pitching question?

It's not about arm strength, as velocity doesn't come from the arm.

Your loss of velocity could be an arm issue, do you have any pain at night? When it's in certain positions?

It could be a mechanical issue, or it could be from doing time-wasting things like long-toss, drills, etc...

Have you been weight lifting? What kind of exercises? If you put on the wrong kind of mass, you'll hurt your speed of movement , which is a huge part of velocity. I talk about (briefly) what kind of workouts are good.

For velocity, the answer is simple, really, but feared by quite a few coaches and pitching instructors. Why? Because many teach what they have been taught, not necessarily what has been scientifically proven.

To increase velocity, a great way to do it is to increase your speed of movement and your momentum.

From 31.5 of The Science and Art of Baseball Pitching: "As has been pointed out earlier, once the arm is ****** to throw, the arm movement propelling the ball is not powered by muscular contraction (Jobe, Tibone, Perry, & Moynes, 1983). Propulsion comes from elastic energy stored in the appropriate structures. As a tangential explanation, this is why weight training of any form will not increase arm throwing velocity; because arm-throw velocity is not caused by the muscular movements trained by using weights. Finally, after the ball release when the arm segments have to slow down to prevent injury, high levels of muscular contractions take place to slow the join movements and absorb the kinetic energy in the high-velocity limb movement.

A basic rule in the stretch-shortening (elastic energy) cycle is, the faster the structures about a joint are put on stretch, the faster will be the ensuing release movement. If one wanted to jump high from a standing position, a quick leg dip will result in a higher jump than would a slow dip. The quicker a movement is, the greater is the amount of kinetic energy it forms. The greater the amount of kinetic energy, the greater is the amount of elastic energy that can be developed."

Now just incase I lost you there, it's saying the quicker you move (which shows up in stride length), with good momentum and no hesitation, the faster you'll throw.

As soon as you lift your leg (the one closest to the plate) up, make a strong lunge, push or leg drive into a longer stride. (You want to move leading with your front hip)

The main focus is to move your body faster toward the plate, which will equate into a longer stride. I suggest looking at this video of Sandy Koufax. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm8oHYRS6hA

No hesitation in his delivery, a stride length of what looks to be close to his height if not even further out. It was the same with Nolan Ryan as well. It will put your body in a better position to throw the ball, thus less chance for injury and better control.

Also, look at 0:31 and 0:43 of that video. Do you see him taking a step directly back? That adds more momentum because you're putting your body at a greater distance from the plate. More momentum = more velocity.

Also

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hAviGQNvJrE

87 MPH with a 133% stride length. Talk about speed of movement.

Now I know you didn't ask this part, but I'm going to respond to it anyways:

1) Long-toss... DON'T DO IT! (unless you're doing it prior to going on the mound, as a means of building up your level of intensity. It will not help in velocity at all, and here's why).

Now what have we learned from the study I posted above? From cocking point to release, there's hardly any muscle activation in the arm. So, what's the point of arm strength? Besides injury prevention, it won't help in velocity. And does long-toss help with arm strength? No.

From 8.2 of The Science and Art of Baseball Pitching: "Total actions (e.g., those to be used in a competitive setting [ie. pitching]) need to be practiced. The partial or isolated training of movement segments (e.g., long-toss, resistance training) would not replicate the unit function in the total action [it's not the same as pitching from the mound]. Thus, once techniques (total response patterns) are being refined, partial practices will serve no purpose other than to learn another movement. There should be no intergration of the partial practice movement into the total response movement once an individual-determined level of skill competency is reached. The only way a highly skilled pitcher can improve his pitching, is to practice pitching. No axuiliary training activities will contribute to skill enhancement once the skill has achieved a resonable level of proficiency."

The key is that baseball pitching is overwhelmingly a skilled acitivty. Every long-toss throw replaces a throw that could be made from the mound while working on perfecting better mechanics, stimulating game conditions, and mentally focusing and rehearsing the very refined and difficult skill of hitting the glove with all pitches.

Strength in the throwing shoulder is equal with the strength in the non-throwing shoulder (Sirota, Malanga, Eischen, & Laskowski, 1997). Ellenbecker and Mattalino (1997) also showed there were no differences between both shoulders in isokinetic work in professional pitchers. Strength did not differentiate the throwing arm and non-throwing arm and therefore, is an element that is irrelevant for pitching. It shows that strength in the throwing shoulder is not that important (for velocity) because it is no different to the non-throwing shoulder.

Henry and Whitley (1960) studied the relationships between arm strength, speed, and mass. They found no relationship between static and movement strength. The explanation for their findings was that neuromuscular patterns are specific for all forms of movement and unrelated to static strength.

You'll hear some say that they've gained 10 MPH doing long toss. Those who say it are usually in high school/college. Why's that? Because they're still growing, gaining mass, becoming faster, etc...

2) Weight training.

Certain kinds of training. Full body exercises. There's no slow heavy movements in pitching, so lifting heavy weights - besides getting a general level of fitness before working towards a more specific level of fitness - makes little sense. You'd just be wasting time. You want to work on being explosive, tax the same system you'll be using on the field, and plyometrics help as well.

Now, continuing on about improving velocity, there's trunk flexion (the amount of flex at the trunk). It will improve velocity, because it's the last large mass of linear movement that is going towards the target.

It will also help your arm from being injured because it provides a longer arc of deceleration.

Momentum is another part of velocity, any movement that's not towards the plate (ie. if you stride closed or too open), that's energy that's not going straight.

And if anyone tells you to do any drills (especially the towel drill), then show them this, and tell them to shut up.

Now, at what point in a pitcher's career do they use a towel to throw? And not even to throw! The towel drill tells you to hold onto the towel. Even if it didn't it still wouldn't be a good (or even decent or even below average) device to help a pitcher.

How much does a baseball weigh? 5 oz. It has a certain shape, a feel, and it goes to a certain spot.

From The Science and Art of Baseball Pitching, pg 50.21-22: "Pitching is a skill. How will the skill of throwing from the mound at a defined target at game intensity ever be trained unless it is done from the mound at game intensity for an extended number of pitches to produce specific overload or at least maintenance stimulation?"

"The question must be asked: Does this drill really emulate anything that a pitcher does while throwing a baseball in a game? The answer should be obvious; it does not. Therefore, it will not transfer anything positive to a pitching delivery." Infact, it can negatively affect your pitching through negative transfer. Basically what that is, is you'll start performing drill-like movements when you pitch as you tire (which will totally through off your pitching, making the velocity and control go down, and chance of injury up)

Now, to wrap this all up. When to work on this? Bullpen, how many pitches? Etc...

Pitching is a two-phase motor skill, if you want to improve (both velocity, control-wise, and the amount of pitches you can throw in a game) you have to pitch from the mound at game intensity with many repitions.

*Scientific stuff as to why you'll want to do what I say below*

From 28.6 of The Science and Art of Baseball Pitching: "Skill learning is determined by performing skill repititons and obtaining feedback (meaning, the catcher asked for a fastball low and away. Was it there?) in the absence of fatigue.

For skill learning to occur, learning has to take place in blocks so that feedback from one trial can be used to modify the next trial. That feedback gradually causes good elements to be retained and poor elements to be altered. The essential feature of learning is that the proximity of trials allows the learning benefits (the feedback) from one trial to transfer to the next. However, when other activities intervene between repititions of a skill, the benefits of feedback are disrupted. This interference means that what is experienced in one trial quickly becomes masked by the intervening unrelated activities. Consequently, sporadic trials wth unrelated trials in between do not foster learning. This is a major reason for skill development not being an artifact of a game experience. A block of repititions of the same skill should promote learning and improvement.

Fatigue is the other main feature that must be considered when planning or conducting skill development in a training session. Fatigue impedes learning. Skills and tactical elements are learned faster and retained better when learning occurs in non-fatigued states. All learning should precede (be before) any occurrence of fatigue in a training session... it has been shown that techniques and tactics learned in non-fatigued states produce better performances in fatigued states than do skills that have been learned in the persence of fatigue (Barnett, Ross, Schmidt, & Todd, 1973; Williams, McEwan, Watkins, Gillespie, & Boyd, 1979). The phsiology of learning supports this finding. The formation of neuromuscular patterns is inhibited by increases in acidity of the supporting physiological environment. Thus, when lactic acid accrues (increases) because of physical fatigue, the potential for learning is reduced. The other and more common complication of fatigue involvese neuromuscular patterns. Each skill trial lays down catecholamines at the nerve synapses in the evoked neuromuscular pattern. On the next trial, nerve impulses find it easier to follow the "chemical trail" than when there was none. That is why specific skill warm-ups and mental imagery work. They invoke the appropriate chemicals pattern of a movement and make it easier to perform the skill reliability.

However, if each skill trial is varied, the catecholamines are laid down in several patterns, some of which might be better than others. In time, the body becomes confused as to which neuromuscular pattern should be invoked because there are so many possible pathways to be followed." Once that happens, you'll want to stop and rest for awhile, if not the rest of the day, until the chemical status surrounding the nerves return to normal.

*End scientific stuff. Begin: what I say*

What all that above explained is if you want to get better (velocity, control, able to throw more pitches), you're going to have to throw in blocked sets - with rest in between - so as not to fatigue, and to also go over what you need to work on during the next block in order to improve.

You'll want to throw 5-6 of the same pitch in the same location (and it'd be nice if you had someone watch you to offer advice, or what would be better is videotaping, so you can see yourself what you need to fix), then take about 1 1/2 to 2 minute break, then do this again.

Keep record of how many times you hit the desired location, and always try to become better than the pitch before.

This will all help you improve. The more you pitch (and with good feedback so you know what to do to improve), the better you'll become.

If you're expected to throw 100 pitches in a game, you better be able to do it in practice. If you don't, you won't be fit to pitch those 100 pitches. That's where people hit the so called "wall", their control goes south, their velocity might lower, and their chance for injury (because your body might not be using the same motion because of fatigue) increases. That's why you should build up your bullpen pitches higher and higher (not right away, but as I said, build up the number of pitches gradually).

As your mechanics are improved, and your skill improves, then start pitching both in non-fatigued and fatigued states. "Arnett, DeLuccia, and Gilmartien (2000) showed that males and not females benefit from practicing in fatigued conditions. Performance in fatigued situations improved after condition-specific practice. A coach must be wary not to practice only in fatigued states but to balance the two experiences and to err on the side of too little rather than too much fatigued practice."

Best of luck. (If you'd like me to expand on anything, please feel free to ask).

do alot of long toss and strength up your legs since pitching is consist of your lower boddy, alot of dumbell kicks and curls and buy a rubber workout band and use it to do throwing motions to devolop that muscle memory and recognition and fill a tennis ball with pennies and just flik it up b4 u take th emound it makes the lighter coming onto the game

you may want to consult an appropriate doctor and maybe an mri for possible damage. i would also suggest some rest. if you insist on pitching, no breaking stuff!

Just don't follow Roger Clemens example

Get on the Mitchell list.

Quick answer is to long toss. 2nd if possible, exercises that develop your lats.

umm sorry but i am like baseball illiterate, lol

P.S. check ur mail, lol

Juice it up

HGH