The major misconception of pitching, that continues to ruin arms, is the belief that velocity comes mainly from the arm. Stop thinking with your arm! This will cause so many problems mechanically and physically your career will eventually come to a halt. You need to beat it into your head everyday that your legs and core throw the ball and the arm follows and guides the pitch. When starting your delivery on the mound your first step should NOT be lift leg so I can break my hands and get my arm moving fast.  This is pitching with all your arm. This is only recruiting your arm to handle the workload of the pitch. You must learn to recruit from the major muscle groups in the legs and core, to handle the workload of the pitch. In return this will generate so much more velocity and save your arm from absorbing all of the stress.

Pitching from the bottom or ground up is visualizing your lift leg as a log you are about to role down the hill or mound. Pick it up, feel its weight, hold back your upper body and throw the log down the hill leading with your butt to the target. It is extremely important that you load your weight back while the front leg moves to the target. Notice the picture above of Gagne in this “Load” position. Notice his weight is back, his back leg is sitting and his lift leg is moving to the target. This is the essence of bottom up pitching. Now notice the young man in the picture to the right of Gagne. He is almost at the same moment in the delivery but he is in a different position. His weight is forward, his arm is up and his stride is short. The difference between the two pictures is, once Gagne’s foot lands he can then transfer all the weight that he is loading in the back leg into the pitch. The young man has no weight loaded and is forced to only whip his arm to generate any velocity. The young man is pitching from the top down and he will be one of Dr. Andrews next patience if he does not make the adjustment.

Another sign of pitching from the top down is driving your glove hand to the target. This will also throw your weight forward preventing the “Load.” If you are a pitcher who pitches from the top down then thank God you read this article. You know need to understand what you are doing to cause this and learn to pitch from the bottom up. If you can make this adjustment, you will not only save your career as a pitcher, but you will increase your velocity by about 10-15 mph.  The problem is this adjustment isn’t easy!  It will not happen over night or within the year. It is a long process of changing muscle memory that you developed when you were very young. This means you will need a coach or video analysis to make this adjustment. You will also need to understand how to finish your delivery from the “Load” position and most important you must work on this adjustment everyday.

Please do not let this article discourage you. You have been given a gift with this knowledge. Most pitchers in high school and even college do not understand this consciously or subconsciously. Therefore this will put you ahead of the game.

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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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To start the analogy we have a car, a hill and a wall. The car is sitting on top of the hill and the wall is built at the bottom. The wall is high enough to just peak over the hood of the car. There is a passenger in the car not wearing a seat belt. To begin, the car starts down the hill at full throttle. The farther it travels, the more speed it gains. It reaches the end of the hill and slams into the wall at full speed. The wall does not break or move. At this point I would like you to really visualize this event. I am sure you have good enough knowledge about classic physics to know what is going to happen to the passenger. Yes, the passenger is propelled through the windshield and flies through the air and lands about 40 feet in front of the car. So, why did this happen? Yes I could throw a bunch of scientific jargon at you but it shouldn’t be this complicated. The passenger flies out of the vehicle after hitting the wall at full speed because it was the only part of the car that wasn’t secured to it. Energy must go somewhere, so when the wall stopped the car, all the momentum transferred to the passenger because it still had the potential to move.

How does this relate to pitching? Good question! The best way for you to understand this comparison is if I describe the correlation. Let’s start with the car. The frame of the car in the analogy of the car crash is the pitchers core. The hill is of course the pitching mound and the wall is when the pitchers front leg lands and stabilizes in his delivery. Now, the front leg is important in this analogy. It is playing the role of the wall. That is no easy role to fill because the wall, in this case, was able to stop the car dead in its tracks. So as the pitchers core travels down the hill, like the car, gains momentum, then the front leg lands and plays the role of the bionic wall. What happens now? Let’s continue to keep this simple. To understand what happens now we must label the last correlation of the car crash analogy. That being the passenger. What is playing the role of the passenger during the pitching delivery? I will tell you! The ball is the passenger. The ball is along for the ride like the passenger and it also is the only part of the ride that isn’t secured to the vehicle or in this case, the pitcher. So, if the front leg does its job of playing the wall, then the ball will be forced to receive all of the momentum generated; in return reaching its top velocity potential.

You may still be a little confused at this point, so to help you pull it all together I will go into more detail about the wall. Let’s bring back up the event of the car crash again. Let’s say the car speeds down the hill and hits the wall but the wall does not hold. It gives away but manages to slow the car some. What happens now to the passenger? The passenger does not fly through the windshield. This occurs because the wall didn’t completely stop the car. It was allowed to continue moving until all the enegry created from the inertia of the car dissipated. Therefore the pasenger was saved because he wasn’t forced to receive all of the momentum from the car. This will be the same case with the ball, if the wall or leg does not stablize completely. This will mean the pitchers front leg will continue to bend instead of hold and the body will not transfer all of the momentum to the ball. For the pitcher to reach his top velocity potential he must stabilize from the front leg all the way up to the chin. The arm and ball should be the only part of the body moving after the chest has extended as far out as it is capable of going. Watch the video above of Edison Volquez performing this almost perfectly. Also view the pic here of Chien-Ming Wang in complete stablization of his front side.

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If you would like TopVelocity.net to analyze your pitching video, please follow the instructions below.

How to shoot your video?

Shoot two angles for your video. An angle from behind the pitcher and an angle from the throwing arm side of the pitcher. Make sure that the camera is not higher than the pitchers shoulders. Also make sure the camera is stationary.

Each angel should have two or three pitches of video.

How do you package and send your video?

Compress your video into a digital format. For example, DVD, Divx, AVI, MOV, WMV, MPG or any other common format. Burn the format to a CD or DVD. Visit the “Contact Us” page and request our mailing address to send the video too.

Video Analysis

At TopVelocity.net, once we receive your video, we will analyze your mechanics with advanced video software. This software will allow us to do a comparison of your delivery to a Professional Pitcher with a similar frame as yours. We will then use the software to generate overlays and slow motion clips to give you an extremely detailed analysis. We promise you will be impressed.

Once the video has been analyzed, we will compress the recording and send you a link to the analysis download. You can then watch your analysis.

Our video analysis is very popular with the pitchers we have worked with. It is a great tool because they can always go back and look at the video. We do recommend that you have a video analysis done at least every 2 months.

If you are still interested and would like to send your video in today, the price is only $49.99 for an analysis. Contact Us

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Definition of throwing:

Definition of pulling: the act of pulling; applying force to move something toward or with you; “the pull up the hill had him breathing harder”

What definition best describes what a Major League Pitcher does on the mound?

Yes, it is correct to state that the definition of throwing is the more conventional answer but as someone who played professional baseball, when I was pitching my hardest, it felt more like a pull. The definition of pulling uses the word force and the illustration of breathing harder. This is my experience of power pitching. These two definitions best describe the difference between average velocity and top velocity. Look at one of my favorite pitchers Felix Hernandez and you will see it looks more like he is pulling than throwing as the definition states as throwing with the arm and wrist.

The key point of the “Pull Perspective” is the amount of weight you are pulling. The more the better. If you are pulling a lot of weight you will not be doing this with just the arm. Your body will need to recruit the core and legs to handle the bulk of the work load. Therefore your hips will need to drive towards the plate first, while holding the throwing arm back with the shoulder, until your core and legs have given you all they got. Then the back shoulder will fire through and release the ball. This picture of Greg Maddux illustrates holding the shoulder back while the hips drive to the target. This component is called “Separation.”

The best way to implement this “Pull Perspective” into your own delivery is by visualizing that you are not holding onto the ball but instead a towel or resistance tubing. You could actually do this. I have a few drills in the AcePitcher Handbook that perform this action. The towel or tubing is connected to a sled or a person standing towards second base. You can also visualize a harness around your hips with tubing secured towards second base. Now, perform your delivery following each of the AcePitcher Components.

In the picture of Felix Hernandez above and Tim Lincecum below this is where you want to finish the drill. This position is the point of the drill. By visualizing the pull you should find this position more naturally than if you where just throwing the ball like usual. If you notice his arm is way behind his head, back arched and hips under his belly with landing leg supporting all the weight. The upper body is flexed and ready to release the energy or power into the ball.

The reason for implementing the “Pull Perspective” is to prevent the arm from leading the body. If you find that your arm is drifting in front of your chest before your shoulders have committed to the plate then you are not recruiting your core and legs to handle the work load and generate Top Velocity. This is common in young pitchers. This is what most coaches call throwing with all your arm.

The “Pull Perspective” is actually what it states, it is only a perspective. A way of looking at the act of pitching differently. It is important that you look at pitching differently because conventional thinking continues to fail us as pitchers. This is why a microscopic amount of pitchers make it to Major League Baseball. So this perspective is my little gift to you.

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My advice to you is take two pitches as far as you can. You will see the best pitchers in the game taking two pitches through high school, college and even low A minor league ball. I know this may be upsetting to you but don’t take it negatively. When you see the improvements you will make as a pitcher when you focus on your fastball and one offspeed pitch you will be pumped.

Where should you go from here?

Start with reading my articles on velocity because these articles are teaching you the perfect delivery for your fastball. There is also a mental leap involved here. The reason a lot of young guys throw many pitches is because they do not have the confidence in their fastball. You must gain this confidence. I didn’t say find this confidence, I said you must gain it. So, set your sights on an explosive fastball and you will earn it. Your mental training starts with visualizing this goal. I want you to see yourself dominating with your fastball. See yourself throwing with perfect mechanics that you read about on this site or watched in the AcePitcher instructional videos. Using these visualizations along with reading and watching the material here you will with no doubt gain a top level fastball. We are here to support you.

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