Virtually all young pitchers today don’t have much of an off season thanks to the popularity of travel teams and the mix of prep, summer and fall leagues. This has created an upturn in elbow and shoulder injuries at a early age for pitchers who sadly are not allowing themselves an off season to recover and rebuild. I found myself a victim of this cycle throughout my personal career. I received rotator cuff surgery at eighteen to fix a torn supraspinatus immediately after my first college start. Three of the common issues contributing to my tear, the American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI), lead by the famous Dr. James Andrews, has defined as the explanation for the increase in elbow and shoulder injuries in youth pitchers in their Position Statement released this season. Continue reading
Ideal Pitching In-Season Training Program
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If you have not seen the latest pitching velocity analysis of Aroldis Chapman on ESPN’s Sports Science, then you must watch this video below. It talks about why Chapman is able to throw so hard, as compared to the rest of the games hardest throwing pitchers. One of the main components of his delivery that Tom House points out, is his stride. Tom House started the National Pitching Association and is the pitching coach at the University of Southern California. What Tom House says about Chapman’s stride is that it is 120% of his height which comes to 7.5 feet and the average MLB pitcher has a stride length of 87% of his height. Not only does he have an amazing stride length but his stride speed is .8 of a second, 15 % faster than the average MLB pitcher. 
I get this question a lot because it is a good question. It is amazing how many pitchers in today’s game are having surgery. It is a sign that the education of proper pitching mechanics, in the lower levels of the game, are very poor. Most young pitching injuries would not occur if these young pitchers only knew a few important pitching components that would prevent injury. The other problem is overuse but this issue alone could fill several articles.
The quickest and easiest way to add velocity to your fastball is through professional pitching video analysis. The problem is two things: One, you have to make sure the coach doing the analysis does not use conventional wisdom when evaluating your pitching delivery and two, you must make sure it is affordable. There are hundreds of coaches who still coach this game with conventional wisdom. If you do not know what I mean by this then I will explain later. You also must be able to afford the analysis because you will need more than one and if one breaks your bank then you will go nowhere fast. 
The two word answer to this question is Triple Extension. This word comes from the Olympic Lifting World which was the beginning of Strength and Conditioning. The definition of Triple Extension is the extension of three joints. The three joints are ankle, knee and hip flexor. This is the essence of lower body power. There are no other three joints in the body that can recruit as much power as these three joints. This may be a simple answer to this question but it is not simple to implement more triple extension or 3X into your pitching delivery.
Pitching elbow injuries are all to common today. This has a lot to do with the competition increasing while the education of physics driven pitching mechanics is not being taught. The reason is conventional wisdom is not changing in baseball today. Golf has seen more advancements in mechanics analysis and health science than baseball. This has a lot to do with the politics of the game. I will not discuss the politics of baseball on this site because there is too much to discuss when it comes to pitching mechanics.