Throwing a Football Then Throwing 101: Newsletter 6/100

The Role of the Warm-up in your throwing.

This past weekend, I helped one of the NC area scouts out and drove about an hour up the road to check out a game he couldn't get to. I was there to watch the away team's starting pitcher, and boy did he not disappoint.

I showed up probably 30 minutes before the game, watching pitchers warm up can tell you a lot about who they are as a pitcher/person. Minutes went by, I was looking all over for who appeared to be the most locked in (generally it is very easy to tell who the starting pitcher is), and I couldn't pick anyone out. I looked for his jersey number and couldn't find anyone, and there was no one playing catch with a catcher.

20 minutes before first pitch, still no one. Another minute or two go by and the starter appears from the dugout with a football in hand. He proceeds to walk down the line and flip the football around. It is now about 14 minutes before the start of the game and he's playing catch with a football at about 90 feet, at this point I assumed the game started later than I thought. With 10 minutes left before the game, he finally puts the football down and starts flicking a baseball to his catcher from about 60 feet away, when he gives the thumbs up and walks to the bullpen mound. He then gets on the mound, flips 10 pitches at medium effort and then rips 2-3 heaters at the end.

All the scouts walk to the scouting section behind home plate, and sit down to wait for the bottom half of the first inning. First half goes pretty quick, and the starter for the away team rolls out on the mound.

He lobs his first warm-up pitch, and my radar reads 92. He gives the second pitch a little more effort and it's 94. Then he throws a few sliders, two change-ups and his last fastball of warm-ups is 96.

The batter steps in, and the first pitch is a fastball: 98. Then he throws a few sliders at 87-89 and gets into a 1-2 count. You can see the effort increase as he knows it's his chance to really let one go. The pitch comes in at 101.1 miles per hour. He proceeded to hold 96-101 for 4 innings, and controlled his pitches enough to really stay in the strike zone the whole outing.

This dude is a really exciting arm, and shows something that a lot of people miss when it comes to training and performance: the warm-up is there to help you perform at your best. You don't need a fancy drill progression, you need to warm the body up to do what it needs to do.

It's a Skill Issue: You Don’t Fix Yourself Pregame

Being really good at throwing boils down to a few main things, two of them being : output capacity and Skill. Output capacity can be defined as the maximum amount that a system can produce under normal operating conditions. Simply, how much power and force can you put into the ball as a pitcher. Skill can be defined as the technical capabilities of the pitcher, his mechanics, ability to throw off-speed and move athletically on the mound to accomplish the task of pitching.

Both of these factors are fully determined long before you step on the mound, your physical output capabilities are built up over years and the skill of throwing is an ever changing facet that requires you building up steady improvements over your entire career.

This pitcher exemplifies this, he might not know it, but his warm up routine is specifically what you would do if you are already dialed in on both fronts. There's no mechanical improvements that are dying to be made, and you are already strong and explosive enough in order to throw the ball as hard as you need.

When you get to this point as a thrower, you begin to realize what is actually necessary to compete. You need to move the body around and get used to the flow of throwing, but you don't need to spend 25 minutes on ultra specific drills. You need to spend enough time to feel comfortable on the mound, but you don't need 20-30 reps of all your pitches to all your locations.

To speak in comparison, we all have that one friend who shows up 5 minutes before the golf round, takes 3 swings on the range and shoots 74 and beats us. It's annoying as can be, but the relationship between practice and skill is important to understand.

Yes, skill is built by practice. Yes, practice helps to get you better. However, if you are way better than someone at golf, you'll likely beat them no matter what the situation. Skill has always been the bottleneck, your pregame routine won't save you from the fact that there are people way better than you.

This is why this pitcher can make it work, he is simply a very powerful athlete and incredibly good at throwing the baseball. Once you check these boxes, you just need to move around enough to feel good. You see it all the time in professional athletics, the best in the world might not have some elaborate warm-up, but they're still going to dominate, because they are the best.

Don't get me wrong, this player could benefit from a more structured warm-up. Having a set routine can help you build consistency and have something to fall back on when things don't go your way. But a routine will never replace being good, it simply won't.

Where is your focus?

How should this impact your training? It should help you keep it simple. Set standards in the weight room and progress them consistently. Add 5 pounds to the lift every week, and build your strength up over the course of months and years. 5 pounds added every week is more than enough if you stay consistent and give yourself time to be good.

Slowly improve your throw. Find one thing you do poorly and improve it. Give yourself time, if it was easy to throw 100, way more people would. Building a resilient throw takes time, and the only way to build it up consistently is by doing it over the course of years.

Massive jumps in velocity happen, but they are often the result of super low hanging fruit being found and improved, your pregame routine won't cause you to jump 5mph before your next start.

In today's age of pitching development, way more people need to recognize where performance like this comes from. Skill and power. The only things that can make you into an elite athlete, being more skilled than the rest and being more powerful than the rest. Put together both and you get something special.

John