Lessons I learned from My Velocity Training

    My journey to try and throw a baseball harder started in 2020 when my senior year of college baseball was canceled due to covid. The journey was long and hard with a lot of negatives and positives, but I was able to increase my velocity from the high 70's to 86 miles per hour. It took a lot of hard work in the weight room and throwing wise but overall, it gave me a greater appreciation for how hard it is to throw harder and it's not something that magically happens overnight. Hopefully this blog can give some athletes advice about what I did right and wrong in this throwing journey. 

    First off, I am going to talk about what went right in this throwing journey. In the weight room I pushed my body to new levels and got stronger than I ever had before. You have to do this to throw harder as if your body doesn't have adaptations, you will just remain the same. Also, I did a lot of mobility work and I recommend you try to stick to a mobility routine if you want to throw harder. Nutrition is also a very big part of the process, and you need to eat the right foods and enough calories to perform at your highest level when you are throwing or even lifting. You also have to be drinking a lot of water to maintain proper hydration levels. The last thing that I did was track my sleep every night and used a Whoop to measure my recovery levels every day. This is important because you need to be able to see how your body feels and what type of stress you should be putting on it that specific day. Overall, it takes what it takes to throw harder you have to be able to do these things day in and day out and track your progress over time. 

    I made a few mistakes that I will recommend people don't do if they want to be able to gain throwing velocity. The first is hopping around from program to program to find a way to throw harder. I used Robby Row, The 90 MPH Formula, and then Driveline Baseball. These are all smart baseball people and can help you get better, but I think that you're better off just choosing one and being consistent with it instead of hopping around from program to program. The second mistake would be I didn't build my program backwards and make it, so I was full strength going into the season. During this process even though I increased my velocity to 86mph eventually I got hurt because I didn't build my program backwards to be ramped up once the season started. It is most important to be ready to perform in game and it doesn't matter as much how fast you are throwing in a velocity session in the wintertime. 

    Overall, it helped me become a better coach going through this journey and hopefully this can help young pitchers develop velocity. Pitchers are throwing harder than ever but remember slow gains over time will be more productive for your health then getting a big jump then ending up injured. The process is hard but throwing harder for anyone is not impossible if you do the right things. 
   

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