Last week the Assistant GM for the New Orleans Hornets called me about implementing a core strength and flexibility program for the team. My reply was not taken well by him because I laughed. After I regained my composure I explained that if you have a well thought out strength and conditioning program, core strength and flexibility components are built in and done on a daily basis. I felt it was a waste of the teams time for me to go in once a week for thirty minutes to train explicitly on core and flexibility work. Needless to say; he was not very happy with my reply.

This conversation did trigger a host of thoughts about past training concepts, present training concepts and future training concepts. I remember the days when strength coaches had a background in either power lifting, olympic lifting or bodybuilding. Then high intensity training became the fad of the day. That was followed by sport specific training. Sport specific training gave way to core and stabilization training, which gave way to functional training. What do all these training methods have in common? A lot of books and videos have been sold. Yes, I am jaded and sarcastic by nature. I just want to know; what ever happened to a basic well thought out training cycle? I think coaches and athletes are so impressed by the latest line of training equipment and the latest training fad that they forget about the basics of performance: power, strength and speed. This is not an indictment of training philosophy, but an article to provoke thought.

I incorporate some faction of every training philosophy in my training cycles. I pride myself on being able to steal from the best and worst programs. If I can find one thing to make my training cycles better than my athletes are getting better. When it comes to training I do not dismiss anyone or any system. I will learn from anybody, anywhere, anytime.

Now if you employ this technique when writing a training cycle things still have to mesh and it has to be logical. I have seen training cycles thrown together that made absolutely know sense. There are facets of training programs that you can use to enhance your training cycles. For example:

Bodybuilding – a ridicules repertoire of exercises
that can be performed.

Power lifting – absolute strength lifts, max effort
lifts and dynamic effort lifts.

Olympic lifting – explosive power and speed lifts.

HIT – lifting for muscle hypertrophy, endurance
and volume.

Core/Stability – building your athletic foundation.

Functional Training – isolateral and balance training.

Rehab -joint stability work.

Sport Specific Training – there are few exercises that truly mimmick sport. This has always been a catch phrase that I have true distain for. If you’re an athlete who is getting stronger, more powerful and faster then your getting better athletically.

You can take bits and pieces of different training philosophies and mold them into a coherent and concise program. Do not pigeon whole your athletes into one training system. Let your guard down and absorb knowledge form non traditional sport training areas. Don’t be swayed by entire training systems that come around every two to three years. Stick to your basic philosophy and enhance it with sound practices of other philosophies.

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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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When I speak of long toss, I mean throwing the ball more than 120 feet. This means throwing the ball farther than from home to second base. To make this easy to understand and for you to base your opinion, I will break long toss down into a list of pros and cons.

The Pros of Long Toss:

It is a max effort exercise which is pushing the body to generate more force to the ball. If performed with total body mechanics, this can train and help develop the total body. Long toss mainly trains the “Load position.”

The long distance toss increases the chance of error in locating the target. This is training accuracy for long distance.

The Cons of Long Toss:

It is a max effort throwing exercise which is putting a lot of stress on the arm. Especially the decelerator muscles. If a pitcher has poor mechanics and throws with more arm than body, then long toss can be very destructive to the pitcher. If you are looking for an overall total body training program I would suggest mixing Olympic lifting and plyometric training with a throwing program that does not over throw the arm.

It is training long distance accuracy which is a different release point than 60 feet pitching accuracy. If performing long toss, it is important to finish throwing  from at least 60-65 feet after throwing long, to re-establish your pitching release point.

The mechanical difference from long toss to pitching on the mound, is almost the same difference as playing home run derby as opposed to hitting off of a live pitcher. There is a mechanical adjustment from hitting slow pitches intended for home runs, to hitting hard pitches intended to strikeout the hitter. This adjustment is proof that throwing long toss to pitching has a placebo effect (A placebo is anything of no real benefit which nevertheless makes people feel better.) For example, hitting the home runs in a home run derby would build confidence, which then would effect how you perform against a live pitcher. Just like throwing the ball 350 feet would give you more confidence when you start throwing the ball at 60 feet. It is now a shorter distance and it requires less effort, so you feel a lot more powerful. This is because throwing the ball 350 feet gives a visual measurement of your strength. To help you understand this point I ask this question. Which way do you think it is easier to tell who is throwing harder? The difference between a pitcher throwing 85 mph to a pitcher throwing 90 mph, or the difference between a pitcher throwing 310 feet to a pitcher throwing 350 feet.

There is a difference in mechanics for a pitcher throwing at max effort from 70 feet away to 350 feet away. The difference is in the release point. A pitcher should always throw with the same release point because it is crucial for velocity and accuracy. Continuously changing release points from throwing long toss to pitching on a mound will effect a pitchers consistency. Therefore, the only reason to perform long toss is for the placebo effect. It is just like taking an over the counter supplement that says it will increase your muscle mass. It gets you all excited and pumped up, but this doesn’t mean it is actually working. If this feeling is all that matters to you, then keep playing long toss. Otherwise, if you feel the placebo effect is a waste of time and emotion, then I would suggest you train your pitching delivery the same ever day. Constantly making mechanical adjustments to increase your velocity on the mound, without putting a lot of throws on your arm. You will see more velocity gains from a total body training program than from a long toss program any day.

Check out the Ace Pitcher Handbook!

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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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In my article Olympic Lifting Increases Pitching Velocity, I use Newton’s second law to prove why Olympic Lifting will increase your velocity. If you have not read this article please do. I will now illustrate how aerodynamics can help us as pitchers to understand how to develop Top Velocity.

Think of velocity as a jet like the picture here. The red line illustrates the aerodynamics of the machine. If you notice the jet has the same amount of weight on the left side of the line as the right. Also see the line as the quickest distance between two points. If the jet stays on that straight line it will get to its final destination faster than if it strayed off the line on its way to the end.

The definition of Aerodynamics is the study of the forces of air acting on objects in motion relative to air. This would mean that If there is a drag on the left side of the jet then not only will the jet slow down but it will be forced to stray off the straight line. This will decrease velocity to the jet in two ways. The first way is by decreasing the force applied by the engines with the drag effect and the second way is by forcing the jet to travel outside of the straight line in a more curved direction.

“I am sure you are wondering how this applies to pitching but this is the quatum leap you must make here.”

I will use these pictures of Felix Hernandez to help you with this leap. Felix has one of the hardest fastballs in the game and you will now see one reason why.

I have added the red line to show you the same information as with the fighter jet. If you notice that the weight distribution on both sides of the red line in all three pictures is almost evenly distributed like the aerodynamics of the jet. This is what keeps Felix’s body moving forward on his “Point of Balance.” If his weight distribution was more on the right side than the other he would loss considerable velocity. This is because his arm would create drag on his body and he would need to over compensate by pulling his arm across his body to keep his body moving forward. This would force him like the jet to stray off the straight line path and the drag would decrease the force that he created in his lower half from driving off the mound.

This doesn’t mean you must throw over the top. What it means is you must keep your weight evenly distributed over your “Point of Balance.” So, if you throw sidearm you need to distribute your weight more over the outside part of your landing foot using your hips to shift the weight and not your shoulders.

The key here is what you see Felix and all the hard throwers doing. This is using their hips as their “center of gravity” and holding all of their weight balanced over their landing leg. This is the reason why pitcher’s must have very strong leg strength.

The best way to find your “Point of Balance” is with a photograph. Draw a line from your belt buckel to your landing leg toes. With this line you should see your weight evenly distributed on both sides of the line.

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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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Newton’s Second Law:
States that the acceleration (velocity) of an object in motion is dependent upon two variables – the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. As the force of propulsion acting upon the object increases, the acceleration of the object increases. As the mass of the object increases, the acceleration of the object decreases.

Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion

a = f/m (f = force, m = mass, a = acceleration)

Let’s put this into baseball terms. Newton’s second law of motion would state that to throw a baseball 90 mph would require 6.5 pounds of pressure applied to a baseball, with a mass of 5 ounces, for two tenths of one second (.20).

6.5 pp applied to a 5 ounce baseball for .20 seconds = 90 mph fastball

Therefore to increase an 80 mph fastball to 90 mph you must either increase the force applied or the application time. The application time is how long you hold on to the ball once the force is applied. Subtracting 25% of application time forces a pitcher to increase the applied force by 33%. Increasing the application time by 10%, increased to .22 seconds, would add 10 mph to an 80 mph fastball.

80 mph fastball + 10% more application time = 90 mph fastball

* If you desire to see the formula in more detail that explains Newton’s Second Law defining the velocity of a baseball in motion then refer to Dr. Mike Marshalls article at: www.drmikemarshall.com/ChapterTwenty-Nine.html To find info scroll down to “1. The Release Velocity Formula for Baseball Pitchers.”

Catapult Theory:

The Catapult is made up of three components: the pivot, the coil and the arm. Let’s add a ball to the end of the arm to represent a baseball. To measure the velocity of the baseball, after the arm is released and the ball is in motion, we use Newton’s second law as described above. The importance of the Catapult is its relation to a pitcher at his full range of motion before launch of ball (See picture of Nolan Ryan below). If the Catapult pivot is not stable and is moving forward during release of the arm, then this will decrease the force applied to the ball at launch. In return, poor velocity. Now, if we stabilize the pivot, meaning no movement, and continue to apply the same force to the ball. When the arm is released and the ball is launched, it will reach its potential velocity. To keep force applied to the ball consistent the coil must maintain pressure on the arm during the entire delivery process.

How does Olympic lifting come into this equation?

First reason, it is the only type of lifting in the weight room that trains triple extension.

What is triple extension? This isn’t something new to the sports world. Olympic lifters have been using the term “Triple extension” for a long time. Triple extension occurs when the ankle joint extends, the knee joint extends along with the extension of the hip flexor. Visualize a long jumper in mid air like above (Notice left leg in triple extension). Also notice, in the picture to the right of Nolan Ryan, his right leg has triple extension. You can see his ankle, knee, and hip flexors in full extension. There is no weight lifting that trains the body pushing off of the ground as a single unit better than the Olympic Lifts. Triple extension plays in every sport that involves pushing off of ground.

Second reason, notice the lifter doing a split jerk at the top of the article. This is a very similar movement to pitching. More similar than any other weight training exercise. Studies have shown that athletes get better when training within their sport. This is called sport specific training.

This lifter is using triple extension to drive the weight up. Just like the pitcher driving the ball to the plate. The only difference here is the consequence of error. If the lifter losses momentum in the hips, he will drop the weight. If the pitcher losses momentum in the hips, he will throw a home run to some lucky batter.

If you want to learn about the Olympic Lifts and what they are, follow this link and watch the instructional video.

Coach Gayle Hatch Instructional Videos.

Now, how does triple extension increase velocity?

In all ways described in the Catapult theory above and Newton’s Second law, it adds both application time and force applied to ball.

First let’s explain how it increases application time, which is the most efficient way to increase velocity. Maximum application time comes from full range of motion. Example, Nolan Ryan has 180 degrees range of motion in picture above. This is the maximum possible. This means the Catapult is set to its potential, arm all the way back. For this to occur with a pitcher the hips must be pushed under the shoulders. The only way to push the hips under the shoulders is extending the back leg ankle, knee and hip flexor, also called Triple Extension, at the perfect time. With hips all the way under the shoulders, the pitcher now has reached his full range of motion, therefore increasing the application time to build or maintain force to the ball.

If the hips are lagging, the chest is leaning forward and the arm is leading the body, then minimal application time has occurred. Less range of motion therefore less potential to create more velocity.

Triple extension adds force to the ball because it aids in the momentum originally generated from the lift leg along with gravity. This only aids the momentum, if triple extension occurs, just before front foot strike. If it happens to early and the hips have not moved down the mound, then the hips open too soon. This kills the purpose of good momentum and it also kills full range of motion.

With chest out and hips under shoulders, chest and chin must remain up until launch of ball to keep pivot stable through entire delivery.

More benefits of Olympic lifting!

Not only do these lifts train Triple Extension better than any other style of lifting but it specifically trains fast twitch muscle fiber. This is what makes an athlete explosive. For pitchers and baseball players, getting stronger in the weight room has been forbidden, until the steroid area came into fruition. Now everyone is lifting. This isn’t a trend. This is because it works!

The last benefit of Olympic lifting for the pitching delivery occurs during stabilization of the front leg. Like described in the Catapult Theory, stabilization must occur to prevent decreasing force applied to ball. Therefore if the pitchers landing leg moves forward or gives away, then force is decreased to the ball. In return poor velocity. Notice Nolan Ryan in the picture here. His front leg almost triple extends. This means he is preventing instability in his front leg by holding and even extending it back into his hips. This is why he reached his top velocity.

So how do I get started?

In the weight room but first find a professionally certified Olympic Lifting Coach. These lifts take a lot of training to perform correctly, so to prevent injury. I do not recommend performing these lifts with out a proper coach supporting you. Please check with your physician before performing these lifts and remember weight is not important. Your form in the weight room and on the field is all that matters. Always sacrifice weight for good mechanics.

If you have any questions about this information please post your questions on the discussion board.

View footage of Nolan Ryans delivery in slow motion.

if you would like to take a risk and try the lifts on your own then you can stream our instructional videos here.

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• Pitching Coach Critique
• How to Develop Top Velocity
• 10 Legitimate tips to Pitching Velocity