I give away some secrets to the 3X Pitching Velocity Program along with my stance on the emotional long toss debate. You will also learn a little bit about my story and how I tore my rotator cuff and made it back to baseball. If you like the interview please share it with your friends. Thanks for watching!

Check out the original posting of the interview here:
Brent Pourciau Shares 2 Arm Strength Secrets & How to Really Long Toss

Mark Brooks Brent Pourciau Interview Transcript

Mark Brooks:
Welcome my friends. Welcome to another episode of AoB experts. I am your host Mark Brooks and today we have a really interesting episode. Our guest today is Brent Pourciau. He is the creator of TopVelocity.net all the way from New Orleans. Just to let you guys know, 99.9% of the content that is at the Art of Baseball.net consists of hitting. We talk about the physical and the mental side of hitting but here is two reason why I love having pitching experts on this show. There is actually two reasons. One it doesn’t matter who you are, we want to learn how to throw harder. We want to understand best practices, the best training tips to learn how to increase our velocity. Number two, we all want to know what is causing arm pain, what is causing common arm injuries, what can we do to help avoid those injuries so it doesn’t rob us of playing time. So that is exactly what we are going to talk about today with Brent Pourciau. `He has got some great tips that are extremely actionable that you guys can apply tomorrow. You guys pay attention so stay tuned and enjoy the show.

Alright guys, welcome to another episode of AoB experts, I am your host Mark Brooks and man we have an awesome show today. We have, all the way from the land of beignets New Orleans, Brent Pourciau. How are you doing man?

Brent Pourciau:
I am doing great Mark. Thanks for having me man!

Mark:
Yes, so you were saying that the weather is getting pretty bad. How is it man?

Brent:
Yeah, it looks like a tornado is coming. Who knows, we just had one, I think two weeks ago. We had a tornado just pop up on the south shore. I am on the north shore which is across the lake pontchartrain from New Orleans. We call the south shore, which is the New Orleans side. Yeah they got a little tornado last week which was pretty nasty. Our weather here is very dramatic.

Mark:
Alright, so you know you are the founder of topvelocity.net. Creator of the 3X Pitching program. What I really think is just interesting is a lot of the knowledge that has come from topvelocity.net. The resources there and a lot of the information that is inside 3X pitching program comes from your story and how you basically had an injury and you had essentially had to battle back from that and you learned a lot of basic principles about avoiding arm injury and increasing pitching velocity. So that ids really interesting story. Can you kind of share with us specifically what you experience was?

Brent:
Yeah, that is a great point Mark. I think we all eventually in our careers, specifically being pitchers we are going to run into some injury or some we start having pain because we are pushing our limits. When we are out their throwing and we are trying to compete specially when we get into a good high school and a college we are competing at a tough level. We are sacrificing our bodies everyday, I guess just like any sport, we are specifically sacrificing our arms. I was just like a lot of guys and I noticed my arm was breaking down. I started freaking out. I didn’t know what to do so all I did was just try to hide it. Pain killers, icy hot, anything I could just to try to keep battling everyday. I wasn’t going to let that slow me down well that is just not really the smartest strategies is what I learned because that eventually tore my rotator cuff. The lesson was I knew if I was going get back. I tore my rotator cuff freshman in college, I knew if I was going to get back to playing college, and this was going to defy the odds or basically what doctors where telling me which was you will never play again. There is no way. If I was going to do that I knew I was going to have to do it differently this time. I knew if I just did the same thing a pretty good chance the  doctors where right. I was determined to prove them wrong because you know when you are 18 years old and someone says, someone in the medical profession, you are never going to play again it devastates you man. I mean I went into deep depression but the way I came out of it was, there was this saying that came across my face really changed me. It is that old saying, “Where there is a will there is a Way.” That just told me, hey yu don’t have to listen to these doctors, this saying is telling you if you really believe in this, if you really have the will to be the greatest baseball player or at least play this game again, then the way will present itself. I just kind of took that and ran with it. I then ran into some key, some really well know strength and conditioning coaches that showed me the hold strength aspects of it that I was completely uneducated around. I credit Tom House, he was really changing the industry at the time, he was really innovative. He was definitely pushing out of the conventional wisdom of pitching and I satrted learning his concepts of hip to shoulder separation and I just took off with it. That is what 3X Pitching is. Basically me trying to figure out hip to shoulder separation and how you can enhance it and how you can effectively use it to not only increase velocity but it is very much an injury prevent component. It is something that is going to protect your arm.

Mark:
Which is awesome because basically your claim is that you can take a pitcher from 5-10mph in about 16 weeks or less. That is a really bold claim but whenever you go to topvelocity.net you are bombarded with case study after case study of these kids who are seeing these sorts of increases in velocity. So what would you think is kind of the key principle that some of these kids are learning?

Brent:
Well, the reason I can make this claim is because the majority of young kids that come to me, I am saying the majority, not every single one. The majority of the ones that come to me haven’t done a basic or even a good strength and conditioning program that is specific to their needs as a pitcher or becoming a high velocity pitcher. Just them learning that and implement that alone in a 16 week program is just dynamic. It is amazing the results you see but the thing is this isn’t an easy road. I am telling them, yeah 5-10 in 16 weeks but you are going to be killing yourself. Literally, I am not making it sound like it is an easy 5-10 this is the hardest 5-10 you will ever earn in your life but just the strength and conditioning aspects, I am a USA Weightlifting Certified Sports Performance Coach, so I know, I did it in my career, I really credit a lot of me coming back and throwing low to mid 90′s after arm surgery was to the strength and conditioning aspects that I was learning and developing. At the same time I know specifically from all of my research what we have to do mechanically to make sure that what we are developing in our strength and conditioning program is being converted on the mound and into the ball. It just works man! Like I said this isn’t rocket science. I tell my guys this isn’t rocket science, it is just basic stuff that you need to learn and if you can implement it effectively through a program that is proven to work, it can happen. It is just up to you if you are willing to commit at this level.

Mark:
Yeah, that is the same kind of misconception that we see with hitters as well. They kind of take for granted that hitting is kind of pretty simple or at least the principles that can provide you with the success that you need. They are pretty simple concepts. I feel like I am not doing anything revolutionary but I am providing kind of a simpler approach to increasing the results that they want. Which is really amazing.

My second questions, this is something that I really have been, I really wasn’t sure. I am kind of on the fence with. There are two schools of thought when it comes to long toss programs and how often do you throw everyday essentially. So I want to know what your take is on long tossing and also what your take is on throwing. How often should you be throwing on a weekly basis?

Brent:
Isn’t this a fun debate. We all love this!

Mark:
It is like a religion. It is never ending.

Brent:
I just think I love getting into it because it sparks so much emotion man. I am kind of a high intensity guy so I kind of enjoy it but the problem is a lot of guys coming into the long toss debate they just think it is black or white. We are not talking long toss or not. I mean what is long toss? I mean is it 80 feet? Is it 120 feet, 300 feet, what is long toss? So I really try to make it my stance on it specific to max distances. I say anything past 150 180 feet it really starts to go into a whole other realm of throwing that I don’t think is really conducive to pitching.

I know the argument, well if I can throw the ball 300 feet I am throwing the ball 90 mph. Well that is kind of, you know, fussy math a little bit but that is fine. If that is what gets you fired up and makes you think you are going to throw 90mph one day then that is fine. I don’t think that is a really, educated intelligent way to go at it. From what I have learned and developed through measure a pitcher through many different variables when it comes to atheism and motor coordination or the  mechanics of it. I can evaluate the pitcher and show him where he is failing within his athleticism or within his mechanics to say this is why you are not 90. I don’t have to go and say well, yeah you are 270 feet well you got another 30 feet and then you are going to be 90. I just don’t take that approach. I know I have really gone at guys like Alan Jaeger about it who I really think is a nice guy, he is very professional, and we have come to terms on it. You know we can agree to disagree but I just don’t believe in anything past 180 feet is going to be the most effective way in developing velocity. If you look at the studies, the only one we have right now is the one ASMI did and that one really shows, here comes the rain, I don’t know if you can hear it. That one really shows that once you go past 180 feet what happens is the forces on the body double but the velocity doesn’t. The velocity doesn’t even change. You are doubling the forces you are putting on your body to throwing the ball 300 feet but your velocity is more than likely can be the same as it was when you were throwing 180 feet and you had maybe half the amount of forces on your body. I just don’t see the benefits to it. There are many other ways we can train for velocity and arm health and that is through a strength and conditioning approach and that is through a mechanically drill based approach and that is just the approach I decided to take because I think it is more effective.

Mark:
Yeah, I would have never thought that is a million years. I kind of come from the school of thought that you just throw as hard as you can as far as you can and you are done. I had a slightly torn labrum as well and it wasn’t fun. It took me a long time to get back from it and I would attribute just not having the right knowledge to that sort of injury.

Brent:
Sorry to interrupt, if throwing the ball as far as you can was the only way to train arm strength or velocity then why don’t you see hitters playing homerun derby everyday to train for bat speed, bat power. I don’t understand, of course that is one way of doing it, if that is the way you want to do it then that is fine but I guarantee you I will show you so much more information outside of that that it will convince you that there is a better way of doing this. That really is what 3X Pitching is.

Mark:
Very interesting! I have two more questions for you and we will finish up with this interview. This is a pretty cool little segway. What roll do you think nutrition and your diet has with developing arm strength and avoid injury?

Brent:
Yeah, being a strength and conditioning coach, I am very must crazy about nutrition. I have my own nutrition recommendations. I do meal plans, supplement plans for all my guys. So I am very much into it. I remember when I was 16 years old, or actually when I had the injury 18 years old. I remember there was this health food store down the street and I would go in there everyday and read the labels on the bottles. This was back in 1995, not much on the Internet at that time. I would sit in there all day and read all the labels on the bottles because I was looking for anything to help me and that just started my education. Man when I got to pro ball and played Indy ball I was obsessed with it. I mean I wouldn’t even take a hot shower when it came to recovery, I was doing ice baths, I was alkalizing my diet. I mean I was crazy about it. Nutrition is just another place to get an edge and I think nutrition might not be important to a high school ball player or maybe a college ball player but high level college ball and pro ball it becomes very important because it is one more edge that you can have on the game. When you are at that level and everyone is as god as you, you need all the edge you can get.

Mark:
Awesome! Now who is one guy in the major leagues right now that really has things figured out. This is a question that I ask every single guest. So lets do a position player and then a pitcher. So who is one guy that you see on tv who is competing day in and day out that you just love watching on tv?

Brent:
You know, I am probably the worst when it comes to major league baseball, I put my head in research all day long. So whenever I pull my head out I usually just want to sleep or hangout with my family and I rarely want to turn the tv on and watch a game but you a lot of my guys, my followers on the sight they always want to throw different mechanics at me because they saw some pitcher throwing in a certain way. I will look at it and I will learn a lot about a new pitcher’s that way but I think the guys that I love and I have always loved. Not to say, I am 6’1 6’2 I was 235 when I played. I was a bigger guy but I just love the small guys. I don’t know what it is but I love the scrappy small guys like Pedroia. I guess that would be my infielder and you know, Lincecum, even though I think he is really struggling now because I don’t think he has really made smart choices when it comes to nutrition when it comes to strength and conditioning but I love the small guys. I don’t think there is something you can’t learn from a small guy because they are the guys who are having to do anything and everything to compete with the giants in big league ball and it is just awesome to see it. That is why when Lincecum came out it was just so awesome to see a guy that little throwing that hard at that time and dominating. I am really a big fan of all the small guys in big league ball because they are really amazing to watch.

Mark:
You have topvelocity.net, if the art of baseball community wants to reach out to you you can go to topvelocity.net. You also have a facebook fan page as well.

Brent:
Yeah, my fan page is taking off as well which is at facebook.com/topvelocity but you can connect with me many different ways. You know, topvelocity.net, I put a forum up there that has a lot of great information. All of the pitching articles, I put a lot of my good content in my pitching articles, videos, there is tons up there. There is a lot of Free stuff for people to dig through and learn from and get a good understanding of what I do so!

Mark:
Thank you so much Brent! I really appreciate it. I will make sure that we link all of that down below so people can see that info.

I have one last question for you. What is your one piece of advice for players who are wanting to increase their velocity, avoid injury and just really tap into their true potential. What is your one piece of advice?

Brent:
Can you even hear me because the rain is coming down. I heard it, I just to see if you could hear me. I think the most important thing, I am going to give you two. I think this are really key secrets so I would listen in because I feel like I am  giving away my program just in two secrets. One of them is going to be your power to weight ratio. You calculate a power to weight ratio with how much power you can push, a great way to get a good understanding is a power clean because it is a pure power movement. So how much power or weight can you throw off of the groud in an explosive movement so divide that by your body weight. If you can drive 150% off of the ground in an explosive manner then that means you are going to be an explosive power athlete. I mean that really is a key even for pitchers specifically if you want to be a high velocity pitcher. The other think would be learning how to generate more hip to shoulder separation. I am really a big believer in it and I believe triple extension is the key to enhancing hip to shoulder separation. So that is the mechanical component. If you can learn hip to shoulder separation and get a1.5 or 150% power to weight ratio, I think that is the key to throwing 90, 95 or as hard as your genetics will let you throw.

Mark:
That is a great advice! I can hear you fine but I can definitely hear the rain.

Brent:
When it comes down in Louisiana man it comes down.

Mark:
Well thank you so much Brent, I really appreciate you. Good luck with everything.

Brent:
You too Mark we will talk soon thanks!

So you are hoping to get picked up by a pro team this summer? Or are you a high school player curious to see what pro baseball is all about? Trying out for the MLB is an ambitious goal. The odds are against you but what did you expect, its pro baseball!

MLB Tryout Tips

As a pitcher I threw 94 mph at a Major League Tryout and didn’t get picked up! I am not posting this to brag, well maybe, but mainly to tell you my story so it will give you a good understanding of how this business works. After I hit 94 mph in a Major League Scouting Bureau Tryout Camp in California, I was sent to pitch for a Crosschecker with the Twins. My major issue was that I was 26 years old at the time. If you want to learn more about why I was 26 then you can learn more here.

To make a long story into a made for TV movie, I didn’t sign with the Twins because they didn’t like my age, or that is what they told me. They did encourage me to tryout for the Golden League which was an independent minor league organization. I was drafted in the first round for the Golden League and the rest is history. The point of the story is if you want to pitch in pro ball, pitching velocity is critical. I had attended 3 MLB tryouts before this last one and never threw over 90 mph. Not until I broke 90 mph did they show any interest. This is why I developed the 3X Pitching Velocity Program. It is the program I used and it has helped tons of other pitchers increase pitching velocity and even get drafted. Learn more about the 3X Pitching Velocity Program NOW!

Here is some key tips to help you when trying out this summer as pitcher:

1. Do not throw anything but a fastball. MLB scouts do not want to see your curveball if you throw 80mph. It is the 90mph or go home game.
2. Wear the correct equipment and uniform. These scouts do not have the patience to wait on you or to help you out. Either fit into their system or go home.
3. Show up early and wait your time. This is a cattle call so just except that going into it. It is going to be a long day. They do not tolerant tardiness.
4. Bring enough food and drink to fuel you for the entire day. Give yourself the best chance when it is your turn. Being out of fuel when it is go time is going to hurt your chances.
5. Got full tilt! When they say it is your turn do not throw another warm up pitch. Let it go at 130% intensity.
6. Perform like a bad ass don’t act like one. The scouts are watching you the entire time. Do not screw around or act like you are the next big thing. Show them that you mean business.

90 mph or Bust!

Let’s face it, it is a business at the professional level and pitching velocity is your price tag. I realized this after my 3rd MLB tryout camp when they where only giving 6-8 pitches per pitcher to show your stuff. You would sit around all morning just to throw 6-8 pitches and if it wasn’t what they wanted then you went home. I also noticed the scouts only watching the radar guns and not the pitchers during these 6-8 pitchers. I finally got a scout to say it, he said, “Either throw 90 mph or go home!” I knew if I was going to do another tryout camp then I wasn’t going to waste my time showing off a mid to high 80′s fastball.

This is when I really got good at increasing pitching velocity. I focused really hard on developing the perfect program that would get me over 90mph. I was out of college at this time and the only chance I had of playing pro ball was getting picked up in a tryout. Well, in the next tryout camp I showed them what they wanted!

If you are sitting in the mid to high 80′s then I highly advise you NOT to attend an MLB Tryout Camp until you break 90mph. I also highly recommend that you contact me above if you are determined to break 90mph. I will analyze your pitching delivery and show you what is holding you back and how the 3X Pitching Velocity Program will improve these issues. You also have the option to attend the 3X Velocity Camp with other pitchers who are preparing for the MLB Tryout Camps listed below. Don’t hesitate on this, you need all the time you can get to break 90mph, so you have a good chance of playing pro ball!

Major League Baseball Tryout Information

• No registration fees included.
• Make sure you arrive 30 minutes early to finalize registration before the camp starts.
• You are required to bring your own equipment.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Ever player must sign a liability waiver to attend the camp. If you are under age 21, a parent or legal guardian must also sign the waiver with you. The “Liability Waiver” can be downloaded below.

Download and print the liability waiver » 
 The PDF file format requires you to use the FREE Adobe® Reader®

Tryouts are subject to change.

“ I promise you that you will leave with a complete understanding of high velocity pitching and what it will take to get your son to his velocity goals. It will also be a pivotal moment in your sons career. “

And with that, my son Evan and I were on a flight to New Orleans to learn about high velocity pitching, from Brent Pourciau. You see like you, all I ever wanted for my children was the very best. I had always told my kids, if you work hard, put in the effort, your Mother and I will do everything in our power to get you where you want to be . We had probably spent tens of thousands of dollars flying to the west coast, going to camps. Paying big fees to the local hotshots that run the semi pro lessons/camps , buying and watching all the DVDs and the like. All of these things have some merit,and we met some very nice , well meaning instructors, but when you are lucky enough to have a son that has the passion, the work ethic for the game, you just would love to see more for the effort.

Evan was always very good on the mound, but as he entered high school ( ours is a top 4 program in the State of Ohio ) , and visiting and reading up on the college programs in the area, it became apparent to me that VERY few high school players even PLAY at the college level, and even fewer have that 90mph fastball that it takes to play at the level that colleges demand.

We had tried just “ throwing off the mound “, ( we even have a mound in our basement,) Tossing hundreds of feet ( we have a huge , open park across the street from our home ), med ball polymetrics , drills and the like. Evan has and has always had very good mechanics, we worked on that since he was younger, but the POWER just never appeared in a big way, no matter what we tried.

It dawned on me that pitching is a skill based AND a strength activity…..strength in the PROPER areas of the body. AND you do NOT have to be big to throw hard. Throwing hard is a % of body weight , NOT total mass or height. You don’t “ grow “ and automatically throw hard.

3X Velocity Program New Orleans

Well, when we got to New Orleans, I was pretty impressed…..there were kids from all over the United States there. Colleges in California, New York, Mississippi, and the like were represented. In fact Evan was the only high schooler at the camp.

I also noticed there were additional college kids at the camp that were helping Brent run things…….I would follow them around, grab them each in private and hear their stories. The stories were all the same…” I threw 80, getting by in college, now I am into the upper 80s, low 90s after doing Brents program for the past year, year and a half—whatever . “

After the camp, we were beyond excited. The program spells out everything you need to be successful….and even though at first it seems somewhat overwhelming, we found Brent was always available to answer our questions. All we needed up here was a local YMCA membership and a 2# med ball that we throw in our basement. We have since been back to Brents 2 more times in the past 6 months, and have plans to go again this coming year. It is great to go back to see the other kids, share success stories and gain even more understanding of high velocity pitching.

And Evans results ? As a 15 year old high school freshman he was at 71 mph when we started. We have him on a gun 2x at 81 mph and he routinely throws into the upper 70s…that was within 6 months of going to Brents first camp. The other young men , as well as Brent explained to us , that Evans velocity should just keep gaining and gaining as he grows and gets stronger….the college boys at the camps all said the same thing…..”man if only we had found Brent and his program when WE were 15 years old !”

Evans team mates are all noticing, and complimenting him on his velocity gains……and not only that, the program also makes you a more powerful hitter and a fielder, a stronger athlete just is a better athlete all the way around.

To those of you that may be wondering, I will tell you to take the plunge, you will never regret it….the the program IS and has been a pivotal moment in Evans career.

To learn more about his experience and how this pitching velocity increase has opened more doors for him then listen to the interview below. You can also check out his 3X Video Analysis here:

Austin Easter Pitching Analysis 1
Austin Easter Pitching Analysis 2

Brent:
Hi, this is Brent Pourciau topvelocity.net we got Austin on the line. Austin I forget your last name what is your last name.

Austin:
Easter

Brent:
Austin Easter, cool Austin so tell everybody a little about yourself. Tell them how old you are and where you are playing.

Austin:
I am 17, I am playing at Allegany High School in North Carolina. I am a junior right now. I will be graduating next year.

Brent:
Awesome, and you came into the 3X Programs was it last summer.

Austin:
Yes, it was this past summer.

Brent:
Good stuff! Tell everybody about that experience coming into the programs and you know your impressions of it and everything when you first came into the camp.

Austin:
It was really tough to be honest. It was a lot harder than you would think coming in learning a new system. All of the pitching stuff that you didn’t know and what you are trying to get down in the drills. It was a rough 2 days and it definitely turned out for the best. A lot of positives come out of it and it was definitely worth the money and the hard work I put in to come down.

Brent:
Yeah, awesome and your grandfather came down with you and he has been helping you out through the program and stuff. I have been staying in contact with him and I have been trying to help you guys through it. So what was it like continuing through the 3X programs following the camp. Did it take a little time to get good at it and how did it all work out.

Austin:
It took a little time to get good at it because at camp I wasn’t very good with the med ball drills because it was a lot of mechanics I hadn’t worked before. After maybe a week or two after I got back I started getting the hang of it. Lifting it was really intense workouts and they where tough. You felt real good and you felt a lot stronger after it and the pitching mechanics and the throwing it was a lot of work to get used to but once you did it it was good and you could feel the changes once you did something right.

Brent:
That summer before you went into school did you get through the entire program the full 16 weeks.

Austin:
I didn’t start because I was still playing baseball in the summer. I started in the fall right when school started. I did the whole 16 weeks program.

Brent:
You got through the whole 16 weeks.

Austin:
Right and then we started the in-season and pre-season.

Brent:
Cool, so you have been through it all. So when you first and came and did the 3X Velocity Camp in the summer what did we gun you at in that camp do you remember?

Austin:
I was at 85. That is the highest I got.

Brent:
That was good and tell them your size because you are not a big tall guy you are a stoky guy but I mean you are quick. How tall are you?

Austin:
I am 5’9, 5’9.5

Brent:
Yeah, 5’9 and you were 85. You had some good numbers as far as your athleticism. Your vertical jump, what was your vertical jump at the camp? Do you remember.

Austin:
No I am not sure it might have been 30 something but it wasn’t 40 like it should be after you get through with the program. I guess it was a little lower than usual I think.

Brent:
Yeah, I think you were actually more 25 or 26. I am trying to remember. Yeah, and I know all of the med throws where new to you but when you where first coming through the camp where any of the Olympic lifts as new to you as well?

Austin:
Yeah, I had never done a lot of power cleans and hang cleans. I have just been doing bench press and stuff like that and the towel pull-ups and stuff when you start getting into the more intense parts of it I had never done that. That was a real challenge once you got it down and you get your grip good you start to really feel a lot of improvements.

Brent:
So what do you think, after doing the 16 weeks of the program what do you feel like, you know, what was giving you the best results out of the program. What do you think was really significant.

Austin:
I generated a lot more strength. The speed was the big part. I think I ran a 7.3 or 7.4 the fall before I came down that summer. This fall I ended up running a 6.8 60. That was a big difference in speed.

Brent:
So you were saying that as you were going through the program you were seeing everything getting better as far as your 60, your vertical jump, your maxes. You were seeing everything going up right?

Austin:
Right, I mean like the jumping I could get up about half way up the net of a basketball on a 10 foot goal but by the end I could grab rim. Yeah, everything went up in strength through the program.

Brent:
Cool, so you went into the spring and you are in the spring and two games ago your grandfather called me and told me you had a pretty good game. So tell them about that outing.

Austin:
That was actually the first real game of the season and I did the whole routine before and I worked out before the day of the game and everything leading up to that and I felt really loss and I felt probably the best I have ever felt. When I went out on the mound I was just smooth and triple extending and trying to hit my points and still worrying about velocity. Velocity came and I still had good control. I only gave up one hit that night and I had 16 strikeouts and I was consistent 90-91 and I hit 93. So it really helped my velocity and my control because all of the mechanics where coming together.

Brent:
That is great you touched 93. That was a big jump. So with this the first time you had seen these kind of numbers?

Austin:
Yes!

Brent:
What kind of feeling was that like. Did you feel like that all that hard work had paid off?

Austin:
Yeah, I mean I had always worked hard but it had never really paid off. I really bought into the program and did everything it said and hard work really did pay off and with this program I don’t think it would have been possible.

Brent:
That is awesome man! It gets me pumped up when I hear that kind of success. You definitely have been a hard worker. Your grandfather has been telling me how hard you ya’ll have been working and ya’ll are still working hard. Some big things for you are going to start happening. Have you heard from any schools or colleges lately?

Austin:
Yes, I have already visited the University of Charlotte and I am going to visit the University of Wilmington. NC State is recruiting me, Clemson is recruiting me, App Stats, Winthrop and a couple others but it really some of those where recruiting me before but after the first game the Charlotte scout was their and after he saw that and how I have improved over the summer and fall. That kind of really opened up their eyes because of the velocity increase and control and I think it helped me out a lot with that too.`

Brent:
That is big, I mean, once those kind of schools can see that you can consistently hit over 90 like that they is big. That puts you in a whole other class. Just keep focusing and doing what you have been doing, keep working hard and I mean you still have another off season. Have a great season and enjoy this and in the summer you can do it again.

Austin:
Yeah, I am looking forward to it.

Brent:
Good man! I appreciate you doing this little interview and any wisdom or advice you would like to give out to some of those guys who are in high school or even in college who are considering doing some program like this the 3X Pitching Velocity Program. Any advice you would give them on you know what it takes, or what they need to do and what kind of commitment they need to make to make that kind of change in their career.

Austin:
Definitely worth it if you are a low velocity guy or near the high 80′s and you want to bump over the 90 mark and especially if you are in high school and you want to get schools looking at you. This system really worked for me and for a lot of others. I remember Mitch he committed to LSU and it helped him a lot and their are other kids as well and if you work hard and follow the system you are going to see improvements. If you slack off then you are not going to see anything at all. It all comes down to how bad do you want it. If you work hard with this program you will make something of yourself.

Brent:
You are right man. That is what it takes the problem is most guys are scared to make that commitment. That is the problem up front that they are afraid to commit and work as hard as they can and put it all out there.

Austin:
Yeah, if you commit and you get down and grid everyday you are going to see improvements and you will be happy you did it. If you don’t then you are just going to be average.

Brent:
Yeah, it is not easy. I am sure you had tons of weeks where you didn’t want to get out there and work. You wanted to just lay in bed because you where exhausted.

Austin:
Yeah definitely!

Brent:
Well man I am excited for you Austin. I think you are going to have a great college career man, just keep it up. I am here to help you guys. If anything comes up with any issues or anything man I will keep you moving forward. I will hopefully see you on TV one day.

Austin:
Yeah I hope so. Are you going to do the level 3 or what not?

Brent:
Yeah, I got level 3 if you want to come down this summer or if you just want to wait for me to launch it I am going to launch it sometime this summer. It is pretty awesome man! You will love it. It really does take it to another level. It is all new throwing drills, the strength and conditioning program a lot of the similar lfits and exercisesa but just a lot more intense but the throwing drills or awesome. It is a totally new system that just builds on top of the level 1 and level 2 and I think you are going to love it.

Austin:
Well, I will look forward to coming down and if not I will definitely trying it.

Brent:
Alright man I am all for it. We will  just stay connected. It will be awesome to have you down here training with us this summer again.

Austin:
Ok, sounds good thank you!

Brent:
Yeah, thank you Austin, we will talk soon man. See you!

Austin:
Alright see you!

3X Pitching – Podcast Episode 5 Transcript

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

Alright, It’s Brent Pourciau with TopVelocity.net. And welcome to the 3X Pitching Podcast Episode 5.

Alright moving right along here, we’ve had some good podcast’s so far. Been getting a good response, I’d like to hear more from you guys. If this is something you like I’d definitely like to keep it going and more than likely will keep it going. I would like to hear some of your opinions on how these podcast resonate with you. If you have any ideas or any suggestions on podcasts in the future or topics you would like to hear covered. Things like that… That’ll be awesome.

The Pitching Instructor Vs Destructor

Ultimately the best way to do it is to go to the forums, post in the general section, just say podcast’s requests or podcast question or comments and tell me what you have to say. I’d love to hear from you. And ultimately give me a little more information on what you guys like or don’t like about this. Or if you want more of it or if there’s a lot of you guys out there that are actually listening to this! OK, so today we’re going to cover a topic on an article I just posted recently called, “10 Common Mistakes That Cause Pitching Injury.” I don’t like spending a lot of time talking about injuries just because I guess it’s just a hard time in my career to overcome it but I know I have a lot to offer when it comes to the topics, so I did want to put a lot of good information out there for you guys because lets face it, just like I say in the article, pain and injury in pitching is a very common problem. Because we, you know, we can identify the issues easier and ultimately because there’s still a lot of bad coaching out there. I like to call them, instead of pitching instructors, I call them pitching destructors. Little fun play on words. You know, these are coaches who have come into the coaching field right from the baseball field, meaning they were once players.

And they feel it’s a no brainer and easy transition for them. I was a pitcher, now I can be a pitching coach! Well I believe it doesn’t works that way. I believe you’re going into a whole different profession. And it takes a whole lot of training, just like if I wanted to go to minor league baseball and I wanted to go be an umpire. I’d have to start over again and learn the rules of the game. Places I need to be in certain points of the game and kind of the tricks to the trade. I don’t think I can just jump right into it and all the sudden start umpiring minor league baseball. I’d make a fool of myself. It’s the same way with coaching. There’s a lot of ignorance and guys think that they can switch over and be good at it. So we get these pitching coaches who are kind of relaying information they were given when they were young. Which more than likely was not good information and they’re kind of trying to quickly interpret their moves and then describe them to you in an analysis to try to help you as a player and a lot of times, the majority, it doesn’t work and causes problems. What makes a good pitching coach or instructor is someone who actually studies the mechanics of the pitcher and who analyses film and actually sees the movements in slow motion, understand the kinetic change, which is all the joints and how they link together in the body and work together and how the movements move through them and how they interact together. All these things, coming down to the studies and doing the research to really understand this and to research like I’ve done at Topvelocity.net with all the science we know behind doing studies to determine certain factors of pitching mechanics. If a pitching coach hasn’t educated himself in that manner, then how effective is he?

I’ve seen a lot of great ballplayers in all sports, and I’d say baseball specifically, I’ve been around a lot of great ball players who when I’ve heard them coach, it was a joke. It was the funniest thing I ever heard. It was like a don’t quit your day job kind of thing. Those guys are born to play and definitely not to coach. And then there’s those guys born to coach and definitely not born to play. Of course your not going to have both ends of the spectrum, you’re going to be somewhere in between, but the point being, it’s not a seamless transition for a player to coach so if you just looked at that as someone who is a player and looking for a coach and you looked at all the options out there to help you with your game, you look at all these coaches and you look at how much did this coach play, how long did he play, what level did he play, and how long did he coach, how long did he study, how many analysis has he done. And if you look for a coach who has a balance of both or more on the coaching aspects, which is most important to you, it’ll probably eliminate 99% of coaches in your area when it comes to good pitching instruction that’s why there’s a dying need for it. I get those countless emails of coaches, high school ,college coaches, low level college coaches, parents, saying just that we can’t find this information that your putting out there. There a dying need for it and it’s just amazing that’s why I’m happy that Topvelocity serves a purpose in the baseball community. And I will continue to push it as hard as I can as long it serves that purpose and provides a service because it’s something I love to do.

But that being said, we are really struggling with finding good instruction and in the game of baseball, it’s such a high skill sport that you just..it’s really hard and your kind of gambling on your career to go into it, just kind of naturally, I’m not saying it can’t happen because I know it has. But just going into naturally and saying I’m going to figure it out. That’s a big gamble. Your opportunity to improve your success as a baseball player is greatly improved when you get some of this critical information of how we move, how we should train to better those movements. So that’s where you can really get an edge. You take guys like Greg Maddux, who they called the professor. He was this nerdy looking guy you knew and as far as his athleticism he was a great athlete. His appearance made him look like he wasn’t a great athlete. But as far as his athleticism, among all the other elites in the MLB level, he was more than likely average or below average. His intelligence is what got him to the top level and getting him in the hall of fame. That’s what really unique about this sports but at the same time this sport has the fastest recorded body movements in all sports, so at the same time you still got to understand the speed and power aspect of this game and at the top level of all sports. It’s a great game because you have to be intelligent, well you don’t have to be intelligent, but your success is improved if your intelligent and if you understand the movements because that’ll allow you to overcome the athleticism you may not have to compete at the level you want to be at. The point is in the average realm of baseball instruction, the pitchers are the average pitcher or below average in athleticism, there is a big need of good instruction and unfortunately we don’t find it. Because we don’t find it, we have a ton of injuries and we have common place on any team to hear someone is hurt more in baseball than any other sport. And I would say probably soccer’s the worst but baseball’s not that far away. So it is a problem and obviously it’s a serious problem if you look at the stats from ASMI, the American Sports Medicine Institute, and they operate on twelve thirteen year old kids that have ruined themselves and seriously hurt themselves while playing the game of baseball, the research was induced by coaches and parents not giving them proper instruction, overusing them, and not teaching them about physical development and training. Keeping the body strong, healthy, and durable. And the misconceptions around all that as well.

Pitching Injury Statistics

So that being said, lets look here at some more pitching injury statistics. We’re just going to run through them. There’s eleven of them here, there’s actually a lot more out there than this, it’s just some of the basics just to see the risks involved in what were dealing with. 1 out of 20 pitchers at the average age of 17 years experienced a serious injury in their pitching career. This is from a study of 481 pitchers from the ages of 9-14 who’s pitching career was documented for 10 years of play. 2 of these pitchers had surgery before they turned 13 years old. So one out of twenty has experienced injury in their career. That’s insane! Pitchers who pitched more than 100 innings in at least 1 year were 3.5 times more likely to be injured during this same study. Another eye-opening statistic. Two previous studies of American youth league pitchers found that elbow pain was present in 18% of pitchers aged 11 and 12 years. Obviously just more information that it’s very common. 58% of high school pitchers in one study experience elbow pain. One study has examined the prevalence of shoulder pain among young pitchers, and they found that 26.5% had had shoulder pain by the end of a youth league season. 38% of high school pitchers experience shoulder pain. You can see at the higher lever, still considered the youth level had more pain and injury. The risk of shoulder pain is 2.5 times greater for pitchers who throw more than 75 pitches per game. The risk of elbow pain is 3.5 times greater for pitchers throwing more than 600 pitches per season. So we see pitch count and overuse is obviously, there’s a big correlation, to injury and pain. Rest should be incorporated in all programs; athletes who participated with arm fatigue were almost 6 times more likely to suffer from elbow pain and 4 times more likely to have shoulder pain that those who did not have arm fatigue. Roughly half of youth pitchers report elbow or shoulder pain at least one time during the season. The study’s saying at least half report pain. For each additional 25 pitches thrown after reaching the 50 pitch count, the percentage of pitchers experiencing pain increases. So pitch count is linked to these arm problems. And that’s another big problem.

Look today how it’s common place to play all year. I’ve talked to parents continuously, and their number 1 question is how do I use the 3X Pitching Velocity Program while we’re in season? Well we can modify it and there is a in season program but I’d like for you to go through the off season program first. Ultimately I’d like you to learn through 3X, learning the approach which can take you a whole season, and then preparing yourself for your off season program. Then I get the coaches or parents saying but what if he doesn’t have an off season? That’s your decision. Pitchers are made in the off season. There’s no way i can take all the pitchers who have had great success with the 3X Pitching Velocity Program and take their career and remove the off seasons what holds most of the gains and then replace them with a season and expect them to be in the same place they are today. I can guarantee most of them would be injured. The majority of them would not be throwing as hard as they are today and as successful as today. I would put my life on it. And that’s crazy because we treat these high school, college and professional baseball players differently. We expect them to have an off season. Maybe not in high school but more in college and professional. We expect them to have an off season. We don’t do that with our youth pitchers. We expect them to play all year long. That is a problem. More pitchers are being thrown at a younger age when the body is not strong and durable and the growth plates are more exposed and vulnerable to stress. So you can see how it really is unfortunate how unprepared and the environment we created for our youth pitchers. It’s not an environment for you to experience pain. So when you hear someone say, “I’ve played through all of little league and never experienced pain.” I would say it’s probably because you don’t throw hard. It’s probably because your not that good. If your good you’ve had pain.

Common Mistakes Pitchers Make Which Cause Injury and Reduce Performance

OK, so, now we’re going to go into an article we go over some of the key mistakes and define these key mistakes. These are the most common mistakes, I’m going to define three of them as not related to pitching mechanics. The last seven are going to be related strictly to pitching mechanics. We know just what I said earlier, that ASMI determined that the three factors to arm pain and arm problems are going to be poor mechanics, poor physical fitness, and overuse. So overuse is simple. We need to institute pitch counts. I wasn’t on pitch counts when I was young and I remember every single game I wasn’t on a pitch count. That was when my arm did weird things. It’ll be hard for me to say today that I wouldn’t worry about pitch counts. I know are the times I’m more vulnerable. The interview I did with Jim Morris, from the movie the Rookie, you can listen to his interview here on the podcast by subscribing to my iTunes feed. Jim talked about his fourth surgery, with a well known Dr.Joe, operated on his arm, and the doctor told him that most of the damage you’ve done to your arm, he’d had nine career surgeries, most of the arm damage done to your arm came before you were 15 years old. And when I heard him say that, it game me goose bumps because it makes me think back to all the times where I was 15 years old and was showing off my arm, where I was trying to throw my arm off or I was being over pitched and overused by coaches. I think of all that and realize and believe I’m staying on the same boat. My rotator cuff surgery at 18 years was related to all the damage done before I was 15 years old. I wouldn’t have to think twice about that. I would totally agree with it. So pitch count is important. You can follow ASMI’s youth pitching statement where they give you a recommended pitches to throw. When you see the recommended amount of pitches a young pitcher should throw in a year, it’s going to be tough. You’re going to realize how overused youth pitchers are. Because it’s way under the amount, I think it’s around 600 pitches, if you look at these kids playing all year round they’re probably throwing twice or maybe three times that. It’s kind of sickening because we would never do that to a mature athlete. Obviously these pro pitchers throw more than that but it’s important. I would really institute it. I tell parents when do you want your son’s glory years to be? Do you want his glory years to be when he’s nine or ten. Do you want his glory years to be when he’s 15 or 16? Do you want his glory years when he’s 18? When do you want his glory years to be? I really believe if you want it to be later in life and you want him to have a long long successful career, don’t push him when he’s young and he’s weak and his growth plates are vulnerable. That’s when I would keep him on the shelf and selectively put him in and out and controlled on a pitch count. If my son wants to play and your worried about your son not enjoying the game or having fun, put him out on the field. Not after he pitched ultimately I would say, rest him and then put him on the field and let him have fun. Put him in another sport. I’m a big advocate of a multi sport talent. Put him in another sport. Let him have fun. That’s not an excuse to say that your son should pitch as much as he wants, have fun, enjoy the game, and compete because he can do that many different ways. He’s doesn’t have to be abused on the mound over and over again.

That’s a controversial topic I could have gone off for a long time. And I’ll get into that with any parent but I stand my ground and have very strong principles when it comes to that and when I coach USSSA and I’m the only team with a bullpen and when we go to games I would take a bench and put it down on the outfield side on the foul line and I would tell 3-4 pitchers to sit down there. I was the only team doing it. I took an average team to state championships. Every time I put a pitcher on a field, he was fresh. They were throwing guys two days or three in a row and maxing them out. It was easy! The problem of other coaches is how can we do this and have them sitting out there whose parents are going to pay for that. That’s when you learn they do this only for money. We abuse kids because of money. I found a way to not make money the problem. I got sponsors, parents to understand they could come and go as they please and he’ll be used as a pitcher mainly, and I just did the best I could to set it up that way and it work you guys. We need to do that, these are young kids. We’re not trying to win the major league world series when they’re ten to twelve years old. Lets take care of these kids and sometimes it a better coaching decision because it puts a fresher kid on the field. That’s where it makes sense for those who have the competitive edge.

Alright, so pitch counts! I believe in them and that they’re big. The other one was poor physical fitness. We know this is an issue because, you know we see and hear the misconceptions of strength condition for young pitchers. I’m going write a whole other article pretty soon and how young we be to train and start strength training. if you want to be careful that we’re not exhausting the muscle and then going into a game an trying to compete completely exhausted Kids are vulnerable and their growth plates and open and joints are porous. We want to make sure that they’re strong but not too strong. There’s a balance there which is why its something we need to address. It’s not a complete yes or no and it’s not black and white here, just because your growth plates are open doesn’t mean you can’t workout. That’s absurd! There’s no studies that prove it and it won’t benefit you anyway. We’ll talk more on why as we go through here. That’s going to be covered more here in the 10 common mistakes. And the last one being the poor mechanics an that’s what we’re going to go into and how important it can be.

So number one of the ten most common mistakes is poor leg and core strength. So basically it gives you a good understanding why this is important and gives you the studies showing that its been proven to be an issue and important to prevent injury. Poor core and leg strength, we have studies that show the muscle contractions of the high velocity pitchers have have a ramping up effect going to front foot strike and these studies not only found that these high velocity pitchers, they activate more of their leg muscles and ramp these maximum voluntary contractions up going into front foot strike, but that it’s important to do that. You have a lack of power and strength coming through the lower half, you actually force more demand on the upper upper body. So these same studies that said “Look, these high velocity pitchers generate more force by contracting the muscles harder in a ramping up effect through the stride which you understand 3x pitching, goes along with triple extension and 3x pitching. If we don’t do that, then stress overload on the shoulders is increased and even exaggerated, so yo can take so much stress off the upper body by using more of the legs in your delivery. It’s a performance component and factor and it’s a injury prevention factor. It’s a performance because high velocity pitchers use more legs in the stride and an injury prevention factor because if you don’t use the legs and generate speeds in a ramping up stride, then your going to put a load on the shoulders that is over exaggerated from what is necessary and overtime the shoulder is going to break down more. It’s critical that no matter how young the kid is, you have to get his legs strong or his arms are going to have to make up for the lack of strength. So that’s why you can see studies show that there’s is more injuries in young pitchers strictly because they don’t have the leg strength and haven’t gone through puberty, hormones haven’t kicked in, they haven’t built big quads and hamstring and glutes and they’re using more of they’re arms. There arms are breaking down. And they have pitching coaches telling them “lift up, down and out, slow strides, don’t rush, land soft” All these things to reduce the dynamics of the stride and reduced stride and power. And force the pitcher to use more of the arm. Very important. That’s why I put that one up front. That’s both mechanical and training understanding to really force arm health and injury prevention.

The next one is overthrowing in practices. That just goes in the long line with pitch counts. Guys will count pitch count in games, so they’ll have a pitcher do his warm-ups, stretch it out a bit, get on the bullpen, do his bullpen, gets out of the game and throws his warm-up pitches, and his coach hasn’t started counting pitches yet. He could have thrown 80 pitches. He hasn’t counted one pitch. I don’t want you guys just counting game pitches, those are important, but you got to count all those warm-up pitches too and make sure, and that’s not going to go into that ASMI youth pitching protocol, but you need to understand that these pitches need to be counted in pregames, making sure that not leading to overuse. The next one is pitcher catcher combos. I was a pitcher catcher when I was in high school. And that’s when I had rotator cuff surgery. You got to be careful with it. It’s not the fact is your a pitcher catcher, what the problem is, studies show that through a season the pitcher, which is again saying the pitcher solution throws the most throws obviously. The second to that is the catcher because hes throwing all those throws back. So if you’re going from the pitcher and throwing a 100 pitches to the catcher, and finishing game another 60 pitches. You can see how that then causes overuse and more wear and tear. Be careful with pitcher catcher combos because of that factor. Maybe the starting pitcher goes 6 or 7, in youth 3 or 4, and then the catcher comes in and throws one inning. I might be for that. But don’t do it a lot. You’re putting a lot of throws on those arms. Alright let’s get in more into the pitching mechanics of these common mistakes to pitching injuries!

Number Four, Poor Leg and Trunk Power. Just along the line with the leg and core strength. It just focuses on it and the importance of it again in reducing stress of the arm and also there’s some more studies there that talk about this. This is a good one I’m going to read out to you. “The complex interaction of the lower extremities and core musculature in the kinetic chain reduces the kinetic contributions of the shoulder joint. Thus, the pitching motion should not be thought of as an upper extremity action, rather an integrated motion of the entire body that culminates with rapid motion of the upper extremity. Improvement of velocity can result from optimization of the kinetic chain, which likely also reduces the kinetic contributions of the shoulder to produce top velocity. Reduced kinetic stresses on the shoulder may prevent injury, leading to greater durability and health of the throwing shoulder.” Chandler and Kindler studies show that that 20% decrease of trunk and pelvis power forced the pitcher to make up for it in the shoulder rotation with a 34% increase to keep the same force on the ball. It wasn’t just a 20, 20, it was a 20% decrease to a 20% increase, it was a 20-34%, it was an overcompensation. That’s the problem and why this is such as key component to performance and injury prevention.

Five, Open Stride Foot and Open Stride Foot Placement. Now this is important. This really to me, goes with horizontal abduction. We’ll take about that later and what that is. Maybe I’ll throw in a little right now on horizontal abduction. If a pitcher gets his throwing arm elbow behind his back, going into front foot and his shoulders closed, and then he is going to land with an open front foot, which means it’s facing away from the throwing arm and he steps to an open position from his drive line, if I drew a line from my drive leg toe to the front of the plate. If he’s stepping to the left side and he’s a right handed pitcher, right side for an left handed pitcher, with the open foot, that puts more stress into the shoulder and even the elbow. But you can see if you put yourself in the position, full stride, open foot, step in an open position, throw your elbow behind your back, you can feel all the torque pulling on your shoulder and elbow. So if you have a pitcher who keeps the elbow behind the back going into front foot and shoulders closed, and he’s stepping into those positions, be careful. He’s putting excessive amount of force on the shoulders. Now this is kind of catch 22 here. We have force on the shoulder, more force on the shoulders show the harder we throw. But there’s a balance here. If we go to far, we tear the the thing up. That’s one case if you have a kid having shoulder problems and you see he steps open with the foot in the open foot placement and his elbows abducted behind the back, then you can work on his foot placement and that’ll help him relive the shoulder pains.

Next one, Poor Elbow Flexion. Basically studies show landing with an extended or high cocked arm puts more stress on the shoulders. It’s interesting. You get a lot of young pitchers that when they stride, they stride really slow, they think its all about arm speed. He starts with the glove high, break aggressively, swing the arms, reach the arms back, all this stuff is going to put them into a extended or a position at foot strike where that arm is not in flexion. That arms going to be extended or reaching up, the arm will be swinging behind the back. All those things are going to put it in a position where we don’t have flexion. Studies have found that more flexion, there’s really a balance of flexion from 70-90 is a better place to reduce stress on the arms and shoulders. Just making sure that when they get to front foot, that there arm is flexed and relaxed behind the head. Some shoulder abduction meaning elbow pulled behind the back. The arms should almost be cocked and more internally rotated. If anyone wants the specific description to that, I can give you that and you can also find it and pull it all together which is referenced at the bottom.

Number 6, called “Baseball throwing mechanics as they relate to pathology and performance.” They really give a good description of that but don’t pull it all together. I can pull it all together for you and kind of show you where you need to be at these points. Just make sure you have some flexion. Any of that swinging of the arm, any aggressive movements of the arm, extensions of the arm, just like I said is related to slow strides or too aggressive hand breaks. Just tell him to keep the arms relaxed. The arms are reacting to lower half movements. Just focus on that. Focus on keeping the arm relaxed, reacting to the lower half movements, focus on the pitcher accelerating and ramping up the speeds through the stride.

Alright, next one, No Trunk Tilt and Low Arm Angle. They found that pitchers who dip inside in a submarine/sidearm position as much as we heard and I used to throw that way after the injury. That reduces stress on the arm. It doesn’t on the elbow joints. The elbow joint actually take more stress and the shoulder joint, we reduced the stress on the shoulder joints when our torso is shifted a little bit back towards our butt. So as we’re striding our torso is a little behind the butt. I call this Tilt in 3X Pitching Mechanics And the arm is at 90 degrees. That arm is just above the elbow and we’re at that 3 quarters arm slot. They found that those positions and up are the healthier arm positions. It’s interesting because it’s really convention wisdom belief the other way around. And you think below the shoulder and down is the healthier arm positions. Its not true, The healthier arm positions are more up that’s because the arm is riding the body more. When its down its really leaving the body more taking on most of the force in that movement. Really stress with pitchers to be more vertical and tilted toward the butt and not drag or drop the arm because its really hard on the arm.

Number 8, Excessive Horizontal Adduction. That’s when the arm starts to accelerate and we start to open your shoulders to our target and externally rotate the arm. Studies show that when the elbow is further out in front of the face or chest to external rotation, we call that horizontal adduction. That puts more stress specifically on the elbow and UCL and they found that the point of acceleration, when the arms starts to move forward, if it’s in that really adducted position, it’s almost too much for the arm to handle. Studies found that someone throwing just low 80′s in the position with a good horizontal adduction, it actually snapped all the cadaviers ligaments. We want to make sure we have more abduction at that point in the arm than horizontal adduction when the elbow behind the face, the key to that is hip to shoulder separation . If we have hip to shoulder separation, that means the hips are opening before the shoulder and then shoulder speeds are peaking way after the hips, the arm is getting involved later, therefore it’ll externally rotate quicker, especially if we have good flexion in the arm. Then we’re going to not get into that nasty horizontal adduction and put all that stress on the UCL. That coupled with the previous one and of dropping the arm, tilting at the arm forward, devastating to the pitchers. You can see that created a good category of big percentage of little league pitches, they all do that and that’s why they have arm pain. So just making those adjustments mechanically maybe might even touching pitch counts can have a significant effect on reducing pain or possible injury.

Late Internal Rotation Pronation. Now if we’re in that same position with horizontal adduction out in front of the face with the shoulders squared and arms back. That’s going to create the arm to internally rotate late and in front of the face. Pronation is going to happen late. And that is also found to create more stress on the elbow and the shoulder because now with the shoulder, the shoulder and the rotator cuff is having to support that early arm movement and late internal rotation it’s having to support that now the arm is in front of the face so more stress will be put on the rotator cuff. We found that professional pitchers actually, when they pitch because they get more hip to shoulder separation, get less horizontal abduction, the elbow stays behind the face, they’re activating more lats and subscapularis and the top of the pecs, so that’s specifically the lats being involved is critical , it’s a big muscle group, it can handle tons of stress, that’s our little back wing, that’s when our back wing gets really fatigued when we pitch, its a decelerator accelerator, and it’s not going to get involved if we cant get into that position. That’s going to come from hip to shoulder separation. Hip to shoulder separation really is the key component that will fix 8, down is you can develop a good hip to shoulder separation, maybe even 7.

Last one, number 10. Reduce External and Internal Rotation Range of Motion. So if pitchers have been throwing with bad mechanics for a while, then just in general when a pitcher throws, he stretches the external rotators and actually starts to create more range of motion and his arm goes further back. You can take a pitchers pitch for a while, pull his arm back for a RHP and his left hand back and left arm back, the right arm will go back further. But you will notice the same internal rotation is less. So you’ll have more external rotation in the throwing arm but less internal rotation in the non throwing arm. The problem becomes when the internal rotation is reduced past the same amount of external rotation that was gained. So if you gained external rotation and lost internal rotation , the same amount is fine. But if it becomes more and you lose more internal rotation than the same out of external rotation gained, its a problem. It means your setting yourself up for a labrum tear and the cuff, the integrity of that joint has been compromised. The pitcher needs to stop pitching and needs to strengthen the cuff, rebuild the mobility and integrity, and then get back to it Pitching coaches out there, parents out there, if your son is complaining of shoulder pain, that’s a good place to start. Check that internal and external range of motion. Make sure that’s health.

Why the 3X Pitching Velocity Program

Alright so that’s what we did and in the ten mistakes we laid out a great game plan just a good understanding of whats going on. I hope this enlightens whats out there, some of those pitching coaches, any players that are dealing with arm pain once you worth it all together. Learn the stuff, the more you learn the stuff, not only will your performance get better, but your going to feel a confidence gain, your not going to be hit with these obstacles of injuries and things where you have to take yourself out of the game to get yourself back to it. That will slow you down and screw up your career. You need a all the good health you can get in today’s game. And what we didn’t go over is we went over a little bit over the remedies, but more into the remedies and game plan, if you have these problems or some of these problems or a lot, its really the 3X Pitching Velocity Program. As much as its a velocity program, its an injury prevention program. I’ve had, my favorite guy to really kind of support my program is Darell Coulter, go to his website when you have the chance, http://www.pitchinghabit.com. Great guy , he played and was drafted by the Phillie’s, he play 3-4 years in minor league ball. The first thing he told to me when he came down to my camp, he said “It’s great its a velocity program, but the best thing about this program its great for injury prevention and great for those guys with arm problems, poor mechanics, poor physical fitness, all those things that cause arm problems. It is the perfect program for them.” Its just cool to hear that. Ultimately its why I created it. I had torn my rotator cuff when I was 18 and I was trying to find a better way to do this guys. I needed something that was going to reduce the throws in my arm but still allow me to rep out and put in those thousands of reps to develop this motor coordination of these high velocity mechanics. But not put the wear and tear in my arm. That’s when I developed the 3X Pitching Velocity Programs. That’s the 3X Pitching Velocity System. That’s the propriety series of drill in the throwing program using the med balls and baseball I developed to reduce those reps but still allow you to get tons and tons of throws. Or reduce the stress but still getting those reps. On top of that, its a program that builds optimal power and gives you that superior leg and core strength to be able to take the stress in the arm and put it in the legs to increase performance and prevent injury. That’s where most of the answers are that solves all of this. I don’t ever want to give you anything and feel like I left you hanging. That’s the program that ultimately pays my bills and I get money on it but it allows me to do this every day, I love this, it allows me to help you. Its an amazing program, it speaks for itself. It creates great results, there is tons of guys on the site who talk about it everyday and benefit from it, its’ here to help you if your in these position,. If you have any serious injuries, you do need to see a doctor or physician and get checked out but this information is going to help you when the doctor tells you wants going on. It’ll help you solve these problems. Don’t think this a reason to avoid the doctor. Its not scary. Just go and learn whats going on and lets fix it. That’s the best approach, anything else sets you up for failure. Don’t be scared of it. I don’t believe in an career ending injury. I may call it a career ending injury but its not. If you really love this game and willing to work hard and learn from your mistakes, you can overcome anything. I appreciate you listening to this podcast, keep going up there working hard increasing pitching velocity. Like I said I’m here to help anytime. Reach out to me and I’ll try my best to get you to your pitching goals.

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.

3X Pitching – Podcast Episode 3 Transcript

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

3 Is the Magic Number

Hey, Brent Pourciau, TopVelocity.net!

This is the 3X Pitching Podcast Episode 3!So I’m going to make this a good one. Three’s my lucky number! I had the number three all my career, even when I was young I had three , I don’t even know why. It’s always been my favorite number. I’ve wore 30, 33, sometimes I had to wear twelve, you know two plus one equals three. That’s kind of the way I justified wearing  it. It was just wild. It’s always been my favorite number. So I know, this being the third podcast, I really wanted to cover a topic that’s my favorite topic, that I feel is the most significant topic to what we’re doing here with TopVelocity and 3X Pitching. It really is the foundation of 3X Pitching. When I learned this, it’s what changed my whole game. What took me to a high velocity pitcher. It still shocks me today you don’t hear a lot about it when it comes to the high velocity pitcher. It really is the foundation and why this is going to be a good show. So let’s get into it!

The problem here and the reason this topic is controversial and not coached well in the game of baseball with pitchers is because the conventional wisdom still paints this picture of the high velocity pitcher not being a athlete and being like a specialty. Like, these born freaks are just made to do it kind of thing. Of course we see these common characteristics in all these high velocity pitchers. You know they’re tall, lanky, the majority are. They’re lean. So we think that this is a freakish body type because we don’t see it in other sports. But if you look at the science and mechanics of that body type, of course it makes the better pitcher. But it doesn’t make them less of an athlete. That’s why you can have great athletes that don’t have those characteristics be great pitchers. Tim Lincecum..all the  little guys! I like even… Gio Gonzalez. We see them all the time. So the point is, there’s a definite argument, and the positive and winning side of the argument say that pitchers are great athletes.

There’s studies that show that the shoulder speeds of a high velocity pitcher are the fastest body movements in sports. I don’t know if you heard that study before, but it’s true. The fastest body speed in all of sports is the shoulder speeds of the high velocity pitcher releasing the pitch. Think about it, if in that skill, if that movement is considered the fastest movement in sports, there’s a pretty good argument that the high velocity pitcher could or is the greatest athlete or takes the greatest athlete in sports. I’ll leave that up for you. Kind of a no-brainer for me.

The High Velocity Pitcher is the Best Athlete in the World

I really accept that the high velocity pitcher is an elite athlete. That being said, I really believe that you can develop yourself to be more athletic, that’s when you have a greater chance of being a high velocity pitcher. And that’s what we focus on in the 3X Pitching Velocity Program. Also in understanding that of an athlete or how to become a great athlete, you really have to learn ground reaction forces. You have to learn how to interact with the ground. Because that’s what it is at the end of the day, that’s what makes you a better athlete, the better athlete has the ability  to generate more forces through the ground, which pushes more forces back toward them for them to work with, throw a ball, kick a ball, for them to jump, for them to run. So that is the make-up or basics of the foundation of a good athlete. That’s going to work with any skill, specifically the high velocity pitcher. So if we can just accept that and move out of the debate: Are we athletes or are we freaks? Does athleticism have anything to do with generating high velocities? If you can just get over that and take all this evidence that proves that there’s no difference when it comes down to throwing a javelin or football or sprint or running. The forces we generate through our body are no different than a high velocity pitcher does to throw a ball 95 or 100 mph. Once we get over that, we can start to really learn this stuff. Once you accept that, you can open yourself up to a new game, a new approach to this game. That alone is going to be revolutionary. That alone is going to change your game because the majority of your peers who you compete against don’t believe that. They are lost in the rhetoric of conventional wisdom, that’s not how pitchers play the game. So that alone will you give you an edge. So if you’re willing to continue down the road with me and open up yourself to me, learn this information. Then, it’s going to be exciting because anything is possible at this point.

Studies and Research of How Pitchers Use these Ground Reaction Forces

Now, we need to understand and learn how these ground reaction forces work for a pitcher. It would help to see some studies. Let’s look at some studies and research of how pitchers use these ground force reactions. Or how important these ground reactions force are to their movements. So if go to one of my latest articles called, “Studies Prove Ground Reaction Forces Highly Correlate To Pitching Velocity,” it’s going to cover this entire topic. And we’re first going to look at the first study in that article called, “Characteristic Ground-Reaction Forces in Baseball Pitching.” In that study they took some college and high school baseball players. These aren’t even professional baseball players. They took college and high school baseball players and found that when they went at a higher speed, more max-effort, their ground force reactions peaked. How they recorded ground reaction forces was by putting a force plate under the drive leg. It could actually measure the lateral push and vertical push off the ground. They did the same thing on the front leg. It could measure the lateral push, the linear push, at that point because the foot’s open. Then it could measure the vertical push off the ground. And it found that when those forces went up, wrist velocity speeds increased. Wrist velocity’s are no different than pitch velocities. They’re linked. So basically the study found that these guys generate more force through those two limbs, the drive leg and front leg, throw harder! So there you go! There’s the first study that basically tells conventional wisdom, “You’re wrong!” and that “You’re misleading!”

That point in my career where I tore my rotator cuff…The doctor told me I’ll never play again. And I went to Kurt Hester, who’s in the Strength and Conditioning Hall of Fame and a great coach, and I sat in front of him. You know he trained LSU through the 90′s where they won 5 national championships, they were called Guerrilla Ball, and he gave me his approach. “Well if you can’t pitch, why don’t you become the biggest, strongest, fastest kid on your team?”And I said “Well, that gives me a lot of hope.” You’re right. Maybe helped me find my position.I didn’t even think that this would make me a high velocity pitcher again. I just thought maybe I’ll get a chance to swing a bat or run a base. So I took that approach. Well what happened when I became the biggest, strongest and fastest guy on the team? I actually became the hardest thrower on the team! And I was shocked! I had believed conventional wisdom, I had believed what all my coaches had told me for years and what coaches still pump out today: to keep these kids in ignorance or to scare them to death so they don’t go up and don’t do something they don’t have experience with, which is weight training or resistance training. I found that there was a correlation. That they were wrong! That force, generating power and strength and speed in your body, actually links to velocity. I was actually throwing harder because I was getting bigger and stronger! So it wasn’t what I thought it was. Which was if I got bigger and stronger I would get tighter, slower, and it wasn’t going to work. They were wrong! So just like this article and case study here proving the links to force production to wrist velocities. I had discovered in my own experience of using a training program that enhanced my ability to produce force through the ground. So this gives us the information we need. That we are not wasting our time. There is proof here. Legitimate scientific proof in studying the motions of college and high school pitchers.

Now if we go down to the next study called, “Timing of the Lower Limb Drive and Throwing Limb Movement in Baseball Pitching,” it gives us information about when and how these forces are being generated. But before that there’s a study that’s linked to this. If you need more evidence that the study about ground reactions forces isn’t enough to convince you that building more leg drive, leg force, and leg power increases pitching velocity. There’s another one! It’s called, “Lower extremity Muscle Activation During Baseball Pitching.” You can look that up online. There it shows that in the phases of the leg drive and front foot that these professional pitcher’s muscle contractions exceeded up to levels of 172-175% of its maximum voluntary isometric contractions. So it says here in the study indicates a high demand of low extremity strength and endurance. Specifically coaches shouldn’t incorporate unilateral or bio lateral or low extremity exercises for strength improve or maintenance. And to facilitate dynamic stabilization of the low extremity during the pitching motion. Another study that links, now the leg strength to higher velocities. And they’re also advising you to train to  enhance your leg strength to improve your performance. So there we have two studies that really compliment each other. You have the first one saying that more force through the ground generated higher velocities and this one’s saying the strength of the leg generated higher velocities. So we know now that it’s not just a fall off the mound, it’s not just a drop off the mound. There’s actually a firing of the legs that is causing the force. So you’re not going to get away with just lifting and falling to front foot strike. And that takes us into the timing on these movements.

Here is the study, “Timing of the Lower Limb Drive and Throwing Limb Movement in Baseball Pitching,” which is in the original article I was talking about. It says” However, the slower group produced their peak resultant force earlier in the action, thus reducing the ability to drive over a stabilized front leg.” So it found that when these pitchers generated those ground reaction forces too early, it caused them to go too vertical or kind of leap off the rubber. So they went into front foot strike with less force and therefore didn’t have enough force to get themselves over their front leg. Which was common among high velocity pitchers. So we have to generate those forces just before the front foot lands. If we go back to the original case studies, it says that as well. It says “The push-off resultant was relatively constant at about 1.0 BW until just before foot contact. ” So it found that through the drive leg, it released enough force that went to the level of their own body weight or there ability to move their own body weight and they peaked it just before the front foot lands. So you have to have the strength to move your body weight and peak it just before the foot foot lands. Now that takes a lot of athleticism. Because if you can visualize that, you have what we call, in 3X Pitching mechanics, a linear force vector, which is allowing you to create that force just before you land into front foot strike. That force is one times your body weight. Now if we get in that position. Which we do in the 30 days to 5 mph video series you can subscribe to for free. When you get in that position, you’ll see that your drive leg is abducted, it’s moving out to the side of you, all your weight sits on your knee and ankle. So it’s a very hard position to generate force. So you can see how you have to be incredibly strong and explosive to peak your ground reaction forces at or above your own body weight just before your front foot lands. You’re not going to be able to do this if you don’t have the power and strength of an elite athlete. That’s why in the 3X Pitching, the Fusion System is such a critical part of the program. It’s the bulk of the program. Of course all the 3X Pitching Velocity Drills are super important and they are also a good part of the program. But you can’t get away with becoming a high velocity pitcher without a program that’s going to give you the ability to generate these peak ground reaction forces at or above your own body weight just before your front foot lands with a linear force vector. So it’s a must!

3X Pitching is the Only Program to Promote Ground Reaction Forces

There’s no program out there guys who’s teaching this. I would love for someone to argue that but there isn’t. There is no program out there that is teaching to peak your ground reaction forces just before your front foot lands with a linear fore vector. None of them show you how to get to that position. And none of them teaches you to train your body to build that kind of power in that position. That’s what the 3X Pitching Velocity Program does. If you don’t believe me, go watch the 30 days to 5 mph, watch those videos. I’m actually showing you what it takes and I’m laying  it all out. I’m showing you right there. Anyone else online who had that information would never give it to you for free. And I’m giving it to you for free! I want you to know this is critical, what you have to know.

There’s nothing out there that can make it obsolete. This is the only way in becoming a high velocity pitcher. Furthermore, now we understand the importance of our athleticism. Our ability to create force, ground reaction forces and now know when to generate those forces, before front foot strike. Here’s another case study called “Characteristic Ground-reaction Force In Beginner Baseball Pitching.” Now we can see the beginner pitchers and why we have so many arm problems. Why we don’t throw hard when we’re young? Because we’re even worse at being able to generate ground reaction forces and generating them at the right times at the right movements. So it shows us two things. This convinces us even more on what we have to do. We have to learn this. And it’s the reason why we don’t throw hard until we grow older and get the leg strength by going through puberty and tough training days going through high school sports. Also, it shows why we have more pitching injuries. There’s two reasons we have to do this. We have to learn this for performance enhancement, we have to learn this for injury prevention. So here’s the study. It found that the pitcher keeps his center of gravity over his back leg to allow generation of maximum momentum once forward motion is initiated. If the pitcher’s body and momentum fall forward prematurely, the kinetic chain will be disrupted and greater shoulder force will be required to propel the ball at top velocity. So it’ s showing if you don’t do this correctly and we shift our weight too early, and we have and don’t generate peak ground reaction forces into front foot, then we put more force on the shoulder. Putting more force on the shoulder means we generate our velocity mostly with our arm. And we know that that does not correlate to high velocities. That also puts more stress on the arm. That also links to more injuries and arm problems. That’s why younger pitcher’s have more arm injuries than older pitchers or professional pitchers.

Understand that even more we found here, I found in a study called, “The Kinetic Chain in Overhand Pitching“. Kibler and Chandler calculated that a 20% decrease in kinetic energy delivered from the hip and trunk to the arm requires a 34% increase in the rotational velocity of the shoulder to impart the same amount of force to the hand. So if you don’t do this, someone new to this show and you don’t do any of this, and you’re the one who just shifts your weight and falls into front foot. If you want to put the same amount of force of a high velocity pitcher, who we know generates ground reaction forces just before front foot strike at or above his own body weight. You have to, not just compensate the same amount with your arms and shoulder, you have to OVER compensate. So it’s saying that a 20% decrease in your hip and trunk energy comes through that interaction into front foot strike through the ground reaction forces. A 20% decrease makes you make up for it not with a 20% increase in should arm rotation speeds but with a 34% increase! So once again we can see why the conventional wisdom of lift up and down and out, stride slow, land soft, control your movements, that kind of mentality not only prevents you from being a high velocity pitcher but it ruins arms! I talked more about this in a article I put together of how the conventional wisdom is ruining the pitcher. It’s a good article where I go into even more of the last study and last two studies. And how these pitching coaches, it’s called, Research Proves Why Conventional Wisdom Is Ruining Pitchers Today.

It really shows how these old  school approaches, like slow stride, short stride, land soft, is really endemic to arm injuries of these youth pitchers. But that will be something we’ll cover in another episode. So we’re going to leave it there today. So hopefully you learned a new approach. You learned how if you haven’t been going down this road, how you’re really wasting your time, how you’re putting yourself into the lot of pitchers who aren’t successful, who struggled to get time on the mound,  struggled to move up levels of the game. Until you take this approach and run with it, you’re to ultimately set yourself up for arm injuries and potentially never reach your top velocity. You may never know how good you could have been. Each will live with the regret of not knowing how good you could have been. This approach, this 3X Pitching approach, which uses all this valuable and critical information, is ultimately going to change your game. Change your life and at least at the end of your career, you”ll know you put everything you had into it. And that there’s nothing left. You’ll see, just like in my case, you’re going to see how much further you’re going to get, and live your dream. I’ll never forget the feeling of playing in San Diego and playing in that ideal climate and playing for a professional organization. Signing autographs and meeting people in every town we moved into and playing with my idols. And I’ll never forget that feeling in life and experience. If I didn’t have that experience in my career, I really would of just hated the regret that would follow me. I don’t know what it would have been like. I really think we all need to taste it or experience it because we’ve done since a young age, such as long period of time, you owe it to yourself to not push away this information. Really take this seriously. And get the best out of you. Live the dream! It’s going to propel you into what you do next in your life. And it’s going to give you the confidence of whatever you want to do out of baseball. Even if you become a MLB player one day, it’ll continue to help you. So that’s going to be it for the show. Wish you guys the best out there. Keep working harder and increasing pitching velocity. If you have any questions or need any help, my numbers on the site, reach out to me. I’ll be glad to help you out.

Contact Kevin Schultz

On January 18^th I attended a 3X Velocity Camp and I can say without a doubt, it was the best decision I have ever made with regards to my future in pitching.  Before I go into serious detail about my camp experience as well as my experience with the 3X program let me give you some short background information about myself.

My name is Kevin Schultz and I have pitched 4 years of college baseball and am currently training to try to keep my career going.  Throughout my college career I was always a high 80′s right hander.  To me, that was not anywhere near acceptable.  I wanted to be a mid 90′s guy, so I was always trying new workouts and new mechanics.  I also started video taping and became obsessed with trying to change using this.  I tried long toss, I tried 90 MPH club, I tried my own workouts, but nothing ever got me to 90+ let alone mid 90′s where I really wanted to be.  I then came across Top Velocity which I tried to pick what I could up from what was free on the website, because I was skeptical to pay a high price for more instruction just to continue to pitch in the high 80′s.  This went on for about 9 months before I had communicated enough with Brent that I was sure I wanted to come down and experience a velocity camp.

Why I Chose 3X Pitching?

I went to the 3X Velocity camp with 2 purposes.

1. To learn the system to help myself and
2. Learn the system to help others.  Baseball is life to me.  When I stop playing I plan to coach.

Upon arriving to Velocity Camp Brent took us through the Mechanics Guide and this really solidified the 3X approach because of the in-depth look with Brent right there for interaction.  Also, it gave me a clear idea behind the 3X approach.  The rest of camp is both physically and mentally demanding.  Brent goes through every piece of the program and you are right there with him getting after it.  A 3X velocity camp is truly an eye opening experience.

The day I got home from camp was the day I started the program.  I first knew doing the entire program could help me achieve my velocity goals.  However, I also knew that there were a ton of young pitchers I wanted to show the 3X program and challenge them to do it as well.  3X is just that.  A challenge.  It is the most complete, challenging training regimen I have ever done.  It takes a driven individual to push themselves through 3X but it is what it takes if you really want to become an elite athlete and pitcher.  To teach 3X I wanted to first make sure I had experienced it because that is the best part about the program.  Brent used this stuff on himself and it worked and when he teaches it right there along side of you sweating doing the work too it really helps solidify the program so that is the way I will want to teach it.

I am currently in Week 5 and I love the program, it covers everything.  I always wake up sore which is a great sign to me that I am breaking things down and growing.  Every workout is a challenge, there are no easy days.

Once I have finished the program I look forward to teaching the 3X approach to every pitcher who wants to take the challenge.  I truly believe in the program and wish I would have found it a long time ago.

3X Pitching – Podcast Episode 2 Transcript

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

Performance Data of Professional Baseball

Alright! Brent Pourciau, Top Velocity.net.

Welcome to the second episode of my 3X Pitching show or podcast, whatever you want to call it.

Today, I was going to go over this new study I came across on some of the performance data of professional baseball players and how it has changed the game. If you haven’t heard about 3X Pitching or if you’ve been with the program for a while, it’s really where we’ve been headed, but this just gives us more information to set the bench marks. We have now a ton of benchmarks to set the standards for high velocity pitching. Of course, through mechanics and through all the research that I’ve done and developed with 3X Pitching, but also performance wise as far as with the 3X Pitching profiles with these high velocity pitchers and how they move through these components. Now with these elite athletes who have made the major leagues or professional baseball, how they can perform when it comes to power or strength and speed, which is of course the athleticism of the game. So this is good. If we can see these benchmarks and standards, then we have something to work for. So we don’t feel like we’re training blind. And I would say the majority of baseball players out there in their off season program or even whenever, they’re training blind. I get these calls all the time, “I’ve been doing this this and this, Why am I not getting better?” Well let’s look at your numbers, let’s look where you measure up to these standards. And it really tells the story and you can’t argue with it. But ultimately it gives you the light or shows you the light at the end of the tunnel which when you’re training blind, you can be on the completely wrong path, which the majority of baseball players are. Alot of them go down the wrong path, waste their careers training the wrong way in developing their body the wrong way. Or just neglecting some of the key components of creating the high performance athlete. Of course, it’s going to be more pitching specific, because this is the 3X Pitching show, but this can go across the board.

This can be for all position players just looking at this performance data. So this is great and I plan to very soon put together a 3X Performance Guide to where you can, once you’re in the 3X Pitching Velocity Programs. It’s going to give you all these benchmarks that we know we need to hit. Which covers across the board the complete high velocity pitcher. From the mechanics to the athleticism. From where we need to be and ultimately it’s going to be a formula. It’s just going to be a recipe for you reaching those goals and dreams of being a high velocity pitcher. As long you plug away and follow the program, and you see your improvements, then you’re just moving that much faster toward those benchmarks and goals of being a high velocity pitcher. That’s going to come out soon.

3X Pitching U-Stream Show

I also have some other things in the work. I’m planning on doing a show at the facility during our training sessions this summer. Going to have a ton of guys training down here, just out of New Orleans with me through the summers with the 3X Pitching programs. And the goal is to have a u-stream studio, basically I’m going to set up a u stream or kind of radio type broadcast, going out to many different formats, even podcast it as well. And that’s just something we might do everyday, through our training, once a week depending on our training week, depending on how much time it consumes and I’ll be interviewing all the guys training with me, who’ll be talking about what we’ll be working on for the day, challenges for the week, what were the improvements. Just for you who aren’t here training with us. Or even if you were, it’ll only make it more fun. But if you weren’t here training with us, it’ll give you some encouragement and allows you to follow along. Kind of join in, wherever you are. It’ll make you feel like more part of the 3X movement or what were going to call this show, the TopVelocity Nation. So it’ll make you feel more a part of the movement and I just thought it’ll be fun. It’ll provide enthusiasm for you guys and also some great info. Also I’ll like to ideally have the show where you can call in to the show, so we can have people calling in and asking questions, which would be really cool. So that’s going to be in the works and is the plans for the summer, something starting around May, when you guys are out of school. So look for that coming in on, it’s going to be called TopVelocity Nation. So yeah, a lot of great things to look forward to. But lets get into this episode where were going to cover and if you want to follow along, right now you can just head on to my pitching articles, pull up the Holy Grail Study Proves MLB Players Produce More Vertical Power.

Body Weight Correlates to Higher Levels of Pro Baseball

It’s interesting how I start off the article. It’s very interesting when you start to look at pitching specifically or baseball more like you’re looking at the Olympics. We look at these guys as athletes and unfortunately it has been our history as baseball players where we see ourselves as something special and outside of the athletic world. We kind of fit in our own little mold. But what I think what we’re learning is just the opposite. We’re not that much different. So it’s good to see we even have some of the elite athletes in the game of baseball. We are caught up in these conventional ways. I posted an interview that is on the site of Tim Lincecum reflecting on the past year. Where he struggled and I’m looking at it right now. Ultimately he’s looking at his previous successful years and said it himself, bragging that he wasn’t eating fast food and he changed his diet. He changed his training program. Which is swimming and he lost 30 pounds. Which once I saw, blew my mind. Someone already 170 pounds lost 30 pounds in major league baseball, that’s unheard of. To me that would have been conventional wisdom saying, “Oh we have got to be skinner, more limber, we don’t want to bulk up”, those kind of things, but look, I really believe that the numbers correlate. The weight loss correlates to his poor performance. Even though he’s a great competitor, and he was able to come through as a relief pitcher. This shows he is a great athlete and just shows he deserves to be there. Very poor training decision or off season decision going into this 2012, past 2012 season for Tim Lincecum. When we look at these performance data, we can see why it was a bad decision . Ultimately, seeing that his dropped a good 2-3 mph. On average really crushed him. It just changed his game when it’s not as effective anymore. Specifically when it dropped down to the lower velocities in the league, when he used to be a guy who could put it in the higher velocities. It’s obviously something he did that led to the drastic drop in his performance and I really believe it links to that weight loss. There’s is even studies in inconsistencies in velocity to weight loss. One of them was in my previous article where I covered on the first podcast on the study called, Study Proves Body Weight Is Pitching Velocity Factor. We talked about how body weights correlated to pitching velocity. Basically, we’re going to see the same thing as we move on in this article.

Here’s the study that we took the performance data from. It was called, Anthropometric and performance comparisons in professional baseball players. They took a two year study of 343 professional baseball players and they accessed there height ,weight, body composition and grip strength, vertical jump and ten yard sprint, speed and agility.The population consistent of minor league affiliates.From rookie ball to A, AA, and to AAA and all the way to major league baseball. This chart, as you can see on the article, which really is the holy grail now, and it’s something you should print and put on the wall. It shows the data and the average numbers of the performance data. And it separates it by the level of the game. Rookie ball, A, AA, AAA, and to the MLB. That performance data covered age, height, body mass, body fat, lean body mass, vertical jump, vertical jump peak power, grip strength, ten yard sprint, pro agility. I don’t know if this is a shocker but the conventional wisdom of the game ultimately didn’t prepare you for this but you can see as we move up levels of the game, we see all the numbers across the board, pretty much 99% go up. So the better athlete was at the higher level as we moved up. More importantly, we are getting more information on vertical jump heights. I’ve always been a big believer in vertical jumps. It’s a big time when you come down to 3X Pitching Velocity Camps, we take your vertical jump, broad jumps, just because I was around a lot of good coaches who used to same thing to measure the athlete. It’s a really quick indicator of how good of an athlete you are. Because it’s also an indicator of your power production. And if we’re a power athlete, as baseball is a power sport. Power athletes are the better athlete. Then those athletes are going to have higher vertical jumps. Now there is a difference when we take this into pitching. When we take it into the high velocity pitcher it becomes just as important. So if you’re 6’10, you have more leverage on generating force, than a guy who’s 5’10. And that’s important. But at the same time we can see here that the taller athlete was always at the higher level. So if you start off at rookie ball, the average height was 6 feet 7 inches. When we got the major league baseball, it went up and up, actually the tallest tallest average at AAA was 6 feet 7 7/10 of an inch. For rookie ball 6 foot 1/5 of an inch, no, no, no. Six feet one and a half inches. Then in major league baseball, it was 6 foot 2/10 of an inch. So it dropped a little bit but we could see that the taller athletes were at the higher level.

So that makes sense. But in pitching that becomes even more important. As we know leverage puts more force on the ball, but we still have to have the force production to start the force and start building that energy to leverage it and then apply the force. The point is the vertical and power production is where that energy is created and that is critical for the high velocity pitcher and the 3X Pitching is an approach that cuts through the conventional wisdom because it doesn’t change itself in the low velocity pitcher or the high velocity pitcher. Ultimately it’s not the conventional approach which is very typical and we run into a lot. Where it ultimately says if you’re not 6’5, 6’3, you’re going to have a hard time playing in the professional level. It pretty much discredits you and doesn’t want to help you if you’re under 6’0. 3X Pitching does not take that approach. We are here to work with all pitchers and we do. I would say the majority of pitchers who work with me are under 6 feet because these are the guys that are struggling the most because of leverage. They have to make up for it in the power production. I spend a lot of time focusing on power production because I get the smaller pitcher.

If you come in as a 6’6 pitcher, I’ve had a guy I’ve work with for years named Mitchell Sewald, who’s with LSU now. He’s a 6’6 pitcher. It was a lot easier for him. We still had a lot of work to do. Just because you’re 6’6 doesn’t mean you’re going to throw 95 like Mitchell did. It just makes it easier and that the potential is there. I do have a guy 6’6 as well, he doesn’t have half the speed Mitchell has and he’s a high eighties guy. If you look at the guys like Mitchell and Daniel on the site. The same height but Mitchell’s twice as fast. Maybe three times as fast as Daniel. Therefore it’s power production it came down to. It’s always going to go to power production. Tall just means you have an edge , but if you don’t have the speed and power to use it, then it has very little use. We can take the data here and understand that the most important one is peak power production.

So we want to go down to the chart and look at the vertical jump peak power. We can see that rookie ball was around 10.7 or 10000 Watts of power were generated in the athlete. MLB jumps to 11.5 and 11542 Watts was generated by the mlb ball player. So how do we get that. This is the most important in the board. We know what we’re working with in the chart and enhance the athlete but most importantly we want to what kind of power production can they push out. Also the mean power. We want to see that above average as well. So how can we calculate that? The second half of the article bottom uses the Harlow formula. We can measure the peak and average power, which would be mean.We can put in our numbers and covert our pounds to kilograms and make a vertical jump from millimeters to centimeters. We can put that in and calculate it. It’s going to really astonish you when you look at it. You’re more than likely going to see how far behind you are to the average athlete, is not going to be the average major league athlete or professional athlete. They’re going to definitely be elites. The performance data are professional athletes and these are elite athletes. As much as baseball players don’t want to believe that, you’re going to have an eye opening experience when you calculate your peak and average power. But that’s what we need to do, calculating those numbers. Once you see that. Wow, say you’re 8000 produce 8000 watts. You calculated and your number is around 8000. Well you got a lot of work to do. For you to get to rookie ball, to be an average athlete in rookie ball, you have to produce another 2000 watts. Maybe you have to jump another 5 or 6 inches or vertical jump. When you’re vertical jump is based on your weight. There’s two things here, If you look at the formula, it’s using your weight and your height in the vertical jump. The more you weight, the less higher you have to jump. So if you’re 175 pounds and you have to jump 45 inches, you’re going to say “I can’t jump 45 inches.” Maybe if you could get to 200 pounds, you have to jump 36-38 inches. You can see how , back to the original article about weight correlates to higher velocities. It’s easier for a heavier athlete to generate power than a lighter athlete because he doesn’t have enough weight to put force behind the ball. So adding weight, as long as it’s lean muscle, as you can see lean mass was a category. Of course the MLB athlete had the most. More lean muscle will support more power. That’s the approach. That’s the bigger, stronger, fast approach and the Fusion System in the 3X Pitching Velocity Program. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Power vs Endurance Training the Pitcher

There’s a study that shows called, the Noncompatibility Of Power And Endurance Training Among College Baseball Players. The endurance training group’s decreased an average around 39.5 watts during training. So it did decrease your power. During endurance training in the season, they lost around 40 watts of power. Well that’s not a lot but the other group did resistance power training and they increased around 211 watts, plus a minus 169. Some of them were even more than that. This is proving the best way to keep your velocity in season or to enhance your velocity this off season is to do power training over endurance training. So what kind of power training is best? I put up a list on exercises Dr.Garhammer did on the power outlets of all the lifts in the weight room. The superior move was the clean, snatch and jerk. All the Olympic lifts. So those were superior. The back squats was 1100 watts, the dead lift was 1100. The jerk was 5400 watts. The clean was 5400. The superior lifts were the Olympic lifts. Makes sense because they are plyometric movements in the weight room using heavy loads. Makes perfect sense. So if you’re that guy at 8000 Watts of power, after you calculated your peak power, and our goals is to hit 10000 and be an average athlete in rookie ball, i would advise you to use a program like 3X Pitching and the Fusion System which implements an Olympic style lifting program which is going to be more effective at enhancing your power production. So that’s the goal here, if we can do that, if we got the numbers and followed the program, we implement these key training methods to increase power production and we start to see the power production go up into these professional elite numbers and then at the same time we can calculate our 3X Pitching profile or see how we get our hip to shoulder separation, how well we get to triple extension before foot strike, or how early you get to foot strike. If I get all those key mechanics and along with these performance data, then we’re on the road to high velocity. That’s how. It’s not rocket science. That is a guarantee that you’ll add 5-10 mph or 15-20. Wherever you are, you would potentially reach your topvelocity. This is where it’s revolutionary and the holy grail.

This was what ultimately I was setting out to do when I developed Topvelocity.net. I wanted to give the pitcher these benchmarks and things they can follow. A program they can use to hit these standards. They were the person they wanted to be. Which was the high velocity pitcher. That’s what all this does. This is a great opportunity for you to see what door you’re knocking on or what it’s going to take for you to go where you want to go. It also shows if you’re working hard enough and if you’re putting your efforts in the right pace. Or am I wasting my time. That’s what I hope to achieve and hope it saves you a ton of time getting you in a training program and heading towards the performance data of these professional athletes. I’ll leave that there. I was going to go to more to ground reaction forces but I’m going to cover that in the next podcast. So we talk about how in this performance data, it allows you to generate more ground reacting forces. And how those ground force reactions will you get more leverage or support the leverage you already have to generating high velocities. So we’re going to go into more of that the next episode and that study is an article as well. You can read it if you want before the next podcast. But the studies called, Studies prove ground reactions highly correlate to high pitching velocities. So we’ll go over that and it’s going to show how this performance data is going to help us become high velocity pitchers. I appreciate you listening in and keep working hard. If you have any questions post them here on the page where this podcast is or send me an email. Contact me or post it on the forums. But hey, I’m here to make you a better ballplayer, I’m here to make you a harder thrower, I’m here to turn you into a high velocity pitcher, so let me know what I can do to help you and I’ll see you in the next podcast.

3X Pitching Show Episode 1 Transcript

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

Pitching Velocity and the Link to Body Weight

“Hello! This is Brent Pourciau with TopVelocity.net, and welcome to, let’s just say, the first episode or podcast of 3X Pitching. I’m going to kind of call this show 3X Pitching. I thought it’ll be silly to call it 3X Pitching Show, so I’m just going to call it 3X Pitching!

So basically what I’m going to do in these podcasts and hopefully I can continue to do them for you, is to just bring you a ton of information, more information outside of the pitching articles that I post on TopVelocity.net, so this show is free to my subscribers and if you’re not a subscriber and you got to this no problem, but if you could be a subscriber that will be great. Put your name and email address anywhere on the site, you’ll see it and it has the give away and right now I’m giving away the 30 Days 5 Miles Per Hour 3 videos, awesome videos where I really kind of give away a lot of the programs in there. Of course there’s a ton more of the programs, specifically all the training aspects and proprietary drills I developed in it and lifts and exercises and how I put them all together to ultimately help us increase as much pitching velocity, as much as we can right?

So if you haven’t signed up for that, sign up for that. That’ll be awesome. But if not, this is just a service I want to give you guys and try to get you more helpful information even if your a 3X Pitching user or not. Alright, so today in this first podcast here I’m going to cover a topic out of my most recent or from one of my pitching articles that I wrote called, “Study Proves Body Weight Is Pitching Velocity Factor.” Of course, I like to throw in a lot of controversial subjects out there. Ultimately, they’re really the better subjects because the reason they have a lot of controversy around them is, there’s a lot of misinformation there that coaches, instructors, those professionals that are out there putting their two cents into the knowledge of the game, for improvements to the game.

There’s a lot of conflicting information, and of course it comes down to who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s close to being right, and who’s not close to being right. Of course that could create a whole other show that we might do one day on how to deal with that, but you know what it comes down to is to do the homework yourself, like I always say, become your best or own pitching coach, your own strength coach and really learn the stuff yourself because just like if you’re sick and you’re going to the doctor, it’s great to get two or three opinions but it’s also great to do your own homework and learn it and empower yourself to where you don’t feel like you’re just kind of dependent on someone else’s schooling or knowledge of when they’re helping you. You know, when it comes to getting the right answers and right information, when it comes to your career, just do your homework and ultimately that’s what I’m trying to do for you with all the pitching articles and 3X pitching, I’ve just continued what I did with my career which is to collect as much critical revolutionary information to help me become a better pitcher and I’ve continued that for you. And I enjoy it, and love it and that’s why I do it. And if your a 3X Pitching user or you’ve been to the camps you’ll understand how much I enjoy this and that’s why I put so much hard work into it and so much information into it. So that being said, let’s get started here!

Alright, so, if you don’t have the article in front of you it called, “Study Proves Body Weight Is Pitching Velocity Factor“, you can search that in Google and it’ll pop right up and you can dive in the article. Ultimately, it’s not a long read, so I would recommend you read it but we’re gonna skim through and it basically comes from this case study that I discovered a couple years ago that came out in 2008 that was actually performed in the Texas Metroplex Institute for Sports Performance, Grand Prairie, TX. It also has some of the doctors involved who are from the New Orleans area, which is where I’m out of, so that was pretty cool. I like to see some local action down here so I don’t feel like I’m sitting on my own little island, completely disconnected from baseball, just because we don’t have any major league teams down here kind of feels that way. But yeah, it’s a great study and I specifically isolated the body weight components of it. The study really is a great study because it goes on and nails down I believe nine key components to pitching velocity and I’m going to put out future articles covering those other components. A lot of them in there, they admit in the study, already proven in other case studies, which you will find in my other pitching articles. But there is still some good things in there that have been pointed out in my other pitching articles but haven’t been brought to this kind of detail, which is important. The coolest thing about this research I’ve done, because I had such a great, you know, in my career I had such great results from my training, from all this information I was learning and ultimately when I got in my training program, which is just like the 3X Pitching Velocity Program, and I was working hard with Kurt Hester, who’s in strength and conditioning hall of fame, and I was also working with Gayle Hatch, who’s the Olympic lifting coach, you know, I was learning from what Tom House of the NPA was doing when I was out in San Diego and I was pulling all this stuff together and I was really experiencing some amazing results. This, you know, allowed me to play professional baseball and throw 94 mph after doctors told me I would never play again. When all this stuff was happening, and ultimately I wanted to retire because I wanted to coach this stuff because I felt like I discovered something revolutionary, which I really believe I did. At the same time I really wanted to do more research to see if there was anything I was missing out on or if there was something I missed. I found a few things here and there but the coolest thing after 2005/2006 after 6 years was, looking back was that all these case studies that I pulled up, and there’s been 20 to 30 of them, they continue to affirm the success of the program that I used ten years ago. So it’s good to see that what I was doing was ultimately the right thing and I had no real information on it. It was basically off those trainers who had success and with my trial and error. So it was great to see that this program still stands really strong today and as I continue to improve it, which goes into my level 1, level 2, and level 3′s and beyond.

The 3X programs still revolve around the basics of triple extension, the basics of how us pitchers generate high velocities through our stride and high speeds of our strides, through our leg drives and how that leg drive works. Which no one ever taught us or taught me up to this point. I never really heard it and still rarely hear how you actually align the drive leg to use it and to power the hips open to create optimal hip to shoulder separation. And that being the foundation for 3x pitching and that being what I discovered when developing 3X Pitching. It’s just awesome to see these studies continue to affirm that it’s legit and really works and each year more of these studies come out, it’s proving that it really does work. So that’s really cool because I’m ultimately open to anything, I’m open to any kind of information that came into my system or challenged my system or 3X Pitching, I would be open to really, really studying it and making a hard decision on if I had to change it. But I don’t really see that happening because I have had such great results of course with myself and with a lot of pitcher’s that have come through the program, so it’ll be hard to see that happening but I’m open to it and that’s the point here. And that’s why I’m open to those who have other approaches on the site and as you see on the forums we’re always arguing and there’s a lot of heated debates there, even guys I had to ban because they started threatening my life on email, which was fun! But I’m open to it.

I like debate because it helps me learn and helps everybody else learn. But all that being said, these studies like I said continue to show that 3X Pitching is a legitimate program and it’s proven to be effective. It really is. These studies are showing or proving its effectiveness. And like I said, as with this study here, a lot of these other components that they listed are already pretty much the majority, if not all, are in the 3X programs. There’s some details in there we could define and analyze, something I’ll bring into a more advanced approach. We’re going to touch on mainly body weight.

Body Weight and Pitching Velocity

Body weight being one of the key factors here in this case study. Now body weight’s controversial because it’s where we came from, if we look at our history as pitchers in the game, specifically major league baseball pitchers, that’s were it has been more documented. We can see that back 30, 40, 50 years ago pitchers as athletes were a lot smaller. And because baseball has been the kind of slow poke in all of sports, the one being left behind, we’ve seen it evolve slowly. I guess when you have this new science, you see it really changed sports like basketball and football, we’ve seen it change baseball but not as quickly. It wasn’t a quick jump, it was a gradual increase and it was tainted with steroids just like these others sports.

But I think as we fell into this style we see some of the old pitchers playing the new style of the game and it makes us wonder if those those old school approaches are still valid. Weight being one of them in that old mentality that you want to run long distance, stay skinny, be an endurance pitcher, and you don’t get to be heavy and tight because we need to have flexibility. How long have we heard this? This is the same things they were saying in football back in the 50′s before even Alvin Roy, who trained Coach Hatch, who I worked around. When he was the first strength and conditioning coach in the San Diego, Chargers, before he went to being first strength and conditioning coach in professional sports. He was working around LSU, and LSU didn’t want to open up this new school approach “bigger, stronger, faster.” They really believed that even in football strength training would make you heavier, bigger, and tighter and they’d be less mobile and less athletic. Ultimately they found quickly that wasn’t true. And athletes at that time, like Billy Cannon from down here, who won the Heisman trophy in the 50′s or 60′s. He was training with Alvin Roy. So he was doing something that was cutting edge. He was using this heavy explosive Olympic style weight training and he was called a man among boys in college sports and it was because of the strength training that no one was doing that was competing against him that was giving him the edge. And it still exists today and in baseball but we are still caught in this old school mentality because well look there’s Tim linceum, these smaller and skinny pitchers that they looked like they’ve never touched a weight in there life and they’re amazing and some of the best in the game. And that’s what it comes back to and the way I take on that argument and it’s a good point but what it comes down to and in baseball and football we could be more strength athletes pure brute force. We talk about strength that it doesn’t matter how big you are. Ultimately the bigger guys could potentially have more strength. That really, really is the advantage in football and in baseball it exists but there’s a difference here, another key factor that changes our game. And that is speed.

Speed is important in football but that’s kind of when they get around the ends and throw it past the lines and upfront it’s a strength game. In baseball, its more of a speed game. We look at throwing speed being a performance factor that is critical for a pitcher for an outfielder and infielder. And we see running speed as a performance factor, and for a hitter bat speed being a key factor. These aspects of speed pretty much define the entire game of baseball. So because we’re a more speed focused game, we have to make sure that as athletes, we have the speed components to compete at a higher level at that component. What that does is takes the strength and conditioning aspects or developing the perfect baseball player. It takes and adds a another component to what we’ve done to football. It’s no longer just brute force at this point, now we bring in the speed aspect to develop strength to speed ration. Meaning, if your weight 500 pounds and you can push 500 off your chest or off the ground, that’s incredibly impressive but if you weigh that much it isn’t. So if you can push 500 pounds and you weigh 250, then you’re pushing two times your body weight, that is impressive. Even if we went the other way, say you can push 250 at 500 pounds, that’s not as impressive. But say you weigh 90 pounds, now that’s impressive. The strength to weight ratio what I like to call power to weight ratio because I like it to be more power focused.

Power is defined more as strength and speed together. So its not just how much brute force but also the speed at which we can generate that force which is power. And that once again defines the speed component. So I believe a high performance athlete in baseball will be measured more effectively in a power to weight ratio of 1.5 or 2.0 times his body weight. It’s talked about a lot in Topvelocity.net and I see it as a critical component that measures the better athlete in baseball. That is the better hitter, the better pitcher. Now that defines Tim Lincecum, a guy 5’9 on his toes and 150 pounds soaking wet. That defines him well. Because that says if Tim was pushing 1.5 times his body weight and say he’s 150 pounds, 150 divided by two is 75, plus 150 is 225 pounds. So Tim Lincecum can push or generate power above his body a weight at 225 pounds. He’s considered an elite athlete in my book because he’s at 1.5 his weight. So just take it as a power clean because that is a power movement. Because it’s both how much force we can generate from the ground and how quickly we can throw and catch it. Which is more like a swing and throw when you’re moving that way. Now if Tim Lincecum could power clean 225 pounds for a 150 pound frame at 5’9, that’s impressive, at 1.5 times your body weight. It doesn’t sound impressive to those who don’t think power to weight ratio but they’re just looking at the 225. I know athletes who can curl 225 pounds. That’s when people with those old school mentalities in baseball get lost because they think brute force and at 225 pounds your not a strong guy. If you’re Tim Linceum, you’re incredibly explosive. Power clean wise, I’m 6’1 and currently 210 pounds and I can power clean 225 for 4 sets of 10 so it’s really not impressive to me because I weight 210 pounds. More impressive to Tim Lincecum. So I hope that paints the picture. So that’s where the Tim lincecum argument of strength, here’s a guy who is not strong, not true.

So how can I justify that Tim lincecum can push out his body weight 1.5 or more? I don’t know the numbers but I have evidence that he aces the speed and agility test every time he goes into spring training and I also found that he can do a back flip. How much power can you generate of the floor if you can jump in the air, spin around backwards, and land on your feet. It takes a considerable amount of power. That’s another way we record power specifically 3X Velocity Camps where we record power through vertical jumps, vertically and broad jumps. You have to have a 35 maybe close to 40 inch vertical to jump up in the air and do a back flip. Someone in that range in the 30-40 vertical can push way over 1.5 times their body weight. So I truly believe that someone like Tim Lincecum may not seem like he’s strong like 225 but for his size, I guarantee that he can push 1.5 or more which makes him an elite athlete. Now how does that come back to body weight. Ultimately, it is the foundation of why body weight is most proven to be effective for the pitcher. So if we look at the study, it said they advised us by saying that a larger athlete generated more force. So they’re advising that the reason they believe this, is the same reason why the 54 collegiate baseball pitchers where heavier and threw harder.

They believe that those are larger athletes and therefore can generate more force. Ultimately, they are most collegiate athletes. There’s a good chance they strength trained. So more than likely the guys who were bigger and heavier are because they are the stronger athlete who can generate more force. So when I came across this study it made a lot of sense to me but I put it up there because the conventional coach thinks that weight and body mass and strength, they think it has no place to pitching velocity and no effect on pitching velocity and this study proves otherwise. So I really wanted to make an impact to make these coaches think and to reevaluate how they look at their athletes or their pitchers. So if you ultimately, are looking for or into more evidence that body weight is true, that this generates a more stronger and explosive athlete, then we should see in major league baseball body weight going up because these guy are trying to make money and they want to get good and an edge and once someone got a hold of this information or by trial an error realized every time that when gained weight I pitched harder and hit harder. So I believe we would of seen this evidence, of course we do, before the study we look at the numbers.

Here’s a chart I posted on the article by sportsreference.com showed that in major league baseball from 1960 to 2010 that the body mass has gone up by 3 points and the average weight and the average weight has gone to 186 pounds to 208.9 pounds That is unbelievable, that’s over 20 pounds. So a considerable jump in the past 50 years in body weight.

Also, I posted a chart from efastball.com that shows the hardest throwers, the top twenty hard throwers ever, now this a tough chart because not until the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s did the radar gun become more commonly used. Probably more in the 90′s. So we don’t have any except Bob Feller, the army had to record his velocity and it was a different device or method that they used but that was in 1946 but during the times we really weren’t really recording velocities. So as you see in the chart, you see a ton of 2000 numbers up there of course that was when we were recording velocities more. I honestly believe that in the past, we didn’t have an actual recordings of velocities from the pre 80′s and anything before the 80′s. So the last is 220, 30 something years we have these velocity recordings and we can see the top 20 pitchers from those years. The majority sit in the 2000′s and up. 14 out of the 20 sit in the year 2000 or up. So that really shows that velocity has obviously changed because you can see the 90′s, I played in the 90′s, they were recording velocities all the time. There really was from the 90′s to the 2000′s a considerable jump, not guys throwing harder but on average guys throwing harder than just one guy throwing harder.

That shows you in the evolution of the game something was going on. I believe two things, yes strength and conditioning was a major one. That links to the weight gain.
Two, Mechanics. We’ve learned a lot more mechanically what supports high velocities and what we continue to discover here at Topvelocity but this is evidence that strength and conditioning has made a factor and that’s the link to the weight gain. Now I also took the average weight from that chart and it was 216 pounds.
It wasn’t that accurate and a bit lower. Nolan Ryan I know was more than 195 in his playing years. I had to adjust Chapman from 185 to 200. On average 216 pounds was the average weight of the top 20 fastest throwers in history. 216 pounds is a large man. On average it’s a large man. I’m close to that and I’m a large man. Most guys who come into my camp are less than 216. Those who come in at 216 have all the potential in the world to increase pitching velocity. They are just out of shape , they were born with it, and come in and weren’t athletic. They didn’t understand the movements, so I had to teach them. It is safe to say and accurate and effective in your career for you to add weight. Now just focusing on adding weight wouldn’t be advisable. The harder your strategies its really the bigger, stronger, faster approach. I’ve always been the bigger, stronger, faster approach. It’s how I changed my own game.

Problem was when I went to the conventional coach, told I used the bigger, stronger, faster approach, bigger would throw them off. The bigger, stronger and faster approach, to try to sneak it past them. Stronger, faster I’m with you. Bigger I’m not with you. That’s going to be tough. My coach isn’t going to like that. If I’m a coach my assistant my head coach. Bigger has always been the harder pill to swallow. That’s why linking this and showing this information mainstream will try to take those fears. I really think it’s fear. I can’t lift and get too big. I’m going to get tight and a mess. It’s really just not healthy for the athlete. It’s not true. Evidence shows otherwise. If you just look at the top twenty throwers ever in history there’s very few under 200 pounds and I would even debate the ones under 200 pounds if they’re actually 200 pounds. Lets move past this. Lets ultimately address that what they’ve been doing strength and conditioning wise in every single sport across the board. It varies and they do it different but across the board they’re similar approaches the bigger, stronger and faster it works in baseball as well. That’s a no brainer. A lot of people listen to this and say yeah OK say lets move on. Now that we addressed that, how do we increase body weight. So I put together a list of 30 tips here to increase body weight. These are all thing I promote in 3x pitchers or included in the workouts.

The workouts in 3x Pitching Velocity Program are upfront and level one is more of a beginner program but it really is a advanced beginner program. Its something I would advise to do at a beginner level. If you really are a beginner and in level one we really focus on the stronger and faster aspects of building the athlete. No as much of hypertrophy. Level two is more hypertrophy, level two 3X Pitching because you use more high frequency training which means we increase the volume and amount of time in the weight room. Which means more hypertrophy which means size and growth. So on level two we do more hypertrophy. When I go to level three which will be available soon and being beta tested. We’re using with our guys and I’m making adjustments on it. It’s going to be back more to speed and strength, really focusing hard on our key issues that we have when being close to being a high velocity pitcher. Requirements are you have a 1.3 strength ration. Mid upper eighties and trying to break 90 and focusing on key factors like force vectors and converting that triple extension to hip shoulder separation, rotation and getting good at that. So that’s what we address. In level two I open to the bigger approach in body mass. Which might not be for anymore and who’s 220 and doesn’t want it. I would recommend to stay at level 1 or if your that young kid that can’t gain weight and I want to get to 200, level two would be great and awesome for you. Here’s some tips and like I said they’ll be in the 3X Program.

The first one is to Double or Triple Your Caloric Intake. We can’t add muscle if we don’t eat more. Its the only way we can build and withstand a bigger body mass. So caloric intake is critical and most of you guys who are small guys who might think you eat a lot, ultimately you don’t. You eat a lot of crap. And that goes to the next one, Eat Nutrient Rich Foods. You eat a lot but you eat a lot of crap, you need things that are nutrient rich such as nuts, lean beefs, dark green raw vegetables, things that are loaded with good nutrients, good fat, good proteins, and good micro nutrients. That’s critical, get away from these paper thin nutrient depleted foods. Stop putting that in your body because it’s filling you up and not replenishing your system. Look at that. When your trying to eat more, your just thinking of quality when there’s as much as a quantity that is critical to you gaining mass. So when we say eat a lot and double triple it has to be nutrient dense, if your not its not.

Add a Protein Supplement 1-2x Per Day for the reason when we increase our protein we increase our cellular growth and ultimately our body is going to burn it or it’s going to build with it. The thing is it’s okay to be burned, if it’s not there it’ll burn the protein in the muscles. We need to put in our system through our diets and take it from our muscles mass because then that works against it.

Use Bigger Plates and Silverware To Help You Consume More. That’s just more of a strategy to stop eating on small plates. If you eat like a pig , that just helps you understand mentally how you can prepare yourself. Notice everything is to increase your caloric intake. We can’t build mass without putting it in our bodies.

Eat Raw Foods, Probiotics and Fiber to Help Digestion. I have a diet plan I put my pitchers on I have a online source I put my guys on. It’s a monthly system and it makes sure you put key ingredients that makes sure you recovery to speed it up. One of the key things they’re not used to put them in is raw foods and probatics are enzymes that break down your foods. If we’re stuffing all this stuff in there we’re going to back up. We have to break and digest and simulate and we need fiber to push it out to do it again. That’s important if we’re going to consume faster.

Increase Your Frequency of Lifting. We can use high frequency training. That’s what we do in level two. Basically before we train in level one two more days into one weeks so we really amp up the frequency of training.

Try Adding More Reps With Higher Weight. That’s ultimately what you do when you want to create some hypertrophy, you still want to do high intensity and you fatigue. You don’t want to hit the fatigue reps at 40 reps I’ll rather hit failure at 10 reps. Then it hits strength also. Strength comes from activating more motor units and more of your load from the muscles. And more opportunities to move the weight, therefore activating the motor units.

Try Lifting Twice a Day. Morning and night. That’s adding a higher frequency.

Perform Mostly Leg Lifts. Legs are the biggest muscle group and gains muscle the easiest. Important we are pounding the legs and obvious in the 3x Programs.

No Long Distance Running or Low Intensity Training. Your not activating motor units and less fatigue quickly. Low Intensity, takes longer to fatigue. You’re burning more calories by eating lean meat. Get rid of the long distance running and shorten the intervals and increase the loads.

Use Different Exercises Throughout the Week. Don’t do the same thing over and over. If you look a the 3X Program we change it up. Don’t do the same thing over and over, your body get used to it. It’s more efficient and you fatigue less. So it’s harder to activate more motor units.

If You Are Old Enough Drink an Aperitif to Stimulate Appetite, this is actually an alcoholic drink that you have to talk with your parents about. Your not drinking around 3 to 4 ounces of a aperitif something like a brandy it actually works. Look up online for some aperitifs and you drink it 2 to 3 ounces. Alcohol stimulate’s your appetite and you can eat more.

Read Food Magazines. That ones kind of funny but it’s true. If you sit down and look at a magazine with awesome dishes of food it makes you hungry and you eat more.

Hang Out With Big Eaters. Eat around guys who eat a lot and aren’t squirrels and picky. Get around guys who chow down and brag about it.

Hang out with Lifters. I’m not saying to hangout with bodybuilders. Guys who want to lift and get bigger and they love it when they get a pump and fired up. If you want to be successful hang around successful people.

Eat a Ton Post Workout. When we burn up all our sugars and our insulin levels are high, that means our body is ready to pull nutrients to feed the muscles. Post workout is critical, within 30 minutes, to feed your muscles. If its not there it’ll break down your muscle and work against you.

Eat Less Pre Workout. You don’t want to eat at times before a workout because your going to eat less after a workout. Take in a protein and take in some sugar, but not too much. You don’t want to overeat preworkout, just a good balanced meal in a hour or hour and a half before and burn it all off. In the end you want to be burned off and be starving. Eat the big meal.

Challenge Yourself in Weight Room (Don’t be Stupid Though) Just pushing yourself and working to fatigue. But don’t be stupid and don’t be sacrificing technique and doing something stupid. Don’t be adding an extra rep if your technique is wrong. Be smart and don’t push yourself past the limit. We hurt ourselves it’s because we put ourselves in harms way by sacrificing technique by sacrificing a spotter and not being smart.

Activate More Motor Units When Lifting to Fatigue. Focus mainly on the big muscle groups hitting groups like legs and core.

Sleep 10-12 Hours. Yes our body needs time to get our brain waves to drop so or growth hormone and testosterone is released. If we recover less we break down more. The body starts going to Sleep in a Dark, Quit, Cool Room. That’s just a good sleep. Dark room quiet and cool. That way we can get a better chance of a deep sleep.

Go To High Quality All You Can Eat Buffet. Don’t just eat quantity, go quality like a casino buffet, somewhere your not restricted to one entree, your parents or coaches, whoever is going to pay’s not going to like to hear this.

Snack on Raw Foods. In between meals, if you’re going to snack, snacking on raw foods instead of processed is going to help you assimilate what food’s in your gut and will get you hungrier. If your throwing in processed food, boxed food, cheese or anything processed it’s going to take longer to break down and slow down your meals. This is critical. Snacking on raw foods.

Visualize Yourself Getting Bigger. This is key. Visualization is critical component in enhancing performance. Visualize yourself getting bigger and see yourself at 215 pounds or 250 pounds.

Set a Goal to Gain So Much Weight in So Much Time. In six months I’m going to gain twenty pounds and weigh yourself to see your on the number. I have to gain so much a month and make sure your hitting it.

Go Buy Bigger Clothes. Big pants, big shoes, bigger things we can wear to hypertrophy in and when we pick up some growth that will motivate us and make us feel bigger. Play along with those things that help us gain.

Eat Fast. Parents hate that and it’s not good for your digestion. This is why you need raw foods. This is really not good. This a ton of raw foods and probotics we should still be able to simulate our food. Eating faster pushes us quickly and doesn’t allow our hungry sensors to go off to tell us we’re full. Get food in before it tells your body your full. Your stomach going to burst its because your are full. Don’t overeat though. Be careful.

Train Fast (Less Breaks). In the weight room don’t lift and then talk for 5 minutes. Thirty seconds to a minute break maybe a minute and a half. Let that ATP rebuild and go back at it.

Eat Food High in Cholesterol at Night. Studies have shown cholesterol at night is critical at night for testosterone. If you have cholesterol, your body will produce more testosterone. Like an egg at night don’t over cook and eat it as raw as you can. Good little cholesterol to stimulate more testosterone.That’s pretty much it. That should you give you things to work with. It’s all in the 3X Program when it comes down to gaining body mass. I hope I gave you lot in the first podcast of 3X Pitching. If you would like me to cover any subjects I haven’t covered, I would love for you guys to comment or post on the forums like a subject covers. Like I said I’m going to try to keep this up and I hope this helps and appreciate you guys, let’s work hard and keep increasing pitching velocity.

To contact AJ you can find him on the forums under the name cutfastball23. Here is a list of the forums that he has participated in (Cutfastball23 Forums). You can also email him at theitalian23(a)gmail.com. Here is the forum where he posted his video of him hitting 90mph (Hit 90 MPH).

Watch his 3X Pitching Video Analysis

AJ Martucci Hits 90 mph Pitching Interview Transcript:

Brent

Alright this is Brent Pourciau TopVelocity.net we are going to do an interview here with AJ. AJ what is your last name?

AJ

Martucci

Brent

Martucci, and talking about your success you have had lately you have worked really hard and you have currently broken through the 90 mph range which is awesome and you are 19 am I right?

AJ

Yeah, 19 years old turned. 19 last month

Brent

Why don’t you tell everybody a little more about yourself? Where you are playing where you are from? Let’s just start with that start with where you are from your age your height.

AJ

I went to Carmel high school I graduated last June, currently at Concordia College in Bronxville New York. Right hand pitcher around 185 pounds and I am roughly 5’10.

Brent

You found Top Velocity a long time ago didn’t you?

AJ

Yeah about 2 years ago.

Brent

How long ago?

AJ

About two years ago I found it on Google.

Brent

Awesome man!  What were you looking for? What made you search for whatever you were searching for to find topvelocity?

AJ

Well I have always, ever sense I started pitching when I was 13, I always looked to throw faster that’s what always held me back, so I was online looking up different workouts and everything and TopVelocity came up and I read your story and everything and I was really interested in it. I decided to buy the program. I had already tried the 90mph club with Paul Reddick and that didn’t work for me and I just couldn’t find anything else and it looked legit. The site was put together really well. So I bought it and then I started the workouts and then I kind of shied away from them for a while because my season was going on and everything and I don’t know I couldn’t get into it as much and then in August when I knew I was going to school and I was still at 83-84mph I just really looked at it again and I went into it open mind and did exactly what the program said. I did the medicine ball throws, I did the power cleans and everything, still trying to get my form down and then on Sunday of this week or whatever I got to 90mph. I just wish I would have started the program as religiously as I did 2 years ago.

Brent

That is Awesome! Congratulations! I know a lot of people have kind of followed your progress online and it has been pretty cool to see your ups and down. I mean because a little bit online you know you expressed something maybe you have struggled at and of course you have expressed something that have really helped for you and I know you have kind of kicked the program around a little bit, I mean I know you haven’t done it full blown and mean how many months or weeks of the program you think you did?

AJ

From August to now probably I probably did the full 16.

Brent

Ok, good! What do you think what part of the program do you think was significant in helping you get where you are or get where you got?

AJ

The thing I like about it is that it is very logical to what we do on the mound, how we explode forward. I have seen others guys other pitchers like the way they train in the weight room I will see them, they will go on the treadmill for a half hour and then they will go on the bike and they do a lot of cardo and switch to like 20 rep body weight squats like just a lot of endurance training. I understand their reasoning that people say you need to be able to pitch a 9 inning game whatever, whatever but it’s more of a quick burst and then a rest then just a slow pace the whole time. So, I don’t understand if you play like that then why wouldn’t you train like that?

Brent

Right! Also did you feel like mechanically that it takes also a different approach as far as, you know, addressing the stride and then making the more then linear move. What do you think of that?

AJ

Yeah, because when you always say the triple extension the 3X your training that in like the power cleans and like if I do vertical jumps that is all 3X that is all triple extension. So when I go on the mound and I am pitching and if I get into triple extension then my body is more accustomed to it and it is more power than as if I didn’t train like that and I only did it on the mound then my body wouldn’t be as used to it.

Brent

Yeah, don’t you feel that those low velocity guys they try to get their arms going too early and then they cut off their strides and they specifically don’t really try to put as much speed into their front foot.

AJ

Yeah, I mostly see them come to a balance point and they stop like very like almost robotic. They come to a balance point put their leg down go forward tuck the glove like that is why they are not throwing hard because they are not putting any force into the ball. It is all, they are just thinking about mechanics. I mean that is great but you are not going to throw any faster.

Brent

What part of the program was significant after you went through the 16 weeks what part was significant in really helping you get to 90?

AJ

I think the cleans and the med ball throws because the cleans helped my, not only my vertical jump but just me exploding off the mound and then the throws, I feel helped my torque more. I felt a more whipping action when I threw the ball.

Brent

That is awesome! It is really cool because everyone who has had your success with it, who have gotten to 90, that is always what they say, the cleans and the med throws. What do you think those med throws are doing? How are they helping you?

AJ

I think it simulates the throwing without putting the stress on your arm so you can basically do them a lot more and it is the added resistance, instead of the 5 oz baseball it’s the whatever weight you are using 5lbs, 2lbs.

Brent

I highly recommend just 2lbs, I don’t like guys going over 2 because if you are not doing it right it may put more stress into your arms and ultimately the goal is to not putting any stress in the arm. That is really what they are really trying to make you do. If you are being able to add all of those extra reps without putting the stress in your rotator cuff then that’s the benefit of those drills. Then you can do those every day and just keep getting better at all these key high velocity components which we map out in the 3X pitching mechanics then you are not putting the wear and tear in your arm. So it allows you to put in all those reps without you completely destroying yourself.

AJ

Yeah, that is the part I like because like I have seen on your site before, how if you are such a power athlete and everyone is just focus on just training the shoulder when it is such a small muscle compared to your core and legs that it just does make sense to just train your shoulder.

Brent

Yeah, I mean a lot of those approaches out there, it is not that I say they are horrible, because you know I will mix in even weighted balls, I am doing that in level 3 now it is something that where you have been through the program you, understand good mechanics and then you can use those. Yeah you are right, you learned to use the bigger muscles group’s man that is where the power is.

AJ

Yeah, any explosive thing you do especially like jumping or anything. I mean it is one movement it is not like you have to run laps. That is such the opposite of what you want to do I don’t understand why people want to train like that.

Brent

Yeah and you have really become a strong guy. You have really been focused in the weight room. Tell them a little bit about how intense you are how often you train and how your diet works. Give everybody a little understanding of how hard you train.

AJ

I like to listen to my body mostly. If I want to lift a certain day and I am not really feeling it as far as with soreness. It depends sometimes I will push through but other times I do not want to hurt myself. I try to follow the four day program as much as I can but sometimes I will add in extra cleans just to get the extra reps in if I know I have practice that week or something and I just want to get extra reps in.

Brent

Cool, you are pretty strict with your diet as well aren’t you?

AJ

One of the kids on my team is big into body building, he wants to be a body builder, he has kind of taking me under his wing as far as the diet is and it has helped me out a lot. I have slimmed down a little bit but I noticed that mostly my recovery is a lot better. I basically eliminated dairy and deserts. I just try to have four to five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Keep my protein intake pretty high, my carbohydrates intake pretty high and drink as much water as I can all day and stay hydrated.

Brent

That is awesome hearing you at a young age doing that because you are going to be so much ahead of the game. Most guys at your age they don’t feel a necessity there and the thing is you might not feel it now but I would also credit it to you getting to 90 at such a young age. It is supporting your strength and conditioning program because it is helping you recover quicker. When you get into college and professional baseball as well when your innings keep doubling and tripling your recovery becomes so critical. You might not feel it in high school but when you get into college it becomes more important then you get into pro ball then it is really important to your success, how well you can hydrate and refuel your system.

AJ

Yeah, definitely I definitely see that!

Brent

As far as the cleans, I know you are big into some of the strength lifts, squats, deadlifts, how are the cleans helping you as far as a pitcher.

AJ

I like the cleans as far as, I like the squats mostly but the squats are a slow movement even if you are doing a one rep max. The thing I like about the cleans is it is a stop to a go. It is just like that quick burst and that is exactly what you are doing on the mound especially out of the stretch, you are from the stop and you go as fast as you can to help simulate that.

Brent

Yep, it is the only lifts in the weight room that implement triple extension and implement pure power to where speed is as important as the strength of the movement and that is more specific to how we move as pitchers specifically high velocity pitchers. Ultimately, the strength lifts are all great. We do need a good strength base to build power but if you want a lift that is going to help you convert that strength to the mound you have to do an Olympic Lift because it is the only speed power focused lifts that implement triple extension.

AJ

Yes, I definitely see a difference. I am still getting their on the form and I still feel a difference even with my not so good form now.

Brent

Yeah, I would love to see you post some of your technique online just so I can do an analysis even of your clean stuff because touching 90 is awesome but it is now how can you consistently get over 90 is the next step for you and doing that those cleans will really help you. Getting good at your technique getting your power to weight ratio as close to 1.5 as you can then you are going to have even more explosive power on that mound. Just looking at your video of you hitting 90 you got really good lower half mechanics. I think you could with your upper body work on more elbow flexion at front foot strike meaning keep your arm more flexed in because it allows it to move into maximum external rotation quicker. That is proven that high velocity pitchers can go from more elbow flexion at front foot strike when it is cocked into maximum external rotation. That would benefit you, that would be a big adjustment for you but your lower half is pretty sharp. I could also see you get a lot quicker because you are really a strong guy, I can see it, and you build speed on top of that strength then that is when you really become a power pitcher. You are definitely in the radar of a low to mid 90’s guy. You just have to keep going down this road. I think you are doing everything right!

AJ

Yeah, it is going to be tough for me when the season starts, in like a month or so, to keep with the program but I am going to do the best that I can to at least maintain for as long as I can. I also know I need to clean up my mechanics.

Brent

You should look at the pre and in-season programs that I have. I have even more drills to take us into the seasons that you would like also the strength and conditioning programs are modified for the season. The pre-season about cuts the loads in half, you are only lifting two days a week and then in-season it is built around your rotation if you are relief or a starting pitcher so you can actually give you some ideas on how you can do it and support recovery and ultimate keep your velocity going through the season.

AJ

Oh wow, I didn’t know that!

Brent

Well good man! I appreciate you wanting to do this. I just have to congratulate you man. It has been cool to see your hard work. I have watched it on the forums. You have been very active on the forums and it has been cool watching you learn and find what works for you and really have the discipline to put it together. What advice would you give to someone, like a lot of guys on the site just getting into the programs who want to throw 90 but of course they need to do the work. What advice would you give to that kid who is trying to get where you are?

AJ

The advice I would give them is you know it just has to be a constant in your mind. You can do the workouts and everything and just go through the motions but if you really don’t believe that you can do it and believe that what you are doing is going to help you then I don’t think that you can get there. I just think that anything in life is like that and if you truly believe in the program and you are doing it for the purpose of throwing harder and getting to 90 mph and above then you will get there, if your mind and body come together.

Brent

Man, I think that is incredibly wise. I can’t believe you are 19 and saying that because I wish some of my 22 year olds could understand that. You nail it that really is the key it is called commitment. Most guys come into these programs, the majority of them, they don’t believe, they don’t commit to the work. They don’t basically tell themselves that of course I believe in this program enough that I am going to put my blood sweat and tears into it and it is going to work it is going to get me to my goals. You are right once you can do that it is a game changer.

Brent

Any last words?

AJ

I was just going to say, I mean like, it just has to be if you want to commit yourself to throwing faster like that it has to be in your mind all day. Everything you are doing you should be thinking about it. I just notice that especially just the past few weeks when I knew I was close to it the first thing. When I woke up in the morning I was thinking about it. When I was eating I was thinking about it. When I was in class I was thinking about it. I envisioned myself doing it so many times that when I did it; it really wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it would be because I had already done it in my mind a hundred times.

Brent

It is kind of the story of Jim Morris. Did you listen to his story in the interview that I did with him?

AJ

I don’t think so.

Brent

Yeah, you should listen to it. I will send you an email but it is on the site. I did an interview with him it is a 45 minute interview and you know the movie the Rookie. Did you see that movie?

AJ

Yeah, I like that movie.

Brent

In the interview with him he tells us what he does he tells us how hard he trains. He was lifting heavy. He was running stadiums, doing jump rope. He was doing all this stuff plus he was doing it with his team and pushing them. He talked about the commitment, you know believing it. Not quitting until you reach the goal.

I always say the 3X Pitching Velocity Program is just the map to the treasure, it is not the treasure. You have to actually go find the treasure. Sometimes it is nice to have the map but it is not everything. A lot of guys they just think that all they need is the map. They don’t understand that they actually have to go out there, fight the elements and risk their lives to get the treasure. Ultimately, that is what it takes and if you can’t do that then you will never reach your goals.

AJ

Absolutely

Brent

So what are your goals now from here on out?

AJ

As far as baseball in general I am starting my school season in March, we are going down to Florida and I am just trying to help the team win. My velocity goals, I need to clean up my mechanics and still need to clean up a lot of stuff as far as the lifting. I would like to be at 95 next January.

Brent

That would be awesome! I even like your mentality. I know everyone is saying that too. You hit 90 and you want to go farther and that is key. I got guys even my first one to do it was Mitchell and he is at LSU and we got him to 95 and he is content. It kind of frustrates me because he is happy at sitting at low to mid 90’s and he is 6’6. If I was him I would be trying to throw upper 90’s.

That is great to hear that because a lot of guys get there and they think that is it, well that is it, that is all I wanted to do. Why not keep going why not… There is a big difference when going into the draft at low 90’s as opposed to mid 90’s. It is a big difference. There is a lot more money. It is great to hear you say that because I don’t think you should ever quit. Ultimately, we should want to throw 105mph right if we could, why not.

AJ

Yeah, I would love to. That would be the ultimate.

Brent

Also at the same time you are also making sure that you are taking care of your body and you are not overdoing it. You are not pushing it to hard and breaking yourself down and ruining yourself.

AJ

Absolutely

Brent

Well good! AJ I appreciate you doing this and like I say anyone out there you can find AJ on the forums he posts a lot on the forums. You username is like cutfastball, I think.

AJ

Custfastball23

Brent

If not, actually I will post this up online and would you mind if I put your… What would you feel more comfortable with your phone number or your email online so people can reach out to you?

AJ

You can leave my email.

Brent

Alright I will do that and anyone can reach out to you and pick your brain and learn from you. Cool man let’s do another interview when you hit 95, right?

AJ

Absolutely, hear from you soon.

Brent

Alright man lets end the interview and hang on the line for a minute.

Kevin currently plays for Northern Oklahoma College.

Contact Kevin Royer on Facebook

Watch His 1st 3X Pitching Video Analysis

Watch His 2nd 3X Pitching Video Analysis

 Kevin Royer Interview Transcript:

Brent:
Alright, this is Brent Pourciau TopVelocity.net and I got Kevin it’s Kevin Royer right? Is that how you say your last name?

Kevin:
Yes it is!

Brent:
Cool Kevin, I will never forget when you came into the 3X Velocity Camp. It was this summer wasn’t it?

Kevin:
Yes, it was. It was at the end of this summer in August.

Brent:
Yeah, I will never forget when you came in and because something happened at that camp that it was really kind of cool. I haven’t really seen that type of those quick results you had in a moment where I could really see things where changing for you and it was just so obvious that even the guys in the camp where taken back by what was happening. Just to describe it basically when would do our drills or do our throws you would do the separation throws and it was amazing because we would do our separation throws and if you didn’t hit like if you didn’t stay tilted and you would always work hard to stay tilted. You know high 70′s in these drills and right when I could see the separation happening it was like a 6 mph jump or an 8 mph jump you would jump up to like 84-86mph and it was ridiculous and it was just so obvious which made a really cool effect and it was and all the other guys in the camp their eyes where lighting up because they were going, WOW look if you can just hit it you can implement it and you being a good athlete it made it so obvious that wow look at right their almost an immediate jump in velocity was pretty cool. But I want you to kind of tell everybody how you came into the program like tell us how you what you were doing how you found 3X Pitching when you first were looking for it.

Kevin:
Alright, I was basically I came off and injury for my high school year I didn’t get to throw at my high school senior year because I had an elbow injury and I had to take a year off and couldn’t throw at all. I actually ended up going to a college and started to throw I was throwing maybe low 80′s at max and I was just looking for a solution because I used to throw harder than that in high school. I didn’t know the mechanics, I just basically found them in high school I didn’t know how to use them. When I was in my first year of college I couldn’t really throw hard I was like low 80′s and I was searching for answer and I was looking all over the Internet and then I came upon TopVelocity.net and I was like man I am going to give this a try from what I can tell this looks really good and I gave it a try and I definitely have seen a lot of improvement so far.

Brent:
I think you gave it more of a try you have been working pretty hard it looks like I mean don’t you feel?

Kevin:
Oh yeah!

Brent:
Well cool so when you came into the camps, why did you want to go to the camp? I mean what made you want to come down here all the way down to the camp?

Kevin:
Well basically I had been doing the program kind of not all the way I was just kind of looking for an answer not really committed to anything yet. I was trying to grasp the hip to shoulder separation but I really wasn’t getting it all the way like I just couldn’t really figure it out. I was almost jumping off the mound and but I couldn’t get my lower body separated from my upper body and then I just wanted to get some one on one training and that is when I really saw some big results.

Brent:
Yeah, so tell everybody more about what you think the camp did for you. What was the difference between you before the camp and then you after and what significant impact do you think it made on your training?

Kevin:
Well at the camp before I went to the camp I thought I knew what hip to shoulder separation was and like I thought I knew but after like there was definitely great instruction in it and it actually made me feel what hip to shoulder separation is and after you get to feel what it like feels like then you know how to get it almost but a lot better but before you can feel it you really don’t know how to do it. The camp definitely helped me feel what to hip to shoulder separation was.

Brent:
Cool man and you were that guy who came into the camp who had some average numbers as far as your athleticism you had a descent broad jump vertical jump 60 so we really looked at you I am trying to remember what I told you but it was pretty much just getting you to harness that mechanically and also at the same time we could get your numbers to an elite level. Do you feel that that is what you have been doing is just continue to work on the motor coordination around the mechanics and pushing your goals up and your performance up?

Kevin:
Oh yes definitely! I have been the Fusion System definitely getting me stronger. I haven’t gained weight so my power to weight ratio I think has been going up but I have been getting stronger. I have been doing the conditioning program every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday I think it is and that is definitely helping me to get faster being able to get my 60 up and vertical up.

Brent:
Yeah, you move so fast its like ultimately you are going to easily put yourself into an elite category as an athlete you just have some good genetics on that end but you where pretty inconsistent mechanically and that is just because you where learning it. What do you think made you more consistent mechanically now that you are playing this fall?

Kevin:
Well it is basically what goes back to that thing where if I could feel if I did the hip to shoulder separation right I knew I did it right but I couldn’t always put those mechanics into my delivery and after you feel it once then you just know exactly how it feels and you just keep working to get to those mechanics but and now that I have been working at it a while I have been constantly getting a lot higher pitching velocity.

Brent:
Any of the drills have helped as far as the throwing drills?

Kevin:
Oh yeah definitly. I really like the med ball drills because they allow you to use your big leg muscle and implement those into hip to shoulder separationwithout tearing up your shoulder really hard and those are the things that have helped me a lot.

Brent:
Cool, yeah I can definitly see that. Welll why wont you tell everybody your numbers so you came into the program throwing how hard?

Kevin:
I was topping out at 85 but I was living around 83,82,83 right around there.

Brent:
Cool and then what this fall you have obviously had a great fall but it is just the beginning tell us where you are sitting this fall.

Kevin:
Alright, this fall my last outing I was living around 90-91 and I topped out at 93 and 6 innings 11 strikeouts and I have only allowed one hit and the big think is my accuracy is even though my velocity has gone up my accuracy has gotten a lot better by like the first year I went to college I red shirted because my velocity was down and my accuracy was just horrible but now I have only allowed one walk this year as well.

Brent:
I don’t know what is going on my phone my dang phone keeps dropping out so I last asked you the question what helped your precission what did you say?

Kevin:
Oh, I don’t know how but the hip to shoulder separation just definitly helps your accuracy because when i was using all of my arm I was just very inaccuracte and now I have only allow one walk in the innings that I have pitched.

Brent:
Yeah I mean the reason that it helps is because your arm is getting invloved later in your delivery so when it gets involved later then it is moving with your momentum and your momentum is going in a linear direction. So then your arm is moving in a more linear direction. See if your arm got involved early. If you didn’t have good hip to shoulder separation your arm got out early then it would get in front of the linear momentum and therefore it would try to take control and therefore what does your arm do with your shoulders it just rotates. You are casting your arm out and everything is rotation and then it is harder for you to throw the ball in a linear direction when everything is rotating around, right.

Kevin:
Yes definitly and I have seen a huge increase in accuracy it is awesome!

Brent:
That is just great! You are a great example of the program just because you came in with an open mind about the athleticism of the pitcher and you are an athletic guy and you really jumped into it and you took the mechanics with the same mindset that I just need to harness this athleticism and you are focusing your power as and athlete your speed as an athlete into the ball and then you are going to be a great pitcher because of it. This is why you have had such great results quickly because you definitly come into this with the mindset of, Oh I am a pitcher and pitchers are not athletes which is more conventional. You are definitly a good prospect for 3X pitching because you didn;t have that closed mindedness of conventional pitching wisdom, you know!

Kevin:
Yes, definitly!

Brent:
Well awesome man what an amazing jump you went from low to mid 80′s to low 90′s in what 6 or 7 months or a year or less?

Kevin:
I would say less than that. This summer even when I went to the camp I was throwing mid 80′s and I was just been figuring out the hip to shoulder separation and now it has definitly gone up.

Brent:
Well good I mean hey manI just want I am glad you were willing to do this interview. I just wanted to put out your success and we are really. I mean you are kind of in the beginning of this. God knows where you can get. I could ultimately see you as a mid 90′s guy a mid to maybe upper 90′s guy if you just keep working hard man and implementing the program. Yeah, I ultimately want you to come down to the camps too. I mean not the camps for training with the guys in the summer like we talked about if you can I would love to help you continue man because you have a lot of good things that are going to happen to you striclty because where you are getting with your velocity now. You get up to that mid 90′s level you are going to have a lot of attention coming your way, you know.

Kevin:
Yes, that is what I was planning on doing. I really saving money trying to get down there this summer because I definitly thought that was a great opportunity.

Brent:
Alright dude we will just stay in touch with that and make it happen. I wish you the best keep dominating this fall and thanks for doing the interiew man.

Kevin:
Yeah, no problem!

Born: 06/02/1992
Height: 5-9
Weight: 185
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Jacksonville, Fla.
High School: University Christian HS
Position: LHP
Bats/Throws: L/L
Google Plus Cameron
Call Cameron: 904.347.3753

Cameron trained with Brent Pourciau during the entire 2012 summer using the 3X Programs. He trained through 11 weeks of the Level 1 3X Pitching Velocity program at Guerilla Baseball in Louisiana. He went on to complete the program following his time at Guerilla. He made some big gains and this fall season during his first inter-squad game he experienced the results from his hard work. Listen to the interview below of him with Brent Pourciau describing the moment he hit 90mph for the first time in his career and how it made him feel.

Cameron Grimsley Interview Transcipt:

Brent:
Alright this is Brent Pourciau TopVelocity.net. I got cam, dude I forgot your last name.

Cameron:
Grimsley, Grimsley.

Brent:
Grimlsey, yeah Grimsley on the line he trained with me this past summer. You where the last guy to come in weren’t you?

Cameron:
Yeah, me and Gabby were the first ones to come in.

Brent:
Cool, then Eric was what, he was a couple of weeks behind you?

Cameron:
Yeah, Eric came in about two weeks after and Jake about a week after that.

Brent:
Tell everybody what it is all about training at Guerilla during the summer with everybody.

Cameron:
Aw Man, training at Guerilla is something you will not experience anywhere else. There where 6 kids there this summer. All of where in college, all of use but one where sophomores in college. We all were trying to throw harder because we weren’t good enough and so we all pushed each other to the limits and competing with each other using the med ball velocities and the maxes on our power lifts. It really helped push us which is what I think helped me get the edge.

Brent:
Yeah, it was a lot of fun and a good group of guys. Eric was a blast and you guys all bonded really well because you where living together. Overall it was a pretty fun experience with you guys?

Cameron:
Yeah, it was amazing. We all clicked and just going through what we all went through together we just became good friends. We would go back to the apartment and cook together, we would do everything together. We would go fishing together. We would wake up and all be ready to go. We would make breakfast and then we would all be ready to workout and we would all go together. Pretty much everyday was like that.

Brent:
Yeah, the other great thing was that you were just a great group of guys you where pushing each other and it was just like ya’ll never stopped improving. Like every week it was like someone was going up, wasn’t it?

Cameron:
Yeah, oh absolutely! I was there for 11 weeks and after the first 5 weeks I had already went up a lot. Even though I was getting tired everything was still going up and once I took that week break I really broke through, my velocity jumped through the roof. It was the same for everyone actually. I definitely credited that to the way we pushed each other.

Brent:
Yeah, it was a good group of guys, good environment and you hung in there for a long time I think you were there the longest. Eric only went a week after you left but you where there a couple of weeks before he even got there. Before you came into the 3X Programs how hard were you throwing?

Cameron:
Ok, before I even found out about 3X it was my senior year I was throwing low 80′s and I was topping out maybe 83-84 and I had sat there for a couple of years. That summer I had a workout with a college before I even came to train with you. I was 83-84 topping out at 85.

Brent:
Then after that summer you just recently have been in your fall season and you played was it an inter-squad game?

Cameron:
Yeah, it was an inter-squad.

Brent:
So tell us about this game.

Cameron:
Ok, it was my first outing of the fall. I have thrown a few bull pens about 4 bull pens and I came in to throw two innings. At first off I had been throwing a few bull pens but being in the game and being on the mound it felt that everything was clicking. Everything I had learned this summer was clicking and I felt so explosive, so free and easy. The first inning I went 3 up 3 down and I went back out there the second inning and struck out the sides. After the game the pitchers do the charts and they had the gun on us the whole time. I was doing my chart, calculating up all of the pitches and come to find out I was 86-87 and I actually hit 90 mph. It was one of the best moments of my life honestly.

Brent:
That was pretty awesome! Did anybody else see you hit 90 or say anything about it?

Cameron:
Yeah, actually the coach to me after all that the coach told me I was hitting 86-87 and he was like the ball is coming out of your hand and you look awesome. Couple of my friends who are also pitchers from the team they saw it too because they had to tally up their pitches. It was a cool experience. Not that I am stopping at 90 but just to hit it for the first time it was amazing! It really was.

Brent:
Yeah and for guys to understand, I hate to pick on your size but just tell everybody your size.

Cameron:
Yeah, I am 5’10 with shoes on and about a buck 80 and I am stocky. I don;t have the…

Brent:
Before you came into the programs it was just trying to get you to get more explosive and to get you much more hip to shoulder separation as you could get. Because you are such a stocky guy it was tough for you and you where really pushing it hard and struggling with it. The fact that you have gone up this much and hit 90 is just exceptional. I mean like you said your force vector you were really feeling it that day The fact that you were getting your lower half specifically your drive leg starting to build a lot of power this was starting to obviously effect your hip to shoulder separation and you are getting more torque and you do that to a stocky guy and that is really how you break through. I think that is awesome and just like you said I don’t think that it is just going to be 90.  If you just keep pushing like you are it is just going to keep going up for you.  Man this is just a big congratulations man because you are battling a lot being a short and stocky guy and it is just not easy. It is amazing the fact that you have done that. It puts you in a small group of guys at your size who can do that.

Cameron:
Yeah, absolutely and to be honest because of how explosive I felt when I was pitching yesterday I didn’t even feel like a stocky guy. I felt like I was 6’2 6’3 the ball was flying out of my hand. It is awesome and it is all because of the lifting that we did and drills, speed and agility and all of it.

Brent:
Yeah, and you ultimately could feel it pay off because by you saying you feel 6’2 out there is how confident you felt and how dominate you felt as an athlete and mentally you had that edge and that is so significant in increasing pitching velocity too. You got to confident that you are dominate. You have to be confident that you can blow the ball by guys if not you are not even going to attempt to do it.

Cameron:
Yeah and last year this same time at the junior college I was at I didn’t feel like this. I was throwing low 80′s and I was afraid to go right after hitters. I didn’t feel like with my stuff I was going to be able to throw it by them. Yesterday in the first outing it really, really helped me mentally know that the ball was coming out of my hand well. I wasn’t afraid to throw a fastball in there because they weren’t hitting it. All of the lifting that we did and as hard as we pushed each other I knew that no one worked as hard as we did. I knew that no one pushed themselves as hard as we did and that also gave me a jump on the mound.

Brent:
That is great man! It is such great new to hear because you worked so hard this summer that I was just waiting for that moment when you are in the game and you see that hard work paying off. It makes me excited. I don’t know about you but it makes me look forward to doing it again with you guys because you guys will keep going up.

Cameron:
Oh, absolutely! Seeing the results first hand and feeling that way I do right now, I feel like I am on top of the world and I don’t want to stop I want to keep on pushing it and come back and train in the winter and who knows where I can be.

Brent:
That is great! So did you tell Eric and any of the other guys?

Cameron:
Yeah actually I told Eric, Gabby and Jake so far but I haven’t told Mitch or Daniel. They were all excited for me because Like I said we bonded so well we are best friends. Just like I am excited to hear about their progress they are just as excited to hear about mine. They are problem just as excited as I am.

Brent:
Jake was telling me he is the best guy out there. He is a better athlete than not only all the other pitchers but also a lot of the position players he says he is blowing away too which is pretty cool.

Cameron:
Yeah, he is a beats and he definitely, definitely pushes himself hard and yeah I think it is paying off for him too he told me the same thing.

Brent:
We got Mitchell at LSU and I talked to him the other day and he is all excited he says he is the hardest throwing freshman on the team. He said that Mainieri said that they were looking for a chance that a freshman would be a Sunday starter. So I was telling him that that is big. If we could get him to be a Sunday starter as a freshman that would be really great for him.

Cameron:
Yeah, I have no doubt that he can do it too and he worked hard too and he has got good stuff. I think Mitch could be a starter there.

Brent:
He is all pumped up to for the Christmas break to come back before the season so I hope you can make it happen. I know it is hard but I hope you can make it happen and come down for the break. If not we have the summer!

Cameron:
Yes, if the time allows it I will definitely come up there. I want to definitely continue gaining pitching velocity. You know I don’t want to stop.

Brent:
Just imagine man you are going to go look at that chart and pretty soon your are going to see 91-92 and it is going to be pretty cool.

Cameron:
Yeah and that is the thing. My goal at the beginning of the summer I wrote down 90 mph and I already got it.

Brent:
I told you in my career I wrote down 94 mph and I hit it and then I got pissed that I didn’t go for something higher.

Cameron:
Yeah, so next time I come in I am going to write 93-94mph and who knows. I didn’t think 90 was possible and I got it so know the sky is the limit.

Brent:
Alright man, so good I am glad to hear it. Like I said this is cool to hear it is all paying off. We will just keep in touch. I am glad that you did this interview for the site and we will go from here.

Cameron:
Thank you so much Brent! All the credit goes to you for real. For working with us and teach us the drills, you worked your butt off just as much as we did. I really appreciate it!

Brent:
I did it for you guys. I appreciate it man. We will talk soon!

Written by Jake McFarland

Training with Brent Pourciau at Guerilla Baseball Academy was one of the best choices I have made in my life. All my life coaches told me I was the “Crafty Lefty” and that I didn’t need to throw hard to get guys out. Honestly I got so tired of hearing it and knew I needed to make a huge change if I wanted to pursue a legitimate career in baseball. So I went down to work out with Brent and take the first step in changing my career.

How 3X changed my career and my life

It all started one night on the internet last summer when I was looking up pitching velocity tips on how to throw harder. I found Brent on Youtube showing a video on triple extension (3X) and it blew my mind. I talked to my Dad and ended up buying the 3X Extreme Pitching Velocity Program. I then went to the 3X Velocity Camp to learn all of the drills, exercises and lifts to do the 3X programs. So I decided I was going to play summer ball early April of this year and then I got to thinking, “What if I moved down and trained with Brent for a summer”. So I talked to Brent and he said I could come down and train and that some other guys were coming too. Instantly I knew that I didn’t want to play summer ball and I wanted to make the first step of not being a “Crafty Lefty” anymore. After finding an apartment and meeting all the guys I knew that I was surrounded with people who wanted to be as successful as I wanted to be. Being around guys like this will truly bring out the best of you. Each and every day we would go to the facility and compete against each other in the drills and also the weightlifting which really elevates your game. I loved training with these guys and having Brent there to tell us what we were doing wrong, so we could fix our old habits and become better pitchers.

The Total 3X Experience

With this program I learned that pitching works from the ground up. Your pitching velocity comes getting triple extension and hip to shoulder separation. My whole life I wasn’t separating which wasn’t allowing me to use my body to throw hard. After the first month I seen tremendous improvements. Each week we would see how hard we were throwing the medicine balls and the velocities were always improving. These improvements came from a great strength and conditioning program but also having the motor coordination of your body to throw hard. This summer I gained 8 inches on my vertical, 25 pounds on bench, 30 pounds on power clean, and 50 pounds on squat. With these numbers increasing I seen a 7 mile per hour increase on my throwing velocity which is something that would of never happened if I hadn’t bought the 3X Extreme Pitching Velocity Program.

Overall this was one of the best experiences of my life. I will always use this program and train with it until my last day of ball. Not only did I see an increase in my velocity but I also made some of the best friends of my life.

3X Pitching Review – Jake McFarland

Training with ex-professional pitcher, Brent Pourciau, at Guerilla Baseball this summer was a life changing experience to say the least. How many times have you heard someone say to you: “Don’t worry, keep working on your mechanics, you’ll get to 90 mph with time” or “Some people were just born to throw hard”. I have heard these comments and many others, too many times and was sick and tired of hearing them. I wanted to take my career and put it into my own hands and not leave it up to the “baseball gods”. I wanted to be the reason for my success or failure and not have to live with the regrets of the “what ifs”.

How 3X Pitching Changed My Career and My Life

This is where I met pitching guru, Brent Pourciau. His knowledge for pitching, the game of baseball, and the athletic world, combined with his constant high energy level and passion to help athletes determined to get better, gave me a great opportunity. I bought Brent’s program in the summer of 2011 and was instantly blown away by the time and dedication he put into his program and also the science behind his work. I went to a camp later that summer to learn as much as I could from Brent, and see how my progress was going with the program. At the camp, I was very impressed about how Brent went into great detail with every aspect of his program and how much help he was in each drill.

Through this program I went up over 5 miles an hour on my fastball in half a year, breaking me through the 90 mph barrier! I was then more determined than ever to reach even higher velocity goals. This is when I called up Brent and asked him about the possibility of coming down to Louisiana for the summer to train with him. He was all for it when I contacted him and excited to see me making progress through the program. He even helped me find a roommate that also wanted to come down for the summer to train and helped us on the apartment search.

From the first day I stepped into his facility this summer, I knew it was going to be all business. The other kids that trained at Guerilla Baseball this summer all walked in everyday ready to sweat, train, and get better. We each pushed each other everyday in the weight room. The motivation and energy from being surround by a group of guys who truly desired to get better was such a boost, I saw my numbers jump up instantly. We also studied each other’s mechanics in the drills helping each other get better. We found that it even helped yourself out because you were able to notice things that you were possibly doing incorrectly in your mechanics, by watching and helping others.

The biggest help for me this summer was the coaching and learning experience I got from Brent. He was always there working out with us and pushing us to get better. He was also a great help for me in my progress to fix my motor coordination. Brent also helped us with many other things aside from baseball like finding quick jobs to make some extra cash. He is a great guy and I am truly blessed that I was able to shadow him this summer.

The Total 3X Pitching Experience

Living down in Louisiana far away from home was also a great experience for me. Being in an apartment with 3 others guys I was training with was amazing. We all kept each other on track by making sure we were up on time to go workout. We cooked together to keep a healthy lifestyle for our bodies and it showed its benefits in the weight room. It was also a great opportunity to focus solely on baseball. I don’t know how your life at home is, but my friends at home are not the best influences on myself and my pursuit in baseball, so it was great to be somewhere where everybody was focused on baseball.

All in all, I have done this program on my own and have now completed it at Guerilla Baseball and the results do not compare. My speed, power, strength, and velocity all went up way more when I trained at Guerilla Baseball. For those out there who are dedicated to this program and are determined to take there skills in baseball to the next level, I strongly urge you to contact Brent immediately and ask when you can come down. I know I’m going back as soon as I can!

3X Pitching Review – Eric Mozeika

Here is the 2012 USA Major League Scouting Bureau tryout camps schedule for the 2012 summer.The camps are open to all players 16 years or older. The camps are free. You must arrive 30 minute before the camp begins to register. No equipment is provided so all players are required to bring proper equipment.

All players must sign a liability waiver before attending the camp. If the player is younger than 21 years of age then a legal guardian or parent must sign the waiver on the players behalf. You can download a player liability waiver here from the MLB website.

Download MLB Liability Waiver

For more information on what to expect at a Major League Scouting Bureau Tryout Camp view the links below before attending a cam.

MLB Tryouts 101

FAQ MLB Tryout Camps

Tryouts subject to change.

Major League Scouting Bureau 2012 Camp

Iowa Western CC
2700 College Road, Council Bluffs, IA 51503
Saturday, June 9 – 10:00 a.m.
Map it

St Catharine College
2735 Bardstown Rd, Springfield,KY 40069
Monday, June 11 – 9:00 a.m.
Map it

Muhlenberg HS
801 Bellevue Ave, Laureldale,PA 19605
Tuesday, June 12 – 11:00 a.m.
Map it

MLB Urban Youth Academy – Compton
901 E Artesia Blvd, Compton,CA 90221
Tuesday, June 12 – 9:00 a.m.
Map it

Shelton State CC
9500 Old Greensboro Rd, Tuscaloosa,AL 35405
Wednesday, June 13 – 8:00 a.m.
Map it

Crowder College
601 Laclede, Neosho, MO. 64850
Monday, June 18 9:00 a.m.
Map it

Purcell HS
201 South Lester Lane, Purcell,OK 73080
Wednesday, June 20 – 9:00 a.m.
Map it

Metro Bank Park
1 Championship Way, City Island, Harrisburg,PA 17101
Thursday, June 21 – 11:00 a.m.
Map it

Christensen Stadium
4200 N Lamesa Dr Midland, TX 79705
Tuesday, June 26 – 9:00 a.m.
Map it

Rock Valley JC
3301 North Mulford Rockford, IL 61114
Wednesday, July 11 – 9:00 a.m.
Map it

War Memorial Stadium
1889 W Pembroke Ave, Hampton ,VA 23661
Monday, July 16 – 11:00 a.m.
Map it

Bridgeforth Field
1001 E Cork St, Winchester,VA 22601
Thursday, July 19 – 1:00 pm
Map it

This site is NOT affiliated with Major League Baseball.

Since the Earliest baseball legends began breaking records, transforming into heroes and inspiring nations, there was an element to these player’s success that for the most part have been overlooked by society in how their success is achieved in the game of baseball.

I’m talking about a tool that the greatest players have utilized whether they have known it or not. It’s more powerful than having a cannon for an arm because it can help you achieve it. It’s more consistent than speed and even more dangerous than incredible hand eye coordination. It fact it will give the talent to be a great hitter that none of the best baseball hitting drills can even think to offer.

This is the most powerful tool and if it is truly mastered and used consistently will provide you with the ability to continue to develop as a player.

This power comes from the actual images you have in your mind. When you see yourself as someone who has a great arm, run faster, play smarter, and develop the right social relationships, you are demonstrating this power.

This power is called visualization.

In an interview, when Hank Aaron was asked what was the most important element to his success, after all the home runs he hit, what approach would he recommend.

He said simply” visualization”.

He was a master of rehearsing success. By the time he came to the plate, he knew he would hit the ball hard because he had just finished doing it a dozen times in his mind before the game even started.

The power of visualization comes from mental pictures in your head, but it is also much more than that. It’s a powerful process that is effecting every aspect of your life.

Both on and off the field.

The truth is, there is more and more evidence that supports this law, in which we are in a constant process of creating our own personal realities fueled by our thoughts. If we think a certain way, our life will support that belief.

For example, if I think of myself as an average hitter while on occasion imagining my self striking out and reminding myself how embarrassing and hopeless that makes me feel, that thought and image in my mind is a creation and I will probably continue to be an average hitter.

There is a whole universe out there that is constantly giving us what we ask for. The problem is it reacts to our conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings. It responds to both our positive and negative thoughts. If you want to increase your velocity but you’re still having images of yourself as a person who doesn’t have the gift of a strong arm, guess what? That’s what you will create.

Why not dedicate yourself to visualizing your skills like that of the greatest players that have ever lived?!

In time guess what will happen? Progress will happen.

Take a look at you current situation as a baseball player and know that whatever situation you’re in it’s a result of  the type of thoughts you had in the past, and the type of thoughts you are having now are currently creating your future

At this moment, there are people overcoming illnesses, creating new relationships, acquiring wealth, and achieving life long goals (like adding 5 mph to their fastball;) by changing the images they have in there mind to only things they want to attract into their lives and off of things they no longer want or need to avoid.

This game has the potential to give you everything you could ever desire, but you have to be willing to control your thoughts and dedicate yourself to positive thought to create positive experiences.

You can and will achieve success!

It may be true that each player has a limit to what there potential is but more importantly, most players never stop learning and ultimately never reach there true potential. Many retired Major Leaguers claim to have still been learning and developing themselves as players, and for some, that’s after 20 years in the game. So depending on your perspective, your potential is limitless.

With all the challenges that baseball offers us and after all the hard work we put in, we will get the most out of our baseball experiences when when learn the power of choice. After hours of tee ball drills, and running sprints, we still have to have a disciplined thought process and perception of ourselves.

We will always have the power to choose how to react to what life brings us. We will always have the power to choose what to think.

Let them be thoughts inspired by courage and made with faith in our talent and ability.

Here are three great baseball motivational quotes that represent this mission!

“What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”  – Napoleon Hill

“Visualize, ‘prayerize’, ‘actionize’, and your wishes will come true.” – Charles L. Allen

“Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.” – Unknown

If you have not received your coupon code then please contact me and I will send it to you.

The coupon code only works for the rental.
3X Velocity System Instructional Video Stream [Rental]

3X Velocity System Instructional Video Stream [Unlimited]

Tryout camps are open for all players over 16 years of age. There is no fee. Registration will be done 30 minutes prior to start of camp. All players must bring their own equipment.

IMPORTANT: Each player must sign a liability waiver to participate. If player is under age 21, a parent or legal guardian must also sign the waiver. A waiver can be obtained under the “Liability Waiver” tab below or at tryout camp registration.

Tryouts subject to change.

Follow this link below to start educating yourself on what to expect! Best of luck guys!

FAQ MLB Tryout Camps

2011 Major League Scouting Bureau U.S. Tryout Camps

• Wednesday, June 08 – 11:00 a.m. – Strongsville, OH – Northern Ohio Baseball Complex, 14675 Fultz Pkwy 44149
• Thursday, June 09 – 9:00 a.m. – Purcell, OK – Purcell HS, 201 S Lester Lane
• Thursday, June 09 – 9:00 a.m. – Stone Mountain, GA – Redan HS, 5247 Redan Rd 30088
• Wednesday, June 15 – 9:00 a.m. – Mesquite, TX – Eastfield College, 3737 Motley Dr 75150
• Wednesday, June 15 – 9:00 a.m. – Cincinnati, OH – Western Hills HS, 2144 Ferguson Rd.
• Wednesday, June 15 – 9:00 a.m. – Compton, CA – MLB Urban Youth Academy, 901 E Artesia Blvd
• Thursday, June 16 – 9:00 a.m. – Montgomery, AL – Patterson Field, Madison Ave
• Friday, June 17 – 11:00 a.m. – Harrisburg, PA – Metro Bank Park, City Island 17101
• Saturday, June 18 – 10:00 a.m. – Sacramento, CA – Bradshaw Christian HS, 8324 Bradshaw Rd
• Saturday, June 18 – 9:00 a.m. – Auburn, MA – Auburn HS, 99 Auburn Street
• Monday, June 20 – 9:00 a.m. – Saline, MI – Saline HS, 1300 Campus Pkwy
• Tuesday, June 21 – 11:00 a.m. – Hagerstown, MD – Hagerstown CC, 11400 Robinwood Dr 21742
• Friday, June 24 – 9:00 a.m. – Jackson, MS – Smith-Wills Stadium, 1200 Lakeland Dr
• Saturday, June 25 – 9:00 a.m. – Tucson, AZ – Pima CC-West Campus, 2202 W Anklam Rd
• Monday, June 27 – 10:00 a.m. – Reading, PA – George Field, 1801 N 5th St Hwy 19601
• Wednesday, June 29 – 11:00 a.m. – Hampton, VA – War Memorial Stadium , 1889 W Pembroke Ave 23661
• Friday, July 08 – 9:00 a.m. – Councils Bluff, IA – Doc Ross Field, 2700 College Rd 51503
• Monday, July 11 – 9:00 a.m. – Madison, WI – Robin Roberts Field, 3101 Straubel St
• Tuesday, July 12 – 9:00 a.m. – Fayetteville, NC – Methodist U, 5400 Ramsey Street

2011 MLB Club Tryout Camps

Tryout camp info is posted courtesy of participating Major League Baseball clubs.

Florida Marlins: Wednesday, February 16 - Camp details »

Liability Waiver

Each player must sign a liability waiver to participate. If player is under age 21, a parent or legal guardian must also sign the waiver. A waiver can be obtained in advance by downloading the pdf below or at tryout camp registration.

Download and print the liability waiver »

The PDF file format requires you to use the FREE Adobe® Reader®

Dallas Baseball Instruction

If you are looking for instruction in the Dallas area then checkout Coach Pourciau’s video analysis which also comes with his One on One email coaching. His instruction is some of the best you will find. He has worked with hundreds of successful baseball players in all levels of play.

Dallas Baseball Training Programs

If you are a position player looking to gain sprinting and bat speed then the Baseball Training Manual is what you need. It comes with a free stream to the instructional videos for you to learn all of the drills, exercises and lifts. Coach Pourciau is also available to do video analysis for your lifting mechanics. For more information contact Coach above.

If you are a pitcher and looking to add 5-10mph to your velocity then you must start the revolutionary 3X Pitching Velocity Program today. It is a 16 week program which comes with the 3X Velocity System of med throws and target throws along with the Fusion system which is a complete strength and conditioning program.

Dallas Baseball USSSA Travel Teams

If you are a travel team looking for a training program for your position players or pitchers then contact Coach Pourciau and he will customize your program to meet your needs. 985-377-9249

Dallas Baseball Video Analysis (Pitchers)

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Dallas Baseball Training Program (All Position Players Ages 14U)

Dallas Pitcher’s Velocity Program (Ages 8U)

Serving Areas: Addison, Mesquite, Farmers, Richardson, Lancaster, Irving, Martin’s Mill, Sunnyvale, Garland, Hutchins, Balch Springs, Plano, Carrollton, DeSoto, Duncanville, Wilmer, Red Oak, Rowlett, Grand Prairie