Off Season Training For Pitchers Can Waste Valuable Time

by Dick Mills on September 22, 2008

The claims of how pitchers should train during the off-season are coming high and hard from baseball schools all over the country and from roving clinics. This will go on into the off-season. Here is one claim below that is very enticing. This philosophy is being sold all over the country in the form of a franchise to baseball schools who apparently are stupid and desperate.

This is the beginning of another chapter in the fall of baseball pitching performance. The selection process for finding more top pitchers will further decline based on coaches and parents ignorance and their inability to do their own research first.

This is a pitching training program that emphasizes weighted ball training, wearing weighted vests, throwing uphill on a balance beam, using towel drills, lots of long toss and crow hoping down the mound all in an effort to improve velocity. Forget about control...teach only velocity. Don't the two go hand in hand? They did when I played.

How can you possibly teach velocity without also teaching better control at the same time. When mechanics improve don't both improve as long as a good throwing program from the mound is implemented.

The focus from this baseball school is building "the arm" for improving velocity and arm health.

Why Building Arm Strength Cannot Improve Velocity

These arm strength advocates make no attempt to explain how this building of the arm will improve velocity or reduce injury. None of the weighted ball advocates has yet been able to explain any of it logically.  Instead they just use hype.

They prey on ignorance. They prey mainly on high school/college pitchers and parents who want it all right now and do not understand that pitching performance like golf performance is a process of skill building. There is no such thing as an ability to throw. It is a skill.

Pitching velocity has been proven to come from momentum and speed of movement of the body as it moves explosively from the back leg to the front leg into a stride that is at least 100% of a pitcher's height. The throwing arm does not produce velocity but is designed for ball control.  The body produces velocity...not the arm.   This is how Giants's pitcher Tim Lincecum at 5'10" 170 lbs. has developed his velocity of 95-100 mph.  He got it from his body...not from his arm.

A Big Claim By One Of These Hyped Up Pitching Training Schools

Here is a claim by a baseball pitching school in Houston, TX.  "The program that has helped pitchers across the country gain an average of 6.7 mph in JUST 12 weeks. Some pitchers improved 12 + miles per hour in 9 months!

I absolutely and wholeheartedly believe most athletes…armed with the right information and given the right training protocols… can throw 90 mph! Those that are approaching 90 mph can learn to throw it 95 mph and the already hard throwers can push that century mark! "

First of all there is zero evidence that weighted balls can improve pitching velocity 1/2 of a mph...let alone average of 7-12 mph.  How does it work?  They don't know and cannot explain it with any common sense explanation.

If everyone can throw 90 mph, as these advocated claim,  then what's wrong with all the professional pitchers? Is it that they just aren't trying hard enough? If everyone has the capability to throw 90 mph then every sprinter has the capability to run sub 10 one hundred yard dashes, all swimmers should be able to swim right along with Michael Phelps at Olympic winning speed and all golfers should hit 300 plus yard drives.

But what is even more alarming is that many high school, top D1 college programs and even pro pitching coaches are adopting these ideas. Why? Because they have been convinced to believe it. However they have zero evidence to back any of it up. Their belief and ignorance will be the ruin of many future pitchers.

Why is all of this foolishness? If you do not understand then you should be asking?

I have just given you a simple formula for choosing a pitching instructor, a baseball school or a college for your baseball playing son. If they follow any of these practice activities run the other way as fast as possible. You have found snake oil salesmen.

If you want instant magic or hype...there is plenty of it out there online at just about every pitching websitge or discussion forum by the truckload.

You can believe what you want but I always say: "show me the evidence."

And let the buyer beware!

Dick Mills