Every year we have the privilege of working with a large number of pitchers between October and March. While these athletes come in many different shapes and sizes, all requiring their own individual strength and mobility programming, this wasn’t the case when it came to analyzing mechanics on the mound. Let me explain. Continue reading “Three Big Things That Can Help You Throw a Baseball Harder”
A while back, I wrote an article titled “5 Reasons Velocity Increases during the Season” (click here). Today, I’d like to counter that with “Why Has My Pitching Velocity Decreased during the Season?” and a few things pitchers can do to keep their bodies and arms in tip top shape during the season. Here are several reasons why your velo could be down:
It’s that time of year when I go out and watch all my guys (with a great sense of pride I might add) play ball and in doing so, get a chance to watch many other young pitchers on the mound as well. A common thread that I see with many of them is the similarities in the breakdown that happens in the later innings.
More often than not, I believe this is fatigue of the lower half. The pre-mature change in lower extremity kinematics and timing can generally be attributed to a lack of strength (or a loss of strength if they have stopped training in-season) bringing on many command problems as well as velocity issues. Today, we’ll touch on three topics. Continue reading “Losing Your Legs and Your Velocity Early in the Game”
While getting strong is a given in any sport, how quickly we can apply that strength (power) is what separates good from great. In a nutshell, the quicker you can produce force the harder you’ll throw. Continue reading “Improving Lead Leg Strength — Force Development”
This may sound like a warped title out of one of Aesop’s fables but it’s not. It’s actually a pattern we see all the time in many high school pitchers. When reviewing the pitching mechanics of many of these young athletes, more than half of them are not putting adequate force into the ground with the rear leg while moving forward. Continue reading “Pitchers Trunk Tilt and the One-Legged Throw”
Unfortunately, 90% of the pitcher population cannot handle the amount of lumbar extension Tim Lincecum put his body through. It’s no mystery that low back pain can severely compromise velocity, as well as command, in pitchers. In Part 3 of this series on Pain Site vs. Pain Source, we’ll look at low back pain and some possible “sites” distally that could be causing it. We’ll also look at some things we can do from both the strength and mobility (mechanics) side that may help to relieve unwanted stress in the area. Lower back pain after pitching can be caused by many things, but for the scope of this article, we’re going to concentrate on… Continue reading “3 Reasons for Lower Back Pain after Pitching”
Weighted baseball training is just one of the tools used in our baseball throwing programs to help athletes achieve a higher velocity ceiling. As with any protocol, the “dosage” (volume and intensity) in weighted baseball training is paramount in order to maximize their effectiveness safely. Below are the top 10 questions we get asked often regarding weighted baseballs, including how they work, and how we integrate them into a total throwing program used to increase size, strength and velocity on the mound. Continue reading “Top 10 Questions on Weighted Baseball Training”
Often times when someone describes a pitcher that throws hard, you’ll hear things like “he’s got a quick arm action” instead of “he must have a strong lower half”. Since the ball is released by the hand which is linked more closely to the upper body than the lower body, the former of the two gets all the props while the latter becomes the unsung hero. Continue reading “Building a Bigger Engine in Pitchers… The Lower Half”
Over the last few years, I’ve done manual therapy on hundreds of pitchers. One day, my business partner walked up, saw what I was doing and said to me “Nunz, isn’t there a blog in here somewhere? There’s seems to always be a waiting line at the treatment table for this.”
So, this seemed as good a time as any to write about the importance of getting back the Internal rotation (IR) in order to keep shoulder range of motion in “top-notch” shape all year. Continue reading “5 Minutes of Manual Therapy for Pitchers… Priceless”
In Part 2 of this series on pain site vs. pain source (click here for Part 1), we’ll look several ways the lower half pitching mechanics can lead to pitching elbow pain and how it’s not always originating at the arm (or from the upper half for that matter). Continue reading “3 Ways the Lower Half Can Cause Pitching Elbow Pain”
