Baseball Pitching Velocity Training

Listen to the entire 3X Pitching Podcast Episode 3. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes by selecting the button on the far right.

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3X Pitching – Podcast Episode 4 Transcript

This transcript is a rough draft. It is recommended that you listen to the podcast above.

Conventional Wisdom of Pitching

Alright! Brent Pourciau, TopVelocity.net. And this is the fourth episode of the 3x pitching podcast. Hopefully you listened to the other three. We've had some great ones. Actually the third one was probably my favorite. We covered ground force reactions, which really is a cool topic when it comes to high velocity pitching. And this one is actually going to be cool too! Because we're going to talk about the perspective of 3x pitching.
3X Pitching, I have to say, is the most comprehensive approach to high velocity pitching that you could find anywhere. It covers every aspect of the high velocity pitcher in full detail. There's really nothing left out. I know I'm saying this while finishing my next volume to the 3x pitching mechanics guide. It's also going to come with kind of a seminar here. It's going to come with a seminar power point presentation in the videos. So you're going to have another book to the series and but also another video to learn it quickly. But..not you're going to learn it quickly! It's a bit easier to soak up with a video. But as this evolves, and continues to grow and mature, and becomes a great program.
It's a perspective, when we step back and look at the big picture, it's really a new perspective on high velocity pitching. It's really like a paradigm here. I'm really kind of spinning the tables on the conventional wisdom of the game because the conventional wisdom has us locked in this elementary understanding of pitching. What we learned in little league is a lot of the same stuff what we hear even when we get into high school and college. It's just that really basic, static understanding of pitching and it doesn't help. The perspective is so important. The reason most people get across this information, find this on Topvelocity.net. They're not ready for it. I see a lot of people, because I get in a ton of traffic on the site, and they're off in 20 seconds. They're obviously not reading, but even the ones that maybe spending a minute or two on there, and then they're gone. It just blows my mind that any of the articles that you come across on here, or any of the questions on the forums, within someone reading it in one or two minutes wouldn't intrigue them in any way.
It's because they never look at pitching outside of this little box of conventional wisdom. And once you do, like I talk about in one of my articles with Plato's allegory of the cave, it's probably one of my favorite analogies. So I learned it in philosophy. It's a great understanding of life and how the collective conscious or perspective of life really does kind of plague us all as a handicap. And in this Plato's allegory of the cave, of course Plato is the great philosopher. He came up with this analogy and he said life is a bunch of us people in a cave, we're sitting down chained to the ground,and there's this big light source that's outside coming from behind us but we don't know what it is, and here's just this light coming behind us but it's the outside. It's beyond the cave and we see these shadows from the light source being projected on the wall in front of us. We stand here so long that eventually we start believing these shadows are real. That these shadows are real characters and people and we started interacting with them. We started relating to them. Eventually that becomes a reality. We start to accept that as reality. And that's all it is. And we become happy with that reality and become chained to that floor. But someone, one of us, is intrigued. Something sparks a paradigm switch. And our brain says "Hey! Maybe this isn't reality. Maybe there's more to life than being chained to the floor looking at this wall." So that person became so intrigued that he breaks his chains, wanders to the light, he walks outside and he sees the light and he realizes that he was blind. That he was completely lost. That there was so much more to life than what he was accustomed to or what he had grown used to. And then of course he steps into a new world of information and senses.
Ok! So that gives us a good understanding and paints a picture of how this all works and how conventional wisdom works and why it plagues us. And that's where a lot of baseball is. They're sitting down chained to that cave or chained to that floor in that cave and thinks those shadows on the walls is what it's all about. This is how we play the game of baseball. But there's this whole other source that's where most of the answers are. Really all the answers are. And it's out there. Most of us that are chained to the walls, don't have the desire to get up or get out to go find those answers. But some of us do. And those are the ones here. Those are the ones listening to the podcast right now. You have either had that seed planted and now you're intrigued and now you want to get off these chains into that light. Or there's those of you who've broken out! You've been following this light for a while. So that's what you're dealing with and why you're going to hear conventional wisdom and hear this old school perspective of pitching for a long time. But if you're the one who walked the light, it's your time to have the edge. Again that's what you're going to have. You're going to go back in to that cave with what you learned and you're going to sit back down. And you're not going to have to chain yourself down and if you play that game, you're going to have the edge. You're going to have all the answers. That's important and that's what's key in this game, and that's what we're doing with this podcast. We're really going to paint a different perspective here. We're going to try to get you to look deeper in the light and really see the secrets of high velocity pitching.

Study Proves the Importance of the Initial Move to Pitching Velocity

So if you want to follow along, this is really inspired by this article called, Study Proves Pitching Velocity Is Generated From The Initial Movement and a great study called, Muscle-contraction properties in overarm throwing movements. They found in this study that the results support the thesis that the stretch-shortening cycle is the type of muscle contraction in unloaded overarm throws. Furthermore, it is possible to increase the throw velocity by increasing the velocity of the initial movement. What this article or case study talks about is that pitching is an unloaded throw. That's what it is. Basically the body is loaded with some type of force and then as it unloads that force, that's when it throws the ball. That right there is the new perspective. Because when you think of it that way and you want too enhance performance, you don't enhance the unloaded movement, you enhance the loaded movement. You enhance the initial movement. Not the follow-through.
What have we always heard in baseball. We've heard follow through, pick-up the dollar, we've heard pull the ball down, get over your front leg, get that downward plane. We've heard all that. And all that is, is the unloaded move! That's conventional wisdom trying to tell us "if you want to get better, increase the unloaded move, enhance the unloaded move." But they are only giving you tips to do this with adjustments to the unloaded move. Doesn't work.! We all know this doesn't work! If it worked we wouldn't be looking for an alternative to this conventional wisdom. You wouldn't be here listening to this podcast.
So that being said this article is telling us that the answer is enhancing the loaded move. Not the unloaded move. So how do we enhance the loaded move? How do we enhance the initial move. Because what they're using is, they've discovered this perspective through learning more about the stretch shortening cycle. Like if you don't know what the stretch shortening cycle is, it's a terminology that defines a muscle phenomenon, that the muscles are like elastic components or material. So basically if you stretch it, it fires. And they found if the muscle was fired at a higher rate if it was first stretched before it fires. So there you go. That's saying the same thing. If you want the muscle to fire harder, you got to load it. So you don't try to unload it harder, you just load it harder. That's the new perspective here. So enhancing the initial move is the key to high velocity pitching. If you continue going down the road of trying to enhance the unloaded move, like you've been told all your life, all we wind up with is injury. We wind up with a fatigued arm. We wind up with low velocities. So I'm going to give you some tips here on how we enhance the loaded move.
Of course, the initial move in the entire delivery is the first place. Well of course, that's why this is called 3X Pitching. 3X Pitching, 3X standing for triple extension is basically telling you the foundation to this approach is the load. The loaded move. One of the key components to 3x pitching is what is called the load. In that load, we are loading the drive leg to initiate a bigger reaction and to continue this load and unload up the kinetic chain.

The 3X Pitching Perspective

I call this in the 3X Pitching Mechanics Guide, Action to Reaction and Load to Unload. It's all the same thing. One key tip to enhance the loaded move would be learning triple extension and to build more power into front foot. The one most predominant moment in the pitching delivery where the stretch shortening cycle is at its best is in one of the other components in 3X Pitching, called hip to shoulder separation. When the hips are firing open, and the shoulders are staying closed. The load of the leg drive firing the hips open creating an unload into shoulder rotation. So really in the load, the energy being in the core torque. But all in all as we move up the kinetic chain, we continue to see this action to reaction and load and unload. And I can get very specific into this and that's what I do in the 3X Pitching Mechanics Guide. Which you really need to get because you're learning this at an elite level. And you learn all the eccentrics, you're learning all these specific movements to the load and unload of this action to reaction kinetic chain. But the point is I just want you to keep the key perspective here in this podcast. I want you to walk out of this like you're walking out of the cave in the Allegory of the Cave. I want to plant the seed now. I don't want to get into the mechanics. Because in most of my articles, I go into mechanics, details, and the techniques. So here lets just try to plant the seed.
So just to get a better grasp of this perspective, think of just the overall movement. Think of the feeling of moving down the mound when you pitch. What do you feel when you move down the mound to pitch? You feel of course the initial leg lift, and then that shift of momentum, that kind of fall and as you accelerate into that front foot, and then you land hard. BOOM! You hear and feel that hard hit. BOOM! And now you pick up some speed with your arms and you feel that chest push out and the shoulders go. Then you feel that ball, grip that ball, and feel your arm come through. Feel those feelings because within those feelings there's those loads and unloads. That's the perspective we want here, not conventional wisdom. If you're a guy driven by and controlled by conventional wisdom, you're that guy moving down the mound after your leg lift and you're just falling into that front leg, and you hit your front leg. As right as you hit that front leg you're really trying to pull that arm around, and then pulling that arm around and once that arm comes around, then you're trying to pick it up and touch that dirt, pull the ball down, or rip those fingers off. That's the conventional movement of the pitcher. That's the inefficient, definitely abusive mechanics of the conventional pitcher. That's you trying to enhance your unloaded movement with the unloaded movement.
I want you to think now like the 3X Pitching pitcher. The new perspective here. You who have the excellent grasp of the science behind the high velocity pitcher. The dynamics of the high velocity pitcher. Let's visualize your movements. So you would come into leg lift and you would be working initially to get yourself into a position in your stride, to where you could accelerate your load into front foot. You could accelerate the initial move of the stride as hard as you can into your front foot. So you put all this force and power and intent into that drive and that explosive move down the mound so you hit that front foot like a Mack truck hitting a wall. And then you feel a reaction, you feel the body stay strong but relaxed. Meaning you feel your leg strong to support that dynamic move, you feel the arm and the shoulders relax, and you feel them load up as a reaction to that initial move. You don't feel the body trying to muscle up. You don't feel the body trying to unload the unload. You don't feel the body trying to pull the ball down. You feel all your work has been done and you feel your body reacting to that movement. Loading up from that initial move.
Now you feel the unload. The unload is out of your control. Now the unload is just your body releasing all that energy that you put into it and loaded into it. And then you feel your arms and shoulders along for the ride. You kind of feel them out of your own control. You feel like your arm is just attached to your body and you're just about to experience what's rocking out of your hand. Now the unload is no longer a part of your movement. It's no longer a part of your voluntary movement. It's something that has been built up and generated moving on its own. Now of course, as the arm starts to go, as the shoulders star t to go, the arms going to lay back and we're going to load up again and the same things going to happen. We're going to the, the arms going to just explode and ride and unload and just take off and if it flies off, it flies off. It's no a pull down, pickup, get over my front side. It's a...let it go. I did the work to load it, now let it go. Just let it go.
Alright, so I hope a light turned on. I hope I planted a seed. I hope you're going, "Wow, I get it. THAT is throwing hard. THAT is high velocity pitching. THAT is dynamic. THAT is the next level. THAT is 3X Pitching. THAT is 90 MPH. THAT is 95 MPH." Not this other stuff I've been doing since I was swinging at a tee. This is the game I need to play. This is the game where i will hit my goals, make my dreams come true. This is where I want to be. I'm hoping that this new perspective guys, will put that light on. Got you out of the cave and got you looking at pitching completely different. And it's key guys, you got to hold onto that perspective. Even when you're out there in practice, and your coach continues to pump that conventional wisdom in your head, and it continues to corrupt you, and chain you back to that floor. You got to hold onto this perspective. Come back to this podcast.
I'll know if this is a great podcast, because I see it has the most views. That means I did a good job. I painted the picture for you guys. I gave you guys the perspective of the high velocity pitcher. And you're coming back to keep it there. Keep that seed planted! Keep grooming it, keep growing it, because this perspective will get you to your top velocity. It is the first step. It is planting that seed and if you keep it in there and you keep focused on it, and you use it to drive you to learn more, and to get more information on this, you WILL be a high velocity guy and you will reach your top velocity. So I appreciate you guys listening and hope this did everything for you. I hope it does. Keep working hard, keep increasing velocity, and if you guys need any help, please contact me, I'm here to help.