In the summer of 1986, I set my mind and heart toward preparing for the 1987 college baseball season. I didn’t pitch much in 1986, and now I knew I had to change some of the things I did to get on the mound.
My velocity dropped a lot from high school (90 mph to 84 mph), and I figured the best way to regain that velocity was to get stronger and hit the weight room. That’s the standard line from high school and college coaches to pitchers that don’t throw hard enough, “If you hit the weight room, then you’ll throw harder.”
That’s exactly what I did, and I got strong. I went from 190 lbs to almost 225 lbs. My legs got stronger while across my upper body, I started to look like a fitness model (don’t laugh—I got offers). I did everything in the weight room to get stronger. My diet was excellent, and with the start of the new school year, I was ready to go.
The biggest problem was that I was so tight from getting bigger that it affected my ability to be loose and let my arm act like a whip, as it did in high school. Then, I would simply rear back and throw. Hitters were actually at a disadvantage when I was on the mound. Now, I’d put on so much muscle that I couldn’t move like I used to. I would have looked great on a stage posing, but I wasn’t very good at throwing a baseball.
Within the first week of practice, I felt a bad pull in my throwing shoulder. It was a rotator cuff tear, and I lost my season. My senior year was gone, and so were my many chances of playing pro ball.
To say I was devastated would be an understatement. I was in my room alone when I got the news of the test results of the tear, and I just started bawling. My roommate’s girlfriend checked on my well-being and told me everything would work out for the best. She was being kind at the moment, but how right she was.
Now What?
Once the end of the season comes about for players, one of the main comments that players make is that they’re going to hit the weight room and get stronger. That is such a ubiquitous phrase by athletes that I feel players just say it because everyone says it. That’s like needing a new car and saying, “Oh, anything will do. I just need a car.”
As my friend Ron Wolforth always says, “Hope is not a plan.” You need to have specific goals in mind to improve your skill set. Working on strengthening your body is important, but what part is the most important? Legs? Arms? Core?
If you don’t have a plan, you don’t know whether any of your work will take you toward your goals. Not throwing and just getting in the weight room is a terrible plan for pitchers. Statements like, “I have to rest my arm,” is a big fallacy. You need to throw A LOT to build up strength.
By not throwing, you only make coming back more difficult. Your throwing arm is like a muscle. You take care of the muscle, but don’t we use our muscles all day every day, right? The arm is no different. You need to build up your arm so it can withstand the inherent stress that goes on during a game. Stress is pitching in games, and without the proper training leading up to it, you’ll cause the arm to break down at some point. Stress on a pitcher’s arms comes from playing a full fall, winter, and spring schedule and then continuously pitching in summer league games without a break. That might be the most ridiculous way to get better at building arm strength, improving your breaking ball, or getting the recovery and balance you need after eight months of practice and games.
If you’re in high school or a travel ball player (or a parent of one), you know the number of games you’ve played.
Our Plan
At Throwzone Academy, our plan is to use our summer training classes to help rebuild strength and endurance to prepare players for the upcoming school year or season. Once our summer training ends, we continue with our weekly and nightly classes for players looking to improve all aspects of their throwing, whether on the mound or the field.
Our strength training is conducive to improving the explosive nature a baseball player uses during a game—short bursts of speed and power. Our arm care and velocity program has no rivals in building velocity, spin, and movement, plus being a first-class post-arm care protocol.
This training goes on all year with our players. Unfortunately, coaches (and a note that I AM a coach for a local high school and hear it firsthand with our own staff, which makes me cringe at times) feel that they have the answers to improving their player’s skill set. They may get better by putting on their uniform all the time but not at building skills that make them attractive to college recruiters and professional scouts, particularly pitchers.
We work specifically with players to achieve their goals. If that goal is to play in college, we guide them down a path to make them attractive to college coaches. If a player is doing things to improve, then we’ll reach out to college coaches and let them know about that person if we feel the fit is right.
Overall, Throwzone Academy is a leader in improving the players that work with us. We find out the player’s goals, then give them the best plan we know to get them to that goal. Our assistant coaches and I have been doing this for years, and we’ll keep doing it to help those players who truly want to get better. Maybe it’s to keep the player healthy—we can identify those points where the body goes through its motions and work to reduce the risk of injury so that they throw pain-free.
Our summer training is still happening, and spots are available for the July session. If the summer is ending, then it’s the perfect time to train!
Don’t make the mistake I made in “just hitting the gym,” and you’ll become better on the baseball diamond. You need a plan to become the best player you can be. We can assist with that plan and your goals!
Until next time,
Jim
Jim Wagner's ThrowZone Academy 