Applying the deliberate practice principles to your throwing

In my last post, I talked about the deliberate practice principles laid out in the book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.

To refresh, deliberate practice involves

• Working on a specific aspect of performance
• High repetition
• Continuously available feedback
• Highly demanding mentally
• Isn’t (usually) much fun

In this post I’m going to talk mainly about the third piece of the puzzle, focusing primarily on how it relates to improving throwing mechanics and velocity.

Feedback and throwing mechanics:

To start, you’re probably wondering why “throwing mechanics” and not “pitching mechanics.” Paul Nyman of SETPRO was the first to make the clear distinction between these two activities. Pitching is about doing everything you can do get the batter out, whereas throwing refers to the specific movement patterns/sequences that your body goes through to apply force to the ball. When you hear people talking about posting leg position or hand break timing or whatever, what they are really referring to is a player’s throwing mechanics.

Feedback is particularly under-appreciated when it comes to players and velocity development. When was the last time your pitching coach brought a radar gun to your team’s bullpen sessions? I can tell you that, in my experience, at the high school level and below this form of feedback is almost nonexistent.

So how do you make sure that you’re applying the continuous feedback principle and aren’t wasting your practice time on empty repetitions? Here are a couple ideas…

Max effort long toss

This form of throw training has built in feedback, in that you can see how far the ball traveled as compared to your previous best of the day, week, month or year.

How to perform max effort long toss? You basically slowly work out to your max distance for the day ramping up the intensity, and then work your way back in to 60 feet or so, keeping the same intensity that your furthest throw had, constantly listening to your arm and stopping if anything doesn’t feel right. Check out Alan Jaeger’s videos for an example of what this type of training looks like:

Max effort throwing with radar gun

This form of throw training is particularly effective for pitchers working on velocity from the mound or those who are unable to long toss out to max distance for whatever reason. It’s astounding how many coaches will tell you “the velocity will come, don’t worry about it.” By not measuring velocity, they are giving their players an out. They are not holding their players accountable for their performance, and more importantly they are not providing players with adequate feedback to judge their performance. Few pitchers can actually differentiate between the feel of an 82 and an 85 mph fastball…and it is precisely these fine fluctuations that need to be identified immediately by radar feedback to reproduce similar performance. The player throws a pitch at 83 and the next pitch at 85. Hey! I wonder what I did differently on that throw than the previous one. That was more efficient; let me try to repeat that!! With radar feedback, the player not only learns how to apply more effort (keyword: intent) into their throws, but also learns how small variations in mechanics affect the end velocity. Without radar, 83 feels like 85 and your hope of gaining velocity (not counting strength gains) is severely compromised.

Other ideas for incorporating feedback into your throwing or pitching work:

Control: obviously, if a pitcher is throwing to a catcher they will be able to see the location of each pitch almost instantly. But consider upping the ante a bit in your control sessions. Record balls and strikes, taking a break every 12 or so pitches (roughly how many you aim to throw in an inning). Set goals for yourself; try to get at least 8 out of the 12 in the location you wanted. Take a break in between “innings” and make adjustments where necessary. Keep records of your progress and try to match or beat your previous best with each session.

Control + Velocity: as above, but try to hit a set minimum velocity for each pitch. You don’t want to teach yourself to baby the ball into the zone to get a strike. Learn to merge your control sessions with your all-out velocity sessions.

Mechanics: if you’re trying to pinpoint a specific mechanical flaw in your delivery and develop a plan of attack, don’t hesitate to get out the video camera. Ideally you want a video camera that allows you to easily go through your throws frame by frame every 3-5 throws to gauge progress. It’s slow and grueling, but if you’re looking to alter something mechanically, going by “feel” is not always the best option. An alternative that may be used depending on the situation is a mirror. I do some of my throwing into a net from a short distance away (10-15 feet). Setting up a large mirror behind the net that allows me to view my entire body head to toe throughout the delivery is a method that, when used carefully, has helped me make certain mechanical changes. This specific kind of direct feedback (which occurs during the movement) can be dangerous though because it poses the risk of dependency.

If you have the luxury of a qualified throwing mechanics expert monitoring your sessions, this is another valuable form of feedback, although even the best are not humanly capable of picking up on the minute details that video can. For example, the difference between fanning the shoulders open at landing vs. keeping the shoulders closed can be a difference in timing of as little as 2 frames on video, or under 1/10 of a second. Also, as a player, being able to see your faults on video gives you a much better idea of what you need to work on than just hearing it from an instructor or even having them demonstrate it for you.

Numerous other methods exist for how to apply feedback to your throwing, but since I’m not familiar with them all (and obviously don’t have room to address them all) I’ll make some general comments about these methods, which may include things like towel drills, marking landing spot on the mound with tape, wall drills, etc. My feeling is that these drills or methods should be designed based on a solid knowledge of elite level throwing mechanics and should be as specific as possible to this process from a motor learning standpoint without ingraining improper movement patterns.

For example, a drill in which you’re looking down at the ground the entire time to try to work on where your front foot lands is going to have little transfer to the mound when you’re looking at a target. A towel drill performed to encourage a linear follow-through (primarily trunk flexion) as opposed to a rotational follow-through may also have poor (and potentially negative) transfer if done with enough repetitions to ingrain the movement, as might a slow-motion arm action drill that encourages keeping the elbows in a line as opposed to allowing the scapula to pinch and take the elbows behind the line of the shoulders. Always ask the question: why am I doing this drill? And does this reflect what elite throwers do?

As always, feel free to post questions or comments below. My email is bbrewster51@gmail.com