How A Baseball Pitcher Can Develop His Fastball—It’s Not About Arm Strength

How can a pitcher develop a better fastball?

Most baseball pitchers and coaches alike understand the value of developing their fastball. A pitcher’s fastball is his most important pitch and most of the time all other pitches should be thrown off the fastball.

The important question is—how should a pitcher go about developing his fastball? If you cruise around the internet you will hear mostly hype on developing more velocity from arm strength such as throwing weighted baseballs, hitting the weight room, doing endless long toss or special drills designed to work certain throwing muslces.

Or how about throwing a football to improve velocity? Pure foolishness since there is little about throwing a football that is similar to throwing a baseball. There are skant similarities however pitching is explosive throwing while football throwing is not. There are no benefits for pitchers throwing footballs unless you just like throwing a football. Even if Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan threw a football there is zero evidence that any of it was responsible for their pitching success.

Even professional scouts will advise developing pitchers to “get bigger and stronger” or do lots of long toss.

The fact is unfortunately that none of those methods has been proven to help a pitcher develop his fastball. None.

Why then so much misinformation? It is quite simple and yet baseball fails to understand that for decades of major league baseball prior to the early 90′s very few pitchers did any formal weight training to speak of or even did long toss and yet the large majority of Hall Of Fame pitchers were developed without using any of the current recommended methods of improving velocity. But aren’t pitchers throwing harder today. There is no evidence of that but if they are it may just be that there is much more good information out there on throwing mechanics than there used to be. The problem is only a few really understand mechanics.

Why then do coaches recommend something that has not proven to work? I believe they recommend these other activities such as long toss or drills because the large majority of pitching instructors and baseball coaches have scant knowledge of the mechanics of pitching. Rather than working with a pitcher on his mechnanics these other activities help eat up time and they seem to be better than doing nothing. Put most instructors or coaches in a bullpen with a pitcher and they will not know what to look for or what to adjust with his mechanics to help a pitcher improve his throwing velocity or the command of his pitches.

The fact is that baseball pitching velocity is not about strength at all. No amount of extra so-called arm strength is going to convert to throwing velocity because pitching velocity is not about arm strength at all. Pitching velocity is all about explosiveness or the ability of the pitcher to put as many muscles of his body on stretch as quickly as possible…and then transferring that elastic energy from the larger muscles with proper timing and efficiency to the smaller muscles of the arm. The body is what whips the arm through.

Pitching velocity is all about how quickly the body can pass off its energy from one part to the next to deliver the arm at high speed. The arm is the control devise for the pitcher…not the source of power. The body delivers the arm. Pitching velocity is far more about speed of movement of the body than it is about arm strength.

Many pitchers put a great deal of their time doing long toss in an effort to improve arm strength and velocity when that time could be better spent throwing from the mound…which is the place where pitchers will ultimately be evaluated in their efforts to get hitters out and to be successful.

But many will say that long toss improves arm strength. How does it do that? If more arm strength was the result of long toss and arm strength meant faster throwing velocity and being able to throw longer distances more quickly, then all major league left-fielders who normally have the weakest throwing arms…could just long toss and have the same quaility of throws as all right-fielders. After all, major league right-fielders are put in that position because of their “arm strength” and their ability to stop runners by making quick throws to the infield or to home plate.

If long toss doesn’t help left-fielders develop the same “strong arms” and throwing velocity as right-fielders, how then will long toss help pitchers improve pitching velocity from the mound? It can’t and it doesn’t.

It’s a myth that continues to be perpetuated.

Long toss may fit in as a rehabilitation tool after an arm injury because it is non specific. You can also throw a bit longer as a way to warmup. But I see no other reason to long toss that will help a pitcher become a better pitcher.

Besides long toss the other biggest time waster for pitchers are doing the same drills over and over. Drills have not proven to work as a learning tool and may be the biggest reason that more pitchers are too mechanical, overthinking and actually too slow rather than explosive. But in spite of that every instructor has his favorite drill. And what do drills do? Eat up valuable time that could be better spent instructing on pitching mechanics.

What then are pitchers to do in order to reach their best potential pitching velocity?

It’s quite simple. In order for pitchers to improve their throwing velocity, they must develop better throwing mechanics while throwing downhill from a mound transferring their weight efficiently from one leg to the other—from the back leg to the front leg—so that more energy ends up whipping the arm through into ball release.

This cannot happen while throwing long toss using a crow hop on flat ground and releasing the ball in an upward trafectory. How will that convert to throwing downhill? It can’t and it won’t.

Just bring in a strong arm right-fielder and you will find that he doesn’t have the same velocity from the mound as he does from the outfield. Why? Because pitching from a mound requires practicing the skill of pitching mechanics which outfielders do not have. You can certainly teach it to them but they do not naturally have that skill.

Pitchers who throw more fastballs from the mound while focusing on improving mechanics while hitting the glove in specific locations over an extended number of pitches will end up with better fastballs and better fastball command.

Fastball command is one of the biggest keys to pitching success.

Pitching in games is a measurement of how well a pitcher transfers what he does in practice. A game will not make a developing pitcher better…only practice to improve what happened in the game can do that. Each practice session then or better yet each bullpen practice session should focus on improving mechanics and pitch command while concentrating on one throw at a time at game intensity…rather than throwing at less than game intensity.

What the majority of baseball coaches do not understand is that having their pitchers throw bullpens at 70-75% intensity will not help the pitcher throw at game intensity which may be 90-95% intensity. Throwing at less than game intensity will be interpreted by the pitcher’s body as a completely different throwing activity that will not transfer to the game.

The key to throwing during buppens or in game is not to “overthrow.” Overthrowing is one of the biggest reasons for arm injuries in developing pitchers.

Obviously with growing kids and youth pitchers you must monitor their pitch counts so that they do not throw too many pitches without enough recovery time.

Will just playing catch every day help a pitcher throw from the mound at full intensity? How can it? This may be one of the reasons why many pitchers get injured. Their bodies are not trained enough to throw at game intensity. Remember it is not just about the arm. The body delivers the arm.

The body only understands only how you train it. If the pitcher’s body is trained to throw at lower intensity than a game, or worse yet on flat ground then the muscles will obviously contract at lesser rates than when throwing in a game. Will this help a pitcher improve for the next game.

It can’t and it won’t.

The bottom line to help pitchers throw with more potential velocity is to have them throw from the mound at game intensity, throwing more fastballs more often while focusing on developing better mechanics. And not overthrowing.

The other responsiblity they have is to make sure they are always fully warmed up before throwing, that they have a routine after throwing as well as a continuous inseason conditioning program for maintaining their body and their arm. This will help reduce the risk of injury.

This overall suggested formula for developing a pitcher’s fastball will not only help pitchers improve their velocity over time but it will also help them reduce the risk of injury since the body must be continuously trained to do what it does in a game.

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 at http://www.powerpitching.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, 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.)