First, get some blood flowing. 5 minutes of moving around at a good pace to build some muscle and joint warmth will improve all of the stretches.

I am listing these exercises in the most fluid and logical sequence, so do them in this order and they will flow together nicely.

1. IT Band

IT Band Stretch

The IT band is an aponeurosis, or flat tendon band, that stretches from the lateral hip to the knee. This is tight on many athletes, and can restrict the thigh in multiple planes of movement, as well as cause knee problems.

To stretch, straighten one leg and cross the other in front. Lean into a wall while keeping the stretching leg straight, and you will feel a stretch down the outside of the leg.

2. Hip External Rotators

Hip External Rotator Stretch - Finish Position

If you don’t know why you should be stretching these, check out my article on hip flexibility. This hits the external rotators hard.

Keep your feet flat, toes facing forward. Bottom of the feet never leave the ground. Bring your knees toward the midline of you bottom as far as you can, and hold.

3. Sleeper Stretch

Sleeper Stretch

From the external rotator stretch, roll right onto your side into the sleeper stretch. If you haven’t read my article on performing this properly, make sure you do…

4. Thoracic Spine Mobility

From the sleeper stretch position, stay on your side and pull your hips up to 90 degrees.

5. No Money

Sit up and cross your legs indian-style. This will help open up your hips as you perform the No Money, which stretches the chest and activates the scapulas.

Start

Pin your elbows to your side, and open your arms up as far as they will go, keeping your elbows at 90. Hold at the finish position.

Finish

6. Sumo Squat

Sumo Squat

Stand up. What you started while sitting indian-style will improve as you perform the sumo squat. Widen your feet beyond shoulder-width and squat, getting your thighs parallel with the floor. If you can do this easily, widen your feet for your next two repetitions (more on sets and reps at the end). This doesn’t feel good, but opens up your hips laterally.

7. Warrior Lunge

Warrior Lunge

Move to a box, bench or whatever, and put one foot on it, keeping one foot on the ground. With arms overhead, lean in as far as you can to stretch your hip flexors.

8. Quad-Lunge

Quad Lunge. Notice the Knee is Behind the Hip

Kneel in a lunge position behind said box or object, and position your back knee BEHIND your back hip. Pull your back foot to your butt and lean forward into the stretch. This is the mack daddy of quad and hip flexor stretches.

9. Spiderman with/hamstring kickback

Big Step to Hand then reach to floor with forearm

Kick your knee back to straighten, and lift your front toe

Move into a pushup position, and bring your right foot up next to your right hand. Lean into the floor with your right forearm parallel to the ground. Next, plant your right hand OUTSIDE your right foot, and kick your right knee backward while lifting your right toe off the ground. The goal is to straighten the right leg. Return foot when done, and repeat on left side.

10. Calf and Soleus

Stay in pushup position, and cross the right foot over the left, and shift weight back while keeping leg straight to stretch the left calf. Then, slightly bend the left leg and continue stretching, to hit the soleus muscle and ankle.

11. Shoulder Joint / Lats

From pushup position, go to your knees. Lay your forearms on the floor in front of you, parallel to each other. Keep the forearms completely on the floor and push your hips and weight back. You will feel a good stretch through your armpit region. Arise when finished.

12. Triceps / Lats

Triceps / Lat Stretch

Make your arm into a chicken wing above your head, and pull your elbow across the midline of your body. You’ve done this since middle school gym class.

13. Shoulder stretches

Arm Across. This gets the posterior deltoid and rotator cuff muscles.

Arm behind, pull at the elbow in line with the forearm. This gets the middle deltoid

Arm back and down. This hits the anterior deltoid. Gently pull the arm down straight from the wrist and keep your posture tall and upright.

14. Forearm flexors and extensors

Flexors: Point fingers to sky and pull palm and fingers back.

Extensors: Point fingers down and press the hand down toward the bottom of the forearm.

Note the author's disgusting range of motion. Actual stretching results may vary.

So there ya have it. Run through those stretches and you will be loose and ready to go. Every exercise should be done 2-3 times with a 20-30 second hold in the stretched or finish position. Problem areas might need more attention, and very loose areas may not need as much.

There is research out there saying that static stretching reduces a muscle’s capacity for contraction immediately after, but the harm done from inflexibility, especially in pitchers, is much more serious than that concern, which is negligible at best. A good dynamic warm up with CNS activation after stretching should wake your muscles up just fine. I usually run through this stretching routine 1-1.5 hours before a start, then start my dynamic warm up 35-40 minutes before a game.  If you’re a reliever, then doing this before the game starts or early on in the bullpen is probably the way to go. This same routine can be done after an outing as well, either in whole or in part with emphasis on your tightest joints.

Step 1: Identify The Clutter

Ask yourself these questions:

• What have I been doing?
• Why have I been doing it?
• Have I gotten the results I had been training for?
• How do I currently feel?

This seems really basic and obvious, but you would be surprised how few people actually take the time to examine their daily routines (after all, a routine is by definition minimally variable).  Those who are hungry for new results overhaul their lives when things stop progressing.  As time passes and an athlete gets closer or farther from their season, training methodology must change.  If one never takes time to make sure his goals and training are congruent, then hard work will be in vain – working hard AND SMART is what world-class athletes do.

Step 2: Compare to the Past

• How do I feel compared to when I used to do things differently? Do I feel better or worse?
• Has my body changed in positive ways?
• Have I performed better as a result of new techniques?

Step 3: Test New Variables

Nothing works for everyone, and results vary from person to person.  If you feel more fatigue, aren’t enhancing your performance, or have reached a plateau, then shame on you if you don’t try something new.  Your body will always become more efficient at any given exercise or program over time, resulting in diminishing returns.  Ever see those folks who go to the gym and perform the same routine for years? Of course you have; those are the folks who never get new results.

Even when you are being diligent with a set routine of arm care given to you by a therapist, team, or strength coach, for example, your body will still adapt to it over time.  How do you combat this? You ask? Changing your angle of pull is one of the easiest ways.

Take Blackburns, for example.  The 6 exercise Blackburn series is an incredible routine to increase scapular stability.  Yet, you’ll plateau at these just like any other exercise.  By changing the angle of pull, you can created a new stimulus for your muscles with a very simple tweak.

Y Raise on a Flat Bench

Y Raise on a 45 Degree Bench

Performing Blackburns, for example, at a 45 degree angle will change the muscle recruitment on the rotator cuff when compared with performing them on a flat bench, thus giving your muscles a new stimulus.  More scapular depression is achieved and the rhomboids are more strongly recruited when you use a steeper angle for prone rotator cuff and stabilizer work.  You could use any angle from 0-45, but any higher than that would start getting away from the rotator cuff and the scapula stabilizers that we want to hit using Blackburns.  Simple tweaks like these can be the push you need to get through a plateau and keep making progress.

There are lots of ways to vary your training which I will highlight in more depth in an upcoming article.

Step 4: Throw Out That Which Isn’t Working

I’ll give you an example of a recent change I made using steps 1-4, just on the hunch that it might be holding me back: I had been using 4lb weights for my standing and prone shoulder circuit for the past 2 years now, but I had only moved up to that weight when a friend of mine told me that 4lb was the “healthy pro” standard for his organization.  I was happily using 2lb weights (and throwing harder than I ever had), until he told me that 2lbs was the weight only rehab guys were using for their shoulder work.  So, I graduated to the heavier weight, and never threw as hard again as I did that fall.  Was it the extra 2lbs? I couldn’t say.

So just recently, suffering through a few week bout of dead-arm, I decided to go lighter.  I am plenty strong in my shoulder, with no popping, clicking or instability to speak of (it didn’t used to be that way), so I figured I could maintain that level of strength by changing my rep and weight scheme.

I used to do this:

• (3x/week) 2×12-15 with 4lb

Now I do this:

• (3x/week)  1×5 w/5lb ; 2×15 w/2lb

Why did I do this? The short set of 5 reps with the 5lb weights will make sure I maintain maximal strength, but don’t tire myself out, while the 2 sets of 15 will give me a lower workload while still giving my muscles endurance and therapeutic work.  I never felt fatigued using 4lb weights, but my velocity wasn’t as high as I felt it should be, so I made a choice to change it up and see how it goes, to see if there was something actually holding me back. So far, I still feel strong, stable, bounce back quickly and feel fresh. Cool.

Step 5: Restock Your Shelves With Fresh Methods

If you’re plateaued, fatigued, or underperforming, get some fresh training in your life!  As we have been discussing, you can get new stimuli to your muscles in a variety of ways…

If you’re fatigued, plateaued or underperforming (or suspect you might be):

• Change training volume
• Change weight
• Change both
• Try new variations
• Switch exercises altogether
• Try a week of active rest (if you’ve been going very hard for at least a few weeks)
• Enter a new training phase (more on periodization here)
• Get more sleep
• Re-examine your nutrition

If your performance is increasing:

Keep doing what you’re doing!  But, don’t forget to be introspective about it and be open to new methods because nothing works forever!

In an upcoming article I’ll share with you some easy tweaks for your shoulder work, forearm work and the sleeper stretch.

Posterior Deltoid and Infraspinatus Stretch

Pull the arm across the chest to feel a stretch in the back of the shoulder.  This will get the infraspinatus (a rotator cuff muscle) and the posterior deltoid.

This stretch can also be done at different angles across the body to get the muscles in a new direction.

Middle Deltoid Stretch

With the arm at 90°, grab the forearm and pull the arm across the back.  The range of motion won’t be very long, but you will feel a stretch in the middle aspect of your shoulder.

Anterior Deltoid Stretch

Keep your arm straight and pull directly down the middle of the back.

The key to this stretch is keeping good posture – maintain a high chest and keep your shoulders square.

You don’t want your shoulder to sag or rotate backward as you pull.  This would take the muscle out of proper position to  stretch.

Notes

In addition to standing, these three can also be done laying face down on the floor.

The perfect time to do them is right after sleeper stretches, as you can just stand up or roll over onto your stomach and complete your shoulder stretching circuit.

One major adaptation of the pitcher is in shoulder range of motion (ROM). Pitchers have incredible, otherworldly external rotation.  The average person couldn’t dream of contorting his arm in such a way.

My buddy Andrew Germuth showing off his external rotation

My buddy Andrew Germuth showing off his external rotation

And what price do we pitchers pay for enjoying such lavish external rotation?  You guessed it! A tight rotator cuff and a subsequent deficiency of internal rotation. (there is always a catch!)

So what?  Does it matter if a pitcher has poor shoulder range of motion internally?

The answer to this question is unequivocally “yes.” Any trainer or physical therapist will tell you that a lack of ROM in any joint is pathological and indicative of underlying problems.  Normal ROM should exist in all one’s joints, and if not, there is a probably a problem as to why.  In many populations these imbalances in flexibility might not impair day-to-day functioning, but for athletes and especially pitchers, inflexibility poses major problems.

Dr. Craig Morgan and colleagues are researching the link between elbow pain (up to and including full blown ligament tears requiring Tommy John surgery) and internal rotation.  What he is finding (as he found in me) is that a huge amount of pitchers coming to him have significant GIRD (glenohumeral internal rotation deficiency), and once that GIRD is reduced to an amount within 20 degrees of the internal rotation of the non-throwing shoulder, the pitchers very often return to throwing without pain.  Internal rotation deficits are caused by posterior shoulder capsule tightness, which can be alleviated using the sleeper stretch.  Restore your internal rotation ROM and you will be throwing healthier and harder.

The Sleeper Stretch

The basic form is as follows: lay on your hip with knees bent, with ankles in line with your spine.  Prop your head (or don’t if you like being uncomfortable) under a towel or pillow, your glove or whatever.  Extend your throwing arm out in front of you at 90°.  Keep your chest out and don’t lean back.

Sleeper Stretch Starting Position

Next you need to pinch your shoulder blades together, hard, and hold them that way throughout the stretch. This is crucial, and the stretch is useless without pinched blades because your shoulder will be in improper position.

The WRONG Way – Blades not pinched, shoulders misaligned

The CORRECT way - blades pinched, shoulders in better alignment

CORRECT – blades pinched, shoulders in better alignment

I held a pencil in the middle of my back for effect – think about holding something there while you perform the stretch.

Once your blades are held together, take your other hand and GENTLY push your arm toward the ground.  Don’t force it, just give it enough of a push to feel a stretch. I have to stretch mine 3 times daily to keep it loose, and from the beginning it will take a few weeks to really loosen up.  Forcing it won’t help, it will just cause more problems.

A good sleeper stretch

A good sleeper stretch

Notice how much internal rotation I have in the above picture: about 45 degrees. Once I go through this I gain about 10° more, but that’s it.  Watch what happens when I don’pinch and hold my blades together:

The WRONG way. If you look like this, your shoulder blades are not pinched

The WRONG way. If you look like this, your shoulder blades are not pinched.

If you see someone at the field doing the sleeper with their palm almost on the ground, correct them, because they are doing it wrongly.  Try it the right and wrong way so you feel the difference.  In proper position with blades pinched, if you have 45 degrees like I do, then you are looking great.  When I go in for checkups I measure symmetrical to my left. Everyone has a different setpoint, but no one can put their palm to the floor. It looks about the same, though, which is why players so often do it incorrectly.

Variations and Reps

So now you’ve mastered the form in the 90° position.  The three positions from which you will stretch are 90°, 70°, and 110° from your shoulder to your body. Stretch your arm for 3 sets of 30 seconds at each position.  Even at 70 and 110, keep a 90° angle with your forearm and upper arm.

Correct angle between forearm and upper arm

 Correct angle between forearm and upper arm

INCORRECT angle between forearm and upper arm

INCORRECT angle between forearm and upper arm

Proper stretch at 70 degrees from body

Proper stretch at 70 degrees from body

Proper stretch at 110 degrees from body

Proper stretch at 110 degrees from body

The orientation of muscle fibers in your rotator cuff varies, which is why stretching three positions is recommended.

So do your sleepers daily, and do them correctly.  If you do, you’ll be taking a huge step toward both keeping yourself injury-free, and picking up some MPHs. Flexibility plays a big role in velocity, and I picked up 3-4 from increasing my ROM in my shoulder and in my hips.

Additionally, check out my great new article and video on Sleeper Stretch Variations!

Update – Here is a video from the Morgan-Kalman clinic, where I was taught this stretch. Watch it!

**I am a strength coach and pitching instructor in the Central Illinois area. Personal training, pitching lessons, and custom training programs are among my available services. If you liked this post, please subscribe to my monthly newsletter – you will receive member-only tips, tricks and/or special offers on services and products.**
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Thanks for reading! -Dan Blewett