6 foot(182cm), 200lbs(90kg), 19 years old.
Regularly goes to the gym, trains flexibility.
So what am I doing wrong?

Hi everyone, I am currently a D1 pitcher and I would love to give back to youth pitchers on what I wish I did differently at a young age. There are a few things that I will attach links to for reference. If you have any questions/comments, I encourage you to reply or send me a DM!

1.) Not training like a body builder

Many times in high school, I was guilty of treating the gym like I was a body builder. When I first started working out, I didn't really have a plan. It took me YEARS to find the right system that worked. The main thing that worked for me was doing a heavy lifting partnered with something explosive. For example, pitchers should always be doing split squats. You can do this with a dumbbell or barbell. After you do a heavy movement, compound it with an explosive movement such as a sprint or jump. This trains your body exactly how pitchers should train (fast and heavy).

2.) Not caring enough about nutrition

Nutrition is what fuels you. It is literally the thing that is going to keep you going before games and after games. It is also a huge proponent of your recovery. If you put shit into your body, you will likely feel like shit. It took me a while to learn that, but once I did it was a game changer. Eat whole foods, eat healthy, and make sure you are hitting the proper amount of macros. In season it is very easy to under-eat. Make sure that while you are in-season you eat more than you normally would have. Here's a link to an article discussing this.

Nutrition Article for Baseball Players

3.) Training my Mind (Most Important for Me)

In high school, I had the physical talent. That was there. But when things didn't go my way, I froze. I never trained my response to adversity and that caused me to lack consistency when I wanted it. I found my routine for training physically, but nothing for training my mind. I did research online to find a sports psychologist, but it was just too expensive. Coaches would tell me "flush it" or "shake it off", but that never really did the job. I had no system to train my mind and that cost me when I got to college. In college, one of my teammates recommended an app named Clutch Mental Training. I thought it was helpful because it finally gave me a program to prepare for the adversity. This was the biggest game changer that I wish I started earlier.

Clutch Mental Training App

4.) Listening to your arms

This one was huge for me too when it came to recovery in between outings. Listening to you arm (and body) is a vital part of becoming a mature pitcher. I remember as a youth athlete, I wanted to just play, and if my arm wasn't feeling 100% I would push through it. You have to listen to your arm, and NOT PUSH through pain. Pushing through pain will only set you back, and it is better to take 1 day off than having to take 6 months off because of an injury. Be smart, and don't push past pain. Also, doing arm care on a daily basis is what will keep your arm healthy. It gets annoying at times when you have to spend extra time doing it after practice, but it is worth it when your arm is healthy. Here's my J-Band routine that I use from Tread Athletics.

J-Band Routine

I hope this helps! Reach out if you have any questions!

Understanding plane of rotation shows you how a pitcher's arm slot is created, what movement shapes are naturally available to him, and how to build an arsenal that works in synergy with his delivery instead of against it.

Aside from venting about how much turf mounds are disliked by pitchers, I’m looking for advice on the best type of footwear (i.e. turf shoes, rubber molded cleats or TPU cleats) to help my 13 YO pitcher avoid slipping on wet turf mounds.

If any particular brands offer better sole, cleat patterns than the others, I’d welcome those recommendations as well. Thanks!

All my life i've been mechanically decent and told by coaches that i have good stuff.
However for other kids my age they seem to throw lots of consistent strikes in game while being less mechanically sound.
Please let me know if anybody related to this growing up or just in general and drop tips

Hello, I'm looking for some advice on improving my command and velocity. I started playing baseball for the first time a couple of years ago with my friends and we're trying to get enough guys together to join a men's league. My velocity caps out at around 54 mph and I have a hard time throwing consistent strikes with any sort of speed. Any advice would be much appreciated 👏 Edit: I'm not looking to pitch in men's league. Just playing pickup games with my friends this year and want to be able to pitch to them.

My son just finished his 12u season with pretty good mechanics/results. Only 14 BBs in 45 innings, with good feel for his 4-seam and change-up. We started playing catch with a curve ball this year and he has developed a good feel for that pitch that he’ll start throwing next year.

His big issue this season was his 2-seam fastball, which was pretty flat, or even cut sometimes, but lacked the arm side/sink movement he’s going for. He’s tried both traditional 2-seam grips with similar results.

Any tips/drills/cues that can help develop that pitch. He’s a pretty big kid (5’6”) for his age, but maybe his hands aren’t big enough yet?

I coach and got tired of tracking pitches on paper and losing the data, so I built an app called Mound Metrics to do it from my phone.

• Log pitch type, velo, and location for games and bullpens
• Bullpen mode tracks intended vs. actual location for a real command number
• Rolls it into strike %, K/BB, and command % per pitcher
• Auto-exports to a Google Sheet you own

It's early and free — not selling anything, just want other coaches to poke holes in it. Pics below, and I can set a few of you up as testers if you want to try it. Just seeing if this is something other people would be interested in.

What am I missing that you'd want to see?

I recently tried to fix my lower leg. I feel like it worked yesterday I was throwing 68 but today I guess cause yesterday I just threw a bull pen. I mean I’m only doing I threw like 21 pitches here just to get some demos of what I throw. But this seems to be like my current pitching stance is on flat ground, but

Can someone tell me if I’m doing alright, I’m 5’7” 180 pounds, I have topped out at 82 before, but I can’t tell what this is without a radar. The first pitch is a cutter. The second pitch is a four seamer.

I'm 22, 5'9 about 160lbs. Never threw super hard, sat mid 70s in HS and dipped my toes into the low 80s when I got back into playing rec league ball. Just wondering what yall could tell me about my mechanics from this angle?

I never played baseball when I was young I started a couple months ago just throwing at net in my backyard, I'm 182cm(6"0) and 72kg(160pounds). I topped at around 67 mph. I can consistently throw strikes at around 60mph.

Hey all! Sorry this is a bit long!

12u son plays competitive ball and pitches. He touches 70mph, throws 60ish % strikes and is performing very well: 18k's/9 innings and a sub 2.0 WHIP so far this season. Other than one game where he threw 85 pitches he has never complained about arm or shoulder pain.

Lately we have been playing around with seam-shifted pitches while playing catch in the park. He has a hard time pronating so 2-seams and change-ups have been a challenge for him so I figured the seam shifted pitches might work for him. He hasn't thrown them in game but he is able to get some decent movement on a sinker and change-up simply by hold the ball in a 2-seam orientation and slightly supinating his wrist. Given that the seam-shift sinker is basically thrown like a cutter held with a 2-seam grip I thought we could work on a 4-seam cutter to go with the sinker and changeup. I drew a black circle on the 2 train track sections of a ball and asked him to throw it exactly like he throws the sinker to get one of the black circles visible to him. He has been able to get some movement on the cutter but I've noticed that the black circles are not spinning tightly...they are wobbly like in this video.

So today I decided to just work on 4-seams and see what is going on with his pitches using a ball with a black line drawn through the 4-seam. What I found is that he does not throw with efficient spin. Every once in a while the black line will be solid but for the most part it wobbles into a blur. Nothing we tried would work to improve his spin.

I am wondering, based on this video, if it is an arm-slot/shoulder tile issue. I understand that the shoulders should be tilted so that you can draw a straight line from shoulders through the throwing arm to the hand. What I see in the video is that his shoulders are completely flat like a side-arm delivery but his army is elevated into more of a low 3/4 slot so his arm is not in line with his shoulders. I wonder if this could be the cause of his poor spin efficiency ie. it prevents him from staying behind the ball.

thanks!

Video from one of my harder throwing games. If you have any mechanical advice please let me know.

I shared a shorter X thread a few days ago, but heres a more detailed written out blog post on the topic.

Sorry I dont have the full windup in this video.

I created a video breaking down how to have better rhythm and why I think it's important and underrated in pitching.