What Do Weighted Baseballs Have To Do With Low Carb Diets?

by Dick Mills on December 21, 2004

People will continue to believe what they want to believe…even in the face of evidence that it will not work. I think baseball—and pitching especially is one of the few sporting activities where you will find training aids such as weighted baseballs and a host of other useless thing-a-ma-bobs designed to create better performance. Now you have knuckleheads recommending using weighted vests…to apparently teach pitchers how to develop better posture.

There is "one" born every minute and it seems to be getting funnier by the month. What's next…pitching under water to increase resistance!

If you sampled all professional pitchers…how many do you think would attribute their success in basaball to weighted balls and training aids or doing endless drills? How about as close to zero as you can get!

Then you have literally hundreds of "time wasting" drills designed to produce a smooth effortless delievery that ends up making most pitchers throw like mechanical tin soldiers because all they end up doing is disrupting a motion that is not meant to be broken down into pieces…unless you are dealing with beginning pitchers of course. Remember there are no "natural" breaks in the pitching motion. Putting them there is not going to produce better timing or smoothness.

When you do endless drills you create breaks in the movement that the body will remember. So you get choppy. Drills are a way for many coaches to keep pitchers busy becuase they do not know how to help them in the bullpen or from the mound. Drills eat up time. Their constant repetition would seem to work and yet doing something over and over that is not relevant to a movement with no natural breaks has been proven to be a very poor way of learning. Have you ever noticed that drills seem to work in practice but they don't transfer to the game. The pitcher still ends up with the same mechanical fault.

But people will believe what they want to believe. And will continue to look for magic bullets…even outside of baseball.

Take dieting for example. Remember when the "low fat" revolution came along. It was designed to help people lose weight. What did it actually do? It made them fatter becuase they did not understand that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. They thought apparently that because foods had less fat that you could eat more. They forget that it is calories that make you fat.

So what should people have learned? Count calories and don't eat too much high fat food because it clogs the arteries. But if they knew it was that easy…the food companies wouldn't have made much money making low fat foods. So they didn't tell anyone.

People will remain dumb until you wake them up.

Now click ahead about fifteen or so years to today to see if people got smarter about food instead of looking for magic…like in developing baseball pitching velocity from weighted baseballs.

With pitching and weighted baseballs the focus is on arm strength when in fact velocity is created from arm speed or the summation of forces of the entire body that delivers the arm. Can't figure out yet how weighted balls help with that!

It seems that even baseball parents want to believe what they want to believe. They like the easy way too.

The next diet revolution is the "low carb" diet. Dr. Atkins had been around writing best selling diet books for years and years saying you could eat all the steak and eggs you wanted and still lose weight…as long as you cut out the carbs. Some people bought it…but not enough. Then the South Beach Diet came along…another block buster best seller for those who didn't learn from the low fat revolution so the "smart"food companies decided to jump on the band wagon and guess what! That darn thing didn't work very well either.

Oh, it works a little bit and may have a small place for those who are obese and need a quick start to weight loss but it seems that the low carb revolution was just another fad after all.

It was just announced that only about 5% of the poplulation is following low carb—not enough to support the "smart" food companies…many who put millions on the line and now have tons of the stuff sitting in wharehouses all over the country.

Put it all on a large barge and send it where it is needed.

Will there be other diets and food fads or revolutions that come along? You bet. I am sure they are in the works. Money makes people creative. And that's fine.

But what's the solution for all these diets or diet pills that promise a new "lifestyle." How about eat a balanced diet and count calories! Oh no…that's way too hard. Being married to a hospital trained dietician (and certified strength trainer) …who thirty five years ago was overweight but not now…I learned the hard way—from getting educated by my wife Ginny. I found out there is no easy way.

People never will stop looking because people will believe what they want to believe…always looking for success the easy way… mostly from magic.

What's the real problem? Ignorance and belief. You can't fight somebody who believes strongly in something. And the dumb people usually don't want to educate themselves.

Reminds me of baseball pitching performance. Online you can find hundreds of places to purchase weighted baseballs designed to produce 10 mph in just twelve weeks. Boy that sure sounds easy enough. Why waste time practicing mechanics when all you have to do is throw some weighted balls to get that college scholarship or get drafted.

I wonder why Mariners Jamie Moyer hasn't tried those yet to get his 83 mph fastball to 93 mph in just a measily 12 weeks! Whose doing the thinking out there anyway! Weighted balls have been around now for over 30 years and yet they still have a tough time catching on with intelligent baseball people. I wonder why?

Could it be that they don't really work…when it really comes down to it. And that the only pitchers that it works for are those that just need to throw more or get in better condition? In other words, they only work on untrained pitchers? It seems so. And maybe that's why they wouldn't work for Jamie Moyer or the other hundreds of professional pitchers who throw mid to upper eighties…and would sure like to throw 95 mph.

Who are the baseball parents and even coaches who buy that kind of hype? I'll bet if you look in their cupboards you will find "no fat" chips and a boxes of "no carb" pasta.

People will believe what they want to believe. And the companies who manufacture weighted baseballs sit around laughing… eating boxes of no carb donuts.

Dick Mills

If you have questions about this blog post or on any phase of pitching—mechanics, strength and conditioning, mental training, strategy send those questions to dickmills@gmail.com and I will answer them here.

If you want an explosive body and explosive mechanics you need to get my Free Report atwww.pitching.nexcess.net. We won't waste your time. We show you how to recognize exactly what is holding back most pitchers…find the problem—fix the problem. I show you a comparison between two high school pitchers and a major league pitcher who throws mid to upper nineties. You will see the biggest problem that reduces velocity in the majority of pitchers.(If you are a high school or college coach, ask for our special Free Coach's Report.)