Increasing Speed in Baseball Pitching

The two factors that more than anything else make good pitchers into great ones are velocity, or speed, and control. It's well known that control can be honed over time however with speed many players are left confused about how they can improve their results and whether or not they can make real progress past a certain natural peak. The truth is that you can absolutely increase your speed in baseball pitching, it's all about laying down the foundation for how you will go about achieving that goal.

When you think about this problem in the most basic of terms, it becomes obvious what you have to do. If you want to throw the ball faster, then you have to be able to move your arm faster and generate more power that you can pass onto the ball as you release it. Now, actually getting that done can be much more difficult, but it's certainly possible when you know what you have to do.

Increasing Speed in Baseball Pitching: Important Factors

One of the most important factors in increasing speed in baseball pitching will be your actual arm speed. As explained above, the faster your arm is moving, the more speed you are building up to pass onto the ball as you release it. You can think about it as not just throwing the ball, but the ball being an extension of your body that you are simply releasing in front of you.

This does not mean that you should rush through your windup. During your windup you aren't actually generating any power. Conversely, you are putting yourself and your body in the right position to generate power. You can think about it as your body being a spring, and you're compressing it into a position where the potential energy it has will be turned into kinetic energy. So don't rush through your windup to try to generate more speed and power, take your time and make sure you do it correctly.

Of course this also speaks to another extremely important when you're trying to develop more speed and power. You have to be able to increase your velocity while you're actually pitching, as opposed to simply throwing the ball as hard as you can. This means you have to maintain control of your mechanics as well as your mental concentration as well. An increase of velocity that results in a loss of control is more counterproductive than anything else.

Increasing Speed in Baseball Pitching: Power

In addition to simple arm speed, you also need to be able to generate and harness more power from the rest of your body as well. This brings us back to the windup, which as mentioned is like getting your body ready to spring into action. You aren't generating the power, but you are putting your body in the right place to unleash it. You need to learn how to use your body together as one multifaceted unit, as opposed to a series of individual parts.

Once you can get all of your relevant body parts working in harmony together - your legs, your core, your arms and so on - then you will be able to unleash that much more power and velocity. This can be trained not just through pitching, but also in the gym with the use of appropriate compound exercises.

Compound exercises are defined as those that require the use of more than one set of joints in order for you to complete. Therefore, the bench press which brings into play your shoulders and elbows, and the squat which uses your knees and hips, are both examples of compound exercises. Performing other more complicated exercises as well such as power cleans, working with medicine balls and ropes and more are all effective ways to train your body as a unit instead of training as a collection of disparate and possibly conflicting muscle groups.

Remember, that you also need to build up your muscle endurance as well if you are interested in increasing speed in baseball pitching. Pitching of course is a repetitive process, and you need to be able to maintain your velocity and power as time goes on. Circuit training with moderately heavy weights, using some compound exercises and techniques, is another effective weapon in your arsenal to accomplish this.

You can absolutely learn how to increase your speed for baseball pitching. What you need to do is train in the right way, and focus on the right aspects of your game. Train your body as a unit, and train for endurance in edition to raw strength. Finally, never make a trade between more velocity and decreased control.

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Further suggested reading: Baseball Pitching

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