It’s that time of year when you take all of the size and strength you’ve built in the weight room and start making it move…..FAST!

Plyometrics and ballistic movements are the name of the game, emphasizing the movement patterns that baseball players use most.  For my pitchers, this means exploding toward the plate and teaching their bodies to throw medicine balls at the speed of light.

Featured today are depth jumps and pitching push-offs.  Both work to build explosiveness in the lower half by developing greater Rate of Force Development (RFD) and muscle reactivity.

Depth jumps are simple and don’t require any added load, but are very neurologically demanding nonetheless.  Your reaction to the ground has to be lightning quick – as soon as you touch down your body needs to get back up as high as possible.  On our first day of our ballistic program we started with 3 sets of 6 reps, and we will be building on that in the coming 8-10 weeks.  People add inches to their verticals and improve their speed with this type of training, provided they already have the requisite strength.

Above we have Joe Lloyd, a pro pitcher who trains with me, performing push-offs. The goal here is simple: get out as far as you can as fast as you can.  Our goal is to build up the leg abductors and help launch the body toward the plate.  Pitchers who want to throw as hard as possible need to tap every possible avenue, including their push off down the mound.

Another angle…

Now these push-offs aren’t actually plyometrics, but rather just explosive movements.  The drill starts with the stride foot crossed over and in contact with the wall and the balance foot about 6-12 inches from the wall.  This allows us to load the back leg as the hips start to move forward, and the back leg powers the body forward right before balance would be lost .  This drill can help you lengthen your stride, if necessary, as well as get going forward with more power.

There are a ton of ways to vary and progress this exercise as well, which we will likely come back to in the near future…