Pitching Success: Finding Release Points and Leg Power

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Pitcher Routines
• 3:05 Finding the Release Point
• 5:25 Developing Leg Power and Progression
• 7:23 Time and Pitch Count Balance
• 9:20 Personalized Routines vs. One-Size-Fits-All
• 10:28 Preventing Injuries Beyond Velocity Focus

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today's all about pitchers, baseball and softball and those routines that they can actually adopt that'll give them the best chance of success. Raising athletes the things that causes all dads to go bald and moms to buy minivans. Empowering parents to help their kids succeed. So welcome back to the only show that matters if you're a parent and you are raising athletes because we are in this together, the tide rises for all ships and I'm here to support you and encourage you along for your journey.

Speaker 1: 0:31

So my name is Rob Tarmin and I'm the host here at Raising Athletes. And yes, I've got athletes, I've got triplets. Currently they are sophomores in high school and they are in year 11 of athletics and I talk about them a lot. And through that journey I've gained a lot of experience. I've gone through the good, the bad, the ugly. I've coached, I've been on the sidelines and I offer a unique perspective. I also am an athletic director of a really large athletic association and I own a training facility. So I got my hands in a lot and that means that I can really help you guys out with the insight that I have. The experience that I have and everything that I've experienced is yours.

Speaker 1: 1:10

So I want to help everyone as much as possible, and today we are talking about pitchers, baseball and softball, and what are the routines that they can learn that'll help them to become more successful? And, specifically, what are the routines that pitchers should have prior to pitching in a game and also in their practice, prior to and for warming up during their practices? Personally and there's some differences in opinion here but what I personally teach, and what I strongly encourage parents to discuss with their young athletes, is to develop a very specific warm-up routine. This should be an amount of time that they need and specific things that they do. We want to train our mind and our body to ready itself for high impact, and even though high impact for baseball and softball is different, let's say, than than football, it's still on high impact stress on their arms, on their joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and so if we train our body through specific drills number one, it helps you decrease the chance of injury. We want to decrease risks of injury for kids. It keeps them on the field longer. Also, it helps their body to get to the place where they can perform at a high level in a game versus just maybe some kids I've actually heard they don't warm up at all. They go from bench into the game and that's really dangerous, not just for injury is concerned, but also it doesn't put that child in a position where they're going to maybe have a high success rate now on the mound. So there are things that we can do, that we can teach our kids to help increase that success rate, and that's what we are talking about today. And so I want to talk about some of the things that I teach kids. And it does change as a child gets older and older and they advance through their athletic journey. Of course their body is going to be able to handle certain stresses that when they're older, that their body can't handle when they're younger. So this is an evolving routine that you should take into consideration the child, how long they've been playing and how old they are now. So what we're going to discuss is a basic sort of approach that now you can adopt and adapt to your specific child.

Speaker 1: 3:42

So if it's baseball or softball, there are definitely differences in the pitching motion, but for me I teach that there are similarities across the board across those two sports. And I'll simplify it for you Two things. Number one you want your athlete to find their release point and to find their legs. I'll explain what that means. And there are things in between that help the progression to get their body ready for a 100% high impact, high stress environment of a game. So, finding a release point it's exactly what it sounds like. You want an athlete, regardless of age, to get a feel for the ball releasing from their hands. There is a correct release point and there's an incorrect release point, and I like to start there.

Speaker 1: 4:30

So I start all my athletes. For the first thing that we do is we're going to find our release point in a non-stress, low impact on the shoulder and arm motion and it's literally flicking the wrist and so it's loosening up the wrist right, so we want to get positive blood flow and so that wrist opens up, because for both baseball and softball pitchers, the wrist is a huge part of pitching. So I like to start with getting that release point, finding that child's release in, again, a non-stress sort of motion. And the next part and this is a progression as we progress up, and now we're we're working into our rotations, feeling that that tension in our, in our core. Now I want the pitcher to find their legs because, just like I was saying before that release point. Your wrist is such an important part of pitching. Your legs are critical for pitching, for both baseball and softball.

Speaker 1: 5:33

So part of that routine is now going to introduce helping the athlete find their legs, get a feel for the legs, weight distribution in their legs, getting power in their legs, and that often now comes in a progression where you start closer to the person. In this case let's say it's a warmup catcher, or it could be you, a parent or a coach, so you might start close where you're eight to 10 feet away, where you're doing your wrist motions and you're getting your release and as you progress further, back and back and back, depending on how old your child remember they pitch from different distances. When I get to the point where now I want them to find their legs, I actually now have now worked my progression where I am now further than their pitching distance. Let's give an example. So in baseball we know the maximum distance gets to 60 feet six inches. So if it's a pitcher now whose age has now gotten them to the point where they're pitching 60 feet six inches in a game, when I am now to the point where I have worked my progressions, now I'm going to go further. I'm going to put that child about 10 feet could be 20, 30 feet behind that pitcher's mound because I want them to do walkthroughs and feel their legs generating that power in their legs. Same thing now with softball. Max distance is 43 feet for pitching. What I'll do is I will back that softball pitcher up could be about 8 to 12 feet behind the pitcher's mound and I have them walk and now aggressively eventually remember this is the progression and violently into their motion so that they are getting a feel for their legs.

Speaker 1: 7:13

And what I want to do this is also an important part here of understanding what a warm-up routine should look like is the amount of time and the amount of pitches. It's important that it's both. You don't want to necessarily do just time, because some kids might not throw enough within that time span, and the same thing you don't want to just do pitches, because your body needs time to adjust and for it to react to what you're doing. So I do time and I do pitches and what I like to do, generally speaking, each progression I'll do about a minute and a half and about five to eight pitches and then I work my progression. So I might be starting at about eight feet and then as I progress back and I go eight feet, then I go 15 feet, then I go 25 right and whatever that progression is, depending on the sport and the age of the child. I'm working in about a minute and a half and about five to eight pitches.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Now you might be a child who you're like I need 20 minutes for my warmup. I have other kids that I work with where they need 12 minutes to warm up. I have another kid that I work with. He's older, he knows his body. We've now worked together for a while. That person needs 25 minutes. It's a little bit of a slower progression. We work in, for example, throwing a football and there's other things there, right? So there's no one size fits all.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So this is another thing I wanted to talk about today is as a parent who's raising an athlete. We know there's lots of opinions out there. Maybe your child has already had a few coaches and each coach had a different sort of approach to this particular warmup routine. I want you to understand that no one's gonna know your child better than you and it's important to really make sure that a one size fits all approach is not what is being given to your child, because your young athlete, like I said before, might be that athlete that needs 25 minutes for a warmup or might need the 12 to 15 minutes for a warmup. It's important to develop a routine with you and your private instructors who really intimately understand that particular young athlete and can develop a program. Don't just, let's say, go to your team practices or just have your private one-on-one instructions where you're just talking about mechanics or learning another pitch. I would definitely work with your private instructor to come up with a healthy warm-up routine.

Speaker 1: 9:48

This is neglected, which, in my opinion, is one of the contributing causes for so many young athletes being injured now and, unfortunately, having to go the surgical route and getting Tommy John surgery and all these things. One of the reason is it's all about velocity, it's all about exit velocity, exit, velo, velo, velo, right. But how about we also take time to work with young athletes to develop a healthy warmup and recovery routine so that these kids can stay on the field and have longer careers, instead of just focusing on velo, velo, velo? That's unhealthy. It's increasing risk of injury there.

Speaker 1: 10:32

So what I recommend as parents, because we're raising athletes together is help your child develop a healthy warm-up routine that they understand and that they can do when you're not around. That's also important. That's why I say that they understand, talk to them about it and come up with this great routine so they understand what they need to do to get their body ready to do something that's physically demanding, that's physically stressful. So it's not just about going from the bench to the mound. We wanna make sure our kids, whether they're practicing or it's prep work for a game, have a routine that gets their body and gets their mind ready for doing something that is stressful, and by actually creating that healthy routine, it's giving your child a better chance of success. Guys, I hope you guys found some value in today's episode. If you did, do me a favor. Let's grow this community together and share it with someone that you know who's also raising an athlete. Take care, guys.