The problem is those who don’t take the time to learn my approach or those who never commit to the program. I shouldn’t be frustrated by these people because these are those people who will never reach their goals in life. These are those people who will always need help and who will always complain that they got screwed in the end. I am only frustrated because I know that these are the people that need my help the most. The problem is how do I help them if they do not want it or they do not want to commit?

I haven’t posted a lot of content here on the mental approach to 3X Pitching, so I will start now. Yogi Berra said it best, “95% of this game is half mental.” That is the way I feel. Half of this game is mental and the other half is physical but 95% is definitely mental. If you can commit to any program on the web; 3X Pitching, Dick Mill’s, 90MPH Club, Jaeger Long Toss, NPA, etc, you will get better. I guarantee it! It is because of this Yogi Berra quote. To make it more clear, this quote is saying that yes, you can evenly split up the components of this game including the mental and physical facets but in the end, the mental facet is the most powerful. Have you ever seen the movie, The Secert? If you haven’t then you need to. This is a must see movie. It is proof that your goals will only be accomplished if you ultimately believe in them. So if your goal is to reach your top velocity and you bought the Dick Mill’s program but you are slightly skeptical because the 90MPH Club just sent you an email that says something that conflicts with the Dick Mill’s program, then now you have a problem. Now you are not fully committed and your chances of reaching your goals is limited.

The #1 Reason Pitchers Never Reach Their Top Velocity is the lack of Commitment!

If this is you then grow up and take the bull by the horns for once in your life. Out of all the poeple who purchase my program about 15% actually complete the program and don’t stop until they reach their velocity goals. The job of the program is not to perform a miracle and do the work for you, it is there to help you get to your goals faster than if you did it on your own and time is critical in any career. This is why you should only use a program that was used by someone who shares your same makeup or circumstance. Every single person who finds himself on TopVelocity.net and reads my BIO, about how I used the 3X Pitching Velocity program to beat the odds and top out at 94MPH in a professional season, who can put themselves in my shoes before my arm surgery or just after, always purchase my program and completes it. Though this is not the majority of my pitchers here. This is actually the 15% I mentioned earlier. The other 85% is those who are buying every single program on the web and using the part of the program that they feel is the only thing that is going to work in combination with all the other parts from all the other programs that they feel is best. The only thing missing here is the commitment, because how could you be committed to using a mixology of programs to make the perfect program and have confidence that it is going to even work in the end? The reason it is better to commit to one program alone, is because if you have done your homework, you know that it has been tested and it is proven to work. It is like saying I am going to not just buy a McDonald’s franchise to start a successful business, I am going to buy McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Carls’ Jr and use the best of all of them to build my new business. How in God’s name do you know this will work? Why should it even work? Why not just stick with one of them because they all have a proven track record of producing success.

Don’t just try a program, commit to a program and dare yourself to produce the results that you want!

* I used the picture of Cal Ripken Jr, because in baseball he is the best example of commitment. If you do not know why then do your homework!

Do your history! The pitchers from this era and before did not spend their time in weight rooms because they had to spend their off seasons making an honest living. This means they worked on farms like Bob Feller or were crab fisherman like Joe Dimaggio. Have you ever bailed hay or pulled a crab trap from the water? It is no different than power cleaning 150 pounds or more. Yes, these old ball players where lifting weights, it was just on the farms or the fishing boats. Just ask Bob Feller who lived his entire life as an advocate for fitness and today is still considered one of the games hardest throwers. He will tell you the importance of strength and conditioning for the elite athlete.

I want to show respect to these “Old School Coaches” because I used these coaches programs in the 90′s when I was playing but unfortunately all I got out of it was rotator cuff surgery at the age of 18. I do not credit these coaches for my injury but I do credit the lack of strength and conditioning before the surgery. More proof that these coaches are making bogus claims about weight training. I did an interview with the legendary Jim “The Rookie” Morris and asked him what he was doing, outside of his faith in God, to increase his velocity. His exact words from the interview that you can listen to on this site, “I was lifting a lot of weight!” He said that he was also a college football player and he looked outside of baseball to help him rehabilitate his career. We both shared this in common. I highly recommend that you listen to this entire interview with him.

In my career alone I trained with professional, college and high school top level players who religiously used a strength and conditioning program. They showed up almost everyday at the gym to worship the weight room gods. I also had the privilege to train with Dan Miceli during my rehabilitation years. He was a 15 year major league pitcher for the Padres, Rookies and many more and he would bench press 450lbs and leg press 800+lbs during his off season. He would go into spring training 35 pounds overweight. This was muscle not fat. He said he needed this weight because he would lose all of it in the next 3 months of the regular season and if he didn’t lift this way then he would lose a lot of his velocity late into the season.

I would like to hear those who speak out against weight training for pitchers explain why most of the Mitchell report was pitchers? This means MLB pitchers where using steroids along with a strength and conditioning program to increase velocity. I also learned this first hand from Jose Canseco when were teammates with the San Diego Surf Dawgs. Roger Clemens didn’t ruin his legacy by taking a performance enhancing drug like steroids because it was the cool thing to do. He extended his career because of it. If you know anything about steroids, it isn’t enough to just take this stuff and you will benefit. It will increase the benefits of a strength and conditioning program 10 fold if used correctly! This is why Roger Clemens needed a trainer like Brian McNamee to not only get him the drugs but to show him how to use them and how to use them with a strength and conditioning program to get the maximum gains in velocity and longevity.

If you really need more evidence of weight training for the pitcher/athlete and you do not want to read the countless number of sites that support it for athletes all over the web then I have posted some articles below to show scientific proof that weight training is critical for increasing velocity. Also once you purchase the 3X Pitching eBook you will find it loaded with even more weight training information to support these claims.

I feel that it is popular to believe that weight training does not increase pitching velocity because most people are looking for the easy way out. Most people in this game really want to believe that velocity comes in a mechanical adjustment alone or a secret device that they will one day discover online and it will change their career forever. This is why these pitching gimmicks show up on infomercials at 2 in the morning because they know that their or thousands of baseball players sitting at home waiting for the easy way out.

If lifting weights doesn’t increase pitching velocity then everyone who doesn’t have the genetics is screwed and they should just quit. Wouldn’t life really suck if it was just that simple? I mean for God’s sake, isn’t that why weight training was invented in the first place. It was invented because some highly determined individual wanted to enhance his genetics so he could accomplish a goal that his undeveloped genetics would not support. This is also why weight training is used in almost every single D1 University baseball program along with the best high school programs in the country. It works, for not just football players but all athletes!

I am not telling every pitcher to go out and start throwing around weight but I am saying that if you are sick of waiting for your velocity to increase then get into a weight room and turn yourself into an elite athlete. It will not happen overnight but if you work hard enough and smart enough, you will train your body to move like the hard throwers and then you will quickly learn that this was all you needed to do to start throwing like them too!

Articles that Proven Weight Training Increases Pitching Velocity

1. Scientific Proof that 3X will Increase Velocity and Prevent Injury
2. Baseball Heavy Weight Training Increases Velocity
3. Olympic Lifting Increases Pitching Velocity

When body tissues are cooled, nerve cells in the chilled area initially force adjacent blood vessels to constrict, leading to a marked reduction in blood flow to that part of the body. However, if the temperature of the affected area continues to drop, nerve activity is depressed and the blood vessels begin to open up, flooding the injured tissues with blood, even though cold is still being applied. This flood-of-blood (Hunting effect) is the human body’s reflex reaction to thwart severe cold injury in a body part subjected to chilling stress.

Dr. Meeusen’s studies showed that icing initially stops the swelling and blood flow of the damaged blood vessels into the local muscle tissue but after a period of 10 minutes it can begin to have an opposite effect to the area. His documentation continues to state this damage continues on to another important system of healing.

Lymphatic Vessels: Prolonged ice application can cause lymphatic vessels (which ordinarily help carry excess tissue fluids back into the cardiovascular system) to increase in permeability. This causes large amounts of fluid to pour from the lymphatics “the wrong way” into the injured area, increasing local swelling and pressure, potentially contributing to greater pain. If icing goes on too long, the lymphatic vessels can actually be nearly obliterated, losing all of their fluid to surrounding tissues.

The lesson here is NOT that icing is bad. What we have learned is that icing is effective initially but begins to cause problems after about 10 minutes. Read the description below for the proper way to ice the arm after a game to help aid the healing process.

Ice the elbow or shoulder region for 10 minutes immediately after pitching (DO NOT PUT ICE ON ULNAR NEVER), remove the ice for about 30 minutes, and then reapply it for 10 additional minutes. Repeat this cycle of about two 10-minute icings per hour as often as desired, based on how many pitches thrown, during the first 24 to 48 hours after pitching.

I also recommend that you use a heavy bag of icing. A little bag of ice will not cool off the area enough. You can put a towel on your arm to prevent freezer burn but try to use a bag of ice that almost hurts it is so cold. I also recommend taking a cold shower instead of a warm or hot shower post game for the same healing benefits of icing.

Using the overload to underload approach to train the pitchers body and central nervous system to increase arm speed is the right concept but the wrong approach when using weighted balls. The problem with using weighted balls is that it sacrifices the arm to teach the body how to move weight more quickly. To understand how backwards this weighted ball approach is we must first look at what role the arm plays in the pitching delivery.

The Role of the Arm in the Pitching Delivery

The role of the arm is to get into position to allow for the transfer of energy from the lower kinetic chain into the upper kinetic chain. Once this energy has coiled the shoulder during external rotation the arm’s role is to deliver the pitch to its desired location. Never does the arm work to generate velocity except for using the elastic properties of the arm muscles when coiling during the energy transfer. To better understand the sequence of events through the entire kinetic chain, which leads to the top velocity of the pitcher, you need to learn the revolutionary approach to pitching velocity called 3X Pitching. 3X Pitching proves that to increase the coil of the shoulder during external rotation the pitcher must first increase linear stride power and then transfer that power into core torque at front foot strike.

Why Weightballs are a Waste of Time for Pitchers?

Based on the understanding of how velocity is generated through the entire kinetic chain of the body stated above and also in the 3X Pitching approach, you can see that training with weighted balls using an overload to underload approach is a waste of time because it does not work with power pitching mechanics. Yes, this weighted balls approach may increase arm strength, using the weights, and may increase some arm speed, through training the central nervous system to rotate the arm faster, but the final result will be much less effective than taking a total body approach to velocity like with the 3X Pitching Velocity program.

I used the Overload Underload weighted balls throwing program for years when Dick Mill’s once preached it back in the 90′s. He now credits it to causing injury. It happened that I was using this program the year I torn my rotator cuff. I am not saying that this program was the reason for my tear but it did speed up the process of the injury. My problem was I had bad mechanics. I was an all arm pitcher and when I used this program it made everything even worse. The overloading with the weighted balls put more wear and tear on my cuff and in the end, even if I had added a few mph, it wouldn’t have been worth the extra wear and tear that came with it.

If you are looking to use weighted balls to increase velocity, I really believe that you are looking for the easy answer here. Increasing velocity is developing power pitching mechanics and also developing yourself into a power pitcher. The 3X Pitching Velocity program gives you all of this with a revolutionary approach to pitching velocity. This approach uses the famous 3X Velocity System throwing program to develop the 3X mechanics and the famous Fusion system which is the strength and conditioning program to develop you into an elite power pitcher.So, stop looking for the easy way out and get serious with a serious velocity program like 3X!

When I speak of long toss, I mean throwing the ball more than 120 feet. This means throwing the ball farther than from home to second base. To make this easy to understand and for you to base your opinion, I will break long toss down into a list of pros and cons.

The Pros of Long Toss:

It is a max effort exercise which is pushing the body to generate more force to the ball. If performed with total body mechanics, this can train and help develop the total body. Long toss mainly trains the “Load position.”

The long distance toss increases the chance of error in locating the target. This is training accuracy for long distance.

The Cons of Long Toss:

It is a max effort throwing exercise which is putting a lot of stress on the arm. Especially the decelerator muscles. If a pitcher has poor mechanics and throws with more arm than body, then long toss can be very destructive to the pitcher. If you are looking for an overall total body training program I would suggest mixing Olympic lifting and plyometric training with a throwing program that does not over throw the arm.

It is training long distance accuracy which is a different release point than 60 feet pitching accuracy. If performing long toss, it is important to finish throwing  from at least 60-65 feet after throwing long, to re-establish your pitching release point.

The mechanical difference from long toss to pitching on the mound, is almost the same difference as playing home run derby as opposed to hitting off of a live pitcher. There is a mechanical adjustment from hitting slow pitches intended for home runs, to hitting hard pitches intended to strikeout the hitter. This adjustment is proof that throwing long toss to pitching has a placebo effect (A placebo is anything of no real benefit which nevertheless makes people feel better.) For example, hitting the home runs in a home run derby would build confidence, which then would effect how you perform against a live pitcher. Just like throwing the ball 350 feet would give you more confidence when you start throwing the ball at 60 feet. It is now a shorter distance and it requires less effort, so you feel a lot more powerful. This is because throwing the ball 350 feet gives a visual measurement of your strength. To help you understand this point I ask this question. Which way do you think it is easier to tell who is throwing harder? The difference between a pitcher throwing 85 mph to a pitcher throwing 90 mph, or the difference between a pitcher throwing 310 feet to a pitcher throwing 350 feet.

There is a difference in mechanics for a pitcher throwing at max effort from 70 feet away to 350 feet away. The difference is in the release point. A pitcher should always throw with the same release point because it is crucial for velocity and accuracy. Continuously changing release points from throwing long toss to pitching on a mound will effect a pitchers consistency. Therefore, the only reason to perform long toss is for the placebo effect. It is just like taking an over the counter supplement that says it will increase your muscle mass. It gets you all excited and pumped up, but this doesn’t mean it is actually working. If this feeling is all that matters to you, then keep playing long toss. Otherwise, if you feel the placebo effect is a waste of time and emotion, then I would suggest you train your pitching delivery the same ever day. Constantly making mechanical adjustments to increase your velocity on the mound, without putting a lot of throws on your arm. You will see more velocity gains from a total body training program than from a long toss program any day.