Alan Jaeger vs TopVelocity.net
September 6, 2011
I have been pretty tough on Alan Jaeger’s approach to pitching on this site. Just recently, another well know pitching coach Paul Reddick reached out to me,with the suggestion that I should have a man to man talk with Alan Jaeger in hopes that we could get on better terms. I decided to take Paul’s advice because Paul has been in this business for a while and he is a good person. What I learned was that Alan Jaeger is also a good person and after our conversation we have agreed to disagree when it comes to the best approach to pitching. I have decided to dedicate this article to Alan Jaeger for being such a good sport with my competitive nature.
In the rest of this article, I am going to post Alan Jaeger’s approach to pitching and the Top Velocity approach. I hope that you will read them both. This is a great opportunity for you to learn both perspectives. What you will learn is that these are two totally different approaches to pitching and this will ultimately help you develop your own. Read more
3X Pitching Superior to Extreme Long Toss
May 21, 2011
The argument behind extreme long toss is that the pitcher will learn how to take the velocity of a 300 foot throw and transfer it into a 60 foot throw. This is what I learned from watching an interview with Alan Jaeger who uses extreme long toss with yoga to develop pitchers.
If you have been following this site then you know that I am totally against this approach to pitching. Here is a quick summary of why I am against this type of training. The American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI) proves in their latest case study here that this type of long toss creates elbow varus torque in the arm and uses different mechanics than those used on the mound. In defence, Alan Jaeger says that the athletics of the 300 foot throw when restricted to 60 feet, through his “Pull Down” phase, forces the pitcher to be more open and explosive. Read more
Baseball Heavy Weight Training Increases Velocity
March 23, 2011
Robert U. Newton and Kerry P. McEvoy with the Centre for Exercise Science and Sport Management, Southern Cross University Australia has proven this statement to be true. I have been saying this for years but pitching coaches all over this country continue to believe that lifting weights only make you bulky, like a body builder and does not help velocity.
The brilliance behind this study, called Baseball Throwing Velocity: A Comparison of Medicine Ball Training and Weight Training, is the fact that the scientist set out to prove that medicine ball training was more an effective training method to increasing throwing velocity than weight lifting. What they learned was that weight training was the winner here. Not only was it weight lifting but it was heavy weight lifting. Here is an excerpt from the study talking about this result along with a more in depth description from the study. Read more
ASMI vs Alan Jaeger in Long Toss Study
February 7, 2011
Maximum distance throws produce increased torques and changes in kinematics; caution is therefore advised for use of these throws in rehabilitation and training.
This was the conclusion of the ASMI’s case study, “Biomechanical Comparison of Baseball Pitching and Long-Toss,” released to the public January 2011. This is everything I had come to a conclusion with using all of their previous studies on flat ground throws and elbow injuries. Here was my article about this when Alan Jaeger contacted me to tell me he was upset with my stance against long toss as the “be all, end all” to pitching velocity, back in July of 2009. Read more
The Adventures of Long Tossing!
January 23, 2010
Long tossing has been a heated debate on Topvelocity.net in the past month. The day I posted my first article against the practice of “Extreme Long Tossing” I was contacted by Alan Jaeger with Jaeger Sports. Lets just say he wasn’t happy with my research. The problem is Alan Jaeger and I have totally different back grounds. He played a little college baseball and I played a little pro baseball. Jaeger is a yoga instructor and I am a strength and conditioning specialist. It isn’t that I do not agree with everything he teaches, I just don’t agree with a lot of it but that is the best part about the internet. We can all have our own opinions and programs. Read more


