Road To 90: Breaking Down The Data From The Lab’s Pitching Assessment
Let’s start this with a piece of advice: you are not stuck at your current talent level. That’s just your baseline. With some hard work, you can truly see how talented you really are. When I was graduating high school, I was planning on going to play for a local JUCO. However, at the last second, I decided not to go to school at all as the job I had gotten to pay bills was an entry-level position with a great company. The thought was I could move up within that company and make a lot of money, so why waste time and money on school? I mean all I was going to do was get to play two more years of baseball and then be done. I don’t throw hard so I surely wasn’t good enough to play anywhere else. I was done playing after this.
What I didn’t understand I could improve, that I could train to throw harder. Even if I did, I obviously didn’t know anyone that would be able to help me at that time. I’m not saying I could’ve gone pro, but I could’ve played for a while longer. I know better now and want to make sure every athlete doesn’t make the same mistake.
So when The Lab was created we wanted to assess every new athlete to find where their current baseline or talent level is. That allows us to build out custom training programs based on their strengths and weaknesses. These issues can be related to lack of range of motion or mobility, shoulder weakness, strength, mechanical, or honestly, some sort of combination of all of them. That’s why it is so important to assess a variety of areas that take the full picture into consideration rather than take a quick look at a video, photo, or even worse, just rely on the “eye test”. So it makes sense for me to put myself through the assessment while beta-testing the scalability of a couple of new exams.
This blog will detail the assessment tests, the results, and how they influence programming decisions. Basically, I’ll break down the data as I would for a new athlete. So buckle up, it’s going to be a long one.
Note: This will not include the arsenal assessment which calculates Stuff+ and Miss Distance (Command) of each pitch. I am solely focused on velocity gains and will come back to those when the time calls for me to pitch competitively
Shoulder Strength & ROM
On a new athlete’s first day of pitching, we start with a simple test and throwing day. Now I didn’t start my assessment with this as it came after on-ramping so I would imagine that only helped my test scores. But on this day we test throwers’ External Rotation, Internal Rotation, Scaption, and Grip Strength allowing us to fully look at an athlete’s shoulder health and see what is lacking.
Above are the results of my shoulder testing. Overall, pretty good. I’m above the high school benchmarks and hanging around the college benchmark except for Internal Rotation Strength. That one is a little below the high school benchmark. If your average D1 pitcher is sitting 88-89mph then I’m going to need to bump up both IR and ER strength above their benchmarks. There doesn’t need to be an overhaul on shoulder strength, but adding in a couple of days of band work should suffice.
Within all of the strength numbers up there, there is the shoulder balance (bottom right) report. Another key, whether the shoulder is overall weak or not, is making sure that internal and external strength is somewhat equal. An imbalance can lead to an increased likelihood of injury as the shoulder is not set up to handle the stress on the weak side of the shoulder. Mine came in pretty balanced and checks out.
Besides the shoulder, we have grip strength which helps us measure the health of the forearm initially and over time. The forearm plays a key role in accepting the stress of the throw and keeping it off the elbow. So monitoring any dip in force and cleaning up weakness could be the key to having a healthy elbow. When testing from here on out we will compare them to this initial test.
Jump Testing & Predicted Velo
It has been shown in research that jump height and distance is correlated to potential throwing velocity. Jump height and distance show the athlete’s power output which was shown to be a good representation of the throwing velocity they could produce. Using the MyJumpApp, we are able to calculate the jump height and power of both a countermovement jump and a squat jump. The app requires a couple of leg measurements along with weight. From there, you take a slo-mo video with the app tagging take off and landing. The app does all the hard work and calculates jump height in cm, power, hang time, and a few other measurements.
After collecting data in the MyJumpApp, we switch over to Driveline’s Predicted Velo Calculator. Transferring some of that data from the app gives us the report above. This report compares the collected data to their internal database of throwers grouped by different throwing velocities. From there it gives us a predicted velocity which we compare to an athlete’s actual velocity. If the athlete is outperforming their predicted velo (actual>predicted), it may be best suited for them to focus their training economy in the weight room. On the other hand, if their predicted velo is higher than their actual, skill work should be concentrated on.
Anyways, long story short. I have no hops, no power, and don’t even weigh enough. My countermovement jump is the one that creeps close to the range of throwers at 80+ mph. With all that, it gives me a predicted velo of 81.9 mph which is just +1.4 mph over my actual velo. Hopefully, you know what that means… more strength work!
Mound Velocity w/Video Analysis
Here’s the part everyone loves, video breakdown. But spoiler alert, we already know what I need to work on: strength. We will get to that and how it fits in at the end of this. What that tells us here is that there is nothing major we are looking for. Somehow, I move decently well compared to my power output. I would’ve thought my mobility would limit me. Anyways, this is not to say my mechanics are perfect, but we shouldn’t put too much weight into looking at these small changes. Take a look at the video above of one of my 79 mph throws and let me know what you see. Here are the two little things that stood out to me.
Lead Leg Block
To the right is a video showing my lead leg coming into foot plant. At foot plant, we can see the knee continue to roll toward the first base side and give in towards home plate before locking out. Something that wasn’t tested, but I know from being the athlete myself, is I lack a bit of left hip mobility. This could be the cause of not being able to get my pelvis all the way open and my lead leg/knee in position to put force into the ground. My timing could be slightly off, but another factor to take into account is that I’ve been killing my legs in the weight room. My legs could’ve been a little weak coming into this day and not ready to be at peak force production. This should be something we can clean up with mobility work, continued strength gain in the lower half, and timing work with plyos/med balls.
Shoulder Abduction
The other issue is something I think has plagued me my entire life: elbow hike. I tend to be very over the top when trying to generate velocity leading to two things. One is leaning to the glove side instead of rotating properly (thanks to mobility) and the other is hiking my elbow above the shoulder line. When the elbow is above the shoulder and you try to internally rotate the shoulder, you might run into some impingement issues. This also takes the arm out of the plane of rotation of the body creating an inefficient transfer of energy. In the clip to the left, you can see the elbow seems to be in a low position to start and below the shoulder line. From there, the elbow continues to climb until about max elbow extension. The climb also keeps my forearm from completely laying back and missing some external rotation in the process. So this means we will probably add a little arm action focus which the last section will touch on.
Plyo Velocity & Drill Score
What I like about this section is that it is pretty straightforward and objective. Most of the time it correlates with the subjective decisions I would make solely on the video. Usually, after looking at the video I have an idea of what to prescribe and will pair that with what the reports tell us. Above and to the right is the Plyo Velo Report which tells us which drills athletes perform better or worse than expected. The expected velo is based on the mound velo and Driveline’s database of throwers. Above and left is a “drill score” which basically adds up the the difference between expected plyo velo and the actual plyo velo of each drill and then finds the average. I like to take the philosophy of doing something you do well first to create a good base then move on to drills that enhance the flaw and force the athlete to make the correction. This is usually the 10 rep sets after Pivot Picks in the throwing warmup. From there we pick the two lowest scores; Step Backs and Janitors in my case. What’s great is how these three drills line up with the flaws in the video:
Roll-Ins- Constrained version helps clean up arm action with heavy balls and improve lead leg block
Step Backs- Helps with transition and load down mound which will also help improve lead leg block
Janitor Throws- Helps with the unwinding of the pelvis to get it more open at foot plant so the lead leg is ready to generate force
Beyond the Drill Score, is the plyo recommendation. At The Lab, we have three different sets of plyos that we prescribe: underload, overload, and standard. Usually, an overload prescription correlates with an inefficient arm action. With a heavier load, the arm will “take the path of least resistance” when spiraling upwards and towards release. On the other hand, the light plyo prescription has some relation to some sort of early action, like torso rotation, or a miss in timing. The lightness of the underload set leaves the body with less feel and more arm speed creating that disconnection and forcing an athlete to focus on the correction or delaying torso/arm/etc longer.
Training Program Buildout
After all of that, we know the following to be true:
A fairly healthy and strong shoulder although it could be a bit stronger
Weak strength, power, and jump output
Underweight
Poor hip and t-spine mobility (mentioned but not assessed)
Lead Leg not in a position to block at foot plant
A bit of an elbow hike from foot plant to ball release
Pretty even spread in terms of expected and actual plyo velo
Roll-Ins (+1.1) were the best plyo drill
Janitors (-3.1) were the worst followed by Step Backs (-1.8)
I currently top out on the mound at 80.5 mph; Predicted Velo is 81.9 mph
Now, this seems like a long list, but most of them are intertwined. So I am going to break them down into like groups and discuss what the plan of action regarding them is. If you’ve been following along, some of these will seem familiar.
#1 A fairly healthy and strong shoulder although it could be a bit stronger
Let’s start off with something simple, my shoulder. The testing showed that it was pretty healthy and strong. It was past the benchmarks for high school, but right around the college ones. With the goal of passing the college strength benchmarks, I can afford to add a slight focus on strengthening up the shoulders. Between that, throwing at the proper intensity and workload, and actual strength training, I imagine this will be passed easily next time. As an added bonus that will also target this, there is a bicep tendonitis workout I’ve put together after some research to help target an issue I’ve had before. Since part of the workout includes shoulder work, it will blend nicely. So on one recovery, I’ll add in our shoulder strengthening workout and on my other, I’ll do the bicep tendonitis workout.
#2 Weak strength, power, and jump output; #3 Underweight; #4 Poor hip and t-spine mobility
Basically, this group involves how well can I move and be strong/explosive through them. The poor hip and t-spine mobility was never assessed but plays a key role in being able to move better and generate velocity. Luckily, I’ve been referred to PT to address the issues and I am excited to see what comes of this. Until then, I will continue with my self-discovered warmup which has started to improve both. As for the other two, they go hand in hand. I plan on increasing my max strength over the next 12 weeks which will elevate my potential power threshold, which includes jump height. Increasing actual power output will have to come after increasing max strength. Since we are playing the long game, taking the time to increase strength as much as possible before transitioning into the power phase. And it goes with saying that in order to develop any strength or power, then I am going to need a little more mass and pay attention to my nutrient intake.
As I mentioned, I am going to double up on the strength phases. I'll do one 6-week block of my newly designed strength workouts while doing another 6-week throwing on-ramp. Keeping the throwing side light allows for more training economy to be spent on the strength side. After that, I’ll do the 6-week strength template from Driveline. This program is designed to be paired with a velocity phase throwing-wise so this will be the time I make that transition to a modified WB Mound Velo phase. Since I struggle making velocity transfers to the mound, I am just going to stay on the mound for the time being. After seeing how this phase goes, I may decided to go to a pulldown based velo phase. I’m hoping this backwards philosophy help makes the jump I’ve been missing to be consistently 80-82+.
#5 Lead Leg not in a position to block at foot plant; #8 Roll-Ins (+1.1) were the best plyo drill; #9 Janitors (-3.1) were the worst followed by Step Backs (-1.8)
The correlation between these makes sense. With Roll-ins, you can set up the lower half to have the pelvis close to the approximate posiotion we like to see at foot plant (45 degree angle where home plate is 0 degrees). My problem with my lead leg is I’m not able to rotate the pelvis enough and get it open on time, leaving me in a position that is not ready to block properly and redirect energy up the chain. Not having to rotate the lower half and having myself in a better position is possibly why the velo jumped for that drill. Besides all of that, the forward momentum from the drill is also a great way to strengthen the lead leg and clean up timing.
As for Janitors being so horrible compared to the expected velo, it makes sense. This drill leans into my flaw of not being able to rotate my lower half fully into foot plant by counter-rotating myself more so than normal in the drill’s “set” position. By then presetting my back leg hinge and load, I can focus on getting down the mound and rotating into foot plant to get my pelvis open. Focusing and developing feel rep after rep is the deliberate practice needed to truly make a change. Basically, don’t fall into a trap and go through the motions while doing plyo work or you’ll leave gains on the table. Even though this is my worst-graded drill, it happens to be one of my favorites so I don’t think that will happen here.
Step Backs can be related to both a firmer lead leg block (similar to Roll-Ins) and loading properly to unwind the lower half (similar to Janitors). See, the step back helps generate some momentum and help carry the Center of Mass (COM) down the mound. The move backward helps an athlete get into a good load and slight counter-rotation putting them in a better position to rotate better and get their pelvis/hips open.
Intertwined, these drills all have their piece in making in fixing my lower half. Here are how they will be fit together with the other basic plyo drills:
Reverse Throws: 10 throws each with Black (2kg) and Green (1kg) Plyos
Pivot Picks: 10 throws each with Pink (1.5kg) and Green Plyos (going to be constrained version, see next section)
Roll-Ins: 10 throws each with Green and Blue (450g) Plyos (going to be constrained version, see next section)
Step Backs: 1 throw each with Blue, Red (225g), Yellow (150g), and Gray (100g); sets vary depending on day
Janitor Throws: 1 throw each with Blue, Red, Yellow, and Gray; sets vary depending on day
Walking Windups: 1 throw each with Blue, Red, Yellow, and Gray; sets vary depending on day
#6 A bit of an elbow hike from foot plant to ball release
The elbow hike that was seen is going to change the way I set up for a couple drills. Since my arm is having trouble getting all the way up on time causing an overcorrection, we are going to preset it into the proper position and work back from there. Something is disconnecting in my takeaway and pickup phase, so by taking them away, I can train my body to be in the position I want it to be in. Over time, I was take away this constraint set up allowing myself to go through my full arm action and work back into the that spot.
The set up is simple. I call it ad 90/90. Basically the arm is raised in front of you toward the plyo wall. The elbow should be high enough it is in line with your shoulder making your armpit a 90 degree angle. The other 90 comes from another the angle the forearm makes with the upper arm. The result is your forearm pointing straight up in the air. You end up with what looks like a half a goal post. From there, you counter-rotate rand throw. It feels a little like you’re doing half of your arm action because, well, you are. For both Pivot Picks and Roll-Ins, this alteration will be added.
#7 Pretty even spread in terms of expected and actual plyo velo
Last time I tested my plyos, I was on an overload focus. Now I am back to the standard set. This is set that should be the goal as it means that the athlete performs as expected and may not have any of the glaring weaknesses that are enhance by the shifting of ball weight. So this is great news here.
#10 I currently top out on the mound at 80.5 mph; Predicted Velo is 81.9 mph
Here is the most important one. I currently max out at 80.5 mph and fairly close to my predicted velocity. Besides just telling me where I am currently at, it reinforces a point from above that I need to get stronger and more powerful. So more confirmation. I’ve worked my way up to 82.4 mph before so my first shorter term goal is to beat that (84 by 4/29) with the big one of course being 90 mph by 1/14/2024.
To the right are some other goals with the dates that I would like to accomplish them by. The green progress bar allows me to see the progress I am making towards the goal. It’s a nice little motivator. Once I knock out a goal, I will update it with a new one. One thing missing here is my 2 rep maxes of Squat, Deadlift, and Bench. Those aren’t in TRAQ, but I wrote them down in an earlier blog:
Squat: 340
Bench: 185
Deadlift: 340
(As I edit this, I am ending the last week before I do 2 weeks that include 2 rep maxes. First chance to knock out some goals!)
Complete Training Program
Below is the next 3 months of training. This includes my prescribe warmup and recovery mobility, both strength phases for both the on-ramp and velocity throwing phase, the gradual ramping of throwing into a weighted ball mound velocity phase, and the extra shoulder/bicep tendonitis workouts. You’ll also see some extras that are nice to have like biking and the jump series. These are just some things to round out the program. Another addition are the deload weeks from lifting which are lighter lifting weeks allowing my body to recovery some, adapt and catch up.
It’s a full three months. There will be ups and downs, but its a long ride. The retest on 4/22 is about the 25% mark and will really set the tone. From now until that time there will be content around my upcoming 2 rep max weeks, some in-depth explanations of my warmups/drills, changes due to PT, a Plyo Velo competition (Spoiler!), a retest, the transition between strength programs, and maybe something about experimental drills!
