College Pitcher Found Out Why Getting Bigger And Stronger Doesn’t Work

Here’s is an email that I got from a college pitcher who tried the “getting bigger and stronger” philosophy that is recommended by many pitching coaches online as well as many high school and college pitching coaches. The problem is that those who recommend it do not have the knowledge or qualifications to understand why it does not work to improve velocity.

Thousands of unknowing high school and college pitchers are being given this poor advice every day all over the country.

You should be extremely cautious about this type of advice…even from former professional pitchers and should also be concerned what these coaches and instructors know about pitching mechanics as well. Usually it is just enough to be dangerous.

This is the kind of advice that can be harmful for a pitchers performance and his health as well.

I have written many articles on this blog and on my website www.pitching.nexcess.net, explaining why pitching is not a strength activity and why no additional weight or size and extra strength will improve a pitcher’s velocity. Pitchers who don’t understand this will waste a huge amount of valuable time in an effort to gain velocity from weight room training.

The better solution is to focus on functional strength trianing or strength that can be used in pitching as well as constantly working on improving mechanics. Those are the only two ways a pitcher can improve his velocity. Long toss will not work either.

This is a college pitcher who is trying to get better but can’t because he is getting very poor advice from a pitching coach who clearly lacks training knowledge by recommending swimming which for a pitcher is just another form of overuse training that can lead to tendonitis as well as rotator cuff problems.

By the way, parents of pitchers should be very concerned because this is norm at the high school and college levels when it comes to training and performance advice. And of course it is no better online.

Please read what he has to say and then begin to question the type of advice that is being handed out by coaches and instructors about how to improve pitching performance at all levels.

Dick,

Hi…I purchased both your mechanics and conditioning dvds about 4 or 5 months ago(we talked on the phone). Unfortunately I haven’t been able to really utilize them as we are in season right now. I am a pitcher at X U. Matching up your dvd exercises with the stuff we do is very interesting. First of all we do a lot of weight room/slow exercises. I came in bench pressing only about 135 lbs(I was 6’5 176 at the time). I was topping out at 93 mph in a bullpen setting in the summer before I got here. Immediately my pitching coach got me on a weight gainer and told me I needed to get stronger in the weight room. So of course, even though I knew this wouldn’t do anything, I didn’t argue considering I’d do anything to get more than 14 innings(which is what I had last year at Univ X). Another thing we did was once a week we would get into the pool and do A LOT of strenuous swimming. This was HELL on my rotator cuff.

Fast forward 5 months later. I am now about 190 pounds. I put on 15 pounds in 5 months. My bench press went from 135 to 200. Squat from 245 to 345. And we did about 25 days of swimming in that 5 month period.

I noticed a few things. For one…while I did get a lot better with my control when I got here, I find I can’t throw as consistently hard as I used to. I am not sure if this is just mental or the fact that I was doing the weight room stuff. I was topping at 91(2 mph less than normal) every outing and averaging about 89. However, there were a hell of a lot more 84′s and 85′s in my pitching chart than before.

Another thing is that the swimming tightened up my rotator cuff so bad that I lost a LOT of internal rotation. I would have BAD arm pain in the back of my shoulder with a pain running down my bicep. Luckily I had one of the top doctors in the nation back home who showed me some great internal rotation stretches.

I also lost all the flexibility I had in my hips and hamstrings.

I am just relaying this to you as a real life story that proves that weight room stuff does absolutely nothing. I cannot wait til I hit summer ball and am able to get at the functional training. I may start some of the stuff during this season as well.

Michael

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 . 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, a Little League pitcher 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 by emailing me dickmills@gmail.com