EP91 – Safe Strength Exercises & Optimal Bullpen Length for Pitchers

In episode 91, Dan discusses what parents should look for in a strength coach via the exercises they prescribe in a training program. In the 90-second mindset, he discusses the FIRST thing every player should do this offseason. The question of the week is about bullpen length for youth pitchers – how many pitches should be in a bullpen?

To submit a question for the Q&A segment, email a voice recording to Dan at hello@danblewett.com.Want to support the show? Buy a copy of Dear Baseball Gods on Kindle or Paperback, or listen on audiobook. Or, pick up Pitching Isn’t Complicated, his advanced-but-understandable pitching manual.Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online pitching courses or his mental skills course. Use code BASEBALL GODS to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener.Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get a free pitching checklist, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Danblewett.com

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EP91 Full Transcript – EP91 – Safe Strength Exercises & Optimal Bullpen Length for Pitchers

You’re listening to the deer baseball gods podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn advanced concepts in baseball. Explain simply I’m here to guide you on your baseball journey and help you paddle through. What’s now an ocean of misinformation, guru wisdom, an overly technical diamondbabble.

Welcome back. I’m Dan Blewett. This is the dear baseball gods podcast in today’s episode. We’ve got three great topics. Number one. We’re gonna talk about the safety of lifting exercises and what the standards should be for you as a parent or coach a number two, we’re going to talk about what should the first focus be when you’re approaching your next off season, which is actually rapidly coming up, even though we’ve had sort of a, a nonexistent in season this year in 2020.

And lastly, my listener question is what should be a proper bullpen length for a 14 year old? And I will cover a couple of other ages as well. Okay. First thing. So if you’ve been on, uh, Twitter recently, and of course this is July 28th ish, 2020. If you’ve been on my Twitter recently, you noticed, I re posted a, one of my videos called our front squats safe for pitchers.

And the front squat is a unique exercise in that there’s three different ways. You can do it as far as your arms go. So the, the way you hold the bar on the front of your shoulders. So if you’re not familiar with the front squat, Um, definitely look it up on, on YouTube, but basically the bar sits on the front of your shoulders and it’s butted up against your throat.

So the barbell is held there and what the front squat does is because of the air, anterior positioning of the bar anteaters, it means the front of your body because of the barbell yeah. Is on the front of your body. And so the back of your body, like a traditional back squat, It forces your torso to step up a right better.

It forces more core recruitment. It forces your upper back to become stronger and more rigid. And it places more of the emphasis on your quads. And it allows most athletes to squat deeper and more safely because they can ditch the barbell forward if taught properly how to do this. So this is one of the first things we would teach our kids is how to get rid of the bar safely, because basically you can just dump it forward.

As long as you’re using those plastic rubber bumper plates. So for us in all my years, as a strength coach, working with baseball players and softball players and all athletes, the front squall was a stable for us. It’s a really tough exercise. It’s great for us body strength. It’s great for mental toughness and it’s very safe.

It’s a lot. You basically can’t do a front squat wrong. In the sense that your, your lower back can’t round, because the barbell will have dumped forward by the time that happens on the back squat, that’s not true. You can have a very round lower back, which is very unsafe despite having the bar in the proper position, right.

You could still be squatting. So that’s one of the safety aspects. So the front squat is, is my example here today. Uh, but we’re also gonna talk about Olympic lifts. So the front squat can be done with three grip variations. Number one is to believe they call this the bodybuilders grip, which is the cross arm grip, which basically the bar will sit on the front of your shoulders.

You’ll cross your arms and hold the bar in place by pushing it there with your fingers and your thumb. That one is harder to keep the bar in place, but really not that part at all. It’s just harder than the other two. Most people would say. Um, but what it does is it doesn’t force your elbows into this up and over position that becomes really difficult for it.

The second version is called the front rack position, and this is the way this is the position that you would. Do the front squat, if you’re doing a hang clean or a clean and jerk. So when you do a clean and jerk, which is an Olympic lift, you’re pulling the barbell off the ground and then you’re getting underneath it.

As you pull it up into this front rack position, then you go to the bottom, you squat it up and that’s a full, clean and jerk. So the front squat with the arms, the elbows sticking straight ahead, the risks are bent back about as far as they can go, the fingers are bent back to underneath the bar. You probably, if you’re familiar at all with lifting weights, you know what the front rack position looks like, and this is a hard position to get into.

You have to have significant risk mobility, finger mobility, and elbow mobility, and shoulder mobility to get your elbows up so that the bar stays where it needs to go. And. The elbows are folded back in. Okay. Angled a little bit slightly into the valgus position. The valgus position is the way the elbow lays back.

When you’re throwing a baseball into that gross position that we’ve seen, you know, all these, uh, major league pitchers, their arms get into everyone. And when you throw your elbow lays back into the valgus position, so. The other, uh, variation is it’s sort of a hybrid, it’s called the strap method and you take lifting straps, you put them on the bar and you grab them as close to the bars.

You can, and you pull up on them essentially. So it’s kind of a, it’s like the front rack position, but you’re using the straps, which doesn’t require near nearly as much wrist and finger mobility. You don’t have to get your hands all the way underneath the bar. Just a couple of inches above it to hold it in place like that.

So when you’re talking about training a baseball player, all of your exercises should be specific to them. And the person’s specifically. So not just baseball players specific, but that given athlete specific. Now, when you start talking about how much stress. A baseball player, not just a pitcher’s elbow goes through, you’re constantly throwing elbows, constantly laying back, you know, pitchers have elbow problems pretty regularly, right?

That’s a common baseball injury, whether it’s a surgical like Tommy, John, or something major, or if it’s just tendonitis or any of those just general aches and pains. The elbow is obviously one of the things we’re always trying to protect. So to put the elbow back into that valgus position, into that front rack position.

When you’re choosing these three different variations, you say, okay, which ones are going to have the most stress added to an already fatigued baseball players arm? And the clear answer is the front is the front rack position. The cross arm grip is tougher to maintain good upright posture and good and good bar positioning.

But it’s essentially, there’s no stress on the elbow and it’s just takes a little more effort. Sometimes the strap position is a great hybrid. It’s not hard on the elbows. Doesn’t put it in the same position. Uh, it’s a little bit tougher to keep the bar stable, but overall it’s still a very good choice.

Whereas the front rack position is probably the most stressful and elbows that are already very stressed from baseball. That’s the point. So if you’re a parent taking your kid to a strength conditioning facility under a strength coach, you would be correct to ask. Why would you choose if they’re saying, Hey, we’re going to teach your son front squats with a front rack position.

You’d say, why would you choose that variation given other options that are clearly anatomically more elbow friendly than that one? And that’s a very valid question to ask. And so this is my overall point using front squats and Olympic lifts in general, because I feel, you know, this was for this front right position.

It applies equally to hang cleans. It applies equally to clean and jerks, obviously. So if you don’t like the front right position, you’re equally not going to like hang cleans that much power cleans in general or clean and jerks for competitive baseball players. Cause your elbow is your moneymaker.

Right? So why put extra stress on it when you don’t necessarily have to now? Granted all strength training and physical therapy essentially falls. The said principle, which has specific adaptations to imposed demands, which means if you put it heavy barbell on your back and squat down and squat up your body is going to specifically adapt.

Meaning it’s going to strengthen the back and the legs to the imposed demands, which are the weight of this barbell. That’s now on my spine, right? That’s how we grow. You grab a bicep, you grab a 20 pound dumbbell and you curl it a million times. Your bicep is going to grow stronger and a little bit bigger because you’re specifically imposing these new demands of resistance on your biceps.

So sure you could say that everything that we, every bit of stress that we add to the body makes it stronger. Right. But there’s obviously a breaking point and we all intuitively know that we all know that you can’t just squat, squat, squat, squat, squat, and not expect to start having knee pain or maybe a torn muscle at some point, because it becomes too much.

And with baseball players, their repetitive use of their throwing arm and the arm laying back and the valgus position being so fast and explosive. There’s already a significant amount of repetitive use on the throwing arms. Then the question is, should we add more of that similar stress during training and the answer’s probably no, in that situation, you know, just like we could do like chin ups or an amazing exercise for baseball players, but if you do them to access, you do get really barky elbows.

You get very fatigued forearms. It’s putting a lot of force through that joint. So you have to do everything. To the right dosage and choosing the right variations to stay safe. And this is where it just takes having a good experience, strength coach, who doesn’t just work in the industry, but also has a good amount of experience with baseball players.

So this whole talk is basically to urge you as parents, as coaches or as players to make informed decisions. Cause I’ll tell you right now, as I owned my own strength conditioning facility for nine years. We chose exercises on the safe end of every continuum, knowing that if a parent comes back to us and says, Hey, did he absolutely have to do this exercise that hurt him to get better, to reach his goals?

We always sort of asked ourselves that question. You know, if someone says, Hey, was this exercise absolutely necessary for my son or my daughter? To meet her goals one day, given other options available and the, and the things you’re trying to target and her program and all that stuff, the answer needs to be yes.

And if the answer is ever no, which in the case of the front squat, you could say is doing it in the front row, front rack position, absolutely imperative to my baseball players, career development, you could say. No, the only good answer is no, you could do the front room and they could never be hurt. And that could be completely fine for them.

I’m not saying it’s an inherently dangerous thing, but given alternatives. The best two answers that fit. That question are the cross arm grip and the strap hybrid grip, the front rack position. The front rack position is probably the most potentially stressful position. And as such fails, that question is this essential to my kids.

Development there’s deadlifts. There’s, you know, deadlifts are one of the, probably the least safe exercises for young athletes. There’s many variations of the deadlift that are safer. So you can often swap in one of those where you get a better balance of risk and reward of safety to efficacy, just like anything else.

So again, my urging is as a parent, stick around. If you take your kid to a strength and conditioning, professional, look them up, do some digging. Uh, you don’t have to be there in the facility the whole time, but early in the early going, I would just Snoop a little bit, observe a little bit, just get a feel for how they coach and what they’re doing.

And, and if it seems like they have a good idea and also do your homework before sending them there in general. Um, because again, you want people that are experienced. You want people that are flexible and open minded about. Why they’re doing what they’re doing, because again, exercises are tools to make your son or daughter better, and any tool can be swapped out.

All right. And our 92nd mindset, let’s talk about the off season, which is approaching soon. What should the first thing that you do in the off season? For next year, just to start to be ready. And I’m going to take a unique approach to this. And what I mean is the first thing you should do is figure out what you can do for free to increase your training effects this winter.

So before you say, okay, let’s we have got X amount of dollars to spend in our budget for my son’s training. Um, you know, which coach should we go to? Which facilities should we go through? Should we buy a new blast motion sensor? Or should we buy this thing or this, this device or that device before you, you start spending a single dime, you should sit down with your son and say, what are you doing?

Add to your workload that is free. That is just practice. That will make you better next year compared to last year. And so for an infield, that could be, I’m going to spend an extra. 30 minutes, twice a week, going down to the local tennis court and throwing tennis balls to myself to work on my end fielding.

I can bounce the ball, play wall ball, and work on my, um, my fielding technique. It could be as a catcher, you know, mom, can you throw me balls to block in the backyard for 15 minutes, twice a week. Dad, can you hit me fly balls and extra 15 minutes twice a week. This year. Pick something like that. First, before you start allocating money, you start buying gadgets, you start buying gear, whatever it is, you commit to an expensive training regimen.

Find the things that you can do that are free. That are going to make a big difference. There just practice, go to the local field, go local tennis court. You’d be surprised how much you could do on a tennis court with a tennis ball, whether you’re infielder, outfielder, pitcher catcher, there’s a loss of you can work on.

I know lots of guys from my generation and before grew up wandering off and playing baseball by themselves. You know, that was something that we did. So this off season find the first thing. That’s free that you can do to make a big impact next year and then stick to it. Alright, now it’s time for our listener Q and a portion of the show.

If you have a question you’d like answered on the show, please email a voice recording to hello@danblewett.com.

All right. And our question of the week is from Steve. Hi coach. This is Steve from Winchester, California. I am a big fan of your YouTube channel and podcasts. I have a question for you. I have a 14 year old son that is a pitcher. He throws five or six days per week, including a bullpen day for a child, his age, about how many pitches should he be throwing during a bullpen session.

Thank you. All right. Thanks so much for your question, Steve. I really appreciate, and it’s a good one. I get this question a lot. So basically the standard bullpen for every pitcher, uh, during the season or when it’s not. You know, a starting situation where you’re trying to really ramp your pitch. Count up is 30 to 45 pitches.

That’s the, the gold standard for all ages. Now, if you’re say 10 and under, it’s probably 30, maybe a little less, and it doesn’t really have to get higher than 45 because basically your goal, the bullpen is to get your work in and kind of get out. You don’t want to be fatiguing yourself too much because there’s lots of throwing to be done.

During the week. So the thing to remember is a bullpen is one thing within the scope of your total week of throwing. So especially for a youth pitcher, you’re probably gonna be flying shortstop or center field, or right field or catcher or whatever on your Tuesday night game. Then again on Thursday, then again on Saturday.

So you’re getting a lot of throwing on those days, even if you’re not pitching and that is accumulating on your arm, that’s, you know, it’s a good amount of throwing. Then, you know, if you go practice on Monday, you’re going to make 150 throws at practice with your team. Those throws add up very quickly. I learned that when our team wore motive, sensor on every player on their arms for an entire season, you’d be surprised how much you throw at practice.

Um, and then adding bullpens on to that, those numbers just continue to climb really significantly. Now what I’ll say is. The only times you really go above 45 pitches in a bullpen is when you’re a starter. And you’re trying to lengthen your pitch, count out to start the season. So for college teams, you know, there’s, there’s no way around this to get your starters pitch, count up, you’ll start 30, 45 pitches.

Then you’ll go to 55, 60, 65, 75, and maybe up to 80. And no one ever really goes above 80 pitches in a bullpen. And again, those are only used for. Pre season, lengthening air out, lengthening yourself out so you can hit the ground running on game one. And even then in the F in your first game of the season, you’re probably going to throw hopefully 60 to 75 pitches.

Tops are really closer to 60, especially if you’re an older guy. Now, if you’re younger guy, hopefully that first outing is, you know, two winnings up to maybe 40 or 50 pitches, but I’m not going to get too far off track here. So basically. Remind yourself that the standard bullpen is 30 to 45 pitches. If you’re not going to throw for a while.

So say it’s a Tuesday and you’re not really gonna have much practice as a team where you’re not gonna have a game until Saturday. So you’ve got Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So with three days off, you’d be fine. Find throwing 50, 55 pitches in a bullpen. If you’re kind of considering that more of like your outing for the week, rather than just like your practice in between outings.

And this is again where it gets tricky. So let’s go through two scenarios here. So scenario one, Is you’re going to pitch and relief on a Tuesday night game. And then maybe you start on Saturday and that could be a standard thing for a youth player. So you throw 40, which was on Tuesday and 80 pitches on Saturday.

You’re going to throw a bullpen somewhere between there, right? So it’s, you’re probably not gonna throw a bullpen on Sunday or Monday. You’re gonna be recovering for your outing on Tuesday. So you’d have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to get some amount of work in for Saturday. So it would probably be Thursday.

Cause you have you pitched on it. You threw 40 pitches on Tuesday. You’d probably be off or just play light catch Wednesday, Thursday. You’d probably do a 30 pitch bullpen and it probably be 70% effort or 50% effort just to get downhill. We’ll throw all your different grips, throw from the stretch, throw from the windup, throw to both sides of the plate, get in and get out.

Then Friday you’d play like cats or take off and then Saturday pitch again. So that’s scenario one and that’s pretty typical for an in season for a pitcher who will also, again, might be playing the infield or outfield or whatever scenario two, let’s say you only are going to start on Saturday. So you’re gonna throw 80 pitches on Saturday.

Well, now, Uh, ignoring. Let’s see you haven’t had that start yet. So Monday you’d probably throw maybe a 45 pitch bullpen Tuesday. Maybe you take off Wednesday, maybe long toss. You have team practice Thursday. Cause we’re getting close. Now. This is probably a 30, 35 pitch bullpen, probably 75% effort. The Monday bullpens, probably a little harder, maybe like 75, 90% effort.

And then Friday you’ll be off. And then Saturday you’d pitch. So. The, the big thing with bullpens is there’s typically going to be two intensities, 50% effort, which typically comes out at about 75% of your normal velocity and then 75% effort, which typically comes out at about 90% of your total velocity.

So if you throw 80 miles per hour and you throw a 75% effort bullpen, that’s going to be around 72 miles per hour ish, something like that. That’s kind of how pitchers perceive it. And the research has corroborated this. And if you throw 80 miles per hour, when you throw a 50% effort bullpen, it’s probably going to come out like 65, something like that.

And there’s also those sort of like a cat below that where. Even though, you know, 70% of 80 is 24 miles per hour off 24 off of 80. He is 66. I’m sorry, 56. You probably wouldn’t throw a 56 mile per hour bullpen because from 60 feet, six inches, that’s not really going to make it to the plate for it. Well, and that’s part of it too.

Once you get to the 60 foot, uh, Distance for the 90 foot diamond, you can’t really go below a certain minimum of minimum of speed because then the trajectory that you throw, everything doesn’t really make sense. You have to start to loft it up almost like 56 miles per hour. It doesn’t make it to the plate essentially without starting to arc it up slightly.

So that’s something to consider as well. The guy who throws 90 or 95 can take a lot more off percentage wise and it’s still kind of crisp. It’s still downhill. All of this stuff kind of resembles his game stuff. Whereas when you throw 70 and you’re throwing 60 foot six inches, and now you’re throwing half speed need, you know, 50% effort.

That’s like 50 miles per hour. It doesn’t didn’t really fly the same. So that’s something to consider as well. But anyway, let me sum this up in general, 30, 30 to 45 pitches is normal. 50 to 75% effort is normal for a bullpen. You would only really go up into the 50 plus pitch range. If you have a bunch of days off, I’d say three plus, and you really want to work on a bunch of stuff.

So it’s like, this is my outing for the week. That’s fine. But when you’re taking your bullpens as your work between outings, then they should be closer to the 30 pitch range. All right. Great question. Thanks so much for submitting and, uh, I really appreciate it. Well, that’s it for today’s episode of dear baseball gods.

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As always hustle and stay pious I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time. .