Is A Slow And Controlled Delivery Killing Your Pitching Velocity?

Many pitching instructors will tell pitchers to slow down their delivery in order to improve their mechanics. But does this make sense?

If your pitching practice workout is always at a slow pace won’t you end up moving slower and then throwing slower?

A while back I worked with a former AA left-handed pitcher who is trying to make it back and eventually get to the big leagues. He played AA for two years in a row and pitched well. His problem – he only threw 83-85 mph.

He was told by his organization, whom I will let remain nameless, that if he got his fastball to upper eighties he could be big league pitcher.

He is 6’2″ 175 lbs. His first pitch during our workout produced a stride length of 70″. When we started using Momentum Pitching within 1/2 hour he was to 80″ and was consistently past that line to 82″ by the second day.

During our two day session every once in a while he would stop and grin and shake his head. I would ask what was going on and he would say that what said was the exact opposite of what his AA pitching coaches told him including the minor league pitching coordinator.

Is Your Son Being Taught To Be Slow And Controlled?

Once thing this organization taught was to be slow and controlled. And boy did it show in him. And he knew it. His delivery was slow and thus his arm moved slow. You can’t have a slow and controlled body and have a fast arm. If you try that you will end with an arm injury.

This organization had a drill they had every pitcher do to finish up every throwing session. It was the “up, down and out” drill where each pitcher would lift his leg up to balance, hesitate, let it down to the mound surface and then slide it out to landing.

This pitcher was taught to move slow. I commented on one of the major league starting pitchers for that organization and how slow his delivery was. This is a big guy and yet he is throwing about 90 mph. He is also a friend of this AA pitcher. My student told me that when that major league pitcher first signed out of college his fastball was 98 mph. It didn’t take them long to get him all the way down to 90 mph using this slow and controlled philosophy.

I will continue to remind you why you need to very carefully choose a pitching instructor. Why you should not waste your time and money on pitching clinics.

Did Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan move slow or stay tall? Of course not. He was as explosive and fast moving as any pitcher in history. If you look at the photo of Nolan Ryan on this page what do you see? Notice how he is driving with his back leg and getting his body low and stretched out. This is how most high velocity pitchers are able to move their arms so fast. They focus on gaining maximum leg drive and forcing their bodies to move fast into a stretched out position with a stride length in excess of their height.

Are you being taught to move slow or to hesitate in the balance position? Hesitation or slow movements kill velocity.

If your instructor is not videotaping your son you are wasting your money and your son’s time. If he is being taught to hesitate or be slow in his movements then his velocity will suffer.

This AA pitcher was taught to be slow and controlled. Thus why he could not throw above 85 mph.

Have you seen Giants’s Tim Lincecum throw? Tim is 5’10″ 170 lbs. and throws mid to upper nineties. Why? Because he moves his body fast, develops maximum momentum and strides out well beyond his height…actually over 120% of his height.

If you want your son to throw faster you had better get the slowness out out of his delivery. You had better stop drills and not wasting time on irrelevant activities such as flat ground throwing or long toss. And lots of weight training.

If Your Son Trains Slow In The Weight Room He Is Training His Body To Be Slow

I have repeatedly discussed why weight training will not improve velocity. One of the features of weight training is that you move slow training individual muscle groups. And yet pitching is a full body activity where the goal for maximizing velocity must be to move the body fast into a long stride.

That is why we recommend very little weight training and mostly full body explosive exercises which teach the body how to force as many muscles to stretch out fast as possible. This allows the body to act like a huge rubber band and stretch out to develop maximum elastic energy which is where velocity comes from.

Velocity does not come from arm strength.

If you move or train slow – your fastball will be slow.

If you wonder how you can improve your velocity, like this AA pitcher then our Explosive Pitching Dvd program will show you how. And I guarantee you will gain 6-12 mph on your fastball or your money back. http://www.pitching.com/product/complete-pitching-instruction-program/

Dick Mills