What Your Pitching Coach Can't See Could Be the Key
Pitching coaches can be a great resource, but if throwing harder...with more control...in longer outings is your goal you might be looking in the wrong place. My (Caleb) family is a New Orleans Saints family. My father is from New Orleans, my grandparents still live there, my sister and her family are in the suburbs and I was the only kid in the state of Georgia who grew up dressing as a Saints player for Halloween every year. If you know anything about the Saints, you know they have a long standing tradition...a tradition of losing in spectacular fashion. This year topped them all with a miracle play that was as much the Saints losing as the Vikings winning. If you missed the game its easy to catch up on. The Saints found a way to tackle their own players instead of the other team and allowed a 61-yd touchdown pass as time expired. It was the worst play I've ever seen. Now to baseball. You see, the Saints simply cannot win. No matter how hard they try. In many respects, this reminds me of traditional pitching coaches who are trying to "teach" mechanics. "Do this with your leg", "Sit back more", "Stride further", "Finish in this position" etc. But what ends up happening almost every time? No matter how hard they...and you...try, you just can't see improvements that last beyond a few minutes. What most people find is that the mind is trying to do something that the body simply can't do...and your pitching coach who isn't trained in kinesiology (probably) can't teach you how because he can only see the movement on the surface. Now this applies whether or not the "cue" given is healthy or not. Many pitching coaches know various bits and pieces of an efficient and healthy throwing motion, but don't know how or what is keeping you from performing them. Additionally, most only use verbal cues, which come from traditional thinking or a former "big league" players experience, rather than a knowledge of how the body was made to move. If you have ever heard of coaches "disagreeing" with one another (or emailing us) regarding mechanics then you see the point exactly. What if we eliminated all that and threw the baseball: (1) the way the leading pitching and medical research community tells us is most healthy (2) in the way the body is most strong What if I told you those were the same thing? In the last 3 years we have seen 150+ pitchers come through our doors for a physical evaluation and mechanical video analysis. In EVERY single case, the video of the pitching motion shows us red flags for inefficiency (lost velocity or pain) that are tied to a mobility issues seen in the physical evaluation. Things like:
joint hyper-mobility
balance
hip/ankle/shoulder/pelvis mobility
general flexibility
strength imbalance or deficit
rotation deficit
thoracic (back) mobility
Things your average pitching coach hasn't been trained to see. This is a problem because the very issues causing pain and effecting your velocity the most are NOT going to be fixed by thinking harder while you pitch. They will be fixed when they can be known and addressed in training (training that probably isn't going to involve a baseball!) ___________________ You cannot separate training and pitching mechanics. Mechanics are motion, therefore, they will only become natural after the body learns and then trains how to move. ___________________ Keep your pitching coach, he's a great tool for you to use every few months, but on a daily/weekly basis your pitching development needs: 1) Mobility work (specifically for your needs) done in periods of 15-30 minutes at a time every single day 2) Strengthening the muscles that support the throwing motion (from head to toe) and correct your unique areas of weakness 3) Throwing drills designed to teach the body a new motor control pattern but not strain the arm like a bullpen session
