Gotta realize that pitching is a two phase motor skill
If you're expect to pitch 70, 80, 100 pitches in a game. Why the heck would you be throwing 20-30 pitch bullpens once a week?
How do you expect to make up the extra 50 pitches? Magic?
Okay enough condecending talk
28.6 - The Science and Art of Baseball Pitching:
"Skill learning is determined by performing skill repetitions and obtaining feedback in the absence of fatigue.
For skill learning to occur, learning has to take place in blocks so that feedback [videotaping your bullpen] from one trial [ie. 5 pitches] can be used to modify the next trial [after a 2-3 min break, throw five more pitches]. That feedback gradually causes good elements to be retained and poor elemtns to be altered. The essential feature of learning is that the proximity of trails allows the learning benefits (feedback) from one trial to transfer to the next.
However, when other activities intervene between repititions of a skill, the benefits of feedback are disrupted. This interference means that what is experienced in one trial quickly becomes masked by the intervening unrelated activities.
Consequently, sporadic trails with unrelated trials in between do not foster learning. This is a major reason for skill dvelopment not being an artifact of a game experience.
A block of repitions of the same skill should promote learning and improvement.
Fatigue. Fatigue is the other main feature that must be considered when planning or conducting skill development in a training session. Fatigue impedes learning. Skills and tactical elements are learned faster and retained better when learning occurs in non-fatigued states. All learning should precede any occurrence of fatigue in a training session.
To some coaches, this principle may be contradictory to their understanding of the use of the principle of specificity. It is commonly asserted that if skills are to be performed when an athelete is tired, then learning those skills while experiencing the level of fatigue that will occur in a game is the best procedure. However, it has been shown that techniques and tactics learned in non-fatigued states produce better performances in fatigued states than do skills which have been learned in the presence of fatigue (Barnett, Ross, Schmidt, & Todd, 1973; Williams, McEwan, Watkins, Gillespie, & Boyd, 1979). The physiology of learning supports this finding.
The formation of neuromuscular patterns in inhibited by increases in acidity of the supporting physiological environment. Thus, when lactic acid accrues because of physical fatigue, the potential for learned in reduced.
The other and more common complication of fatigue involves neuromuscular patterns."
I won't bore you any more... but, if you want me to continue just ask.
Anyways, what that is saying is that you're not going to get any improvement by just pitching in games, unless you haven't pitched at all, then anytime you take someone in an unconditioned state and condition them, there'll be some improvements (unless you get bad habits and then you'll degress).
So what you want to do is throw in blocked sets (5 pitches a set) while videotaping yourself. If you know what to look for, this will help. Or if you wanna get a pitching coach, hopefully he knows what he's doing.
So, 5 pitches, take a 2-3 minute break studying video or doing mental imagery (as fatigue impedes learning, and I'll expand on the mental imagery thing because.. I care). Then do the next 5, repeat. Don't throw the 5 right down the middle, practice on low and away, low and up, inside and low, inside and high.
If you're required to throw 80 pitches in a game, you better be throwing 80+ pitches in the bullpen.
11.4
"Mental imagery (rehearsal) is a procedure that can be used to learn strategies and to assist in the control of mental focus before and during a game. Mentally rehearsing a physical skill sets the body to respond better in the action that is imagined or rehearsed. The perception or imagination of a motion in a person produced impulses in the neuromuscular pattern to perform that motion (Bakker, Boschker, & Chung, 1996; Harris & Robinson, 1986) and excites the same areas of the brain used in real ations (Lacourse, Randolph Orr, & Turner, 2003). The benefit that occurs from this pheneomenon is called "neuromuscular facilitation" and is known as the "Carpenter effect"... The effect of this imagery is not as great with intermediate or novice level atheletes as it is with élite performers. Teaching imagery skills increases the use of imagery and is associated with performance improvements, particularly in difficult skill elements (Rogers & Buckholz, 1991)."
