The Baseball Pitching Lemon List Of Websites

All About Pitching Since 1995

Baseball pitchers should be aware of “lemon list” of activities that have not proven out as a means of boosting pitching performance.

After the stock market crashed back in 2000 one financial advisor came out with a mutualfund “lemon list.” This was a list of mutual funds whose performance did not keep up with the indexes in which they were associated. People who had their retirement funds invested in those funds (or stocks) lost up to 60% of their assets.

If you spend time online you should be aware of pitching philosophies that when followed will act just like those mutual funds on the lemon list—pitchers will learn how to lose pitching value and under-perform upper level pitchers.

Pitchers will learn how to waste time doing activities that have little value in building overall pitching success. Some of the activities are not totally wasted such as long toss or weight training, however, you must put them into their proper perspective. Or even playing catch on flat ground.

So which type of websites qualify to be on this baseball pitching lemon list? Websites that:

1. recommend the use of weighted baseballs
2. tell pitchers if they long toss they will gain velocity
3. tell pitchers to copy certain major leaguers’ mechanics and you too will gain velocity
4. recommend heavy weight training or “get bigger to throw harder” in order to boost velocity
5. recommend certain drills to improve mechanics
6. tell pitchers to throw from flat ground in practice instead of off the mound because it’s too stressful
7. tell pitchers to throw at less than game intensity in order to preserve or save their arm for the game

None of those seven activities has proven to improve pitching performance and yet coaches at every level of baseball endorse them. Why? Because that is what every other baseball coach recommends. It is called “belief based” coaching rather than “evidence based.”

But is that a reason to engage in activities that are not proven to work but are engaged in because coaches believe that they work?

I don’t know how you decide to make decisions but ask yourself this question. How has the pitching advice that you have received thus far proven out to improve performance? Most will admit that it hasn’t proven out very well at all.

I spoke to the father of a college freshman last Thursday who is on scholarship. His son was a high school All State pitcher throwing 84-86 mph in high school. His college coach told this boy when he got recruited that if he followed the team’s off-season weight training program that he would be throwing upper eighties consistently this Spring.

He followed the program religiously and his velocity is down. The boy told his father that he feels tight and not nearly as fluid as he did in high school.

And yet this college coach believes that weight training improves strength and therefore velocity. The problem is that there is little relationship between building weight room strength and throwing velocity. In fact, sports science has proven otherwise.

Doing some weight training to build a strength base is beneficial in the off-season but after about four weeks of weight training the additional strength gains do not transfer. Once pitchers gain a strength base they will gain explosive power by doing explosive exercises since pitching is an explosive movement.

Does this mean that these coaches are stupid? Not at all. It just means that they are not well informed. Instead of being informed they have a set of beliefs…that have little basis in fact. And in most cases they learned their set of beliefs from other coaches who learned them from other coaches.

Be careful of whose beliefs you listen to. It could be very expensive. If you are a parent you will at some point probably realize a few years down the road that none of those seven activities which I have listed is responsible for pitchers improving or being more successful. The proof will eventually come out. In fact, most of those seven activities were not even thought of prior to the late 80′s accept weighted balls.

Weighted baseballs have actually been around for over thirty years with no success to speak of at all. And yet the online hypsters find them an easy sell because people erroneously believe that pitching velocity is all about more arm strength. But it is not all about arm strength at all but about how a pitcher can put as many muscles of his body on stretch as quickly as possible in order to deliver the arm with more arm speed.

If you are confused about this then ask yourself this question: If pitching is about strength then how is it that Little League pitchers 10-12 years old are able to throw 65-75 mph hour which is the equivalent of 85-90 mph…without working on developing added strength?

Or how is it that skinny pitchers are able to throw with above average velocity…without getting bigger and stronger?

What about pitching drills? I have written several articles on this blog about why pitching drills are counter-productive to pitchers at all levels unless they are just starting to learn at the beginner level. Below is more proof about why drills will actually set back athletes. Imagine pitchers following a websites advice that actually teaches them to perform worse…not better.

Pitching drills create mechanical looking pitchers who are less explosive because they are constantly thinking about the drill and their body builds in a faulty movement pattern that actually slows them down. Not a very effective means of boosting performance!

This is the time of year when pitchers discover what has worked and what hasn’t worked. You will sometimes hear fathers bragging about how their son’s spent time in the weight room or throwing weighted balls during the off-season and now see a big velocity improvement in their high school pitcher.

What they do not realize is that those gains mostly came from growth and development…not from added weight training or throwing weighted balls.

Long toss may be a good warm-up tool or as part of an overall full body conditioning routine but by itself it has not proven to boost velocity. In my opinion far too much time is wasted on long toss.

What then are pitchers to do? The absolute best activity that pitchers can engage in is to throw with good mechanics from the mound a lot of the time without overdoing it. You can’t get better as a pitcher by throwing on flat ground at less than game intensity since those mechanics are totally different than mechanics that are used throwing off the mound at game intensity.

Every day the online lemon list is growing as more and more baseball websites come on line. And they all believe what they are proposing will work. But it is only their belief and the belief of others. But “belief based” coaching is not working to develop better pitchers.

The only thing that can work to boost pitching performance is “evidence based” coaching…and you will find little of that online.

Don’t become another victim of the baseball pitching lemon list.

Why Pitching Drills Do Not Work:

R. N. Singer (Ed.), Readings in motor learning (pp. 397-409). Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Febiger.

“If muscles participate in more than one movement, as most do, they must be represented diffusely in the cortex. Presumably different centers connect via internuncial neurons with groups of peripherally disposed motor units. . . . .motor units are activated in a definite sequence which varies with the movement elicited. As the severity of effort increases, those involved primarily in one movement may be recruited to assist in the performance of others.” (p. 398)

Implication. Movements, not muscles, are represented in the cortex. Patterns are learned and those patterns are peculiar to every movement.

“. . . reflexes evoked under similar conditions are extraordinarily consistent. Indeed, they are so repetitive as to warrant designating them patterned movements. . . the fundamental unit of action may be thought of as a total response in which agonists and antagonists, synergists and fixators participate in balanced and harmonious activity. Partial patterns emerge secondarily, by virtue of special training, . . ” (p. 399)

Implication.Total actions (e. g., those to be used in a competitive setting) need to be trained. It is highly unlikely that partial or isolated training of movement segments will replicate the unit function in the total action. Thus, once techniques (total response patterns) are being refined, partial practices will serve no purpose other than to learn another movement. There will be no integration of the partial practice movement into the total response movement.

“. . . the sensory feedback coming from muscles, tendons and joints greatly affects movement patterns. Central excitations have a tendency to flow always into stretched muscles. Thus, every change in body positioning alters the configuration of the next succeeding efferent response. It affects not only the muscle stretched, but all functionally related muscle groups as well. This means that a change in the responsiveness of one component of a movement-complex spreads autonomously to the other constituents.” (p. 399)

Implication. When a patterned movement is changed by the conscious effort to alter one aspect of the movement, the whole action is altered, most likely to perform worse. The isolated practices of drill elements and then consciously implementing the experiences from the drills into the pattern, usually will disrupt the pattern in its entirety. Thus, the changed element may be performed “better” but the other, previously acceptable movement characteristics will be altered, presumably for the worse.

“. . . willed movements which are new and unfamiliar always demand cerebration. They are performed at first with more or less conscious attention to the details of their execution. Once mastered, they operate automatically. Conscious introspection at this stage may even disrupt the nicety of an established pattern. After an act has become automatic, . . ., it is less well performed if it must first be considered and analyzed.” (pp. 399-400)

Implication. Conscious attention to details of an automated action will reduce the efficiency/economy of that action. There is a time before a contest when conscious attention to details of technique at practice need to cease so that preparation can be perceived by an athlete as consisting of “good feeling” techniques that are performed automatically.

If many like movements are learned, conscious attention in a contest could switch to a less-efficient pattern of movement, particularly if one item of the skill is attended to. As attention then switches to other different features, the economy of a performance is degraded.

However, when fatigue is incurred, conscious attention to performance details produces a more efficient movement form than one that is executed automatically because it is so fatigued. Thus, there are times when conscious control of performance movements is detrimental (e. g., in non-fatigued states) and times when it is beneficial (e. g., in states of high fatigue).

When work becomes fatiguing, or efficient neuromuscular patterns no longer can be maintained, recruitment of motor patterns and motor components occurs. Irradiation associated with extreme stress is so widespread in the recruitment process that a willed movement limited to a single appendicular joint may evoke action potentials in muscles located in all four extremities, the head and neck, and the trunk.

Through practice, many activity patterns are learned. More than not, families of movement patterns are learned to accomplish the same functional outcome. While a task is being executed, movement patterns will be evoked in series to avoid unnecessary fatigue in the central nervous system mechanisms and the skeletal structures used. In fatigue and stress, the recruitment of extra responses and neural patterns will be more extravagant because of learned facilitation. Much training is performed in fatigue and thus, anything but restricted efficient movement patterns are learned to dominance. If specific limited training had only occurred, that is, the body only knew a narrow band of efficient movements, then the recruitment (irradiation) would be minimal and would center around efficient movement.

Practice does not make perfect. Only practice that yields feedback about the correctness of responses can generate advances towards perfection. If the activity content is largely irrelevant for competitive requirements and/or feedback is inadequate or non-existent, the practices will be wasted. There is no dispute that individuals without external correct coaching feedback do improve in performance but only to a certain level. Without instruction individuals tend to adopt expedient strategies for movement control, which quite often are not the best or most economical forms. This is why an individual can play golf for 40 years, never have a golf lesson, and struggle to break 90 for 18 holes. The expedient patterns that have been learned and perpetuated limit performance to that mediocre level.

For efficient and maximum performance “. . . the kinesthetic acuity we should strive for is not enhanced general body awareness, but rather, a more sharply defined and specific sensitivity to what is happening in those key maneuvers upon which the success or failure of complex movement patterns may depend” (p. 407).

Implication.The skill content of practices has to mimic that of competitive requirements if beneficial training time is to be experienced. It is wrong to practice something with good intent (e. g., “I hope it will benefit the performance”) without being able to justify and demonstrate correlated transfer to a competitive skill. If this dictum is not adhered to then much practice will be wasted or even counter-productive. It is quite possible that movements practiced could be so irrelevant that their impact on hoped for competition-specific movements will be so destructive that performance will be worse than if no skill practice had been entertained.

The programming of appropriate transferable practice activities in an enriched milieu of correct instruction is a challenge for modern coaching

Dick Mills website www.pitching.nexcess.net

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, email me at dickmills@gmail.com and ask for our special Free Coach’s Report.)