baseball pitching question?

How's your mechanics?

Have you been video taping your bullpens to see what's going on?

Edit: And to the person who said to stretch... DON'T DO IT!

Make sure you does a dynamic warm up before you do excercises, and before you plays in any sport, as stretching reduces speed, strength, and force production, and doesn't decrease the risk of injury (it can actually increase it).

What you want to do then is a dynamic warm up:

High knees

Butt kickers

Side shuffles (feet nearly touch in between each rep)

Backwards running

Lunges (get low)

Karaokes

Arm Swing, circles

Running, sprints

Push ups

Or if you lives close enough, a hot 10 minute shower. The goal is to raise the body temperature 1 - 1 1/2º C.

So once you warm up, start to throw, build up your intensity, then start pitching off the mound.

"Stretching reduces the strength-endurance capability of a pitcher (Kokkonen, Nelson, & Arnall, 2001).

Excessive stretching in warm-ups inhibits strength performance (Kokkonen & Nelson, 1996) and force production (Behm, Button, & Butt, 2001; Evetovich, Nauman, Conley, & Todd, 2003; Fry, McLellan, Weiss, & Rosato, 2003).

Stretching routines should be moderate to minimal and cease at least one hour before the game (Fowles & Sale, 1997).

Stretching reduces throwing velocity(Noffal, Knudson, & Brown, 2004).

Stretching does not prevent injuries (Herbert & Gabriel, 2002; Wilkinson & Williams, 2003).

Some researchers have said that no stretching should be performed at all before explosive activities (Young & Behm, 2003)."

Now, why is that?

"When muscles are stretched beyond natural voluntary ranges of motion, the muscles and tendons are stretched unnaturally. Excessive stretching damages tissues and promotes inflammation [which is really bad if you're going to start lifting or doing explosive movements (ie. sports)]" (Yang, Im, & Wang, 2005). Continual stretching can lead to "lengthened" muscles. That condition leads to two performance altering states.

1) The range of movement of the joint about which the lengthened muscles gird is increased. That results in the range of effective contraction of the muscles being altered. Maximum muscle performance will have to occur in a different range of motion to the original natural range. IF a lengthened muscle is required still to perform in the orginal natural range, then performance in that range will be reduced because of the extra stretch. Maximally lenghtened muscles about a joint are associated often with a loosening of the joint. Increased leaxity can expose the joint to increased injury through collisions or simply through maximum efforts. Intra-joint movements can also stimulate aggravations to other structural tissues as well as bony structures.

2) If continued for a long time, muscles, tendons, etc... will start to loose some of their elastic properties, which would further decrease power and speed while increasing the risk of injuries.

It even increases DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness).

are you properly stretching before starting to pitch! very important to not throw but loosen up the arm, then throw some light tosses and then hard tosses, and finally begin to pitch

Try to keep your elbow up above your shoulder when you pitch

a

maybe you arent pushing with your legs. try to drive to home plate

keep elbow upppppppppppppppppppp........

yeah