How Not To Get Ripped Off By A Baseball Pitching Instructor, A Baseball School Or Clinic

All About Pitching Since 1995

How can parents and developing baseball pitchers decide who to hire as a pitching instructor or who to listen to about pitching advice?

The choices are many today. You can go to a baseball school thinking that you will find a qualified pitching instructor. Or you might decide to hire a former minor league or even major league pitcher thinking that you just can’t go wrong there.

I spoke to a sports medicine physical therapist on Friday who was pretty well versed in the biomechinics of pitching who had a heated discussion with a retired fifteen year major league veteran pitcher about lower body mechanics. The veteran pitcher was wrong and his three shoulder surgeries may have proven why you would want to be very careful when listening to him.

In both cases whether you decide to go to a baseball school for lessons or hire a former professional pitcher, you may find out later that you did not get your money’s worth or worse yet you wasted time and actually worked on activities that had no value.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because an instructor is a former professional that you are in good hands. Why? Because in most cases what you will be taught is what that former professional did when he pitched. And he was taught by a pitching coach in college or pro ball who also taught him what he did when he pitched. Not very scientific and for the student a very poor way to learn.

The question is how does he know what he knows?

Also be extremely cautious of former minor league pitchers who tell you all about themselves and how their talent and knowledge landed them a big scholarship in college or allowed them to throw 95 mph…insinuating that they will also be able to teach your son how to throw 95 mph.

Have you ever noticed when listening to a former minor league pitcher who never made it beyond A ball that they all threw 95 mph plus. They want you to know that because they hope you are dumb enough to believe that they have the secret to throwing 95 mph since they want you to believe that they actually were ever able to accomplish that.

This is like having Tiger Woods putting on a clinic for aspiring golfers and by copying what Tiger does you too will at some point be a top professional golfer. Does any of that seem true for you?

Former professional or college pitching instructors will teach you mainly what they believe to know about pitching mechanics which they learned from somebody else and you will find that much of their knowledge has huge holes in it that can be dangerous to a students delivery and his health.

Just because an instructor is a former professional does not mean he is a good teacher or has the knowledge base to teach. It just means that he may have had more talent than other pitchers growing up.

Here are some telltale signs to watch for when trying to decide who you will hire or listen to when it comes to pitching instruction:

1. Do they videotape and then explain what they find as the mechanical faults and then give you a detailed plan of how they will go about fixing those problems?
2. If your son is just learning then some partial practice or limited pitching drills may be in order but if your son has been pitching for a few years then drills will just waste time and have been proven to be disruptive and actually make pitchers more mechanical, less explosive and more conscious of their mechanics. Drills can lead to perfectionistic over-thinking. One big indicator is that your son looks slow and mechanical instead of fluid and explosive.
3. If the instructor cannot explain in detail and demonstrate how pitchers develop power and more velocity in their deliveries then this is a big red flag. You will waste a lot of money with this instructor because he just has not studied the biomechanics of pitching.
4. If the instructor puts anything in the students hands besides a baseball such as a towel then you will be wasting your money. Towels are not baseballs, do not have the same feel and you cannot throw a towel very well. Does it make sense to go through the pitching delivery using a towel when you still have the towel in your hand at the end? You don’t do that with a baseball. You release the baseball. The use of a towel in pitching can actually create very bad habits and disrupt the timing of how the lower body and trunk work in sequence.

   Would you as a golfer substitute a towel for a golf club? Not likely.

5. The instructor tells you what to do for strength and conditioning such as telling you to hit the weight room when he has no background or certification but knows just enough to be dangerous to your son’s pitching health. If he recommends weight room training have him explain how getting stronger will aid a pitcher in either throwing harder or avoiding injury. Neither has been proven to be positively effected by weight training.
6. He recommends weighted balls but can’t explain how they actually work to produce velocity. Don’t listen to the double talk about how it creates an overload effect because that makes no sense physiologically since the weight of the ball is not enough to produce a change within any particular muscle group. So the weight of those weighted balls are actually too light to produce a change as would happen when doing heavy weight training. Remember pitching like golf is not a strength activity but a speed of movement activity that more strength will not help.
7. He tells you to do long toss for building arm strength but cannot explain how long toss will actually create more velocity since pitching is not arm strength at all but arm speed created by good mechanics where the elastic energy of the body is passed off from the large muscles of the legs and hips to the trunk and then finally to the smaller muscles of the shoulder and arm. And that last I looked pitching was all about getting hitters out throwing from a mound at 60’6″. How then does long toss help a pitcher get better? People need to question that.
8. He tells you that special exercises like flexible tubing will help create more velocity. No special exercises have been proven to produce more velocity in pitchers. None.
9. He uses a lot of gimmicks such as bungee cords tied around the waste or legs, balance beams that you throw from. One baseball school out of Houston has their students throwing uphill on a balance beam. Does anyone believe for one second that it makes sense to do that? Is pitching done throwing uphill on a balance beam? Will that teach pitchers better balance? It will only teach them better balance while throwing uphill on that balance beam but will not improve balance while throwing downhill on a mound. How can it?

   What are the IQ’s of people who are buying into this foolishness!

10. They never explain how and why the lower body is the main catalyst in producing velocity but instead teach arm action as the most important ingredient. And they cannot explain in detail how to use the lower body to produce more power. Arm action may be important but arm action is simply about getting the arm into the proper position so that it can be delivered at high speed upon landing from trunk rotation whose speed is developed by lower body explosiveness from elastic energy using a long stride.
11. Never explain why a long stride is important or worse have your son shorten his stride. This is pure lunacy since most youth and high school pitchers stride too short as it is because they do not know how to shift their weight properly while moving from the back leg to the front leg.
12. The instructor catches the student instead of helping him make needed adjustments in his mechanics. You can’t catch a pitcher and see whether he is shifting his weight properly at the same time or whether he is getting his arm in the right position.

So there is a short list for you in an effort to figure out who you will listen to for instruction. There is more that can be added to the list but those are the main problems you will encounter.

Parents and players are wasting a lot of money while getting a low return on their investment. Many pitchers are seeing no improvements in velocity or control and many are getting worse.

I spoke to the father of a high school sophomore yesterday whose son is doing well touching 80 mph right now. He and his son together checked out a baseball school prior to the winter that was a big advocate of throwing uphill on balance beams with lots of gimmicks such as towel drills while focusing on arm action with little mention of lower body mechanics. His son knows two high school pitchers who attended that particular school over the winter. One right now can only throw hard but has no idea where the ball is going. The other can barely throw because his mind is so consumed with arm action drills that he has no idea how to move with any type of fluidity.

The father told me that his son took one look at what they were doing at this baseball school and told his Dad that he wanted no part of it.

More people are beginning to use common sense when making baseball pitching instruction decisions instead of listening to hype.

Dick Mills www.pitching.nexcess.net Since 1995

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 Reportby emailing me dickmills@gmail.com