Lacking this knowledge may reduce pitching performance and increase the risk of injury. If you want to achieve optimal performance in pitching, you should be aware of these research findings based on sports science.
1. To achieve speed, emphasize the velocity and stride of your body moving off the pitcher’s mound. (Slow body movement naturally results in slower pitch speed.)
2. Focus on developing a smooth pitching motion. Once the motion is smooth, your body movement will also become fluid. A smooth pitching motion implies proper pitching rhythm. Any quick or sudden forceful actions will slow down the pitch speed.
3. Never overemphasize any single part of the pitching motion, as this will make the motion sluggish. (Don’t try to deliberately speed up your arm swing or hip rotation; the speed of these actions depends on the preceding motion.)
4. For correcting pitching mechanics, coaches or instructors often cannot provide reliable advice or feedback through visual observation alone. It’s much more effective to record it with a smartphone.
5. For every pitcher, the biggest limitation on pitch speed is the displacement speed generated by the stride off the pitcher’s mound. A pitcher’s natural physical condition largely determines the speed of this displacement. (Young pitchers should focus on maximizing their body’s displacement speed.)
6. Excessive flexibility and stretching training is futile. In fact, such training can hinder the fluidity of your pitching. Any large stretching motions before pitching increase the risk of injury and reduce pitch speed.
7. Gripping the ball tightly with your fingers or wrist contributes little to pitch speed. The primary role of the wrist and fingers is to control the ball’s position at the moment of release. The wrist should remain neutral during release, while the fingers extend your pitching motion.
8. The faster your body’s displacement during pitching, the less your muscles contribute. For pitching, body displacement speed is the key to pitch speed. This means that no matter how intense your weight training or how large your muscles, they contribute almost nothing to pitch speed.
9. The arm or shoulder plays a minor role in pitch speed. Research shows that the pitching shoulder of professional baseball players is not stronger than their non-pitching shoulder. Relying on long throws to strengthen the arm is as mythical as expecting cheers from girls.
10. Pitch speed is built on coordination and rhythm, not the strength of a single muscle group, such as explosive power or muscle force. (Here, muscle force refers to the “strength” used in weight training, which comes from glycogen in the body, while explosive power is the energy exerted in an instant, derived from the body’s phosphocreatine system.)
11. Pitch speed is a crucial aspect of pitcher training. During the season, training just once a week is sufficient to maintain the results of the hard work during spring training. However, this also means that pitching coaches must adjust the pitcher’s speed to its peak before the season starts, and the training program must include a significant amount of fastball practice. This is what I mean by maintaining a specific pitching-ready physique.
Discover Talent, Develop and Practice
Talent is important, but talent alone is not enough. After identifying talent, it requires careful nurturing and training to achieve better results. Children grow every day, and their strength increases daily, so different stages demand different practice balls.
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