Extremely proud to let the Twittersphere know that I have signed with the Toronto Blue Jays organization.
It’s been a long journey to say the least, but wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Throwing is throwing
Yes, throwing the javelin won’t translate to the baseball. Oh, and yes, here is javelin thrower from Instagram throwing a baseball 120m (roughly 393 feet). Say what you want, but if you have the capability to throw a ball almost 400 feet, I bet you could
Was once embarrassed by this picture. 2 guys who racked up countless accolades, 200+ innings, and top couple rounders. And I contributed absolutely nothing but surgeries and injuries.
Today, Im proud— it encompasses the long road. Checkout the link in my bio for the full story
I have been around countless upper 90’s throwers, and they all feel completely different things. I’m all for sharing ideas, but when you get 17 year olds who throw 85 to create a massive checklist of cues in their head before they throw, you’re doing way more damage than good.
Really cool to see a lot of different elements in play here during his ‘Velocity Training’.
The ability to weave these things together coherently in a case-by-case basis is what allows athletes to progress faster and faster in terms of developing skills that actually transfer.
Passive Throwing
The arm is not an active element of the throw. Listen to one of the greatest throwers in the world discuss those concept a bit, then see if you can wrap your tiny minds around this concept.
From 88-91 to a 98-101 7th rounder over a period of 2.5 years. Rome wasn’t built in a day; and neither was @
@brock_moore81
Nothing fancy, nothing overly technical, no black magic or illuminati; just good ole fashioned assessing, planning, executing, and re-evaluating.
Hot take: people are obsessed with dry reps and doing “feels” because they are obsessed with feeling like they’re working hard & they’re scared of objective feedback and failure. Maybe instead of making imaginary progress with your pre throw feels, get good at actually throwing.
Lower Half thread part 2: Pitching is not javelin or cricket. There is no run-up, have to be able to generate and transfer energy from a standstill. As we rotate into the front hip (known in javelin as the block), energy is transferred up the chain and into the baseball.
At 6’ 165 lbs, and your avg fb is almost 98, there’s probably a few things we could highlight about Randy Rodriguez.
One thing to highlight is the elastic dynamics of the shoulder girdle. Good luck thinking that your banded cuff work will prep you enough for ~7500° per second.
Serious tweet: life’s not about you. YOU have the ability to impact people every day. I’m probably the furthest person from perfect, but I’m grateful for Jesus Christ and what he’s done in my life. Thank you for the chance to share this, and I hope someone out there was impacted.
“GameFACES gave me a platform not only to share the long journey that I’ve had, but more importantly, to share the reason I have been able to keep pushing—Jesus Christ”
—
@ben_baggett
GameFACES 2018
Driveline
No, not that evil business that
@drivelinebases
built. It is the phase of the pitching delivery where the arm relaxes into ER and unwinds into IR through ball release and was a term coined by the late Dr. Mike Marshall. It goes hand-in-hand with forward trunk rotation
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining the
@Dodgers
as a Pitching Development Assistant for this upcoming season
Can’t wait to get to work!
#GoDodgers
@PitchingNinja
@FlatgroundApp
any thoughts on 23” VB heaters at 96+ and a 🌪 from a little right handed guy? Asking for a friend.
Unreal story incoming.
Yes, let’s prepare the arm to withstand the forces of throwing baseballs repeatedly at 95mph+ with tubing equal to 10lbs resistance for 2x10. Common sense is tough.
Are you the guy always playing catch and feeling out your mechanics at 70%, but they never quite make any difference when you actually throw at full speed?
It might be time to get out of your own way and allow the change to happen by combining what you’re feeling with reality.
How often do you see someone who can pulldown gas, but put them on the mound and they’re down 10mph?
@hoopesiedaisy
was just another one of those momentum heroes. Hoopes’ journey from out of baseball to 100mph on the mound can clue you in a bit more on what this looks like.
Jack had quite the journey going from being recruited by Division 3 schools to a gap year of completely reinventing himself and going to play baseball in the Ivy League, and 3 years later— being signed by the Milwaukee Brewers.
Long time guy being a dude Benny Biceps (
@ben_baggett
) got back on the mound this week and cruised 95-96 (t96.6) with 20”+ VB on the heater ⛽️🔥
Spun a few at the end because why not... 80mph with 18” of HB ain’t bad either 🌪
Live ABs coming soon 👀
@johnb_sp
I think far too many people convolute the “optimal healthy lifestyle” with “elite performance”. Not many pieces of performing at the highest level in the world are healthy. But you don’t get paid millions of dollars to be healthy, you get paid to be better, I’m with this take.
Throwing—Linear or Rotational? Both. Neither.
A little diagram here of 3 different images, the 3rd being how we envision the throw and how energy should be transferred into the ball to maximize velocity. While the body works rotationally, force must ultimately be transferred
Pitchers should never Squat or Deadlift 💡These traditional lifts never allow the spine to move freely as needed in pitching.
In all seriousness-
1. Everything is context dependent
2. For 90% of the population: the +’s of a few heavy sets of barbell bench far outweigh the -‘s
Pitchers should never bench 💡
Traditional bench pressing doesn’t allow the scapula to move freely as needed in pitching.Push-up/dumbbell variations allow for better humeral stability, upward scapula rotation & core activation that translates over to the diamond🤙🏻
@jaegersports
Javelin
Throwing is throwing. Plain & simple. What implement is more forgiving to suboptimal movement patterns—a 5oz baseball, or an 1.76lb spear? Try to take a 2lb implement and throw it with bad form & see what happens when your arm explodes into a million pieces. If it
One of the best ways to defeat an argument on social media is just to setup a straw man, and then burn that thing to the ground. Constraints are all upon us, whether you’d like to acknowledge them or not.
Stop being a loser and thinking your strong on one leg when you’re not. Mastering sagittal plane competency will do more for you in every other plane then all your BS “Sport-Specific Training” where you side step w booty bands.
Kopech is an absolute poster boy for the way the body works in BOTH the sagittal and frontal planes in order to create torque.
Leg kick is aggressive and sets up pelvis underneath him
Combines this with great side bend to delay pelvic + shoulder rotation until the last second
Learn to leave the throwing arm behind you, and allow yourself the ability to transfer force over a greater time period—aka MORE VELO. Too many athletes trying to generate force rather than transfer it. All about waiting until the last second to flip the switch.
Trying to go in and force positions is dumb. Go try and internally cue yourself into this position and see how much success you have. Have to remove the physical barriers first.
Blending mobility changes into contextual patterns with a “Wave throw”
Hip/shoulder separation is more than just the transverse plane
Linear separation through extension of the spine is also 🔑
Can eventually back chain this pattern into full throws once its grasped
An incredible journey so far—so much knowledge soaked up, many mistakes made, and so many lessons learned. I have a passion for helping others experience the same process and journey I’ve been on, so I will be opening up remote 1on1 training through
@CxnPerformance
@ian_walsh11
Ever wondered why catchers and shortstops have the cleanest arm actions? Their sole focus is to throw runners out. Combine this with the insane time constraint they have and this results in big time movement efficiency. Mechanical changes are best made via constraints and goals.
More isn’t better. More is More, and Better is Better.
“Don’t fall into the common trap of turning every type of training skill, strength, speed, and so on—into an endurance event. ‘You are weak! Do more reps…Your skill is poor…Do more reps…You are slow!
The whole point of an exercise is to train a quality(ies), so absolutely zero context or understanding of execution can likely lead to the inability to train said quality.
Here's the 3 mistakes I’m regularly seeing by guys in the name of ’Spine Training.’ ⬇️
The foot has 26 bones, and we’re obsessed with telling everyone to move and train their feet in all different positions. Well, the axial skeleton has 80, so why are we obsessed w training the core isometrically via “anti rotation” and/or think squatting and deadlifting is enough?
My guy Yoshinobu Yamamoto has easily one of my favorite deliveries of any professional pitcher. Really makes one reconsider arbitrary mechanical models when someone who throws like this sits mid to upper 9’s. Form follows function I suppose.
Oh also he’s 5’10”, 176 lbs LOL.
Really awesome to be on the other side of the picture, having a kid with a dream and a relentless passion to achieve it. You won’t meet a better kid.
86-88 in August. 90-94 after 4 months. Branden took full responsibility of his development, and the results speak pretty loudly.
Phenomenal thread.
Training the lower half really isn’t super complicated:
1. Build the movement capacity to move through ER and IR
2. Get strong enough to where you don’t fall over at FFS
3. Use it to setup proper sequencing for the trunk and arm (the real juice) to unleash ⚡️
So, if the lower half’s primary responsibility after foot plant isn’t to transfer energy up the kinetic chain, then what is it? I posit that the lower half’s job is to be rock solid stable so that the trunk can go hog wild and rotate as fast as possible🤷♂️
throw it pretty hard as well if you decided to throw it on a line. Maybe this is confirmation bias, but maybe it could be common sense? Getting good at throwing leads to being good at throwing.
Build a robust throwing pattern.
@ian_walsh11
Why do we find ourselves constantly looking for things to get better at rather than the task itself?
I think sometimes this is really where the value of good coaching comes into place. Let the coaches measure and set everything up, and let athletes athlete.
What can high speed footage of a 98mph fastball tell us? A lot. What do I want to use it to illustrate? The importance of segmental mobility of the spine (and globally) in order to throw the baseball hard. In physics, it's known as the compound pendulum effect
Outside of a lab, outside of numbers, there’s certainly an aesthetic piece of movement that we can all understand and observe.
If you watch Luis Ortiz throw, I think you can aesthetically appreciate the patience, the timing, and the final whip and effort in the throw.
Instead of seeing training athletes as a strictly linear relationship where better training equals better performance, think about it more as cleaning up overgrown brush on a path, creating the potential for athletes to use this new path.
A lot of guys try to make their throw look a specific way during drills, meaning that they're not solely focused on throwing the ball plainly and athletically.
The focus and action of what is going on should always remain the same, throw the ball through a target.
Two things can be true at once. The dichotomy of metrics.
If you’re walking in an extremely high crime neighborhood holding your wallet over your head yelling about how much money you have, and you get robbed, what is the interpretation of the situation? Are you to blame for
This is by no means an excuse to not go get generally strong. Just realize that smolov’ing your way to 100mph ain’t it. I really think this is where the individualizations of athletes comes in. You don’t need a million exercises, but you must have different buckets of athletes.
“It does no good to be strong in the wrong exercise” - Louie Simmons
Lifting heavy shit requires bracing against any unwanted movement
Adaptations that occur are a must for strength sports but can become deleterious for rotational athletes that require a fully mobile spine
Iron sharpening Iron as guys are really starting to buy in and get after it. We’ve already got Tennessee commit
@SloopHunter
popping a 30.6” vertical w 50 additional pounds (guy started w a 30.8” vertical w no weight 2.5 weeks ago)
For those out there straw-manning that I don’t care about ‘feel’, please listen to
@brock_moore81
's words about one of the biggest things he felt helped him break through and build his 101mph fastball (from 90) over 2 years — FEEL.
doesn’t explode, you’ll likely be 80 meters behind the pros.
While there are certainly unique pieces of the javelin throw that are different than the baseball throw, they way the javelin trains an athlete to stay through the driveline phase and optimize the upper half is truly
This is the longest piece I’ve written since moving to Substack. It’s also a story unlike any I’ve ever done. I’m full-on pulling for this guy to make it.
Throwing is a mixture of both principle and style. Chasing the latter can send you down every rabbit hole imaginable. Focusing on movement principles allows you to free from the minutia and prioritize pieces that actually matter.
Ian has become one of my best friends, and I am honored to have been able to dominate with him the past few years. No one deserves this more. This is one of the best hires in baseball, and I look forward to burning the baseball world down with Coach Ian over the next few decades.
Connor Godwin (Horseheads HS) is a very talented freshman RHP at College of Central Florida.
He threw 2.2 yesterday at EFSC with 0 R, 0 BB and 4 K.
FB: 91-94 and T95
BB: 78-80
Big kid with some nice upside.
@ConnorGodwin7
@TreadAthletics
Here’s to a slight devils advocate. Not 2 be the guy that responds 2 a post of “apples are good” & responding w “why do you hate bananas”, however, I do think given the elastic nature of throwing + the importance of tissue stiffness— this is super interesting concept to consider
My old friend
@Berticushill
said it best to me a few years ago. “Yeah, when you throw 95, then you can throw 95”. It’s simple.
Are you using a means to an end, or the means as the end? The quest to improve important qualities MUST be balanced with the understanding that those
How often do we hear the term ‘neutral spine’ and actually have no idea what that actually means?
Understanding this at a segmental level can help us be more targeted in our training approach with hands-on work, exercise selection, and movement fluidity.
Couldn’t be more proud of how
@Jbestbaseball7
has worked this fall. A kid with big league potential, just needed to work on the engine. We’ve watched the squat go up 115lbs & bench up 35lbs. He’s gotten drastically more explosive (vertical up 6”) along w 12+ lbs in bodyweight.
Justin Best has entered the 200 pd chat room, the weight lifting
@CombineBase
has begun to change the body..
@Jbestbaseball7
has been putting in work and will continue to develop and grow.. The staff around him is excited about the future
@Mmetcalf32
@FSUBaseball
🐎
In today’s game, I think people are starting to truly grasp the effort to develop more velocity (the ultimate goal of having a plus fastball).
The FB is dying. Take the same focus and intentionality to develop a plus offspeed. Heck of a process we go through to build the 🌪🌪
Short side sessions on trackman in place of flat ground work post long toss has also been a game changer
Blend feel and real early and often
Sub max session @ 90-92 with newly polished 🌪🌪🌪 for this minor leaguer
@ben_baggett
@CxnPerformance
Here’s a super interesting drill we superset w some maximal intensity work in order to contrast maximal tension, w maximal relaxation, and proper timing. Even snapped a little still pic, to show just how the arm lags behind, the pec stretches, and we can maximize energy transfer.
Clemson commit—JP Cunningham decided enough was enough and it was time to unleash the beast and beat up on Sloop. Popped a 31.6” w 25lb’ers.
And the work is just starting. More to come.
@ian_walsh11
@SheleyJake
@CombineBase
What’s the point of having more stability if you’re sacrificing function? This doesn’t inherently mean you’re doing anything risky at all either; you can ensure joint stability and tissue integrity without overly focusing on stability training. It's all context dependent.
How can you view the pitching delivery in the same way that you see the golf swing?
These 3 major phases can help us simplify and understand what’s going on during the pitching delivery:
Load
Transition
Release
convinced of anything. He is one of the smartest minds in the game of baseball, yet will continue to tell you that he knows absolutely nothing. He’s pushed me more as a player, a coach, and a thinker, more than anyone in my career so far, and I couldn’t be any more thankful.
Menk has put in a lot of consistent work and been through a ton of ups and downs since meeting him at Combine a year ago. Seeing a lot of kids your own age commit is tuff, especially when you know you’re better. Kid stayed consistent w his work, and the results came