A study found better athletic movements equal more strikeouts which goes along with what Top Velocity has been saying for over 10 years, that baseball needs to have its own combine. The same value the NFL finds in learning the athletic ability of their prospects to determine their success on a football field would be just as valuable for the MLB.
It is great to see like-minded individuals putting together studies, like the one below on links to strikeouts, to help evolve the antiquated conventional wisdom of this game, that believes pitchers are not athletes and pitchers that throw hard, are a mystery to science. Pitchers are no different than any other athlete in sports, they are actually the most advanced when it comes to their biomechanics movements. This means they have a lot more variables to perform at a high level than most other skills.
In this article, I will summarize the case study that found better athletic movements equaled to more strikeouts and how to benefit from this information in your training program.
Baseball Not the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer
I am still astounded that pitching coaches and approaches promote, even today, that the legs do not generate the forces on the arm when this most recent study, along with tons more, show the direct correlation between the athletic ability of the leg movements and the performance of the pitcher. It almost seems that the collaborators of this study where not expecting the results when they posted this conclusion:
The ability to proficiently and rapidly accelerate, decelerate, and change direction throughout agility may contribute to elevated pitching performance (1).
It almost seems like they don't completely believe the results of the study when it is so obvious. I believe the reason these mislead or uneducated coaches in baseball today don't understand that pitching is as athletic of a movement as serving a tennis ball or throwing a javelin, is because they believe pitching is a single plane movement. I have heard some coaches say it is a transverse plane movement, other coaches say it is a sagittal plane movement.
I will never forget the moment I was giving a pitch for the 3X BioMetric Scouting and Player Development System in front of the Dodgers Front Office Spring Training 2015. The head strength coach asked me the question, after my pitch to Andrew Friedman (President of Player Development), Josh Byrnes (Senior Vice President), Gabe Kapler (Director of Player Development) and more, "If pitching is a transverse movement then why do you coach sagittal lifts like squatting and olympic lifting?" First off I saw this coach using lunges and squats with the Dodger players a few hours before he asked this question which are sagittal lifts, second can you believe the head strength coach for the Dodger's believes pitching is just transverse? I had to inform the room that pitching is a multi-planer movement which means we must train in all planes. Lets just say I walked away from this meeting with a completely new perspective of the levels of baseball knowledge. Good to see a study making this same claim I made to the Dodgers:
During the delivery process an athlete must travel through multiple planes of movement, sagittal, frontal, and transverse, in order to successfully complete a pitch (1).
More Strikeouts Equals More Speed and Agility
In the study listed here, they found that the initial phases of a 60 yard shuttle run had the highest correlation to more strikeouts. The study then went on to determine why this might actually be the case:
During the preload phase, muscles are pre-stretched (beginning phase of the stretch shortening cycle), creating an increase potential muscle force production [11]. Similar preloading, pre-stretching and eccentric muscle contraction are prevalent upon foot planting and initiation of change in direct during the JJ Shuttle.
Progressing to the stride phase of the pitching delivery, a pitcher drives off the trail leg and rotates at the pelvis and trunk advancing the stride foot towards home plate [14]. As an athlete decelerates during agility and accelerates in the opposite direction, the drive of the plant leg, rotation of the pelvis and trunk, and extension of the non-plant leg all contribute to the body moving in that opposite direction. This rotational change in direction during the JJ Shuttle is completed in a similar manner as the stride phase of the pitching motion.
The similarities of lower extremity, trunk, and torso movement patterns performance throughout agility and the pitching delivery may explain the relationship between agility speeds and SO (1).
It is great to finally see science studying athletic movements in comparison to the pitching delivery. Wish they wouldn't have only used a shuttle run. Do you think it would have been any less of a correlation with a lateral resistance movement, a box jump or a power clean? I would say with my 10 years of experience advancing the performance of thousands of pitchers and using this approach personally to first advance my career post rotator cuff surgery to 94mph and minor league ball, you would find a strong correlation of more strikeouts to athleticism in all forms of power training.
I finally have a peace of mind in my training that didn't exist 10 years ago, due to the weekly hate mail of followers who believed my elite Olympic based athletic approach to pitching velocity was misplaced or misguided and in most cases, they claimed abusively. I get those emails less now and I am finding more studies backing my work every day. One thing I have learned holds true in life, once you discover a pattern that has survived the test of time then you can pretty much bet the house on it. I am betting the house on 3X Pitching, that it is going to be here and highly effective for a long time. You should do the same!
Reference
- Andrew Wolfe, Jason Jones, Joe Priest, Randy Martin, Kayla Peak - Agility measures related to strikeouts of NCAA
baseball pitchers - International Journal of Physical Education, Sports and Health 2016; 3(2): 188-192
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