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Pitching

Train Hard, Recover Hard

posted on January 6, 2021

It never fails, every college or pro player I speak to says they regret not getting into the weight room earlier in their career. I started training at age 11 at True Grind Systems in Austin, TX. At these young ages it isn’t about lifting heavy weights, it is about learning the habits, movement patterns and intent of moving athletically. I am finally seeing more kids aged 9-12 training all over the country on social media, and I am excited about their future. There are plenty of good sports performance facilities that work with kids around the country now.

Managing Your Training Workload

Over the last few months, I have moved to a 4x a week program in the gym. I do skills camp at 180 Performance Center 2x a week, where I work on a structured hitting, fielding and pitching program. On top of that, I long toss, throw Clean Fuego and a football a few times a week. I’ll throw at least one bullpen a week, where I am focused on my mechanics or on a specific thing I want to work on that week. I’ll get in the batting cage and play wiffle ball a couple of times a week, too. I’ll also ride the bike (indoors or outdoors) once or twice a week. I am not blessed to be the best athlete with great natural movements, with speed or with explosiveness. Like many people out there, I wasn’t born a thoroughbred. I am more like a junkyard dog. I’m not that kid who woke up one morning and could throw 90 at 13 or run a 6.7 60 yard dash. I’ve got to work hard for every gain. You can work hard, too and I hope you have already started. But one key lesson I want to share with you is if you are going to work hard, then you better work hard to recover, too.

whoop strain recovery sleepThe key here for me is the Whoop strap. Whoop allows me to monitor all my activity, strain and sleep. I will use it to track all my training and it will provide me a daily strain score. At the end of the day, it will tell me when I need to go to sleep in order to perform my best, or well enough, the next day. This is really invaluable during the school year and of course before games. When I wake up it, will show me my recovery score and how much my body and central nervous system are prepared for my daily workload.

As I mentioned, getting good quality sleep is really important to your recovery. There are a number of routines I go through before bed that help me with my sleep score.

The Importance of Hydration

My go-to-bed routine starts with my rehydrating and getting in some electrolytes. I drink a glass of Jigsaw Health’s Pickleball Cocktail. Making sure you are well hydrated throughout the day will also aid in your recovery. Dry muscles and fascia are more likely to get injured.

A couple of hours before I go to sleep, I will use blue light blocking glasses if I am looking at any screens. Many studies suggest that blue light in the evening disrupts your brain’s natural sleep-wake cycles.

Active Recovery With Marc Pro

Now I can deal with any tired and sore muscles. I’ll get on the Marc Pro for active recovery. I tend to use it on my pitching arm after throwing days, after an upper body workout day and when I need to throw the next day. This week I’ve used it on my legs as well, since my new workout program emphasizes more squats while my last program was more focused on deadlifting. How much time I spend on it will be based on how much damage/stress my body has gone through. To learn more about the Marc Pro, make sure to listen to this week’s podcast cast with Gary Reinl, Director of Sports Performance for Marc Pro. While I have the Marc Pro on (usually 30 minutes) I’ll get in a comfortable position and watch some YouTube or TV.

Maximize with Mobility

Before laying down in my bed, I’ll spend some time focusing on my hip mobility with several hip flows. I will get on the Rotex floor model in order to work on my ankle (I plan on writing more about this in the future) and hip mobility as well. If I notice any muscles that are really tight, I will use a percussion massage gun or a Yoga Tune Up ball to roll out tight muscles and feet.

I’ll spend about 10 minutes doing my J-Band routine to stretch and strengthen my shoulders and arms. As I get into bed, I’ll spend some time with focused breathing to relax myself and bring my heart rate down.

This is my typical routine 6 days a week. On Sundays, during the off-season, I’ll just use it to recover, play some other sports, like basketball, and rest up. When I look at all this written down, most days, between the gym and skill work, I am putting in 2:30-4 hours of work and about an hour of active recovery, in total. Add all of that to making sure I eat well all day, hydrate consistently and get my 8-10 hours of sleep, and you can see why I say it is important to work hard, but work at recovery harder, as well.

This week I asked on Twitter how long people spend on active recovery and the results of the poll are quite interesting:

Baseball players, how much time do you spend on your active recovery daily?
(@TheMarcPro, mobility, other movement, massage)

Trying to put together an article this week.

— Play Ball Kid (@PlayBallKidInc) January 5, 2021

How long do you spend on recovery?

PS: If you are looking for a Marc Pro code you can you can “Play Ball”.

Filed Under: Pitching, Recovery, Training, Training Equipment Tagged With: hydration, marc pro, mobility, recovery, routines, training

3 Ways to Naturally Increase Spin Rate without Foreign Substances

posted on December 9, 2020

Trevor Bauer engineered his way to a Cy Young Award in 2020. Interestingly, his average spin rate went up 415 rpm. Last year, his spring rate was around 2400 rpms and this year it was over 2800 rpms without an increase in pitch velocity. He wasn’t the only one to increase their spin rate as many other pitchers saw increases but most of their increases were in the 200 rpm range. He has claimed for years that the majority of pitchers were using foreign substances but he has to be doing something different than most.

What has Trevor done to engineer a 2X increase spin rate compared to others in the league?

Interestingly enough, I also increased the spin rate on my fastball by 400 rpm (up to 2100 rmp) the last few months without a major increase in velocity. Trevor may not be sharing all his secrets, but I’ll share what seems to have worked for me. 

People talk about how sticky or tacky substances like pine tar increase spin rate. I’ve even witnessed an experiment where Bullfrog sun screen (this person tried other sun screens but Bullfrog performed the best) and rosin could increase spin rate significantly. There is chatter of other custom compounds being used as well for this. Eno Sarris wrote about how almost every MLB pitcher is using some form of grip substance.

The advantages of using grip substances are unmistakable.

“It’s better than steroids,” said one player development executive about the benefits, which have been demonstrated by major league pitchers in real time before. Trevor Bauer, after making some comments about how a pitcher could add spin rate and throwing some shade at Astros pitchers, ended up doing what can only be described as a public experiment when it appears he added spin rate to his fastball for one inning in 2018, when he was with Cleveland.

“For eight years I’ve been trying to figure out how to increase the spin on my fastball because I’d identified it way back then as such a massive advantage,” Bauer himself wrote in a piece for The Players’ Tribune. “I knew that if I could learn to increase it through training and technique, it would be huge. But eight years later, I haven’t found any other way except using foreign substances.”

It wasn’t for a lack of experimentation.

But what if you are not looking to use a foreign substance but want to try and increase your spin rate?

Professional pitcher and vlogger Robby Rowland recently put out a video where he shared his theory on what he thought helped him unlock additional spin rate from his fastball by gripping the ball by the seam and ripping down with his fingertips. He explains it more detail here:

This is interesting especially when you think about how slick professional baseballs are and wanting to find a way to get a better grip on the ball and create the friction to spin the ball of your fingers. The seams may be the only spot to create natural tack.

After having watched Pitching Ninja, Rob Friedman’s interview with Professor Barton Smith discussing Seamed Shift Wake, I wonder how much of the increase is in actual spin forced on the ball versus the change in seam orientation Robby is now experimenting with by where he places his fingers. 

3 things I have done to naturally increase my spin rate

I don’t think I have the answers but I track my stuff pretty well. The first thing I did was increase the spin efficiency on my fastball. Years ago, my pitching coach Scott Lacey showed me with Rapsodo and video how I was cutting almost all my pitches. He had me focus on just throwing a four seam and slider and remove other pitches for now. Earlier this year, I did an experiment where I showed how using Clean Fuego before throwing a baseball helped increase my spin efficiency and total spin by over 200 rpm. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Play Ball Kid – Sammy (@playballkid)

Secondly, I have really started throwing a football regularly these past few weeks and feeling my body sequence better (while also using the Core Velocity Belt) and focusing on throwing cleaner spirals. I have been tracking the results of my sequencing with video and ProPlayAI. 

Getting a Grip on Spin Rate

However, it is the third thing that has the most questions for me. During this time my grip strength has increased significantly to around 125. This is something I’ve been curious about for a while when I saw that grip strength could also correlate with bat speed. 

I’ve had conversations with coaches like Austin Wasserman who shared how he has seen some of the healthiest throwers have the strongest grip strength compared to his average throwers. Cesar Garcia, owner of Indoorance Sports and Complete Game Gloves, had a similar discussion with Kevin Poppe about finger and grip strength. That grip strength may also help protect the UCL. Professional pitcher Tim Dillard told me he has been using Theraband hand exercise balls for years and he has had a 20 year pro career. He kept one in his bag, in his car, etc. I’ve been using it for the last couple of years and it is why it is one of the items listed on the best gifts for baseball players. 

Bill Miller, author of Swing Fast, has also been looking at two different kinds of grip strength. Overall and immediate. How much grip strength do you have in an instant squeeze on a dynamometer. Does that extra grip strength or finger strength transfer more force to the ball by sticking to the index and middle fingers better?

What have you seen work on increasing spin rate? Have you tried these 3 ways yet?

Filed Under: Pitching, Training Equipment Tagged With: fastball, grip strength, pitchlogic, rapsodo, spin efficiency, spin rate

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