot can be a major cause of difficulty in repeating your delivery, I believe we need to dig a little deeper and look closer down the kinetic chain to lower half pitching issues. Continue reading “5 Lower Half Pitching Issues Preventing a Consistent Release Point”
By Nunzio Signore (BA, CSCS, CPT, NASM, FMS)
It’s been a crazy year for everyone, but that didn’t stop us from continuing our efforts to develop great ball players while educating the community at the same time. Here are the top received blogs of 2020. Continue reading “Best of 2020… Strength Training, Pitching and Hitting Articles”
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”
