The Value Of Baseball Pitching Drills—Does Your Son Still Use Drills When He Rides His Bike?

The question is are baseball pitching drills valuable of not? And should your son being doing a lot of baseball pitching drills to improve his mechanics?

According to the large majority of pitching coaches and instructors from Little League baseball right through college baseball, drills are considered valuable. But why?

Baseball pitching is considered to be a simple two-phase motor skill. In that respect it is like golf. This means that in pitching you have a wind-up and then a pitch. In golf you have a backswing and a downswing. And that’s it.

In both activities there are no natural breaks. In other words you should not see a hisitation or any stopping once the action is initiated…even though some instructors still have their pitchers hesitating at the so-called “balance position” which…actually acts as a break for developing rhythm and proper tempo. Stopping does not make sense.

When you make a baseball pitch (like golf) you are using the entire body’s forces that together… using proper timing help build energy and transfer that energy efficiently from the large muscles of the lower body up to the shoulder and then finally to the hand and fingers in order to deliver the ball.

The other important element to consider is that pitching is one of sports’ most explosive actions. Explosive meaning the ability to put as many muscles of the body on stretch as possible and as quickly as possible. The pitcher’s body in that sense acts like a big rubber band. And that’s why you want a long stride…not a short stride.

So the question must be asked that if there are no natural breaks in an explosive sports activity…why on earth would you think that by inserting small breaks in the pitching motion that it will help produce a better pitching motion?

Makes no sense to me. I pitched a long time including six years of professional baseball and don’t remember ever doing any drills.

And yet at just about every baseball field or during every pitching instruction session you will see pitchers doing drills. And what they are doing is building in slowness while becoming more mechanical while thinking more about each little part of the delivery. How to build “the mechanical—overthinking” pitcher—one drill at a time.

Do we really want to produce more slow and mechanical pitchers who are thinking about every little phase of their delivery?

Doing pitching drills is like having your son, who knows how to ride a bike always start out riding it by having you hold the bike and then pushing him away so he can start peddling. Or have him start down the street going very, very slowly to make sure his ride is perfect and then to have fun riding after he does his riding drills. Does it make sense that your 17 year old son is still doing his bike riding drills?

So do baseball pitching drills make sense to you? Why would they.

I spoke to the father of an 11 year old pitcher yesterday from Florida. He told me proudly about all the different drills that his son’s pitching instructor has him doing during every lesson. There were “stop at the balance position drill”, “stop at landing drill”, “the towel drill”, “stop the glove out in front” drill and on and on.

I asked him why he had his son doing drills if he already had a pitching motion? He said all the instructors…mostly former professional pitchers had all the kids at this academy doing pitching drills. He also told me that everyone praised his son for his good mechanics.

I asked him if his son looked slow? He said he was a bit slow but he could throw strikes.

I asked him if his instructor had every videotaped his son and broken down his mechanics? He said no. That’s a big red flag that the instructor does not fully understand pitching mechanics. Thus the reason for all the drills.

I told him that his son no longer needed to do drills but that what he needed now was to continue to make any needed adjustments within his delivery so that it continued to be more explosive and smooth. You see a smooth delivery that is explosive is an indication of good timing of all the parts.

Baseball pitching drills produce slowness…not explosiveness. And baseball pitching drills also produce “over-thinking” pitchers who don’t pitch well under pressure because they are always thinking about their mechanics…rather than how to get the hitter out.

Why then do baseball pitching coaches and instructors like drills? I think that there are a couple of reasons. One reason is that drills eat up time. And if you can fill up a lesson with drills then you will not have to teach pitchers how to make needed adjustments within their delivery throwing at game speed intensity. Instructors can also create more lessons because they can always tell parents that they have more drills to teach. Teaching pitchers how to make needed adjustments within their delivery…without stopping or slowing down…would require a lot of study.

The point is that most coaches and instructors out there do not fully understand baseball pitching mechanics…or the sports science principles of proper training…therefore drills are much needed.

The drills are a smokescreen and make them look like they do know how to instruct. This is another reason why you will see coaches using weighted baseballs or also having pitchers do a lot of long toss. They do eat up time…which could be better spent throwing from the mound at a target at game speed intensity.

Do you really think that a hand towel feels like a baseball? If you don’t I will guarantee that the pitcher’s mind and body does and because you can’t fool them it completely disregards the towel as anything meaningful related to pitching. In other words all the towel drills that a pitcher does will not register with his mind and body as a way to help his mechanics.

How many drills do you think that all the Hall of Fame pitchers did in their day? Probably zero.

Baseball pitching drills are a modern day phenomenon. Just something else to insure that youth, high school and college pitchers don’t reach their full potential.

How many mechanical drills do you see football quarterbacks doing? I think 99.999% get better by working on their throwing mechanics by just throwing a lot of passes.

I wonder if that would work for baseball pitchers too!

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.