Prep Baseball Report

Pitching 101: Building a Strong Foundation


Dan Cevette
President, New York



 

The column, Pitching 101, was inspired by Pitching and Catching classroom meetings throughout my professional career.  The content is based on my experiences and my journey and these are my opinions. 

I tend to get asked a lot of questions about baseball, mainly pitching. I was a Professional Baseball Pitcher for 11 years for three different MLB Organizations where I was able to gain a great deal of knowledge on pitching from some pretty impressive instructors.  Some of those being; John Farrell, Scott Radinsky, Charles Nagy, and Steve Belcher just to name a few. I have also been lucky enough to have the opportunity to sit down with Giants Gold Glove Catcher Kurt Manwaring (1992) a time or two. Now let's get started...

Pitching 101 – Building a Strong Foundation

Now's the time to start planning your off-season training and throwing programs. It’s critical you don't put the “cart-before-the-horse” when creating these plans with your trainer, instructors, and/or family members.  Remember; houses need foundations in order to stand strong and the same goes for pitchers.

Today's game has evolved and we now see the stronger, quicker, and more athletic players separating from the rest of the pack. This movement is something I welcome to the game and support with full conviction. However, as mentioned before, all houses need a foundation to stand and the bigger the house, the stronger the foundation must be to support the structure. Therefore, your No. 1 goal right now should be strengthening your pitching foundation. Let’s look at what I call the “pitching foundation”

In my opinion, the pitching foundation is broken up into three parts:

1.) Legs/Core/Flexibility

2.) Mechanics/Delivery

3.) The Arm Deceleration System


A complete pitcher will focus on all three of these areas looking to enhance each during their training sessions. Here are some examples of below:


** Legs/Core/Flexibility

Some of my favorite leg workouts consist of:

  1. Squats
  2. Walking Lunges/Reverse Lunges
  3. Split squat jumps
  4. Dead lifts
  5. Plyometric box jumps
  6. Reverse Hamstring Curls
  7. Dual and Single Leg RDL

Some of my favorite Core exercises consist of:

  1. Ab Wheel/barbell Rollout
  2. Barbell Russian Twist
  3. Swiss Ball Crunch
  4. Leg Raises
  5. Med ball Mountain Climbers
  6. Pike to Superman
  7. Low back extensions
  8. Low back swimmers

Check out some of these drills in this video as well...


Some of my favorite flexibility exercises consist of:

  1. Full Body Stretches 15 minutes a day, from your neck to your toes and everywhere in-between. I really like the video below...


 

** Mechanics/Delivery

Things your delivery needs to be successful are:

  1. The delivery needs to have Balance and Strength
  2. The delivery needs to have Rhythm (avoid choppy movements)
  3. The delivery needs to be consistent and repeatable 

I love the the towel drill. It's inexpensive, easy to do virtually anywhere, and you can do it by yourself, check it out....


** The Arm Deceleration Process

  1. Your deceleration process (braking system) uses muscles like your Rotator Cuffs, Deltoid, Traps, Triceps, Bicep and Biccep Brachii to help slow your arm down as safely as possible to avoid injury. If we strengthen our braking system we are able to go faster, longer, and still slow down safely. 

If you aren't doing things like this video shows below, you need to start now...

Start with these drills mentioned above if you want your pitching foundation to be strong this spring. 

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