Another Email From A Magic Bullet Website Owner

by Dick Mills on December 01, 2004

Here is the second email I just got from an apparently upset baseball website owner who sells weighted balls and a variety of training aids designed to improve velocity for pitchers.

This is someone who has no background to my knowledge on biomechanics, training and conditioning, in pitching at a high level or in producing any instructional material. He does however want baseball parents to purchase the programs that he recommends…including those programs that recommend the use of weighted baseballs as well as sets of weighted baseballs which he has available to sell.

My agument for the past seven years or so has been to just prove that they work…using a peer reviewed study. There are none. It is all anecdote and as I have said if weighted balls worked for pitching they would work to help professional pitchers improve their velocities from the eighties into the nineties. If it was that simple don't you believe that every professional team and pitcher would be throwing weighted balls during the offseason. But they don't.

Because professional baseball understands that they do not work…they never have and they never will. They only seem to work because they simply force a pitcher who is untrained to just throw more. But it is the "throwing more" that creates the velocity increases…not the use of the weighted balls.

You can increase velocity by simply improving mechanics and throwing a regular baseball more with those improved mechanics. Plus you can improve the body's ability to move faster by doing explosive training.

Moving the body faster is the only way to improve velocity since pitching velocity is the result of the summation of all the forces of the body…not by increasing so-called arm strength.

If these websites are going to sell these training aids then they should provide real evidence that they actually improve performance. None can.

We never needed them in baseball before. Why do we need them now?

My job is get people to think about the time and the money they will invest in trying to improve performance. There is no magic way to do it. And there never will be. If youth pitchers waste time on unproven training concepts…it is the one commodity they will never get back. And it is why so few make it to the next level.

Dick,

You sir are now officially the king of misinformation, not an advocate against it.

The typical year over year gain without help is generally said to be 3-5 mph. Not 5-12.

An average of 7.7. is, I agree, not necessarily proof of anything—but again I ask where are your stats—what does your program accomplish? Proof, baby, show some damn proof! Without it, people should not spend their money with you—not a dime.

As for the tennis argument, I've never heard anything as silly. Who in their right mind would suggest that we swing a bat at a weighted ball—that would be the tennis equivalent and I could only hope the bat would break because if not the arm might take the punishment. No wonder tennis dropped it. But hitting a weighted ball is not the same as throwing one. A foolish and illogical argument you make.

But hey, carry on. The more extreme you become the more people will go elsewhere.