A Pitching Workout Emphasizing Flat Ground Pitching - Does It Make Sense?

by Dick Mills on August 31, 2008

A pitching guru, who has 100 something videos on YouTube recently said that he recommends pitchers spend 80% of their pitching workout time pitching on flat ground and only 20% pitching from the mound. 

Does this make sense to anyone?  It shouldn't. 

His reasoning for pitching much more often on flat ground is that he said that flat ground pitching is less stressful and mound pitching is too stressful.  My question is too stressful how?  Of course he did not give any specifics on why it is more stressful because he has not thought this out very well because he got this idea from another pitching guru who also did not provide any information that makes sense.

A client recently posted two of this guru's Youtube videos on our Member's Forums for feedback.  Here is what some of our clients had to say about them:

Does It Make Sense To Practice Something You Do Not Do In A Game?

The only pitchers who should practice on flat ground are those who pitch from flat ground during games...like Little League pitchers. 

However, every high school, college or professional pitcher should spend all his practice time pitching from a mound...not on flat ground and certainly not doing long toss unless they do long toss during the off-season as part of their overall conditioning program.  (By the way, there is zero evidence that long toss improves velocity since sports science has proven that arm strength is not much of a factor for producing pitching velocity.  Pitching velocity has been proven to come from elastic energy by moving the body fast while stretching the muscles as quickly as possible by striding at least 100% of the pitcher's height.)

The idea of doing something different in practice (flat ground pitching or long toss) as opposed to what is done in a game (pitching from the mound) violates the Principle of Specificity in sports science. This must be applied to all sports not just baseball.

Is swimming fast more stressful than swimming slow.  Of course. However, how much time do you believe Michael Phelps spent swimming slow to gain those 14 gold metals in the 2008 Olympics? 

Is walking less stressful than sprinting?  Of course.  How many world class sprinters do you believe spent  20% of their time sprinting and 80% of their time walking to get to world class speed? 

There is no sport that thinks like baseball thinks about how to train or improve pitchers.  Could that be why we have so many arm injuries today?  Because too many pitchers spend too much time pitching slow on flat ground and then try to pitch fast from a mound?

We should all ask ourselves the question: If you don't pitch from the mound how will the body understand how to develop the required specific fitness of transferring the pitcher's weight downhill. When will the pitcher's body, legs, hips, abdominal muscles, learn from specific training how to provide that specific training effect? Only through the Principle Of Overload which means you must practice several blocks of that skill in order to train the body to gain that specific fitness to do it over and over.

This is what is meant by being "fit to pitch."

Why Flat Ground Pitching Is A Foolish Irresponsible Idea To Perpetuate

The idea of "flat ground" pitching in order to reduce stress may be one of the most foolish ideas in baseball. Flat ground pitching requires more effort from the arm because the pitcher's body does not have the "impulse" required from the body moving downhill which actually reduces stress of the arm. And of course the body interprets flat ground pitching as a completely different activity from pitching from the mound because the mechanics are completely different.

If the pitcher does not practice "the deceleration phase" or "landing phase" which actually stops the body's energy so it can transfer back up the chain, then how will the body get trained to land properly and then hand off that energy to the next part?

The entire body must be able to handle all the forces of pitching so that it is fully trained and "fit to pitch." It can only do that by practicing the specific action of pitching from the same surface that is required in the game.

What is also important to understand is that the response from the body is quite different when you do non-specific activities such as long toss, flexible tubing exercises, flat ground etc, and these non-specific activities are what create body soreness.

And yet, going in to this off-season thousands of pitchers at all levels, because of poor information that is not backed by sports science training principles, will practice non-specific activities (long toss, flat ground pitching, short bullpens, less than game intensity bullpens or not bullpens at all etc...) that cannot help them improve their skills to improve velocity, control while reducing the stress to the arm. 

I believe pitchers today are spending over 50% of their practice time on activities that have no proven benefit to help them improve.  These are activities that coaches and instructors believe work but can provide not sports science research as to why they would.

Do yourself a favor. Question everything.  Then ask yourself if doing irrelevant practice activities makes sense to helping a pitcher improve?  In most cases it does not.

If pitching instructors provide no evidence as to why certain practice activities are valuable, and they don't make sense, then ask yourself what else will this instructor recommend that has no basis for improvement.

How will pitchers improve if they are wasting valuable time...listening to instructors who simply make things up without providing real evidence based research?