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Pitching with your Legs

I heard a story about Roger Clemens once about pitching with your legs. It went something like this.

Roger was in high school and Nolan Ryan was his favorite pitcher. He always wanted to see his rocket arm up close and personally, so one day he got a ticket to watch him pitch in Houston for the Astros. He showed up early to the game so he could watch him throw his bull pen. Roger went over to the pen and waited for Nolan to up show up. He was expecting to see this long explosive arm rocketing the ball to the catcher. What he noticed immediately when Nolan started to throw was the size and power of his legs. He could not believe that he had not notice the essences of Nolan Ryan’s power, which was his legs. This convinced Roger that if he was going to have a rocket arm like Nolan, then he too would have to develop big and powerful legs. Read more

Proper Pronation Prevents Pitching Pain and Injury

Pitching pain and injury, along with most elbow problems come from overuse and poor mechanics. If we narrow it down to elbow pain then proper pronation is usually the determining factor. Proper pronation of the arm at release is when the thumb finishes down. Notice here in the picture of me in my last minor league season. Improper pronation at release can be the result of poor mechanics and aggressive off speed pitches.

For proper pronation to occur in the throwing arm at release the pitcher must extend the arm to release. The improper release of the throwing arm which would prevent proper pronation would be to pull the arm down to release. I find this to be a major misconception in the conventional wisdom of the game. Physics proves that during the velocity phase of the throwing arm, the pivot or elbow, must remain stationary until after release. This means the elbow must extend to release to prevent the elbow from moving down during the throw. This not only supports velocity but protects the elbow from resisting high amounts of deceleration forces. Extending the elbow to release also protects the rotator cuff during the deceleration of the arm. This will allow more of the back muscles to get involved during the deceleration phase. Read more

The 3X Power Stride

Most young pitchers do not have the leg power (power is strength and speed) necessary to generate the energy needed, through the stride, to reach their top velocity. If you are a pitcher who uses mainly your arm to generate velocity then you will find yourself shortening your stride to quickly get your front foot planted. After front foot strike you then will use your glove side and throwing arm to generate most of your velocity. Not only is this approach to pitching not efficient, it puts unnecessary wear and tear on the rotator cuff. Learning how to use the stride to generate power to be transferred into the ball as velocity is far superior than the later approach. Read more

You Go Pro Baseball

I have been in a few heated debates over my pitching career and this website. This is because I had an average to below average baseball career after I tore my rotator cuff at 18 years old in my first college appearance. So I don’t have all of the labels like, All American or Major League Experience which some of my readers want to hear. You need to understand that I spent most of my career focused on just being able to pitch again, first in college and then in professional baseball. My Doctors told me that I would never pitch again because one year after the surgery my arm was still not recovering. At TopVelocity.net I am not calling myself the greatest pitcher of all time. What I am calling myself, is a Velocity expert! This is because I overcame a major rotator cuff tear to not only pitch again but to develop enough velocity that I was able to “Go Pro!” Read more

Overload to Underload – Right Concept, Wrong Approach

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. Read more