How to throw harder

Brad

You have room to get stronger but be very selective in strength conditioning program.

If you will allow me, I would like to share from my own personal experience and what worked for me as a college/athlete and minor league player.

Before you begin, let me suggest "no heavy lifting" and a lot of rubber tubing and 1-2 pound weight for use to build rotator cuff housing muscles. Abduction, adduction, inversion, eversion, pronate, supranate...in other words, north/south/east/west, think of all these directional movements when composing individualized training program. This is vital in protecting shoulder and arm from injury and must be done prior to increasing weight amounts.

Let me say it this way, find and develop a program that will strengthen your body from the inside-out. What I mean by that is train fine motor skill muscles first in order to establish strong housing and foundation for the larger muscle groups. Specifically, the rotator cuff muscles around ball and socket joint of shoulder.

As in pitching, the lower body and abs play a much larger role than most HS players realize. Build up legs, preferably using running drills such as hill climbing, tire pulls, running with weight attachments, etc. You can be creative but make sure linear movement is involved in lower body building.

Would also increase ab workouts but be careful with lower back and ck with coach about recommended crunch programs. The center muscle groups compliment lower body conditioning and will help attain rotational power and linear movement.strength conditioning program should, in combination with these recommended components, increase velocity over a period of time, but won't happen over-night and will require much sacrifice and determination along with an All-American diet. Recommend vast amounts of collard greens and chicken every day-lol. All this I just shared, worked for the Shep-LOL But you got to work your program and totally focus with no side attractions, know what I mean .

Wish you the best of luck and hope these suggestions will put you on the road to great success.

Sincerely,
Gotta See Em Shep! (old board username-lol)

For what ever it's worth to you now Brad I will give you this info. For you this info might be coming a little late in your career, but for other young aspiring pitchers this would be good info and something to get started on right away. I'm not saying what Shep told you was wrong, but the weight lifting will only do so much for you. It will definitely get you in shape provided you have cardio vascular with the lifting. Think about it this way, what do pitchers do? They throw! What do you think the one thing that will help your arm strength and velocity? Throwing! Specifically, long toss. Long toss when ever you can, that increases your arm strength. When my son was growing up we used to play long toss all the time. Year after year his arm strength has increased. He is 17 now and throwing 88-89 consistently and even pops a 90-91 sometimes. We even had a mom who thought she knew so much question my son why he was out playing catch in October while her son was at the same park playing in a football game. (When her son pitches in games now his fastball is batting practice and is getting hammered.) This is sound info and was validated when my son attended a pitching camp at Notre Dame a couple weeks ago and the the question was asked to pitching coach Rooney. The single most important thing you can do to increase arm strength is to throw and play lots of long toss. Don't you wish you had this info when you were 9 years old?

Great stuff by both, but Shep sad it all as you get plenty of cardio from runnng, especially up hill. The long toss is also extremely important.

Thanks guys ive always heard long tossing and band exercises makes you throw harder its just the whole actually doing the stuff that gets me. But now ive realized that even though i dont play for a highschool thats big in baseball u can still make it to another level. so if anyone else has anymore tips please share them. thanks brad

mechanics

Brad

Those guys are correct also about long-toss and proper mechanics.

I only addressed the physical strengthening aspects as well as some cardiovascular suggestions as in lower body building and abs since you only weigh 150 now. It is my belief that putting on good fuctional body weight is most important at this point of your career, especially if your not even playing at a very big HS.

Remember Shep's motto: Preparation meets opportunity.

If you pay the price now, you will reap the dividends later.

Shep Cares

shep that is a great motto

http://www.thecompletepitcher.com/pitching_workouts/tubing_program.swf

There's the rubber tubing excersises if you needed'm.

Power your self off of the mound. Push hard, and good, strong, developed quads are the key. You can get them by doing squats.

I back SeedThrower's post 100%.

If you are very determined to increase your velocity, and funds are available, you might want to seek the advice of a pitching coach or trainer and not advice, though helpful and given in good spirit, from here.

If you begin a conditioning routine without proper direction, you most probably will end up hurt.

Do you know Chris who posted on another thread in this forum?

I don't even think you need a personal trainer/coach. If you put in the effort to listen to your coaches, that is enough instruction. Throwing with a friend is just as good for your arm as throwing with a trainer/personal coach.

Once you are in good condition for baseball, I would focus on pitching specific activites. In order to pitch, you must first learn to throw. It's been said that fifty percent of your velocity is produced from your shoulder to your finger tips. If this is true, you first need to address arm action issues. Make sure that you have no pauses in your arm action and that you are trying to move the arm quickly. Remember, you can't throw hard with a slow arm.

I once asked a similar question on another website, and I was told that in order to throw hard, you must practice throwing hard. This makes perfect since! You won't learn to throw harder by practicing at 50%. You must challenge yourself to throw harder. You have to go about this in an intelligent manner, you don't want to start out too hard and injure yourself. I am probably not qualified to give you any details, I am just relaying some information and beliefs that I have learned.

Also, you may want to research some weighted ball programs. They have been proven to improve velocity.

Whatever you decide to do, you will need to get your arm in better condition.

Long toss is always a good idea.

First, a 4-seamer will go faster than will a 2-seamer. More seams = less drag = extra 1-2 MPH (which is true but completely counter-intuitive). That's why a 4-seamer is often referred to as a "rising" fastball and a 2-seamer is often referred to as a "sinker." They both of course sink, but a 4-seamer sinks less due to the reduced drag.

Second, I'd be willing to be that you're not using your lower body efficiently. You need to get the rotation of your hips leading the rotation of your shoulders.

Third, I agree with the general advice above on conditioning, especially with respect to weighted balls (assuming that you gradually build up the weights). However, I think the point of conditioning the arm is to enable it to hold the shoulder together. Let the rotation of the hips, torso, and shoulder generate the primary force.

i've been going to a pitching coach for the last couple of years and he is recognized as the top in the country. whenever i ask him about velocity, he always stresses doing the tube exercises during the offseason while also doing lot of lower body strength training like squats and power cleans, but one thing he says is to lay off the long toss until the season starts. if anything, long toss in the offseason should be done sparingly, or else you will wear down at the end of the season.

quote:

Originally posted by the next...1:
mechanics

couldn't say it any better

By poss45

quote:

i've been going to a pitching coach for the last couple of years and he is recognized as the top in the country. whenever i ask him about velocity, he always stresses doing the tube exercises during the offseason while also doing lot of lower body strength training like squats and power cleans, but one thing he says is to lay off the long toss until the season starts. if anything, long toss in the offseason should be done sparingly, or else you will wear down at the end of the season.

poss,

Is it possible you could give out the name of this pitching instructor who is recognized the top one in the whole country? I was under the impression that long toss strengthened the arm so that it might not wear down as soon.

There are no magic words of wisdom. Read the good books written by great pitching coaches. Read Roger Clemens routine. He is disputably the hardest working pitcher in the business.
Watch any Pro ball game and you will see long toss and surgical tubes.
If you are young get your docs advice as to when to start heavier weights.
Read the Jim Morris story. Jim Morris went to heavy weights to develope his fast ball. I read another story of a guy who was going to give up and went to haevy weights and got into the 90s.
Personal experience although interesting is not scientific evidence.
Beware the quick fix, be patient and work hard with the time proven methods. The nice think is the advice is realatively inexpensive. Work on your whole game.

Brad, There are many forms of stength. One form is base strength often referred to as starting strength or limit stength. This is in general how strong a person is or how much strength can be called upon. There is also speed strength or power which is the combination of strength and speed together or combined. The level of ones base strength is directly related to ones ability to develop power. In theory the more strength one has to begin with the more power he should be able to develop. What many naysayers do not understand is one can train for power without using heavy weights. The best gains for power can be found using somewheres between 30-60% of max lifting capabilities. The best lifts for developing power are the olympic lifts.

You can believe whatever you want in regards to getting stronger for baseball or getting more strength to throw harder, however you want to state it. The fact remains if you want to get better a major part of that equation is centerd around strength. Strength enables ability/potential. Without developing the ability the potential drops significantly. Due to the fact that potential is in part centerd around ones ability.In other words when one elevates his ability his potential also elevates.

You stated something to the effect that you hit the wall in terms of velocity. This is not unique at all. How many other kids you know hit the wall at or near where you are? I bet a whol lot of kids are in the exact same boat you are. Why?

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Ok well im now a junior in highschool and ive been stuck around the same velocity for about 2 years now. my fastball is topping out at around 70 or so. i have a 2 seam and a curveball but i need a good fastball before anything and 70 is like pitching batting practice in a varsity game. So can anybody help me figure out a way to throw harder. if it helps at all im about 5'10 150 lbs.

I would focus on improving the timing of the rotation of your lower body.

First of all, make sure that your hips are leading your shoulders. Second, try to keep you shoulders closed as long as possible. This will give your hips more time to open up.

If you do this in conunction with conditioning your lower body, then you should see a significant benefit.

PGStaff,

yes long toss strengthens the arm, but what my guy, marty kobernus says, is that you should give your arm an offseason to rebuild and maybe not throw long toss every day. all i was trying to say is that you can't just stress your arm to the max 365 days of the year and expect to keep getting stronger, because too much can wear you down in the long run.

quote:

yes long toss strengthens the arm, but what my guy, marty kobernus says, is that you should give your arm an offseason to rebuild and maybe not throw long toss every day. all i was trying to say is that you can't just stress your arm to the max 365 days of the year and expect to keep getting stronger, because too much can wear you down in the long run.

This is good advice.

The body can't heal if it's constantly being used.

Ask Sandy Koufax.

To answer your questions polishpride their are a couple other kids around the same speed as me but their are also younger kids that are throwing harder. But i think once i get everything right with my hips and shoulders and landing spots and all that i hope i see a good increase in speed. Thanks for all that have been helping out here.

Brad if you listen to Chris and take time off there will be thosands of guys cruise right by you. My son and all the pitchers that we have been associated with throw all year. During the winter 3 times a week with Long Toss and bull pens against live hitters.
Read a good book with pro advice not some guy pumping weird ideas and big words. A word of advice to Chris stop trying to give advice on topics you have only lab expertice in. You are playing at something that can hurt someone.
Brad get good advice and work your tail off or you will be left behind.

Oh Brad I forgot. Don't worry about the other guys speed. Work on your talent and arm and body development.

quote:

Originally posted by BobbleheadDoll:
Brad if you listen to Chris and take time off there will be thosands of guys cruise right by you. My son and all the pitchers that we have been associated with throw all year. During the winter 3 times a week with Long Toss and bull pens against live hitters.
Read a good book with pro advice not some guy pumping weird ideas and big words. A word of advice to Chris stop trying to give advice on topics you have only lab expertice in. You are playing at something that can hurt someone.
Brad get good advice and work your tail off or you will be left behind.

Taking a month to a month in a half off from throwing has never hurt my son, or other pitchers with whom I am familar. The arm needs some recovery time. I have seen this advice in various places over the years.

And he has always come back stronger than ever after the downtime.

So I would respectfully disagree that some downtime will creat any problems for a pitcher.

Yes but if your arm is in gret shape the rcovery time is a few days. That is why pitchers follow a rotation.
No pitcher pitches every day. During the winter 3 times a week . My son also comes out strong every spring. Almost every pitcher in the programs I follow is piching in the US college ball.
There are 2 weeks off at Xmas and a few days on hollidays and that is it.
If you don't keep your arm in good shape you have to work it back in with risk of injury. If my son gets tired arm during the season he lightens up his load for a couple of days.

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Yes but if your arm is in gret shape the rcovery time is a few days. That is why pitchers follow a rotation.

No it isn't.

It may take days for muscles to heal, but it can take weeks, months, or years for tendons and ligaments to heal. That is why in the old days (before surgery) pitchers would have to take a year off.

Yes, they do have to then recondition their muscles, but that's relatively easy to do.

quote:

If you don't keep your arm in good shape you have to work it back in with risk of injury. If my son gets tired arm during the season he lightens up his load for a couple of days.

If you ease your way back into pitching, there is no additional risk that you will injure yourself.

quote:

Originally posted by Brad13:
To answer your questions polishpride their are a couple other kids around the same speed as me but their are also younger kids that are throwing harder. But i think once i get everything right with my hips and shoulders and landing spots and all that i hope i see a good increase in speed. Thanks for all that have been helping out here.

Assuming the information you gave in regards to yourself is correct than I highly doubt you have extremely poor mechanics,impossible to say without seeing. Im not discounting the importance of proper firing sequence bewtween hip/shoulder regions it is very important to uitlize the kinetic chain to reach max potential. I also would be highly supicious of some guy telling you what you are doing wrong if he has never seen you throw a single pitch, futhermore even if the person Im eluding to has seen you throw a pitch I still would not put a whole lot of stock into his analysis.

My reasoning is pretty simple. You say your a junior, that would put you at what 16 or 17 years old perhaps even 18, if the latter is the case than perhaps you are not meant to be a pitcher but I would guess your either 16/17. That would mean by the information you posted that at 14/15 you were throwing around 70mph. the same as today two years later, I cant believe the light didnt click a little sooner!. Although 70 at 14/15 is not great it is neither bad, probably the norm or just slightly above. Through this I would conclude that your mechanics were probably suitable and also probably pretty solid.Your not a big guy now I suspect you were not a big guy then, which lends even more credence to the notion that your mechanics were probably pretty sound. You must have been doing something right. Even if you do find the percieved holy grail to hip shoulder separation dont fool yourself into thinking that you will automatically throw 10 mph harder, in fact Id bet the farm that at best you MAY get a few more mph. even if this netted you another 10% you would be up to 77mph. Still batting practice fastballs but thats not even the point. the first thing I would check if given the opportunity would be overall mechanics of course but also your tempo, specifically the amount of time from highknee lift until release. again without seeing you I dont want to prejudge or cast comments, but I would bet you are near or above 25 frames on a 30frame per second camcorder.Which again though may be nothing because as a youth you were successful which logically makes one think that this was probably not an issue either. The same way your separation was and is now proabably not a huge issue in regards to velocity, logically there seems to be much more to the total equation. Also, just understanding or getting what good separation is about is not nearly enough. In order to reach max potential its more what you do or how you set your body/posture wise up beforehand, the prior action dictates the amount of success in the following action. One facilitates the other. In other words even if you understand the concept of good separation if your not performing subsequent actions that setup the body for this it aint gonna help you to much. The bottom line is your mechanics were no doubt okay 2 years ago, you seemed to have some success. What has changed within them in the last 2 years? Probably not to much inso far as becoming a hinderance for velocity development. Again Im not discounting the fact that good mechanics will help alot but on the otherhand if you have been a successful pitcher in the past do you honestly believe your problems are all mechanical? You should be trying to improve your mechanics, in a sense they are like practicing the martial arts. These people never accept what they are doing as good enough. There is a constant struggle/ effort to make them better, the same way a pitcher looks at his mechanics.

Brad it comes down to preparation and ability. You prepare yourself to be the best you can be. Even if you do have the sweetest throwing mechanics possible if you do not have the ABILITY strength wise it AINT GONNA MATTER, thats my point. Which brings me to the closing point of perhaps just perhaps this is why so many pitchers in hghschool end up like you, stuck at a certain plateau. No matter what they do or try they find that they have hit the wall. Part of the reason is they are not working at developing the ability to generate more power to begin with. Its like turning ona light, you flip the switch [turn your muscles on into action] and whatever watt bulb you have in the socket lights up. What burns brighter with more power a 60 watt bulb or a 100watt bulb? At 5ft10 and 150lbs. I suggest if you want to throw harder you need to get stronger to give you more ability to throw harder. again great mechanics mean nothing without ability to use them to their fullest potential! Sooner or later in one form or another strength becomes an issue, just perhaps your time is sooner, just an opinion!

Chris, Chris , Chris.
I had better call my son's college coach and tell him he is really doing things wrong.

u cant throw harder ur speed is ur speed what you wana work one is your control and movement

Why can't you throw harder? If it was impossible to throw harder people wouldn't be long tossing, throwing weighted balls, or conditioning as much as they do.

yea long tossing and all that stuff might inceasre ur speed by 1 or 2 miles if it did work better everyone would be a pitcher

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Originally posted by 3.9seconds:
u cant throw harder ur speed is ur speed what you wana work one is your control and movement

Untrue if you are like 14, 14, 16 years old. I use to have bad mechanics and use to throw average speed. But i worked on my mechanics with a instructor and i am throwing really hard. One has to get the most out of thier body.

I think throwing a baseball is sort of like running. Everyone has a top speed and some of us are fast and some not so fast. There are things that can be done to marginlly increase foot speed or thrown ball speed but that's about it. Practice, regular throwing and work on mechanics can help but only a little bit (unless there is a major mechanical problem). Not everyone has what it takes to throw hard and that is not a weakness or deficiency. It is just one thing you may not be able to do. Try to find out what you excel at and develop that.

I would think if you follow Coach Chris' advice you should have no problem breaking 90 mph. He has a video of himself throwing and I can tell you he is awesome ,he may even have deceptive ability if you know what I mean.

chico

Several of us scouts literally cried after viewing that Marshall Throwing Motion backyard video... His knowledge is so good no one would have ever known any difference and I even advised him the day he posted video to remove it ASAP but he wouldn't. Really a shame because he is a really good guy and puts so much time and effort in baseball. Still think he has "some" good ideas.

Shep Cares

quote:

Originally posted by snoop:
I think throwing a baseball is sort of like running. Everyone has a top speed and some of us are fast and some not so fast. There are things that can be done to marginlly increase foot speed or thrown ball speed but that's about it. Practice, regular throwing and work on mechanics can help but only a little bit (unless there is a major mechanical problem). Not everyone has what it takes to throw hard and that is not a weakness or deficiency. It is just one thing you may not be able to do. Try to find out what you excel at and develop that.

Do you totally disregard getting stronger and increasing power? The more power the more force. Sooner or later strength becomes an issue! Do you think its a coincidence that most world class sprinters are built like trucks. Not to mention that probably over half of the ncaa d1 short sprinters are college running backs? Its all about power, dont matter how good your mechancis are if you do not have the power to create the force it takes to throw the hell out of the baseball does it matter how good your mechanics are. Good mechanics SUPPORT the athlete they do NOT make him! Its like the totally blind guy with the 250 thousand dollar sports car. What good does it do him if he cant drive it. In the same sense what good are perfect mechanics if the person does not have the power to make them worthwhile? Now you can argue all you want which comes first but the fact is both are needed to succeed. The point is your wrong. Getting stronger will enable the person to also become more powerful. This will enable to develop more force. Only then with the combination of good mechanics will the person throw harder. Concentrating on perfecting mechanics alone may give a person a little benefit in regards to velocity but more gains will come from that in regards to being efficient as well as consistant.

Get in the weightroom. Throwing longtoss and running uphill works but when you add lifting your velocity will go up.