Enhance your baseball skills during the offseason with an effective throwing program. Discover the importance of setting player goals and how it can maximize your training. This blog post will provide you with valuable insights and tips to optimize your offseason throwing program.
Discover effective strategies to prevent injuries in youth baseball with this comprehensive guide. Learn how to protect young athletes and ensure their long-term health.
Learn the key techniques and drills to master the art of baseball throwing mechanics.
Discover the significance of bullpens in maintaining pitching precision and how they help pitchers improve their feel for the game.
As a part of our continuous efforts to provide our athletes with top-tier training and development resources, we are thrilled to introduce our new initiative, the "Pitch Lab". Designed with the specific needs of young pitchers in mind, the Pitch Lab offers targeted workouts and in-house training to improve pitch mechanics and enhance performance on the field.
Pitching is a physically and mentally demanding position in baseball. Whether you are a high school pitcher or pitching at any other level, it's important to be well-prepared physically and mentally. Here are some tips on how to prepare for your next game:
Youth Pitchers often experiment with pitch grips by what they see on YouTube, TV, or just what "looks cool." Despite their best intentions, youth pitchers that play around with their pitch grips can significantly hurt their chances of throwing strikes or possibly their arms by not utilizing the correct grips and delivery.
These are the five most common pitch grips that youth pitchers (with pitch grips 4-5 below being more for advanced, mature pitchers) should master (both from how they throw the pitch to the spin direction of the pitch when it's released per diagram below) before taking the mound.
A youth pitcher should be always looking for ways to increase velocity, but it should be done under the guidance of good coaching and instruction geared around the pitcher increasing their throwing efficiency. Chasing higher velocity isn't the end-all-be-all, but when a youth pitcher naturally builds a better delivery they will in turn gain velocity. Yes, strength has something to do with it, but gaining separation and rotational efficiency does even more to build sustainable, effortless velocity. Throughout baseball history and even today, pitchers with higher velocity are revered, but faster is only better when it's sustainable and controllable. That being said, here are some ways that youth pitchers can naturally increase their pitching velocity.
1. Changing Locations. Pitchers need to be able to change the location of their pitches. They can't win an at-bat by throwing to the same spot every time. They need to be able to throw to different zones and eye levels. The more variety a pitcher has in their pitch location the harder it will be for a batter to assume where the ball will be thrown.
1.) Be an athlete and GFF (Go Forward Fast!). Ask yourself this simple question, “When does a player throw harder; pitching or with a crow hop from the outfield?” The obvious answer is with a crow hop from the outfield because you are more athletic and are able to create more momentum. The key to maximizing your velocity on the mound is creating a similar momentum while keeping your direction moving towards the target (the catcher). Dr. Tom House says, “When the whole body gets moving forward and the front foot hits, that weight transfer turns into energy translation, and that energy is going to travel up the body, into the arm and into the baseball,” House also says, “The arm is just along for the ride. But if you don’t get moving forward as quickly as possible, you’ll recruit strength out of sequence, or have movement out of sequence, the energy is not going to be efficiently transferred from your body into the baseball.”