The bottom line is this: Pitching is like picking up chicks. The first move is critical. You have to get the first move right, or you probably don’t have much of a chance.
To change a movement, you have to change the mover. To stabilize the back leg (thereby increasing impulse) the athlete must have enough mobility to get into a position that optimizes the length-tension relationships in all of the muscles surrounding the hip.
Nearly every other day, we get a call from a player or a parent or coach of a player with arm pain that has bee diagnosed as tendonitis. The player feels a little pain in their shoulder or elbow after throwing. It’s nothing major -just a pinch or a dull ache. They ice it, take some Motrin, Advil, or Tylenol, grease it up with Icy Hot and try to “throw through it.” The pain persists and eventually gets worse. They take a few days off, but when they start throwing, it hurts again.
The UCL, Labrum, and rotator cuff aren’t the most highly vascularized tissues, they do receive some blood flow, and therefore under the right conditions, they are capable of remodeling themselves to resist the stresses under which they are placed.
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.
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.
