Baseball Pitching Velocity—This Is The Mentality

Typically, high school and college baseball pitchers will ask how to best gain baseball pitching velocity. Or the ask if there are any baseball pitching specific “lifts” that you can do in the weight room to help improve baseball pitching velocity. They want to know are there specific exercises that they can do that will show up eventually on the radar gun.

They may also get the following advice that is handed out daily online at the dozens of discussion forums or baseball pitching websites that players and parents visit looking for the quick and easy way to boost baseball pitching performance such as:

…get on a good weight program that focuses on the back, ab’s, and obliques. Work the lower body very hard. And long toss, long toss and long toss.

What’s wrong with the questions and what’s wrong with the answers?

First of all there are no specific exercises that will help any baseball pitcher develop more baseball pitching velocity. Why?

Because baseball pitching velocity is a full body activity and uses the summation of all the forces of the body. Baseball pitching is an explosive activity not a strength activity and explosiveness is about how quickly a baseball pitcher can put as many muscles on “stretch” as possible. Baseball pitchers can’t get that in the weight room.

But what about long toss for improving baseball pitching velocity? Long toss is more about training the entire body to throw so is simply a part of conditioning or warm-up but in and of itself it will not improve baseball pitching velocity because it is not specific enough. After all long toss is done on flat ground using a crow hop throwing in an upward trajectory. None of that will transfer to throwing down hill trying to hit a target. Long toss is a completely different activity than pitching from the mound.

If a baseball pitcher wants to throw harder he must be able to move his body faster (more explosively) using down hill mechanics throwing at game intensity. That is how to boost velocity.

This means that his baseball pitching strength and conditioning program must be as specific as possible using functional movements that are explosive in nature that will transfer to the pitching motion.

Baseball pitchers (and parents) at the high school and early college levels must also understand the growth and development issue. Some kids will throw harder than others because they may be earlier developers…some will just get bigger sooner.

Many major league baseball pitchers were late developers which means they did not reach mid to upper eighties until getting to college. Some come to mind. Roger Clemens, Astros Billy Wagner and former Braves closer Mark Wohlers. These guys were all only throwing low 80′s in high school. We know that Clemens ended up throwing upper 90′s, Wagner has hit 100 mph and Wohlers hit 103 mph.

If you are a late developer like many major league baseball pitchers nothing is going to get you to your pitching velocity potential until you fully develop physically. You cannot rush Mother Nature. For many high school pitchers that may not come until college so don’t get discouraged. And no amount of weight training or long toss is going change that.

What baseball pitchers should always work on then are activities that encourage them to move quickly and explosively and always continue to perfect pitching mechanics since pitching is a skill activity.

If you have questions 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 at www.pitching.nexcess.net. We won’t waste your time. We show you what works and what has been proven to work. I show you a comparison between two high school pitchers and a major league pitcher who throws mid to upper nineties. Find out why you do not have “explosive mechanics” that produce more velocity.