Increasing Pitching Velocity

This is not an easy task. It takes a good understanding of velocity mechanics and the will to work and train hard and smart. If you are looking for a quick fix then you are wasting your time. I spent five years of my career only working on reaching my velocity goal of 93 mph and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. If increasing velocity was easy then the web would not be full of people claiming to have the secrets to its success. If you are going to reach your velocity goals it will be by learning how to become more total body in your pitching delivery and by developing more fast twitch muscle fibers with a good strength and conditioning program.

The problem with most pitching coaches or strength and conditioning coaches claiming that they have the program to help you increase velocity is that these programs lack a major phase in the process. This phase is adapting your new fast twitch muscle fiber that you developed in the weight room and on the field into your pitching delivery. It is not an easy job to take your strength gains from the weight room and apply them into your pitching delivery. Just like it would almost be impossible to teach an Olympic lifter, who has never pitched, how to throw 90 mph. This is also why most baseball coaches tell you to stop wasting your time in the weight room, this is because they do not understand how it correlates to pitching. The only program that I have ever found to how this keystone to a legitimate Velocity Enhancement program is the Ace Pitcher Handbook. This is because I spent my career working with very talented coaches and trainers to develop the missing link.

If you are determined to find the answer to your question here on How to increase pitching velocity and you will stop at nothing to find the answer then I promise you the answer is here in the Ace Pitcher Handbook. I have sold over 10,000 copies thus far and have received countless testimonies praising its success. Here is the latest testimony from a excited parent that I received yesterday.

“Reed has hit 90 mph for the first time this May. These velocity drills are working. The Ace Pitcher Handbook has been the answer!”

Reed bought the Ace Pitcher Handbook 6 months ago and followed up with me on a weekly basis during the program. He went from 86 mph to 90 mph by the end of the program.

There is no reason that Reed’s success and the countless others who have benefited from the Ace Pitcher Handbook could be yours as well. If you are determined the I suggest you purchase the Ace Pitcher Handbook TODAY!

How to increase pitching velocity? answered here!

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Every coach knows that speed is the most dominate factor in sport. Coaches recruit fast athletes and design their offenses and defenses with that speed in mind. If these afore mentioned assumptions are correct, then, why are strength coaches training these same athletes to become slow and un-explosive.Training an athlete to become faster is not relegated to speed work on the field. You don’t take a highly recruited, gifted and genetically superior athlete into the weight room and do nothing to improve his speed and
explosive capabilities. Whether it is intentional or unintentional, strength coaches around the country are training their athletes in the weight room to become slower.

This is not an attack on training philosophy. It is an attack on the lack of common sense in the strength field. No matter what your training philosophy – Power lifting, Body-building, Olympic lifting or High intensity training, you can improve your program with a little common sense.

CST (Common Sense Training)

Rule #1
Train for strength not endurance. Remember your training for strength not a triathlon. Don’t spend an extreme amount of time in a hypertrophy phase or endurance training. Train at five reps and
below at eighty percent and above. Do this as soon as possible in your training cycle. You have to be strong to run fast, so why train above six reps? Your goal is to get strong – to run fast, not to lift long – to run slow and long.

Rule #2
Train explosively. Olympic lifts train the athlete to explode and use maximum possible force. Athletes will develop a high rate of force, a key point in sports training. Athletes who implement these lifts in their lifting program will train fast twitch muscle fibers, the fibers employed to give you speed, explosiveness and power. In essence performing an Olympic lift is performing a fast, explosive weighted jump. Sprinting in essence is a series of fast, explosive bounds. These lifts will directly help an athlete run faster Implement lifts such as: power clean, hang clean, power snatch, hang snatch, split jerk and jerk from the rack. The amount of weight does not matter as much as bar speed.

Rule #3
Train your VMO. Training the vastus medialis will help decrease ground contact time which is crucial to increase speed. Incorporate exercises such as: chain back squat, chain front squat, walking lunge and split squat into your program.

Rule #4
You need hamstring and low back strength. Because the back squat is one of the test for lower body strength in most programs, strength coaches sometimes over look the hamstrings and lower back. The hamstrings are connected to the glutes and back extensors. This is through the sarco-tuberal and dorso-sacral ligaments All lower body workouts should involve exercises for both the hip extension function and the knee flexor function Knee flexion exercises: leg curls and glute/ham raise. Hip extension exercises: Romanian deadlift, goodmorning reverse hyper and back extensions.

There are coaches with superior educations and impressive resumes who either over think while writing their cycle or under think while writing their cycle. When all else fails just use some common sense..

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The only reason I was able to play Professional Baseball after a major rotator cuff tear in my first college appearance was because of one thing, Velocity. For five years all I focused on was getting back to my velocity before the surgery, which was about 86mph and then adding as much more as possible. I never expected that I would soon reach 94 mph. This is why I started this website and also started the Guerilla Baseball Academy in Louisiana.

The biggest question I get is, how did I gain so much velocity after surgery?

Well, during those five years of starting over with the skill of pitching, I obsessively read ever book I could find on strength and conditioning and pitching mechanics. This helped put me headed in the right direction and then I started training with Kurt Hester who was the strength and conditioning coach at LSU during the 90′s when they were called “Gorilla Ball.” Kurt changed my career.

Kurt put 35 pounds of fast twitch muscle fiber on my body through Olympic lifting and plyometric training. After one year of his program I was throwing 90 mph. At this point I didn’t have much time left in my career so I decided to go to California and tryout for the Golden League. This is an independent minor league organization. I hit 91mph in the tryout and was drafted in the first round. I then meet one of Tom House’s certified pitching coaches Mike Layseca and he taught me about hip to shoulder separation, which I had none. When I started my season in San Diego, one month into it as my mechanics got better, I topped out at 94mph. At this point in my career I felt complete. I had made it to Pro Ball and beat the odds against me. I also got to play with a childhood ideal, Jose Canseco.

I would have never made it to the professional level without learning all of the secrets to Velocity. I would have never increased my velocity from 86-94mph without this knowledge and hard work. This is why I created this website and put together the Ace Pitcher Handbook. You are not going to find this type of information in books or websites that are created by athletes who didn’t overcome the impossible to achieve the success that they claim to have had. Those athletes are just giving you or selling you information that helped them to maintain what talent God gave them. Therefore if you are an athlete who is trying to overcome the impossible then you are wastering your time and money learning from those nature athletes. Even if they label themselves as All American or Major League.

If “YOU WANT TO GO PRO” then you must learn from those who made it to the professional levels and came from a similar background as you!

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If you are a tall and skinny freak who throws 90+mph then stop reading and have a great career. If you are like most of us, average in size and believe you have the potential to throw a lot harder without causing injury, then you must begin to learn what the strength and conditioning world has discovered.

The strength and conditioning profession has proven that pitching is an anaerobic exercise. An exercise that does not involve oxidation. The systems involved in creating energy for pitching, during the anaerobic exercise, are phosphagen and glycolysis systems. This is the use of creatine phosphate and sugars to make ATP (energy). What this means is, if a pitcher trains these systems in the off season then the muscles will develop more fast twitch muscle fibers to support the anaerobic exercise. More fast twitch muscle fibers means you have a higher capacity and storage of ATP. You also have the ability to recruit more muscle fibers, to add to the intensity of the workload. More muscle fiber recruitment creates more muscle strength during exercise. This increased muscle fiber recruitment during exercise causes more damage in the muscle during fatigue and in return promotes more testosterone to be released in the muscles to heal the damage tissue.  This will build more muscle mass for future damage control. These side effects of high intensity anaerobic training, without a doubt, will lead to an increase in velocity. This is  why pitchers who get bigger, stronger, faster, throw harder. When I say bigger, I do not exactly mean larger muscles like a body builder. I am talking about muscles that are more dense. A good example would be a light weight Olympic lifter. They look like little kids and can lift like machines.

I have dedicated this website to the secrets of velocity.  They are velocity secrets because conventional wisdom doesn’t want you to know.  Conventional wisdom sees pitching more as an art, instead of a science. If you have the desire to take it to the next level of pitching, you are going to have to overcome the old school techniques of coaching this position. You must learn the science of strength and conditioning for athletes. You must understand that if you need the most out of your body, you must learn what that is and what does it take. The first step in this process is questioning conventional wisdom and learning the science in everything you do. The next step is training fast twitch muscle fiber in the off season and maintaining the gains into the season. It isn’t an easy task but done correctly, it will mean the difference from a college career to a professional career.

I recommend the Ace Pitcher Handbook as an excellent off-season and in-season program that will promote  fast twitch muscle fiber development.

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Dick Mill’s says that science today has proven weight training does not increase your throwing velocity. I have yet to find any scientific information on this theory. I would like to ask Dick Mill’s, “Why, when I was a junior in college and training with the Olympic Lifts, after six months my velocity went from 82 to 90 MPH?” During that summer I played on a travel team, I would complete an intense workout and then rush to pitch a full game immediately after the workout. I may not recommend this to other pitchers but it sure did work for me. I then spent the last five or more years trying to figure out why this worked. This is when I wrote the article “Olympic Lifting Increases Pitching Velocity” and also this is when I coined the term “Triple Extension.”

The reason for my velocity improvements did come from the Olympic lifts. This is because, if these lifts are performed correctly, they will max out your core strength potential and promote fast twitch muscle fiber growth. There is no better way to train your core and fast twitch fiber, than with these lifts. If I go a week without performing these lifts, after my first day back I can feel the weakness first in my core. I even have serious soreness in my core the next few days. I also immediately feel more powerful on the field after the soreness goes away. I feel it when I sprint and throw. Just like when you do a lot of squats and your vertical leap goes up.

The biggest miss conception about these lifts are that they will turn you into Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is a fairy tale. The Olympic lifts build defined athletes. Just look at Matt Bruce here, a current Olympian. He is about 5’7 and 170 pounds. He can Power Clean and Jerk over 400 pounds and he looks like a boy in person.

If you are a pitcher and you are looking for these type of velocity improvements, then you need to drop everything you are doing and learn these lifts. You need to start a program like my “Fusion System.” This workout is the main part of the Ace Pitcher Handbook and was developed by my trainer Chad Engelhardt. It is called the “Fusion System” because it isn’t only about these lifts I have described. It is also about building joint integrity to handle more stress from the improved velocity and the sprint work to really define those fast twitch fibers.

So, if you currently have a program that involves you sitting in an air conditioned health club, on a cushioned seat, performing a chest press, then you better ask yourself, “How the Hell is this making me a better athlete?” It isn’t! Athletes are not made in health clubs. They are made in hot sweaty gyms and on dirty ball fields. Remember this, if you want to play with the “Big Guns,” you better train like one!

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It is a major challenge to take the scientific definition of velocity and put it into motion within the pitching delivery. The only way I made this happen was through constant trial and error.

Before I give you the secrets to top velocity you must first understand how important it is to train the body for this ability. Your training program should be made of lifts and drills that are training fast twitch muscle fibers. I am sure you have heard me say this a million times but there is no better training than the Olympic Lifts. This involves all types of Cleans, along with Squats and some Split Jerks. These lifts force you to move a good amount of weight very quickly, therefore making you a more explosive athlete. Once you have maxed your explosive potential as an athlete you are then ready to find your top velocity as a pitcher. Purchase the AcePitcher Handbook for all these explosive training routines and much more.

In layman’s terms,Velocity as defined by Newton, is force divided by mass. So for you to develop more velocity you either need to increase the force applied to the ball or the application time with the same amount of force. I recommend we do both as pitchers but here I will break them down separately in two questions.

How do we increase force to the ball?

This may seem complicated but in theory it is very simple, so stay with me. To increase force to the ball we must add momentum to our delivery and then stablize that momentum for transfer to ball. Now, this is where we as pitchers go wrong. Most young pitchers when wanting to add force to the ball only add the momentum to the arm. Momentum must be added to the lower half of the body for it to be efficient and effective when delivering the pitch. Let’s use a Javelin thrower to understand this lower half momentum. What a Javelin thrower does is he can run as quick as he possibly can to a point where he must plant his leg and stabilize the momentum to transfer it to the Javelin. Watch the video!

A Pitcher is not allowed to run to develop the momentum so we must do what ever we can to develop the momentum on the mound. This is where you should watch AcePitcher.com’s 5 Components to Pitching. This video will show you how to develop momentum as a pitcher by using the lift leg, triple extension in the back leg and most important, stabilizing that momentum and allowing it to transfer to the ball.

How do we increase application time?

The answer to this questions will give you the final big picture to understanding top velocity. Application time means the amount of time a pitcher holds on to the ball through his full range of motion.

If a pitcher applied 6.5 pounds of pressure to the ball for .20 seconds as the arm is moving towards the target this would have more velocity than a pitcher applying 6.5 pounds of pressure to the ball for .15 seconds.

The question now is how do we hold on to the ball longer while keeping the same force applied. This is called separation. This is the 3rd Component in AcePitcher.com’s 5 Components to Pitching. Separation, which is occurring in the picture here, is separation of the back throwing shoulder to the back hip. If you notice the back hip is almost pointing to the plate and the back shoulder is almost pointing to second base. This is important because it is building the majority of the torque developed from the lower half momentum in the core or stomach. Now when the shoulders commit to the catcher and the chest hits the wall like the picture below, the arm will have full range of motion. Notice Nolan Ryan’s arm 180 degrees behind his head. This is the increase of application time with the same force applied.

By building more torque in the core, instead of the shoulder, this is not only increasing velocity but saving the arm from serious wear and tear. Please watch AcePitcher.com’s 5 Components to Pitching to learn this in detail.

In conclusion, developing top velocity is every pitcher’s right but not every pitcher has the natural understanding of this skill. With this article, AcePitcher.com’s 5 Components to Pitching, and some hard work it is possible for any pitcher to throw 90 plus mph.

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This is where I critique Pitching Coaches that have made their name online. They make their money critiquing you so let’s turn it on them for a change.

I have parents calling me all the time and expressing their frustrations with weeding through all of the pitching propaganda online. They want to know what the best instruction for their son is. I usually say “I hate to tell you this but I can only give you my bias opinion.” So I have decided to do better and put together this article of critiquing these Coaches online. Just remember this is TopVelocity.net so I will only be discussing Velocity Science and Training issues.

Paul Reddick www.paulreddickbaseball.com
on “Weight lifting for pitching”

Please watch his video before reading my points below.

First point

Mr. Reddick isn’t a Doctor, Physical Therapist or a certified training. So for him to educate us on tendons, ligaments and injury he better back it up with some professional medical documentation. I would take this advice with all Coach’s. This is why we have sports doctors, therapists and trainers.

Second Point

He is correct about over training the push muscles to pull muscles but this for any sport would be a bad idea. This is why a good trainer will make sure you are building joint integrity. Which means training both push and pull muscles equally.

Third Point

I am not a Doctor but my experience has shown me that little muscles do not make stronger tendons and ligaments like he is referring to. I guess he doesn’t know who Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Eric Gagne, Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, and Jason Giambi is.

What I learned through experience is that strong muscles make strong tendons and ligaments. The most effective way I have developed muscle strength, preferably fast twitch muscle strength, is from Olympic lifting and plyometric training but I am not the only one saying this. D1 Training facilities make a fortune on this philosophy for all sports. They are backed by top athletes in sports like baseball, football and basketball.

Last Point

Mr. Riddick says that long term lifting for a pitcher can lead to injury and first poor performance. The older Nolan Ryan got the more he incorporated a lifting routine. He credited his longevity to his strength training in the weight room.

I am not saying that any strength training routine will help a pitcher. I strongly believe in Olympic lifting and Plyometric training for pitchers. I personally gained six mph in one year post surgery from this type of training and I wasn’t the only one.

I would say that Mr. Riddick’s advice hear would be good advice for someone who is already throwing in the upper eighties and is over 18 years of age. This type of advice for someone throwing in the low eighties or less and who is 18 years or older, you need to get Bigger, Stronger, Faster, if you are going to make it at the next level! There is no better way for an athlete to make this happen than through Olympic lifting and plyometric training.

Dr. Mike Marshall www.drmikemarshall.com

When I first found Dr. Marshall I watched his videos and about half way through them I thought it was a joke. I actually started laughing. It is obvious he developed these theories after his many years of pitching. This is a red flag. I would never take advice from a Coach who never practiced what he preached. If Dr. Marshall would have tried his techniques he would have found that his theories are useless.

All of his videos are about preventing elbow injury. He is saying through his many years of scientific study, he found that during pitching, these small muscles around the elbow are being over developed and causing restricted range of motion. So his techniques are based on changing the pitching delivery to prevent this over development of these small muscles.

This is absurd! This would be like advising a Nascar driver to drive on only two wheels at a time to prevent wearing his tires out.

Where Dr. Marshall missed the boat was the revolution of baseball through Strength Training. He never mentions this new world of sport specific training because more than likely he doesn’t even know it exists.

What we have learned through strength training is that we can rebuild joint integrity in the weight room. We can prevent over development in the small throwing arm muscle with a good joint integrity program. This way we do not need to degrade our performance as an athlete/pitcher to prevent injury.

It is unfortunate that someone like Dr. Marshall believes in these absurd theories because he has brought a lot of good information to the pitching world.

Alan Jeager www.jaegersports.com

Alan Jeager has no professional pitching experience. His Pitching Instruction involves Long Toss and Yoga. Watching this video I heard nothing about mechanics and actual scientific data. All I heard was him talking about Freedom and looseness in the arm. What does that mean? Pitching is as technical as shooting a high powered rifle. This video sounds like a ballet dance.

His long toss routine is as Old School as it gets. This is the same old stuff they told us pitchers back in the day. You hear nothing about the actually physics of the drill or delivery and all of this fluff about Freedom and Looseness and the calm before the storm.

So why is this long toss routine worthless? Because it is based on the philosophy that the arm throws the pitch and NOT on the philosophy that we throw a pitch with the entire body as a single unit. Therefore it is unnecessary to put this kind of wear and tear on the arm outside of competitive play.

The arm can only handle so much. The body can handle so much more. So spend more time on learning how to get more out of your body than more out of your arm. This is the key to your success as a pitcher.

Alan Jeager has a good band program and Yoga program for mental training but nothing he teaches actually helps the pitcher move up levels of the game as an athlete.

His long toss program should be avoided completely. A lot of bad mechanics will develop from long tossing along with soreness and injury. You should never exceed more than 90 feet when tossing. This is the same for running. You should never run more than the distance of the bases. This means we are training outside of the realm of the game. This will not help us improve as athletes, baseball players and pitchers.

Dick Mills www.pitching.com

Finally, someone who gets it! When I was a young pitcher I used the Dick Mills program and it was fairly old school. He would have me do drills in the mirror like breaking my arms from the glove, getting into the T-position, it was basically choreography. I also did his weighted ball drills for velocity training, which beat my arm to death. The entire time I would follow his son who was the same age as me. He was a top round pick from Arizona and then all of a sudden he had arm problems. I immediately threw the Dick Mills program out the window because at this same time I started having arm problems. I do not credit Dick Mills to my arm problems but all I knew was that it wasn’t helping. Then a few years later I am having arm surgery and Dick Mills is changing his entire program.

After listening to this video I see now that Dick Mills has seen the light but what bothers me is it is all in theory for him. What I mean is he had a long professional career and never pitched with this new scientific information. I find it hard to listen to a Coach or Teacher who is not teaching from firsthand experience. Don’t get me wrong, we need Coaches like Dick Mills to save pitchers from the likes of Alan Jaeger’s long toss program or Dr. Marshall’s pronation nightmare. It is just hard to find a pitching Coach online today who teaches physics driven mechanics with firsthand experience. Yes, I am bragging now because I learned this scientific understanding of pitching and then used it to overcome my almost career ending shoulder surgery. I went from 86 to 94 mph and played minor league ball after doctors told me I would never play again.

If you watch my instructional videos you will see a better understanding of what Dick Mills is teaching. He misses the point on a lot of issues because he has never applied it to his own pitching delivery. This is why I continue to pitch in amateur leagues. I feel that once I stop pitching, I must stop coaching because I will lose touch of this complex understanding of the dynamic pitching delivery.

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