Why Pitchers Should Be Skeptical Of Most Professional Pitching Instructors

Professional pitching instructors have many duties when they are being paid to instruct pitchers at all levels – some of those duties are to help them improve to the best of their ability and give to them an ongoing plan for ongoing improvement.

Unfortunately, that is not what is happening in most cases because professional pitching instructors are not videotaping pitchers during each practice session. Without videotaping even big league pitching coaches can only guess what is happening with a pitcher’s overall mechanics.

Certainly there are some actions that can be observed by just using the naked eye. For example, it is easy to see the back foot action and the front foot positioning as a pitcher moves from the back leg to the front let. It is easy to see when the pitcher is landing on the midline or not or even whether he is swinging his lead leg out and around…all of which will reduce velocity, lead to poor control while adding stress to the arm.

However, the main mechanical components for maximizing force production and thus improving velocity cannot be seen with the naked eye.

For example, an experienced instructor cannot see these important points that maximize velocity, affect control and can add or reduce stress to the arm:

1. the position of the back knee whether it is collapsing the back leg or not
2. whether the pitcher is completing back leg drive or not…a major component for maximizing velocity
3. the amount of elbow flexion or elbow bend which can impact the positioning of the arm at landing and going into acceleration
4. the angle of the front leg at landing and whether the leg and hip are bracing at the right time or not
5. the position of the throwing arm, hip and trunk at maximum external shoulder rotation (arm laying back to parallel)
6. back foot action and timing for maximizing hip rotation
7. position of the hips and trunk at maximum external shoulder rotation
8. position of throwing elbow in relation to trunk at maximum external rotation
9. stride length – can the pitcher manage his stride and maximize trunk rotation and flexion speed?
10. arm position at ball release – is the arm fully extended

There are more of these mechanical issues, however without videotaping a professional instructor is simply guessing. And you may be wasting money and valuable time.

For example we recently had a5’10′ 172 lb. RH high school junior visit us for a one-on-one lesson. The pitcher’s current velocity was in the low eighties. His father had sent a video for us to review prior to the lesson so we were prepared to know which changes we would focus on. We likes a lot of what we saw as the pitcher was explosive and has very good intensity. But he had one serious flaw and couple of minor ones.

Through our questionnaire process I learned that this boy was hitting 86 mph during his sophomore summer…which of course is well above average. My philosophy is that if a pitcher has hit a certain velocity once he should be able to hit it most of the time consistently. I wanted to find out what had changed from last year to this year.

With more questioning I learned that he had been working throughout the off-season with one of the major league pitching coaches. Now of course most parents of Little League, high school or college pitchers believe that having the opportunity to work with a major league pitching coach would be the absolute best investment of time and money for long term improvement of their son’s pitching. However, my only question is – did he videotape during every session in order to know what was working and what was not working.

The father told me that the only videotaping he did was a view from the back looking toward the catcher for the benefit of sending it to a showcase for evaluation. Other than that there was no videotaping.

So what changed from sophomore year when this pitcher was on his way toward 90 mph to right now? Since the father did not have any videotape of his son throwing 86 or during his sophomore year, which would have shown the big change, I had to find out what this major league pitching coach worked on.

He worked mainly on one thing. Lengthening his stride. Since I believe in having a long stride or a stride that is 100% of the pitcher’s height, you might think that is a good thing. It is only a good thing if you as an instructor are able to view the videotape and see if the long stride produced a beneficial change. It did not.

This pitcher was not able to manage a stride of 73-74″ even though he was 70″ tall. However, the real problem was how this pitcher was shifting his weight. This poor weight shift forced his trunk to lean back during his stride which produced a slowing action of his entire delivery.

Pitcher loses 4-6 mph on his fastball by working with a major league pitching coach

So what did we do? We showed the pitcher how to shift his weight properly so his trunk did not lean back plus we shortened his stride so he could manage that stride and feel his front leg and hip bracing so his trunk could rotate and flex forward faster thus whipping his arm through at a faster rate.

The point is the major league pitching instructor did not videotape. He only assumed. And his assumption cost this college and maybe pro prospect 4-6 mph on his fastball going into a very important year of his career…when college coaches are looking for top pitching recruits.

I told his father that we are confident he can get his lost velocity back very quickly in a matter of a a couple of weeks and then be on his way toward a 90 mph fastball which he could easily see by his senior year.

If you are paying a pitching instructor and he is not videotaping during every lesson then he is guessing and you are wasting a lot of time and money…and maybe your son future and his arm health.

The other thing this father could have done is have us do a video analysis which would have shown why his son was losing velocity. A video analysis is an insurance policy against poor instruction.

But remember this… there are no secrets to pitching improvement. Just sound sports science principles that we apply to pitching that just make common sense. No magic spoken here.

A video analysis is your best insurance policy against poor instruction, guaranteed improvement and added arm insurance against injury. http://www.pitching.com/video_analysis/

Our Explosively Pitching DVD program teaches parents how to help their sons use their bodies to pitch instead of just their arms. Not only does this improve velocity but reduces the risk of arm injuries. We also teach them proper conditioning. http://www.pitching.com/products/