The first thing Justin Verlander said to me is “I’ve got a problem. In my start today, I was sitting at 88-‐91. That’s not going to get it done. I’m a stuff guy. I’ve always had great stuff. I’m not the type that will be ok learning to pitch in the low 90s. I need to get my velocity back."
24 mph in just over three years? For some, that may seem unrealistic, but gains like that are not uncommon here at The Florida Baseball ARMory. They happen so frequently that we’re no longer surprised. We’re always thrilled, but never surprised. And with the right individualized training plan, they can happen for anyone, including you.
The man who has recorded more hits than anyone in the history of the game is telling us that instead of getting in a player’s head and trying to change a movement from the top down, a more effective way to elicit an adaptation and subsequently influence the movement is to create a training experience that provides a player with sensory information (visual, vestibular, auditory, and/or kinesthetic) that encourages his body to choose a more effective movement pattern.
When an athlete achieves the mobility necessary to maximize his length-tension advantages and then finds the synchronous co-contractions to fully optimize the contractile and elastic properties of his muscles, he accomplishes his goal and his body naturally wants to do that again. His natural instincts take over and he is compelled to move in the same manner again and again. When it clicks, it stays.
It turns out that HOW you learn or refine a skill like hitting, throwing, or pitching is more important than WHAT you actually learn. We have emerged as an industry leader in applying this leading-edge motor learning science to baseball training.
In 2019, Jake Odorizzi went from being a promising middle of the rotation arm to one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. Jake trained with us for more than 3 months and according to an interview he did on MLB Network, the he credits the work he did at The ARMory for his success.
Elimination or at least suppression of eccentric biceps activity is essential for protecting the labrum and the UCL. For this reason, safely and efficiently dissipating the energy of throwing through a rotational deceleration pattern is one of the seven attractors in pitching.
This generation baseball players big advantage is the explosion in technology we’ve seen lately, which allows us to know what a player should work on. How to get gains in the quickest manner possible is where our motor skill acquisition science approach comes into play.
A professional baseball player who was cut from his high school team? We see that all the time. Here is a story on one of players who made the transformation from left out to a pro closer.
History is replete with examples of uncommon men who have found the courage to scorn their critics and their own demons of self-doubt to produce uncommon achievements. Orval and Wilbur Wright, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, and too many more to name have all faced their critics and doubters. I’m certain that at some point each of these iconic heroes was met with the same kind of pivotal moment when self-doubt threatened to dash their dreams and disrupt the trajectory of their lives, when they said ....“I can do it.”.
