Transcript

Velo is King · The Mound Visit

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If you like Velocity, this is the episode for you. Josh and I
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are going to talk about our own experiences with training Velocity. I'll talk about
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it from a player and a coach's perspective on some of the things that have
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helped me along the way. We'll also talk about some nutrition with gaining weight
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as well as weightlifting, as those can be key elements to gain velocity.
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But before we jump into the episode, we need a huge favor of you.
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We are trying to grow this podcast to be as big and as popular
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as possible and to help as many coaches, players and parents as we can.
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In order to do that, we need you to help us get the
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Apple and Spotify. That will allow us to reach more people and accomplish our
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goal of helping players, coaches, and parents. Without further ado, let's
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jump into the episode, all right, Josh, I want to take you
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on a little journey today with a little story to paint a clear picture of
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what we want to talk about today. So I'm going to describe a Division
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one picture that by all accounts absolutely dominated. He had a point five or
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a point six ERA through his first fifty innings, finished the year with a
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one point six through one hundred innings. Was a left handed pitcher, did
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did all the little things, didn't walk guys. Was phenomenal. Now would
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you believe me if I told you this very picture did not get drafted?
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I wouldn't. What would be a reason you think that he didn't get drafted?
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Either velocity or projectability? Yep, those are two good guesses, right,
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But even at the Division one level, right, you would think a
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left handed pitcher Division one baseball, statistically he's good. You would think that
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guy would get an opportunity. But the fact is that stats how well you
2:02
pitch only plays a very small percentage of what goes into getting drafted. So
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that picture was me back in twenty fourteen, So we're talking ten years ago,
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where even then velocity was still super super important. Now, twenty fourteen
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wasn't that long ago, But when you think about it being ten years ago
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and where we're at now with velocity training, we've come a long ways with
2:27
the way we develop it, the way we train it, and how important
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it is, and even back then in twenty fourteen, a left handed pitcher
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throwing eighty three to eighty five, I would on a good day be eighty
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six, maybe eighty seven, but really lived in the low to mid eighties.
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And that was the number one reason I did not get drafted. So
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today I want to make sure that there isn't another picture out there that doesn't
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understand the business of it and how it works when it comes to getting drafted,
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because you can put up all the numbers you want, and I want
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you to pitch well. I want every single picture to dominate from a statistical
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standpoint, but if you want to play professional baseball, the reality is you
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have to get to a certain baseline. From a velocity standpoint, your stuff
3:09
has to get to a certain level. And at the end of the day,
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that's what matters the most because from a projectability standpoint, like you just
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said, they can project more accurately what that guy will do at the next
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level. So I didn't get drafted. I did play independent ball for four
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years, and truth be told, once I got even to that level,
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it was pretty evident that velocity was more important. I started to get hit
3:31
around more. I was never a strikeout guy. But even at that point
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I started missing less bats, more contact, more harder contact. The margin
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for air was so small that if I made a mistake over the middle,
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I was going to pay for it. Now, even if you throw a
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bit harder, you might pay for it. But as I showed on Wednesday,
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so today we're recording a week before this is actually released. But today
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I posted something about velocity. I don't know if you saw it, Josh,
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but I'll share it on the screen. This is Division one baseball this
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year. This heat map here, so for those of you that are not
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watching on YouTube, I am showing a heat map of all ninety five plus
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miles an hour pitches right down the middle. In twenty twenty four Individual one
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baseball, the weighted on base average or wOBA was two fifty nine. So
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for those of you that aren't familiar with wOBA weight on base average, it's
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on the same scale as on base percentage. So if you know what a
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good on base percentage is, you know what a good WHOBA is. So
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two fifty nine that would be a horrendous on base percentage for a hitter,
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which means that is very good for the hitter or sorry, very good for
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the pitcher, ninety five plus miles an hour literally right down the middle.
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The wOBA individual one baseball is two fifty nine. Now this other graph you're
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on the right, not graph with this other heat map, is showing all
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fastballs this year that are around the perimeter of the strike zone, so every
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location butt right down the middle, but still inside the strike zone. I
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have it broken down by velocity, so pitches that are eighty seven to ninety
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miles an hour around the perimeter of the strike zone have a wOBA of three
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to twenty seven, so a lot higher than two fifty nine. Ninety one
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to ninety four gets better down to two ninety one, but it's still not
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better than literally ninety five plus right down the middle. And now when we
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get to ninety five plus, and now you're going to be the edge of
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ninety five plus. Now the WHOBA is two twenty four. So it is
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a consistent progression and drop off the lower your v low and the performance from
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a weighted on base average standpoint. Now I could even break this down for
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those of you that like more traditional stats, if you like batting average,
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I don't have them right in front of me. But I did look at
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this when I was researching this. It's the exact same progression with batting average.
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So the point of this is velocity matters. Is it all that matters?
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No, of course not. But for a lot of players, this
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is the missing link for them. This is what is holding them back from
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getting opportunities. So today we want to help you with that. We want
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to help you with ideas of how you can train it, what is a
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smart way to do. But we'll talk about our own experiences of how we
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have trained it and had success stories, maybe some things to watch out for
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and hopefully leave you in a better place than where you started. So,
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Josh, you've shared on this podcast a couple times now that you went from
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throwing seventy eight miles an hour at sixteen to ninety five at eighteen. That
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is an incredible progression. I think probably ninety nine point nine percent of guys
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that are sixteen throwing seventy eight are never going to throw ninety five. That
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doesn't mean that more of them can't, though, So I want you to
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share with us some of the things that you did, Like I know you've
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shared you went to drive line, you were using weighted balls, But like,
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what are some of the things that you think made the biggest difference in
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you gaining velocity? Yeah, for sure, we can definitely dive into that.
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But I'm actually really curious as to how did you dominate the D one
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level throwing low eighties. I actually didn't know that about you. Was it
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just mixing pitches or Yeah? I didn't walk anybody. I mean that was
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that was the real key. So I think I I had like a four
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percent walk rate, so big lea average is eight percent or eight and a
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half percent. So I didn't walk anybody. And I was just very good
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at changing speeds, locating like when I didn't just throw strikes like I actually
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for the most part through the ball where I wanted to throw it. My
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big inspiration was Jamie Morier. So for those of you that know who Jamie
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Moyer is, he was a soft throw and left handed pitcher played the major
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leagues for twenty plus years, and he was the definition of a crafty lefty.
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And I studied everything about him. I read his books, I studied
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everything about him. And one of the things that he talked about was use
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your slowness to your advantage. So what he meant by that was when hitters
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see soft throwers, especially soft lefties, they get really antsy, especially at
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the college level, because they see it like, all this guy's throwing slow,
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I'm gonna crush this guy, so they get extra excited they try to
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do more at the plate. So I use that to my advantage by changing
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speeds, throwing a lot of change ups early and then showing a fastball in
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late so I could use that eighty three and make it play. It was
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at least eighty eight plus, So it really came down to the sequencing the
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mental game. I was huge on the mental game, Like even though I
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threw eighty three, I acted like I threw ninety five. And I think
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that projected itself onto my demeanor, the way I attacked hitters, my confidence,
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and my aggressiveness with executing pitches. But the year before, so Truthor
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told my junior year, I had a horrible year. I had a six
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point two. Yeah. I ran my junior year in eighty three innings.
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So I was a weekend starter. Didn't pitch well, just got it.
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It was really like every other adding and went out would be good. The
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next outing, I'd get killed. Good outing get killed, and I was
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trying to be someone I wasn't At the time. I was pitching as if
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I did throw ninety five. What I mean by that was I threw too
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many fastballs, like I should have been throwing more off speed pitches. I
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should have been pitching to my strengths more, and that offseason tried to gain
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more velocity, didn't really know what I was doing, didn't have a lot
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of success, and honestly, I don't know why, but I actually threw
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harder when I was in junior calle so my freshman and sophomore year. My
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sophomoreyear specifically, I was eighty five to eighty eight, and then my junior
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year I was like eighty forty six, and then my senior year I was
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like eighty three to eighty six. I don't know why the villa went down,
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but I became a better pitcher because I had to be, or else
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I wasn't gonna be able to last long in the game if I didn't learn
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how to pitch. So I did all those other things really really well,
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which works in college, I think, but at the next level it's just
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so hard to dominate with below average velocity, like guys do it, and
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people always want to look at the outliers, But most of you guys aren't
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outliers. I wasn't an outlier. There was a threshold when I got to
9:37
independent ball that I've kind of reached my threshold I was. I pitched well,
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I was an okay pitcher, but I didn't pitch good enough to prove
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that okay, this guy actually is the same guy that he was in college.
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So I'd never got signed by an ORG because I never proved that mid
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eighties worked even in independent ball. Now, I did throw harder, and
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I'll get into that later in this episode. As time went on into penneball
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and I started to learn more about training velocity. But the fact of the
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matter is most of you guys are not outliers. And we can look at
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the outliers. We can look at the Tom Glavin's, we can look at
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the Jamie Moriers, and we can strive to do that. We can strive
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to be command guys change speeds. But the truth of the matter is you're
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probably not going to be Jamie Moore. You're probably not going to be Tom
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Glabin, So we need to make sure we are doing everything we can to
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reach your full potential from a velocity standpoint while also still working on that command
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stuff. We want to give you the biggest margin for air that we can
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and the most opportunities, and for most of you, it's going to be
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the velocity training. Yeah, that's so interesting. So you're able to change
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all those speeds and command the ball, but you still weren't an outlier.
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That's super interesting to me because when people think of outlier pitches and soft tosses,
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they just think, oh, if I can hit my spots and change
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speeds, then I'll have success. But you're saying that that's not the case.
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Yeah, I mean I think to a degree, right, I mean
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I think the kind of what I'm getting that was number one pictures aren't as
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good at hitting their spots as they think they are, especially when I feel
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like when I got to independentpon, I got to the next level, I
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was a reliever number one, so I got in a different role for the
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most part. I started a little bit but was mostly relief pitcher. College.
11:20
I was a starter and I just never really got in the groove as
11:24
a relief pitcher. They tried to use me as a left handed specialist a
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lot in those types of roles. I just did not thrive in that.
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I actually was the opposite of most lefties. I actually did better against righties
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than I did left handers. And I think it was because of the change
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up. I just threw a lot of change ups, so and I just
11:41
never got comfortable on I didn't have the same confidence, didn't have the same
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I still don't think I was the same picture as I was in college.
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Like college, it was like there wasn't pressure of losing my starting job,
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and that gave me confidence to try things, to work on things. Versus
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an independent ball, I was fighting for my life. Almost every outing I
11:58
fired a baud outing, I thought I might get released because that's just the
12:01
nature of the business and indie ball. So I think that played a big
12:05
factor of it, and it kind of caused me to not execute as well
12:07
as I used to, just because I think I lacked a little bit of
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that confidence because of just where I was in my career and just not no
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longer being the one of the better players on the field. And so when
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you were in college, was the mentality that, oh, I don't need
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velocity because I'm dominating or why didn't you try to increase that velocity during college?
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Oh? I tried, I promise you. I tried to throw harder.
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I tried to throw harder since I was in high school. I mean,
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I don't know. It was weird. I was one of those guys
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like I could long toss forever, Like I could throw the ball from end
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zone to end zone on a football field, like even in high school.
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And I get on the mound and it was eighty in high school senior year.
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You know, it's just it didn't make sense. And it's just I
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think it came down to and I think I talked about this before. I
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just became more robotic, didn't have the same athletics. I wasn't in the
13:01
weight room. Also, like I was in the weight room, but I
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wasn't really doing what I needed to do. Like I was undersized. I
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was one hundred and forty five pounds my senior year of high school. College.
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I think by my senior year, I was one seventy. Yeah,
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I'm five eleven, so I mean it's not super skinny for five eleven.
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It's about average. But I still was on the thinner side. So all
13:18
of those factors. I mean, I think I just was uneducated. I
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didn't know exactly what I needed to do to throw harder. Like I remember
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one bullpen in the fall my senior year, my pitching coach was literally having
13:28
me try every possible thing mechanically to like try to throw harder. They'd be
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like, eighty two, eighty two, eighty two. I'm like, I'm
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telling you, I'm trying to throw it hard. I don't. I don't
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know what to tell you. And so it wasn't until later on I found
13:45
out about like actually following a good weight to ball program and all those things
13:48
that started to help later down the road. But no, I definitely was
13:52
trying to throw harder. It just for some reason. I don't know it's
13:58
reflecting back on it now. Maybe it's just what I got in game mode.
14:00
I tried just to slow down and place the ball because that's what was
14:03
comfortable, and I knew I could execute my spots. I don't really know
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why my villa even went down from my software of college to my senior year
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of college, but my senior ye is my best year of my career from
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a stat standpoint, So it was tough to want to change things from that
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standpoint. Yeah, I think velocity is just such a tricky thing where you
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can train for it and you can do all the right things, but sometimes
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you're just not going to see the increase in velocity. And that's something that
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I'm struggling with right now, is that I'm doing everything to try to get
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my villa back up to where it was in twenty twenty one, where I
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was throwing in the high nineties and that's the hottest I'd ever thrown in my
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life, but now I just can't seem to get the end. Yeah,
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it just goes to show that velocity is a very tricky thing, and it
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also comes in spikes, linear progression. It's you gotta keep putting in the
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work, you gotta keep coming in through your mobility, lifting, throwing,
15:07
and then maybe you'll get like a two to three mile now unlock and you'll
15:11
just spike a little bit, and then you're gonna plateau or maybe even lose
15:15
a little bit velocity before the next spike. So I think for the people
15:20
who are listening, don't get discouraged. If you've been training for a couple
15:24
months and you haven't been seeing any results. As long as you know that
15:30
you're doing the right things. Yeah, that's a good point. And for
15:33
you, I mean, you're already a mid nineties thrower, so like you
15:37
going for let's just say your starting point of seventy eight, you going from
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seventy eight to eighty five was probably a lot easier than going from ninety five
15:46
to ninety eight, right, Like, once you get higher, it becomes
15:48
so hard to get that next level or that next step because you're already doing
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so many things well to throw ninety five that now every single detail matters so
15:58
much from a mechanic standpoint, a physical preparedness standpoint, your rest, how
16:03
fatigued you are. It's just the most minor things matter the harder you throw.
16:10
So I would I do want to encourage guys that there is a lot
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of hope if you are throwing eighty miles now, if you're in the seventies,
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like, there is a big jump that you have the potential to make.
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You just have to know the right things to do, and hopefully we
16:22
can share some insights on that. But I would be curious for you.
16:26
So you know you were in the high nineties, you said twenty twenty one,
16:30
Yes, Okay, so you've had back surgery since then. Do you
16:33
think that's playing a big factor in that. Yeah, definitely. I had
16:37
back surgery and I niated a disc, and so I'm no longer able to
16:44
lift heavy, and that was part of what actually got me to throw so
16:48
much hotter, was that I was able to lift really heavy. I was
16:52
scorting over full plates, I was deadlifting six hundred pounds plus, and so
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I feel like all that strength led to that spike in velocity. And now
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that I'm not able to do that, certain muscles of atrophied and I'm not
17:07
able to produce that force that I could in twenty twenty one, and so
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I need to find ways to work around that, and so far it's been
17:18
a challenge, but I'm still here and I'm still putting in the work and
17:22
finding ways to try to get that velo back. What are some of the
17:26
exercises that you're doing now that you think are helping and are making a difference.
17:32
Yeah, So in twenty twenty one, I just hammered the compound movements,
17:37
just the fundamentals, back squads, dead lists, a lot of bilateral
17:42
stuff. Now that I can't put a barbell on my back anymore or lift
17:47
something really heavy off the floor. I'm doing more single egg stuff. So
17:52
my favorite exercise is actually a goblet pistel squad. So I'm holding a dumbbell
18:00
right here in a front Scott position and then I get up on a box
18:06
and then I do a pistol squat off it. And that's one of the
18:08
exercises that I can really try to load up. I can do over like
18:12
one one hundred and twenty pounds on that, and that's like as heavy as
18:18
you know, like three four hundred pounds on squat, So I really like
18:22
that exercise. I'm doing a lot of single arm exercises as well, so
18:27
Dumbell bench single arm, Dumbell rose single arm. And the purpose of all
18:36
of that is to train up my call because why I got back surgery was
18:40
because of my call was weak and I wasn't supporting my body and so my
18:45
lower back was taking all of the weight. And so now I'm just trying
18:48
to train up my care so that that takes more of the weight instead of
18:52
my lower back and all the stress goes there. That's great. Yeah,
18:59
So you're you know, I feel like this is kind of the progression you
19:00
would have made anyway, because you were getting so strong with the bilateral exercises
19:06
like squat and deadlift that usually the progression is we're moving for speed, and
19:10
we're also doing more single like type of work or split stance variations. So
19:15
while you can't do the heavy bilateral work, it sounds like you're finding really
19:18
good workarounds like single like pistol squats for heavy weight to where it's not stressing
19:22
the back as much, but you're still able to get a lot of really
19:26
good work in on the lower half. When you were sixteen, what was
19:30
like a big part of your lifting program, Like were you mainly focusing on
19:34
like the big three of deadlifting, squatting, and benching, or like what
19:38
was your main focus in the weight room when you were sixteen? Yeah,
19:42
for sure. When I was sixteen, I did swaft around programs a lot,
19:48
But looking back, all I really did was hamm of the fundamental exercises
19:52
of squat, deadlift, bench, and some type of row or pull up.
19:59
And I remember doing the five by five program. Do you know what
20:02
the five by five program is? I do, Yeah, five five sets
20:06
of five reps for most of the major compound lifts right, m h.
20:10
Yeah, it's pretty much just squat five by five, bench five by five,
20:15
deadlift five by five and I'll do a couple accessories around that and that's
20:21
pretty much all I did, and that got me stronger. I feel like
20:23
for building a good base or you really need is progressive overload, and any
20:30
kind of program that will allow you to do that will provide a lot of
20:34
results, especially in the weight room. Yeah, I think that is the
20:40
number one thing that teenagers should do to start out with. Like, you
20:42
don't need to get cute in the weight room, Like you don't need to
20:45
do quote unquote baseball specific exercises. You just need to get strong right and
20:51
do it at the primary lifts of squatting, deadlifting, bench. If you
20:53
don't want to do a bar reil bench, do dumbbells. You can do
20:56
poll ups as well for another polling exercise, But you really don't need to
21:00
get fancy. Get as strong as you can and gradually progress the weight every
21:04
week for as long as you can, and you're eventually going to reach a
21:07
plateau and you'll be able to break through that eventually as well. But like
21:11
if you can just hammer those lifts early on in your career, you're going
21:15
to get so much stronger, and you're going to set the foundation as well
21:18
for when you get to college and you are starting to do more specific exercises.
21:22
You will have already accomplished some of your basic strength foundations, but you've
21:26
also have learned how to hinge properly, how to squat, all of those
21:30
fundamental movements that you're going to need to do at the next level in the
21:33
weight room, as well as things that apply to throwing, like your ability
21:37
to hinge, squat, push, pull, rotate. All those things apply
21:40
to pitching. And if you can set that foundation early, you're only setting
21:44
yourself up for success and you're going to get some really easy velocity gains purely
21:48
by doing that. Yeah, you couldn't have said it better. I think
21:52
just hammering those compound exercises are going to provide so much results, and just
22:00
from a muscle gain and weight gain perspective, those are the biggest bang for
22:07
your buck, because if you're hammering squats, looking back, I probably would
22:11
have done front squats instead of back squats just because it's less pressure on the
22:15
spine. But if you're doing you know this heavy squats, heavy dead lifts,
22:18
heavy pressing, and pulling. Movements like Nubie gains are overpowered. You're
22:26
gonna gain strength muscle weight like crazy. And so another big component of how
22:32
I gained that velocity was that I gained like thirty to forty pounds in one
22:36
year, and a big part of that was the lifting program, but also
22:41
the eating and the diet at home played a massive role. Yeah, walk
22:49
through that briefly, just because I know, I hear a lot of kids
22:52
say they're trying to gain weight. They're eating all the time and they're not
22:56
gaining weight. So you get you should have said you gained thirty to forty
22:57
pounds, which that is some serious weight. What were some of the keys
23:00
for you? Yeah, I think for gaining weight, it's just pure math.
23:08
You have to find out how much you're burning somehow. You can,
23:12
you know, use any of the tech Whoop or Apple Watch, you know,
23:17
all the tech available these days. You can get a general idea of
23:19
how much you're burning on a day to day basis, and you just have
23:23
to eat more than that. And for a haganer, it's painful, trust
23:27
me, I know it. It sucks so much when I was going through
23:32
that phase. The amount of peanut butt of sandwiches I ate was was crazy.
23:37
But yeah, my diet pretty much looked like I would wake up and
23:41
I would have like a high calorie shake, well, cram everything in as
23:45
many eggs as I could, you know, protein shake, protein powder,
23:49
all of that, and I would have that in the morning for a snack.
23:53
I'd have a peanut but of sandwich. For lunch, I'd have some
23:56
type of meat with rice, and then I'd have another snack peanut butter sandwich,
24:02
sneak that in, and then at night I would have a big den.
24:06
I'd tell my mom, Hey, I'm trying to gain weight, can
24:08
you make a big dinner for me? And so she would cook that up,
24:11
Thanks Mom, and I would smash that and so, yeah, it
24:17
sucks. Honestly, that was hotter than the training itself. Eating was hotter
24:22
than my throwing. It was hotter than mobility or lifting. But it was
24:26
probably one of the biggest components of me gaining velocity. Yeah, no,
24:32
it really isn't, because that was the same way, right, I just
24:34
said I was one hundred and forty pounds one hundred and forty five pounds by
24:37
senior year, and I thought I was eating a ton. Obviously I wasn't
24:41
eating enough, because, like you said, for most people, in most
24:44
situations, it is simple math, right, you have to eat more than
24:48
you are burning. And a simple way to think about this is, if
24:51
you want to gain one pounds a week, you have to eat five hundred
24:55
calories more than you are burning per day. So if you do that for
24:59
seven days, that is thirty five hundred calories and excess of what you're burning
25:03
thirty five hundred calories equals one pound. If you want to gain two pounds
25:06
a week, you got to eat one thousand calories more than what you're burning
25:08
every single day. So now we're getting into some serious calorie numbers, especially
25:12
if you're a guy that's burning you know, four thousand plus a day,
25:17
which is likely for a lot of teenagers with how active you are and just
25:19
how fast your metabolism is. There is a calculator I'll put this in the
25:23
show notes that Precision Nutrition has. It's a free macro calculator. Basically,
25:27
just plug in your age, your height, weight, your activity level,
25:33
and it will spit out for you roughly how many calories a day you are
25:36
burning. So if you don't have a whoop, or you don't have an
25:37
or ring, or you don't have something that tracks it for you, this
25:40
will give you a general average of what you're burning. And it also will
25:44
give you some recipes and some meals and how many calories and specific macros you
25:49
need for each meal to reach your goal. So it's pretty cool, it's
25:52
pretty insightful, it's it's very helpful. I use it a lot with guys
25:56
that I work with, and even if it's not perfectly accurate with it's not
26:00
gonna be perfectly accurate, but it does give you a starting point. And
26:03
if you're eating the amount that it says on there, for let's just say
26:07
one to two weeks, and you're not gaining any weight, then you need
26:10
to up it by five hundred calories. So do that for every single week
26:14
or two weeks. If you're not gaining any weight, then you need to
26:17
eat five hundred calories more a day from that and just keep adjusting it until
26:21
you get to the ranger where you're going at a one to two pound rate
26:22
per week. Yeah, for sure, And I think especially for the hot
26:29
gains, if you're doing everything right, you're doing throwing, lifting, mobility,
26:33
and you feel like you're doing everything, but you're not gaining gaining velocity.
26:37
It might be your weight that's holding you back. And that was definitely
26:42
the case for me. I was doing all these throwing programs, lifting programs,
26:48
but as soon as I started eating a lot as a sixteen seventeen year
26:51
old, and at that time, my tesoscerone was high. You know,
26:55
I was going through puberty and everything, so I grew and got thick,
27:00
and so that might be something to really look into if if you're plateauing anything,
27:06
you're doing everything right, Yeah, for sure. So let's dive into
27:11
weighted balls, specific velocity trainers. I guess I weighed balls necessarily, but
27:15
let's talk about velocity training specifically. At what age do you think it's appropriate
27:22
to do a specific velocity program? And I guess what I'm saying velost program,
27:26
I am referring to weighted balls, plioballs, things of those nature.
27:30
When do you think is an appropriate age in your experience? And like when
27:34
should you guys really start to focus on that? Yeah, so I think
27:38
pliables you can do them pretty young. I would say, as soon as
27:45
you're pretty developed thirteen fourteen years old, you can incorporate pliables into your routine.
27:52
I wouldn't say plio velos just yet, and definitely not pulldowns just yet,
27:56
but I think you can definitely incorporate it and incorporate some plio drills you
28:03
know, rollins, pivot picks, and also just long toss. I think
28:07
long toss is huge at that age. It's it really opens up your arm.
28:11
It increases the external rotation of your arm. I attribute a lot of
28:15
my velo from long toss because I did that all the time, and I
28:19
have really great external rotation, and I think that's partly why I have that.
28:26
But I do think getting into the specific plio vello routines, the pulldown
28:33
routines, I would wait until I was about sixteen because that is very high
28:38
stress on your arm. What do you think, Yeah, no, I
28:42
agree. I think you nailed it with the long toss. Like I think
28:45
that is your quote unquote velocity program when you are thirteen, you know,
28:49
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, in that age range, like really even up
28:52
through eighteen, like, long toss can play a huge factor in helping you
28:56
gain velocity promote athleticism. It freeze guys up. I think it's just overalled
29:00
us a really good idea for a lot of players. And then from the
29:04
PLO standpoint, like yeah, I think I think as long as you're not
29:08
approaching it at a young age with the idea of I am trying to throw
29:11
these as hard as I can, with the goal of it being to throw
29:15
harder, I think it's okay as long as that's not the case. I
29:18
think if you approach it from the standpoint of I'm starting to create good habits,
29:22
from a routine standpoint, I'll get warm up routine. I'm using these
29:26
maybe just to just to work on some mechanical things. Not that I think
29:30
you should get too cute with mechanics at a young age, but I think
29:33
as long as you're like treating it more as like a foundation of building a
29:37
plan and a routine for yourself, I think that's all good and well.
29:41
I just would definitely hold off on using it as a quote unquote velocity tool
29:45
at too young of an age. And you know, once you get to
29:48
sixteen, I mean, and even sixteen, I mean, there's plenty of
29:52
guys that do it. I work with guys that are sixteen that I have
29:53
them use ploballs, but I am always aware of the individual and what is
30:00
the lowest hating fruit for them, what is the most important thing, Like
30:02
I have sixteen year olds that I don't do actual you know, weighted ball
30:06
pulldowns with. I don't do actual plio velo with. I'm using the plyoballs
30:10
more as a mechanical tool, a warm up tool, those types of things,
30:14
and they're gaining velocity more so through that part of it, even and
30:18
the weight room, like we talked about again, stronger, gaining weight,
30:21
all of those things. So I do think that it's important to understand what
30:25
is the low hating fruit for you with the velocity. If you're completely filled
30:30
out, you're strong, you're doing everything right and you know you're healthy and
30:34
all that, and you're just not throwing as hard as you need to do
30:37
at the next level, then yeah, you probably need to get a little
30:38
bit more aggressive with your training, especially if you're getting closer to college and
30:42
you want to play out of college or a high level college. So it
30:45
does come back to knowing your own situation, knowing where you're at, and
30:48
what is the most important thing for you to make that next step but for
30:53
you, for you, I would love to hear about this. It sounds
30:56
like you were doing all of this simultaneously, which is probably what led to
31:00
such a huge burst in velocity. Now, I know you went from seventy
31:03
eight to ninety five, you know, in that two year timeframe, But
31:07
can you walk through even just like the first two months of you know,
31:11
if you were you a drive line at sixteen? No, I got there
31:15
when I was seventeen turning eighteen. Okay, so sixteen. Were you doing
31:21
pulldowns a plow velo at sixteen? Uh? Yeah, I was actually at
31:26
that. Actually, when I first started my velocity training journey, I did
31:33
a program called top Velocity. Do you know what that is? Yeah?
31:37
Yeah. So they are anti weight bulls and they are big med ball guys.
31:44
So for the first I would say three to four months, I did
31:48
the program where I would throw two pound med bulls in all kinds of positions
31:55
and I would radar them. And that was pretty much my weight to bo
32:00
velocity program at that time. But I was lifting really heavy, I was
32:06
eating, and I think that's what increased my velocity more than the medals.
32:12
But as soon as I started to figure out what drive line baseball was I
32:17
bought the weight to balls and I started the velocity training program straight away,
32:22
which included a plio velo at the start of the week and then pooldowns at
32:28
the end of the week. Okay, got it. And so when you
32:31
were a top velocity, how much harder did you throw? You are from
32:36
seventy eight to what I'm not too sure about the specific numbers, but I
32:40
know I gained at least like five miles an hour, just because probably from
32:46
the lifting and just from like a good program perspective where I was actually following
32:55
a structured program instead of just all right, I'm going out and playing twice
33:00
a week and I'm not even training properly. Yeah, exactly right. When
33:06
you're at that age, like just having any sort of program, you're probably
33:08
going to get better just because you have structure and you have something that you're
33:12
following, and you're getting a new stimulus that that you haven't had before.
33:15
So you're going to get gains. So let's let's talk about some specifics of
33:21
some of these velocity programs we touched a little bit. You just mentioned plow
33:24
vilo, you mentioned pull downs. What are some other aspects of velocity training
33:30
that you've done, you know, for me, like, something that comes
33:32
to mind is like mound velo doing, you know, wait to ball vilo
33:36
on the mound, or just regular baseball at max effort? Like, are
33:38
what are all of the options that you've done or that you have seen when
33:42
it comes to the specifics of velocity training. You know, I think you
33:46
touched on it briefly, but I think a big one was that I didn't
33:51
focus on mechanics until I was eighteen. And I didn't even pitch until I
33:55
was sixteen, So I was just shuts up all up until I was six
34:00
and so I had all that athleticism in my body, and I wasn't thinking
34:04
about trying to get cute with the mechanics and nothing like that. I was
34:08
just focused on all right, I'm just trying to throw this ball as hard
34:12
as I can. And with the drills that came with the drive line program
34:17
and the pooldowns that I was doing, my mechanics kind of just morphed into
34:22
a high velocity delivery. And I do think that I was lucky, but
34:29
I do think there's something in not focusing on mechanics too young, because I
34:34
see that all the time. There are guys who are throwing, you know,
34:37
sevent year eighty miles an hour, and they think that their back leg
34:40
rotation is going to be the unlock to throw niney you know. And so
34:45
I think the biggest thing for me was pooldowns because it promoted so much athleticism
34:52
and it taught me the intent to throw hard. And that was the biggest
34:55
thing when I was at drive line was that you need to throw hard,
34:59
to throw hard, and pulldowns taught me the intent and what was actually required
35:05
to throw at a high velocity while also training the athleticism because you're sprinting at
35:09
the target and you got to turn and throw and stop all your momentum and
35:15
try to create as much velocity as you can and that's a pretty complex task.
35:20
So doing that trained my body and morphed my mechanics into what it was,
35:25
into a high velocity delivery. Yeah, I totally agree with that from
35:31
the mechanical standpoint that you know, that was me. I was trying to
35:35
focus on my mechanics too much when I was on the mound. When I
35:37
was long tossing, I wasn't and that's where the disconnect was. And the
35:42
intent part of it. That's what I learned later on independent ball. As
35:45
I started to learning about drive Line, I learned about all these other companies,
35:49
mainly drive Line at that time, but learning what it meant to actually
35:52
try to throw hard. I had never actually tried to throw at max effort,
35:57
and the second I did that, I went up a couple miles an
35:59
hour purely by just trying to throw harder. So I found out about drive
36:02
Line back in twenty sixteen. I want to say it was. I was
36:06
a high school baseball coach at the time. I was I had played two
36:09
years of independent ball. I had just been released the previous summer, like
36:13
halfway through the summer. Didn't really know what I was going to do.
36:15
I was throwing eighty four eighty six at the time, and I was looking
36:21
for something, truthfully, for my players at the time that I was looking
36:24
for something to help them to throw harder. Somebled across drive Line saw they
36:29
had an eight week free program. It was with Way to Balls had the
36:31
whole set. I was like, you know what, I'm going to put
36:34
myself through this first. I'm not going to just have my players that are
36:37
you know, fifteen just do this random program that I know nothing about,
36:42
so I decided to do it. It was an eight week free program.
36:44
It consisted of of pulldowns. At this point, it was literally just pulldowns.
36:47
There was no plo. There might have been a plio vlo. It
36:50
wasn't on the mound though, but it was like purely polldowns for the most
36:53
part. And by the end of it, my max poll down was ninety
36:58
seven, which for me was really good. First day on the mound,
37:02
so they didn't want you throwing on the mound like at all, I don't
37:05
think during this eight week so I wasn't on the mound at all. And
37:07
then I got on the mound for my first bullpen and I hit eighty nine.
37:10
I had never hit eighty nine in my life, and so no,
37:13
I'm like, oh, okay, this stuff actually works. This was literally
37:16
in an eight week time period, I went from my lifetime high of eighty
37:20
seven to being eighty nine. So I was like, Okay, I need
37:23
to do some more research on this. I need to dive into this.
37:25
I ended up going to it wasn't a conference, but Kyle Body and his
37:31
partner were in Arizona for something, and I went to and I met them,
37:37
I threw in front of them, and I was started to get all
37:38
in on what they were teaching and try to learn more about it. And
37:44
the intent was one of the biggest things for me. That's what those pulldowns
37:45
did. Like you said, like you have to be aggressive with it.
37:49
You're you know, the traditional running guns. You're going out of full sprint
37:52
and you were moving as fast as you can, and it's teaching you to
37:55
move fast. And now sometimes there's disconnect with guys on the mound, like
37:59
you still have to learn how to do that out of the delivery, which
38:00
is another aspect of it. But that initial queue or that initial thought of
38:07
trying to actually throw hard can be a big unlock for guys, especially back
38:13
then, like five, six, seven years ago. It was especially helpful
38:16
then for older players because they had never done that. Now, I feel
38:20
like because of you know, Driveline, how much they're around Tread and so
38:22
of these other companies, Like I would say more kids are trying to throw
38:25
harder now, so they have the intent piece now, it's just a matter
38:28
of timing up that intent correctly and still being loose and not tensing up when
38:32
they're doing it. There's all these little little aspects of it that can help
38:36
you still throw throw even harder with what feels like lower effort than going at
38:40
max effort with it from an intent standpoint, Yeah, for sure. And
38:45
you said that you never you didn't touch the mound for eight weeks, That's
38:50
exactly what I did. But I did that for months on end. I
38:52
literally did ply velos on flat ground, and I did pulldowns on the flat
38:58
ground, and I didn't touch the mound until I kind of knew that I
39:02
had the capability of touching high eighties to ninety, and I just thought of
39:08
it as Okay, the pulldowns and plier villos were building the foundation and building
39:15
the power and the elasticity needed to throw hard, and then now when I
39:21
get on the mound, I can try to transfer that. But I'm not
39:23
going to be trying to build velo on the mound. I'm going to build
39:27
the velo off the mound on flat ground and then go transfer it. Yeah.
39:31
I like that. It just it keeps you disconnected from thinking about pitching,
39:37
and it allows you just to stay free and athletic as long as you
39:39
can. And then eventually when you get to the mound you can translate that
39:43
because you've just done it so much. I like that idea. I think
39:45
that's really helpful for a lot of guys, especially that are younger and in
39:49
the situation that you were in. So we've talked about a lot of general
39:52
things that we've done. I think it'd be helpful to dive into some specifics
39:57
as well as you know, maybe like what are so of those velocity numbers
40:00
that you do need to see before you start moving on to other aspects of
40:05
your training. So let's say you're sixteen, you're a sophomore in high school,
40:09
and you want to play Division one baseball. From your experience, what
40:14
do you think is like, what does the goal velocity need to be and
40:17
where do you need to get to before you even think about worrying about the
40:21
other aspects of pitching. Yeah, it really depends on what your goals are.
40:28
But if it's to go to a powerhouse university or get drafted these days,
40:36
I mean, I hear that ninety five is in you ninety I don't
40:38
know if you've had that yard, but you know it's it's the brutal truth.
40:45
And I think if you want to get to that level, you need
40:47
to be throwing at least ninety two ninety three miles an hour. Now,
40:52
if your goal is to just go play college baseball, I think eighty eight
40:57
ninety is plenty even lower than that if you're a good pitcher. But if
41:02
you really want to maximize your career, I think the way the game's going,
41:08
ninety three, I would say is a good benchmark. Yeah, I
41:14
would agree for the most part with that. Like I think, let's just
41:16
say you want to play the divisual in baseball, eighty eight to ninety I
41:20
think is a good number. Once you get to eighty eight to ninety,
41:22
it's not that that is like the ultimate goal from a velocity standpoint, but
41:25
you're at the point to where if I'm throwing eighty eight to ninety and I
41:29
have general feel for an off speed pitch, I'm around the strike zone,
41:32
I'm probably going to get an opportunity. If you're eighty eight to ninety and
41:37
you have no clue where the ball is going and you don't have a secondary
41:39
pitch. Rather than focusing more on velocity, that's when you probably do need
41:45
to shift your training to making sure that you're around the strike zone because the
41:50
velocity isn't the part that's holding you back from getting opportunity. It's the strike
41:52
throwing ability. So that's where you have to understand what that trade off is,
41:57
especially if you're a high school kid. If you're trying to get to
42:00
baseball, you want to play at a high level. You get to eighty
42:01
eight to ninety vello is good enough to get opportunity. Now you need to
42:07
focus on those other areas. And as those areas develop and you go to
42:10
your college, now you're a freshman, you can still work on velocity and
42:14
hopefully you're going to throw harder by the time you're eighteen, un till you're
42:16
twenty one twenty two. So it's not that velocity isn't important anymore. You're
42:21
still going to work on develop in other areas by getting stronger and all those
42:23
things. But you have to understand at what point is that no longer the
42:28
low hitting fruit to get you your opportunity. And then, like you said,
42:31
if now you're in college and you want to get to pro ball,
42:34
okay, there is another threshold that you need to get to to get a
42:37
good opportunity. There are guys that get drafted at ninety. But once again,
42:39
there's few and far between with some of these things we're talking about,
42:43
and you want to give yourself the best chance possible, But it's always that
42:45
give and take of command, training, velocity training, developing off speed pitches.
42:51
You have to understand what needs to get pulled up for you to get
42:53
your next opportunity. Yeah, for sure. And I had a postal experience
42:59
with this where I went on a recruiting trip while I was wearing eighty eight
43:04
to ninety and I didn't have great command. I've never really had great command.
43:10
I have a really good slider. But when I was eighty eight to
43:14
ninety, I got a bunch of Juco offers, but nope, I don't
43:19
think I even got a single D one offer. Now, a couple months
43:22
later, I kept training, training, and I go on a similar trip,
43:28
similar recruiting trip. It was out in Arizona, the Arizona four Classic,
43:34
and this time I'm throwing ninety three ninety four and I get more D
43:38
one offers than I know. I didn't know what to do with so,
43:43
and I also got an offer from my dream school, which was Stanford at
43:46
the time. So even that three to four miles an hour makes a huge
43:51
difference, and I think if you can, you should try to strike for
43:55
that. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's crazy how much of
44:00
a difference a couple miles an hour can make, but it really does.
44:01
And like even when we look at the breakdown that I shared earlier from a
44:06
performance standpoint, like every mile an hour can make a big difference. And
44:09
it's also you know this gets talked about as well, but it's worth saying
44:14
again that as your velocity goes up, it allows your secondary pitches to play
44:17
even better because now they're sharper, they're harder, most likely, and they're
44:22
going to be more effective. So it's funny we're in a day and age
44:27
where we're training to throw as hard as possible, but we're also throwing as
44:30
few of fastballs as possible at the same time, and then when you do
44:35
throw a fastball plays up even more. So it's just a really tough time
44:37
to be a hitter, to say the least. Yeah, for sure.
44:40
And the saying from my good friend, and I know your good friend as
44:45
well, Tyler Zumbro, he goes, Yeah, train to throw a hundred,
44:49
but don't throw it. Just throw it. All suite exactly, because
44:52
if you're throwing a hundred, then you also probably pretty nasty. So but
44:58
yeah, velocity does make everything better and it just increases the modun of era.
45:02
You don't have to hit your spots. You can just stay in the
45:06
zone. And as we just sow a ninety five plus down, the middle
45:08
still gets out. So yeah, velocity still is king yep, exactly.
45:15
So let's dive into some specifics of what a training program could look like an
45:21
eight week block. I'm going to share this pdf here, So these are
45:25
essentially three different options and possibilities of what a schedule could look like. So
45:31
the first one is the most conservative Velocity program that you could follow, So
45:36
for those of you that aren't watching or just listening, this is simply just
45:39
showing what the progression would look like from a low day also known as a
45:44
recovery day, a medium day, also a hybrid day if you're familiar with
45:47
drive Line's terms, then a high day would be that velocity day. So
45:52
week one would have just one high day, one velocity day, so Monday
45:55
and Friday would be a hybrid or medium day. Tuesday, Thursday Saturday are
46:00
really light days, and then that Wednesday would be your velocity day. The
46:06
following week, you would shift to two high days a week, so you
46:08
would have a high day on Monday and Friday, low days Tuesday, Thursday,
46:12
Saturday, and one medium slash hybrid day on Wednesday, and you would
46:16
just go back and forth between these two weeks for the duration of your program.
46:21
And the benefit of this one is it maximizes time for recovery. So
46:25
you can see there's three light days in here. You only have one high
46:30
day every other week, so it just allows for more ample time to recover,
46:34
so some of that volume can be higher and you can really get after
46:37
it on those high days. The next one is a little bit more of
46:40
a progression, so you're doing two highdays every week, but they are on
46:45
Mondays and Fridays, and you still have three low days per week, so
46:49
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are low days and you have one medium slash hybrid
46:52
day on Wednesdays. And then the third option that I have here is more
46:58
of the traditional plan. This is probably similar to what you did, Josh.
47:00
I would guess is you have two medium days, two low days,
47:04
and two highdays every week, so that could look like a medium day on
47:07
Monday, high day on Tuesday, low day, Wednesday, medium Thursday,
47:12
high Friday low Saturday. So this one is good and I do use this,
47:17
but I will say you do need a dload typically after you know,
47:21
four or five weeks usually, and that's where maybe you deload to just one
47:23
of these high days per week. It depends on the situation and how the
47:29
velocity is trending. That can help you as well with whether you need a
47:31
deload or not. But I'd be curious, Josh, which of these schedules
47:35
have you used the most, and you know, what are your thoughts on
47:37
all three of these. Yeah, So when I was just getting started,
47:42
I use the second one where I'll go high on Mondays and then high on
47:49
Fridays again, and I'd have a medium day on Wednesday, and so on
47:53
Monday we would have the ply velos and then Wednesday it was just a long
47:58
toss day. Friday was the plight pull down day. But what I found
48:04
was that as my velocity started to climb and I started to throw harder and
48:07
harder, I could only take one high day per week. So instead of
48:15
the two high days, I would do medium day Monday, medium day Wednesday,
48:20
highday Friday, And that's kind of what worked for me. When I
48:22
did two high days, I just couldn't recover and it would make my whole
48:29
body sore and I'll make backward progress. So I think, really, you
48:34
just got to listen to your body and see what you can handle. And
48:37
just keep in mind as you were starting to throw harder and harder and getting
48:40
into those nineties, it is more stressful on your body and you might need
48:45
some more time to recover. Yeah, exactly. That's a great point of
48:49
knowing yourself, knowing your body, and not pushing through something just because you're
48:52
supposed to have a high day that day. Understanding your body is super important.
48:57
Another super super important thing, not just for V low phases really any
49:00
phase. But you gotta treat your low days like low days. You can't
49:05
try to throw too hard on those days cause it's going to mess up the
49:07
rest of your week. So when it's a low day and you're supposed to
49:09
throw at fifty percent effort for twenty throws or whatever it is, do it
49:15
even if you feel better then you expect to feel on a low day.
49:17
Treat it light because you're going to feel even better and fresh for the days
49:21
where it actually matters to throw hard witch is your high days, yeah for
49:24
sure. And one thing that I do is that I only threw applios on
49:29
these load days because I know that when I grew up a baseball and stop
49:32
playing catch and I'm signing to mess with my pitches and anything, I'm just
49:37
gonna throw too many and my low day turns into a medium day real quick.
49:42
So I just grab my green bowl, the one pound bowl, and
49:45
also the blue bowl, and I just go through some drills low effort,
49:50
you know, sub fifty percent, just to get some blood flow going through
49:54
the omka, and then I'm done for the day. I love that.
49:58
I think more people should do just plios on the load days because you're not
50:01
going to throw off speed pitches, right, You're not gonna start ripping off
50:05
speed pitches with aploball. And since you're just thrown into a wall, you're
50:08
more than likely going to stop at the appropriate time because you have a set
50:12
number of throws that you're probably making versus cash play. You have your partner,
50:16
he's throwing pitches back at you, maybe he's throwing sliders, and you're
50:19
like, oh, maybe I'll throw a couple sliders just to see how it
50:21
feels today, and then, like you said, it turns into a medium
50:22
day. And I would say the majority of pitchers live in that medium territory.
50:28
They're in that eighty percent territory all the time. And truth be told,
50:31
like I like medium days because I think they are good to feel stuff
50:35
work on mechanical type things. But in my opinion, the real gains are
50:38
made on the low days, and they're made on the high days because you
50:40
need the load days for the recovery and you need the high days to get
50:44
the stimulus of throwing hard. Yeah, And I'd be curious to see what
50:50
do you think about balancing the throwing volume and the lifting volume, because when
50:55
I was a drive line there was a whole program where when the the lifting
51:00
volume was really high and we were focusing on strength, power and gaining weight
51:04
to muscle the throwing program, the volume decreased a lot, and vice versa.
51:10
When we were starting to decrease the volume in the weight room, we
51:15
were starting to do more speed stuff, light of stuff, the throwing volume
51:19
really increased. So I'm curious as to see what you think about that.
51:22
Yeah, I generally agree with that. Like, that's what you typically see
51:27
is you try to match those with each other, or you know, early
51:29
in the off season, when you're maybe not doing a lot of throwing volume,
51:31
that's when there's going to be a lot of strength focus in the weight
51:34
room. Now I'm glad you brought up lifting though, because most guys that
51:37
are listening to this, if you're a high schooler or a college guy who
51:39
needs to throw harder, the weight room is probably a really important piece for
51:44
you. So, like, let's just say you're doing one of these schedules
51:46
this summer, like you can't be lifting light, Like your lifting needs to
51:50
be a big part of your program most likely, and what's going to be
51:53
important is that you try to match them with those high days. So like
51:57
what I would do, let's just say you're lifting three days a week and
52:01
you are following let's just say the second one, so high days on Mondays
52:06
and Fridays. I would have your lifting days beyond Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
52:10
as well, so that you're really timing up those load days to really be
52:14
low days, because if it's a low throwing day, but then I get
52:16
in the weight room and I'm pushing weight as hard as I can. It's
52:20
no longer a load day from a physical standpoint. Maybe throwing it is,
52:22
but I'm still really amplifying the intensity my CNS is going through the roof,
52:28
Like there's going to be other aspects of where you're stressing the body and fatiguing
52:32
yourself. So I would really try to match up the high days with your
52:37
lifting as well. So lift after you throw on that Monday, after you
52:40
throw on Wednesday, That Wednesday one would probably be more on the lighter end
52:45
so you have enough time to recover for that Friday lift. But like Mondays
52:47
and Fridays, I would just make those like really big, full, high
52:52
intensity days from a throwing and your lifting standpoint. Yeah, I agree one
52:55
hundred percent. And that's a mistake that I had made when I'll first training,
53:00
was that I was like, all right, I'm going max effort throwing
53:05
on Monday, and so I'm tired, so I'm just gonna do my lawbody
53:08
lift on Tuesday and then I'll go throw and then just alternate, alternate,
53:15
And that really doesn't work because you're never recovering, and I know it sucks
53:20
off the pool down day, you're tired your gas, but if you can
53:23
try to get that lift in, then you're gonna be able to recover and
53:28
get those gains even better. So exactly, so walk me through a little
53:32
bit about like let's just say like APPLYO VLO day and maybe this has changed
53:37
for you, but like, how do you like to balance the overload versus
53:39
the underload balls? Are you going? You know, same amount of reps
53:44
for each of them, Like let's just say you're going too blue to red,
53:46
too yellow to gray, or you know, did you find out over
53:50
time that you were worse with one of the balls versus the other and you
53:52
spent more time on that ball. Yeah, exactly. When I first thought
53:58
it out, I just did every bowl. I did the green bowl.
54:02
I did green, blue, red, yellow, and gray, and I
54:07
didn't do any more than the other. But as I kept training and kept
54:13
training, I found that I was way better at throwing the heavier bulls and
54:15
the lighter buls, and so I would focus more on the lighter balls.
54:21
And I know there's a lot of things about arm strength versus arm speed.
54:25
I'm not too sure about that, but I think just attacking your weaknesses is
54:31
really huge but at the start, you want to really just hammer the fundamentals
54:38
and throw them all. Yeah you said it perfectly. Yeah, early on,
54:44
use all of them, and over time you're going to start to see,
54:46
like, what is the weakness for you? Like for me, it's
54:50
heavy balls. And what's funny is actually lefties. What I found is lefties
54:53
are usually better at underloads and rieties are better at overloads. So that's something
54:59
for you to think about and outside everybody, but that's on average. So
55:02
definitely, over time, try to go more into what your strengths are,
55:07
or sorry, try to lean more into what your weaknesses are so you can
55:08
get better at that and that will hopefully help reen up your floor in your
55:12
velocity as well. Yeah for sure. I mean when I was doing the
55:15
Drive Line program, I will throw the blue ball like as hot as some
55:22
of the hottest throws that were in there, but then my grable I would
55:27
only be able to throw in the mid eighties and I would be thinking why
55:30
would that happen? And it was just because I wasn't throwing, I wasn't
55:32
moving quick enough. And so by focusing on those light of bulls, I
55:37
was able to attack my weaknesses and that's ultimately what led to my next spike
55:42
in velocity. Yeah, I love that. That's great. Did you have
55:46
any players or do you currently have any players that do you try to model
55:50
yourself after from a delivery standpoint, or like, is there any guys you
55:53
watch that throw really hard that you try to copy some of the things that
55:57
they do. Yeah, I actually think I think this is this might be
56:00
an unlock for some players, is that just look at your favorite MLB pitcher
56:07
and try to copy them. And so when I was young, I would
56:09
always look out to you Davish and he has a little bit more of an
56:14
unorthodox delivery because he's Japanese and they kind of go through things a little bit
56:20
differently over there. But if you can really try to model your mechanics after
56:25
an mob pitcher and it actually looks like it, then chances are you're going
56:31
to be in a good spot and it's going to be a pretty good delivery
56:35
without really focusing on, you know, the tiny details of oh I want
56:38
to feel my back leg, I want to feel my lead leg. It's
56:42
more just like, all right, I'm trying to copy him and throw the
56:45
ball as hot as I can. I like that. And I think I've
56:49
seen people talk about this before, but players that are sons of former big
56:52
leaguers usually have really good looking swings or good mechanics because they grew up around
56:58
the field. They watched the best the best do it as little kids,
57:00
and they were able to emulate them right like, probably one of the best,
57:05
actually, the best I would say that was the son of a former
57:07
big leaguer was Ken Griffey Junior. He grew up around his dad being in
57:10
the big leagues all the time, and he got to see it firsthand,
57:13
and I'm sure that played a huge role in his development of being able to
57:16
see the greats and just mimic them and copy them and get to see it
57:21
day in and day out. Yeah, for sure. And with the Texas
57:23
Ranges we have Jacklida and he throws gas and obviously his dad was a great
57:29
big legua and I'm sure that had a lot to do with it, for
57:32
sure. Yeah. So just a couple of things before we wrap this up.
57:37
You know, the summer is approaching fairly soon for guys, and there's
57:42
gonna be a lot of players that are deciding whether to play summer ball or
57:45
whether to just train. So I'm thinking more specifically about college age guys,
57:51
because I do know a lot of colleges will send their players to play summer
57:52
ball. What do you think should be the deciding factor for a college age
57:57
kid whether he should play summer ball or should train. Again, I think
58:02
it depends on your goals. But if your goal is to get drafted this
58:07
year, then you're really going to assess your situation and compare yourself to the
58:10
guys who are actually getting drafted and be like, am I good enough?
58:15
And it's really hard to look at yourself from an objective standpoint, But as
58:20
a general rule, if you aren't topping out at least ninety three miles an
58:24
hour, or you have terrible command, or you don't have a good offspeed
58:29
pitch, then it might be a good decision to go train at one of
58:34
these facilities and attack your weakness and so you come back for the main season
58:39
and if you dominate, then you're going to have a chance to get drafted.
58:44
But I think, on the other hand, if you have all this
58:46
stuff, you have the velo, the command and the off speed, and
58:51
now all you need is the exposure, then if you can get into a
58:54
really good summer All League. Then that's definitely worth it more. You said
59:00
it perfectly. I think that wraps it up for this episode. A lot
59:04
of really good nuggets for guys, and you know, at the end of
59:07
the day, you have to know where you're at in your career and what
59:09
you really want