Three Things You Can Borrow From Tim Lincecum’s Mechanics To Boost Pitching Velocity

How can Little League, high school and college pitchers improve their pitching velocity. The latest sports science research has proven that pitching velocity must come from improving pitching mechanics rather than strength. The video show Giants’ Tim Lincecum’s pitching mechanics at different points of his career. They are worth studying.

I was especially glad to see that Tim Lincecum won the National League Cy Young award as the leagues best pitcher. Why Because I thought it might finally put to rest the unsupported belief that smaller pitchers don’t have pitching stamina and thus get injured more. Sports science research would just laugh at most of what baseball coaches believe about how to improve pitching performance and reduce the risk of injury.  They are not reading the sports science studies.

Tim Lincecum is reported to be just 5’10″ and weighs 170 lbs and yet his fastball typically reaches speeds of 95-100 mph.

The question that every major league or amateur pitcher should be asking is – how does he do it? Does he just have special pitching velocity genes. Or was he born with an exceptional arm. The fact is neither of those beliefs has any merit.

Pitching velocity is a learned skill

Tim Lincecum’s pitching velocity is the result of what his own father taught him about how to use his body to produce velocity instead of his arm. By the way…Tim Lincecum’s father is reported to not be an advocate of a lot of strength training since I am sure he understands what the latest sports science research has found that pitching is not a strength activity at all…since many Little League pitchers can throw 70 even 80 mph without have much strength at all. Pitching is an explosive movement and a full body activity. Focusing on building more strength or doing special arm exercises has proven to be a waste of time and effort.

There are actually three aspects that Tim Lincecum displays in his pitching mechanics that all pitchers can use to improve their velocity right now whether they are Little League, high school, college or even professional pitchers all looking for an extra 6-12 mph.

There are three important aspects that all pitchers can learn by studying Tim Lincecum’s mechanics:

Tim Lincecum moves down the mound faster than any other major league starting pitcher –   Speed of movement is the key to pitching velocity and far more important than strength.

Tim Lincecum’s stride to height ratio is greater than any other major league starting pitcher – his stride length is reported by him to be 120% of his height. (During one-on-one lessons one of the first things I focus on is having the pitcher increase his stride length to at least his height but normally more than 100% of his height.)

Tim Lincecum gets his arm involved in the pitch later than any other major league starting pitcher thus the energy he gets from his fast and long stride gets to the ball as late as possible thus producing more force from his fingers.

So those are three elements that any parent, coach or player can use right now to help increase their pitching velocity at any level of baseball.

CAUTION: There are however some aspects of Tim Lincecum’s mechanics that I would not advise you to copy because they could actually reduce performance or even lead to injury.  Some professional pitchers are able to overcome certain mechanical faults while copying those faults by others can have adverse effects.