FVS Velocity Program for Position Players

The key for position players to increase velocity comes in these four components; Force Production, the Force Vector, Front Leg Stabilization and Hip to Shoulder Separation. If a position player wants to increase velocity, he must enhance Force Production, focus his Force Vector towards his target, Stabilize his front leg at front foot strike and convert this force or power into hip to shoulder separation. If you are new to this site then this may be the first time you have read these terms when describing the throwing motion. Here are some simple definitions of these components to help you understand this approach.

Force Production – This is the force applied in the throwing delivery either through the drive steps or step, before front foot strike. In the last drive step force production is enhanced through the ankle kick of the drive leg. This will start force production at the foot where the body is in contact with the ground and this ground reaction force will move up the leg, into the hips, to create hip rotation.

Force Vector – This is the direction of the ground reaction forces. The force vector is the angle of the drive leg ankle to knee. The ankle to knee or force vector must be in line towards the goal or target.

Front Leg Stabilization – The front leg must also produce force which comes at front foot strike. When the front foot lands, this force moves into the ground and where there is an action there is an equal and opposite reaction which is that force moving back up the leg. If the leg continues to stabilize, this force will travel into the hip, to assist in creating hip rotation.

Hip to Shoulder Separation – This is the most critical component of all throwing deliveries. All the other components are used to serve this main component. Enhancing hip to shoulder separation at front foot strike is the key to reaching your top velocity from any position. This component describes the separation of the back hip to back shoulder at front foot strike. The more hip to shoulder separation the more coil or torque in the core which will create more velocity while reducing the stress on the arm.

The difference between the FVS throwing motion and that of the 3X Pitching throwing motion is how force production is generated. In the FVS throwing motion, force production is a product of the few drives or momentum in the body during the movement towards the ball. This is because most throws from positions start with body movement and in the pitching delivery, the pitcher must always start in a static position.

The similarities of the FVS throwing motion and the 3X pitching throwing motion is everything after force production. Speed and power is still just as important to generating velocity, in both throwing motions. The more powerful athletes in the field will also be the harder throwers, if their mechanics are using their full power, like here in the FVS approach.

Don’t get me wrong, game time spent on the mound is priceless but to much of it can become a major problem. My mother always said everything in moderation is healthier. This is the same for anything. The problem with spending to much time on the mound, during game time, and not enough time developing yourself in an off-season program is that you make yourself more susceptible to injury and you limit your ability to grow and develop. ASMI has already done the studies on how high pitch counts per game and even per season are being ignored and that this is a reason why arm injuries are so high. The lesson to be learned here is that not enough youth, high school, college and even professional pitchers are separating their seasons into a moderate divide of a growth and development program, a load building program and a maintenance and recovery program. These programs are the foundation of what I like to call the 3 season pitching system.

3 Season Pitching System

These three seasons should be a staple part of all pitchers yearly pitching cycle. Those pitchers who only using a 2 or 1 season system are limiting their ability to enhance performance and prevent injury. Sticking to this 3 season system will promote success in all levels of pitching.

Off-Season Pitching Program

The Off-Season should be around 3-4 months out of the year. Preceding your Off-Season program you need around 1-2 months of complete rest from any type of exercises. You should focus on nutrition and good sleep. This means going to bed at a good time and logging about 8-10 or more hours per night. This type of sleep should be consistent all year long.

Once your Off-Season begins it should include the following:

1. Dynamic Warm-up
2. A total Strength and Conditioning program based around an 8 week cycle to build speed, strength and ultimately power.
3. Joint integrity program to develop your small muscle groups like your rotator cuff.
4. A throwing program that complements your strength and conditioning program to help program the new motor coordination around good pitching mechanics.
5. Anaerobic conditioning program to promote speed and power movements through a full range of motion along with building your ATP buffer.

Remember your Off-Season is focused around increasing performance without using a high volume of throws. This is the most effective season to increase velocity.

Pre-Season Pitching Program

The Pre-Season program should be around 1-2 months out of the year. The foundation of the program is transitioning your training from a speed, strength and power development program into a speed, strength and power maintenance program so you can begin to build your pitching workload. This means you will need to begin to increase your volume of throws as you decrease your resistance training.

Once you begin your Pre-Season program it should include the following:

1. Dynamic Warm-up
2. 1-2 days per week of higher rep and lower resistance training. Workouts should incorporate more medicine ball training than barbell training.
3. Joint integrity program to maintain strength in your small muscle groups like your rotator cuff.
4. A throwing program to begin increasing your volume of throws with mound time as you gradually build up to your In-Season pitching rotation.
5. Anaerobic conditioning program to continue to increase your ATP buffer while providing some speed and strength maintenance.

Your Pre-Season program is a transitional period in the year where you must effectively convert your Off-Season program into your In-Season program. You have less time to make this happen, so you must work hard and smart to make sure your Pre-Season program works with your team practice schedule and gradually builds you up to your In-Season workload.

In-Season Pitching Program

The In-Season program should be around 3-5 months out of your year. This program is built around your pitching workload. This is your pitch count requirements based on your rotation. If you are a starter or a relief pitcher, your In-Season program should be scheduled around this rotation. The foundation of the program is to continue to maintain speed, strength and power with a major focus on recovery. The better pitchers are able to recovery faster between appearances. A good In-Season program would promote this recovery.

Once you begin your In-Season program it should include the following:

1. Dynamic Warm-up
2. Med Ball strength maintenance program or weight training maintenance program.
3. Anaerobic conditioning program to support speed, strength and power maintenance and also to promote increased ATP buffering.
4. Joint integrity program to maintain strength in your small muscle groups like your rotator cuff.
5. Throwing program to help promote motor coordination synchronization without a high volume of throws.
6. Nutritional and supplementation guidelines.

The goal of your In-Season program is to maintain your Off-Season gains, as long as possible, while promoting a quick recovery between appearances.

TopVelocity.net currently has an Off-Season program which is the 3X Pitching Velocity Program. I am developing an pre-season and in-season program. Stay tuned!

Pitching Video Analysis

With video analysis at the amateur or youth level, it is a great opportunity for the young athlete to step into the shoes of their ideals for a moment. It gives the pitcher the hope that if I can just move like the elite pitcher then I can accomplish what he has accomplished. I would confirm this theory and say yes, there is a chance this could happen but here is the problem. Video analysis allows us to slow down time and see things that we can not see with the human eye but at the same time, it forces us to loss track of time. This is critical because time is the measurement of speed or velocity and if your ultimate goal is to increase your speed or velocity then this can become a major problem. This is why to much analysis can result in what is called, “Analysis Paralysis.” The more we get caught in analysis as athletes, the more we slow down. This is very dangerous to ones career because the higher levels of the game are separated by time. This means, the higher levels have faster athletes, which create a faster game. If you can not compete at these speeds then you will never make it to these higher levels. This is why you must use video analysis wisely.

The Theory of Real Time and the Athlete

I am going to explain here why we slow down as an effect of over analyzing a personal skill. This may be to far out in left field for you, so if you are not staying with me, just jump to the last paragraph.

The main reason for “Analysis Paralysis” is because we begin to transfer our muscle control from a subconscious level into a conscious level. This means we start to move our bodies with our brains, instead of with our nervous system. This is like when you are first learning a dance move and you feel like a goof ball as you are starting to learn the dance but overtime as you get more comfortable with the movements, you begin to relax and enjoy yourself. It always happens this way because as you start learning the dance, you are using your thoughts to control your movements and then as you continue the pattern of movements, your nervous system is alerted that this is a pattern and then your nervous system takes control of the repetitive movement as your brain relaxes into enjoyment. This continues on until the brain tells the nervous system that a new pattern has begun. Another way to understand this theory in your everyday life is the next time you are driving a car and you take a right or left turn, notice that you never once thought to your self, “OK, [Your Name],  grab the wheel at 12 and 6 o’clock and rotate the wheel counterclockwise for a total of 3.75 rotations.” This would more than likely cause an accident and you may feel that you need to be committed into a mental hospital. This is because if you had to do this every time you took a left turn in the car, the process would slow down your reaction time because you are having to verbalize and visualise the entire process while it is actually happening. This adds a complexity to a simple process and prevents the skill from occurring effectively in real time. This is what happens when we over analyze our pitcher delivery. We get so caught up in the analysis, that our brain is doing all the work and our nervous system is never given control. This will also produce pitching mechanics that may look like an elite pitcher on film but your speed and velocity has suffered.

The most effective way to use video analysis is only a few times a month. You need to keep the big picture that if you are going to become an elite pitcher, you not only have to have similar mechanics as the elite pitcher but you must move through these mechanics with similar speeds. So when you get a video analysis of you pitching next to an elite pitcher here at Topvelocity.net, you also need to get the speeds of the pitcher and then work to match his speeds as well. For example, if his vertical is 38 inches then your vertical needs to be 38 inches. If his 60 yard dash is 6.6 seconds then your 60 yard dash needs to be 6.6 seconds. Don’t just be satisfied with having similar mechanics on film of an elite pitcher because you could then fall victim to, “Analysis Paralysis.”

The Position Statement also mentions that the use of the curveball at the youth level may be an issue but no research exactly shows why. ASMI states that the problems could be that throwing a curveball enhances the effects of the three major factors of primary injury for youth pitchers. Here is a list of their recommendations for preventing injury.

ASMI Injury Prevention in Youth Pitchers

1. Watch and respond to signs of fatigue. If a youth pitcher complains of fatigue or looks fatigued, let him rest from pitching and other throwing.
2. No overhead throwing of any kind for at least 2-3 months per year (4 months is preferred). No competitive baseball pitching for at least 4 months per year.
3. Do not pitch more than 100 innings in games in any calendar year.
4. Follow limits for pitch counts and days rest.  (Example limits are shown in the table below.)
5. Avoid pitching on multiple teams with overlapping seasons.
6. Learn good throwing mechanics as soon as possible. The first steps should be to learn, in order: 1) basic throwing, 2) fastball pitching, 3) change-up pitching.
7. Avoid using radar guns.
8. A pitcher should not also be a catcher for his team. The pitcher-catcher combination results in many throws and may increase the risk of injury.
9. If a pitcher complains of pain in his elbow or shoulder, get an evaluation from a sports medicine physician.
10. Inspire youth pitchers to have fun playing baseball and other sports. Participation and enjoyment of various physical activities will increase the youth’s athleticism and interest in sports.

It is interesting that ASMI advises to learn good throwing mechanics to prevent arm injury but they never mention to use a strength and conditioning program to improve the poor physical fitness issues. The answer always seems to be just rest more or do not throw to much. I believe in pitch counts for all levels but we must stress the importance of a good strength and conditioning program for all levels, even the youth level as a key component to preventing injury.

The 3X Pitching Velocity program was developed for the mature pitcher but can easily be modified for the youth pitcher. Checkout the Beginners Guide to 3X Pitching to learn more (Coming soon..)

In my last interview with the legendary guru of Speed and Strength Training, from D1 Sports in Tennessee, Kurt Hester, stated that Major League Baseball is using glorified physical therapy instead of strength and conditioning. This was a shot at the lame approach to training and rehabilitating athletes in the MLB organizations. This is coming from a guy who trains some of NFL’s most explosive athletes and who was label as Gorilla Ball, when he was training the LSU tigers in the 90′s.

Kurt says that fear is a major problem with baseball players. They train the way they do because of the fear that comes from the higher levels of the game. He also says that if young baseball players trained like Major League ball players, they would never get better. The fear is that weight training, especially heavy weight training, will make you bulky and will cause injury. Kurt says the MLB’s athletic trainers are running glorified physical therapy programs and not actually training their athletes to become bigger, stronger and faster.  This is why I believe top draft picks and big salary pitcher’s like Mark Prior leave the league with a career ending injury, after only 3 years in the show, and never make it back.

This is the reason players like Barry Bonds carried his own trainers and doctors almost everywhere he went. Kurt said what makes athletes better is increasing force production. If you can train to move more explosively in a vertical or linear direction, then you are a better athlete because of it. This force production translates into running speed, bat speed and throwing velocity. This is the same approach he used when he trained the LSU Baseball team to 5 National Championships in the 90′s and 2000. He enhanced the force production of every athlete on the team and yes, even the pitchers benefited from it. They all became so developed that they were calling the LSU style of play, Gorilla Ball. This style of training, developed by Kurt Hester, was not only revolutionizing LSU baseball but the entire game. Kurt was receiving calls from Major League Managers who wanted to know why they were hitting so many runs, stealing so many bases, and their pitchers collecting so many K’s. When he would tell them that he was focusing on force production, through heavy load and triple extension training, these Major League Coach’s wanted to use his program but everyone of them shied away from the program because of the worries that they would be scrutinized for using this type of heavy load training in the MLB. Kurt says baseball is behind Golf when it comes to strength and conditioning.

Learn More about Kurt Hester

Kurt Hester is the National Director of Training for D1 Sports Training. He is known nationally for his energetic approach to training top-tier athletes.

Kurt is D1′s primary authority on sports training and is responsible for instilling the D1 training philosophy and making sure all D1 coaches properly implement and teach training programs and techniques. In addition, Kurt oversees D1′s NFL Combine Training Program.

Prior to D1, Kurt ran and owned HS2 Athletic Performance in New Orleans for nine years, where he turned out more than 400 collegiate scholarship athletes and trained more than 50 NFL draft picks. He also trained numerous MLB draft picks, high school All-Americans, state championship teams and collegiate National Track & Field finalists. Prior to HS2, Kurt was a strength & speed coach at LSU, Tulane and Southeastern Louisiana University. In addition, Kurt is still an active strength and speed consultant at Florida State, Tennessee, Illinois, Ole Miss, Alabama, Nichols State, Grambling State and the Unviersity of Miami.

Kurt, a graduate of Tulane Unviersity, was inducted into the Strength Coach Hall of Fame and holds various certifications through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, United States Weightlifting and the Speed, Agility and Conditioning Association. Kurt learned under USA Weightlifting coach, Gayle Hatch and speed coach, Tom Shaw.

If you would like to watch the interview with the legendary Kurt Hester, it is hosted on TopVelocity.net and is also a part of the 3X Pitching Velocity Program.

What makes a BAD pitching Coach?

Someone who has no experience in playing the position at the top levels of the game, or someone who has no certified education of how to coach the position.

How can a BAD pitching Coach effect a pitcher?

Pitching takes a tremendous amount of muscle coordination. The body must naturally understand how to build maximum momentum and torque, to deliver an above average fastball to a specific location. It is a pitching Coaches job to guide the pitcher to reaching his athletic potential. This takes an expert understanding of the position and the athlete. If the pitching Coach is far from an expert then the chances of him being a guide to the pitchers athletic potential, is very poor. This could be detrimental to a young pitchers career because promoting bad mechanics, due to the lack of experience or education, will decrease velocity and cause injury. It happened to Me.

What are the signs of a BAD pitching Coach?

1) No experience in the top levels of the game.

2) No certified education in the world of pitching and athletic training.

3) A poor understanding of Physics Driven Pitching Mechanics.

4) A poor understanding of the physiology and psychology of his pitchers.

5) Over throwing his staff of pitchers.

6) Discouraging his pitchers from using a strength and conditioning program.

7) Forcing his pitchers to throw more breaking balls than fastballs.

8 ) Using Long Distance running to build endurance in his pitchers.

9) Excessive amounts of long toss.

10) A poor warm-up and dynamic stretching routine.

11) Not educating his pitchers on proper athletic nutrition and rehabilitation.

12) Not educating his pitchers on the mental game.

13) Uses a lot of poor conventional wisdom to coach his pitchers.

What are the signs of POOR conventional wisdom of pitching mechanics?

These are old techniques of pitching, that have been proven throw science, to decrease velocity or cause injury.

This would be Coaching the pitcher to:

1) Take the ball out of the glove and reach it to the sky.

2) Get into the T position. Glove hand to target and ball to center field.

3) Pull the glove hand in hard to your body, while pulling the throwing arm down to throw.

4) Kick the back leg up high after release. He may even use a chair for the pitcher to kick his leg over, after release, to force this bad pitching mechanic.

5) Keep your landing leg bent at release. Do not let it straighten!

6) Pull your head down hard during pitch.

7) Wipe your arm.

8 ) Slam your chest into your landing leg.

9) Move your arm faster.

10) Drive your glove hand to the target.

How to PLEASE a BAD Pitching Coach?

I will be the first to tell you that this isn’t easy. Due to the high percentage of BAD pitching Coaches in all levels of the game, ever pitcher will deal with a BAD pitching Coach a few times to many in their career. The best way to deal with a BAD pitching Coach, without him having an effect on your career, is not to avoid him but to please him. Here is some TIPS that will help.

1) Do whatever he says when he is looking and then do what you think is best when he isn’t looking.

2) Study the game, the position, physics driven mechanics and strength and conditioning. Become your Coach.

3) Do not let him catch you educating the other pitchers. Especially if he is a HOT HEAD.

4) Do not screw around when he is around you.

5) Do not talk bad about him to other players.

This is the MOST IMPORTANT TIP:

6) You must IMPROVE.

The hardest thing that any pitcher or athlete must learn, is that it is a rare case for you to find a Coach that will propel your career to the top levels of the game. This is because, they are just as concerned about their job, as you are about your job. So if you want to make it as a professional one day, you are going to have to knock down a lot of doors. You will always find support but the only person that is going to help you get their is yourself. I will leave you with this quote from Nolan Ryan.

“Pitching in the big leagues is a dream. Preparing to pitch in the big leagues is a nightmare.”

If you would like TopVelocity.net to analyze your pitching video, please follow the instructions below.

How to shoot your video?

Shoot two angles for your video. An angle from behind the pitcher and an angle from the throwing arm side of the pitcher. Make sure that the camera is not higher than the pitchers shoulders. Also make sure the camera is stationary.

Each angel should have two or three pitches of video.

How do you package and send your video?

Compress your video into a digital format. For example, DVD, Divx, AVI, MOV, WMV, MPG or any other common format. Burn the format to a CD or DVD. Visit the “Contact Us” page and request our mailing address to send the video too.

Video Analysis

At TopVelocity.net, once we receive your video, we will analyze your mechanics with advanced video software. This software will allow us to do a comparison of your delivery to a Professional Pitcher with a similar frame as yours. We will then use the software to generate overlays and slow motion clips to give you an extremely detailed analysis. We promise you will be impressed.

Once the video has been analyzed, we will post your analysis here on the forums. You can then watch your analysis.

Our video analysis is very popular with the pitchers we have worked with. It is a great tool because they can always go back and look at the video. We do recommend that you have a video analysis done at least every 2 months.

If you are interested and would like to send your video in today, your first analysis is FREE. Contact Us