Think of it this way. Let's say you're a pretty decent pitcher with a pretty decent arm, but you don't spend a lot of time in the weight room. You actually have no idea how good your body can be at full potential because you've never played at your bodies full potential. To make matters worse, there are 1000's of players out there who are working out right now, or running sprints or running distance to give themselves every possible advantage once the up yells PLAY BALL! That's the point isn't it. To put your body in position to play harder than your opponent longer than your opponent.
From a pitcher's stand point, your conditioning program is DIRECTLY correlated to how hard you throw, how good your arm feels, and how likely you are to get injured. Your conditioning program consists of a daily combination of the aforementioned sprints, distance running, agilities, band work, and long toss. During your preseason, you want to really build your arm strength with a dedicated long toss and bullpen program. After completing these throwing sessions, you always always always want to do some kind of running. As a good rule of thumb, after every bullpen, a nice long jog (30mins or more) is appropriate. After your long toss session, you should complete some kind of interval/sprint session.
Now, it is important that we utilize both kinds of running in conditioning program. Long runs serve a different purpose than their shorter more explosive counterparts. Longer jogs are great for pumping tons of blood through your system over a longer period of time. This blood flow helps your arm repair itself and flush out any lactic acid (the stuff that makes your arm more sore longer) build up. The runs also force the legs to strength in a long distance type of fashion which loosely mimics what is required of the body over a 2 hour pitching start. Essentially, the stronger you feel during runs, the stronger your body will feel later in the games you are pitching. On the other side, intervals and sprints are great for EXPLOSIVE leg strength. Some examples of these exercises are sprinting from the foul line to center field and walking back to the line, spring along the warning track from pole to pole (or variations of walking, jogging, and sprinting the warning track) and bow and arrows (jogging the warning track and sprinting straight across the outfield to center field). By doing these sprint workouts, we force the body to explode quickly (like the release of a baseball) and then come back to a calm state. Your heart rate will do the same thing. The elevated and the decreasing heart rate will build a different kind of endurance that will benefit a pitcher throughout each inning. Think about how your body reacts during an inning, and then the calm you experience as you wait in between innings. Ultimately, your goal is train your body to react to as many types of physical exertion as possible. If you can handle all of these types of runs, then you can handle the exertion of an outing on the mound longer and control your body better late into games.
In relation to this, you want to also conclude all of these workouts with some variation of core work. (By the way, when I say CORE WORK...I mean your full core, not just your front abs) This means planks, side planks, alligator walks, russian twists, prone cobras, ect ect. The core work is essential to controlling and stabilizing your body through these long starts we are talking about. The two main things that break down over the course of a start are your legs and your core strength. When the core breaks down, the legs will not be controlled as well and the upper half will suffer as well.
I could go on for days on this subject. Perhaps next week, we'll look even further in depth about a few specific exercises.
Until Then!!! Work hard guys, the season is almost here!!
Very Nice FOCO
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