September 8, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

No Slouching, It’s Time To Work

For the last two seasons, more and more parents are contacting both Dan and I in the early fall about hitting or pitching lessons with their son. The “off season” is much shorter than it used to be as people realize that competition is fierce in the middle school and high school levels. It take more than just a few months of baseball in the summer to develop skills that create high level success.

Both Dan and I maintain that proper knowledge of the fundamentals of hitting and pitching are immensely valuable to learn at an early age. This is why we have chosen to produce articles and videos on all things related to hitting and pitching and send them to you daily. Over the summer we backed off to a couple emails per week as baseball slowed and many of you took vacations. Now that school is back in full swing (for most), it’s time to resume our emails Monday through Friday mornings. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Coaching Pitchers, General Baseball, General Hitting, General Pitching, Hitting Mechanics, Mental Game of Baseball, Pitching Grips, Pitching Mechanics, Pitching Tips, Pitching Velocity, Pitching Workouts

September 2, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

College Baseball Recruiting: Writing a Letter

Are you in the process of trying to figure out which school is right for you? Maybe you are frustrated because you know you have the proper skills to play for most colleges but you just may not know how the recruiting process works? Don’t worry if you fall into these categories; you are not alone!

One of the most frustrating parts of being a talented high school athlete is that you don’t know the first steps of getting recruited to a good college or how to “get your name out there”. Another frustration you may share with others is that your High School coaches don’t have a clue either. Some athletes think if they are good enough they will get noticed. Well, that’s certainly not the case.

It’s time to roll up your sleeves, lace up your shoes and get to work. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Coaching Pitchers, General Baseball, General Hitting, General Pitching Tagged With: College Recruiting

June 14, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

Where Pressure Comes From

Sunday evening I sat down in front of the TV to watch the Miami Heat take on the Dallas Mavericks in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Getting late into the game, the Mavericks opened a pretty hefty lead, though not out of reach of the Miami offense. I kept waiting for the LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh show to make one last run… but they couldn’t. Something seemed to create a stiffness in their play. Wade dribbled a ball off his foot, and James tried to push the ball up the key while guarded heavily by three Mavericks only to throw up a ridiculously nonathletic shot. What causes this stiff play in sports? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Coaching Pitchers, General Baseball, General Hitting, General Pitching, Hitting Mechanics, Mental Game of Baseball, Pitching Mechanics

April 1, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

Beware: The Outside Pitch

The Outside Pitch

I was watching a 13U youth tournament a couple weekends ago and noticed the catcher for one of the teams was setting up on the outside corner every pitch. I wasn’t sure if this was just the catcher’s choice or if the coach had instructed his pitcher and catcher to throw on the outside corner all game. I asked the parent I was sitting next to and he said the coach wanted the guys hitting the outside part of the plate. While it’s generally a good strategy to set up on the corners of the plate, I don’t advocate throwing a lot of outside fastballs all too often at this age (unless the pitcher is throwing rockets). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Coaching Pitchers, General Hitting, Hitting Mechanics Tagged With: Baseball Pitching, Mechanics, Pitching, Pitching Mechanics

March 31, 2011 By The Pitching Academy 2 Comments

Baseball Swing Mechanics

The other day I was working with an 11-year old player with his hitting mechanics. I was watching him take a few swings and observed that he was struggling with keeping his head under control; it was tilting drastically to the right (he’s right-handed) during his swing. No doubt if you have a young hitter or work with young hitters you’ve seen this problem as well.

While it’s impossible with the correct hitting mechanics to keep the eyes perfectly level during a swing, all good hitters keep their head still when they swing. If the head is under control, the eyes will be stable thus giving a hitter a better chance at tracking each pitch. Moving head and eyes distort depth perception. Watch this swing and notice how his head stays under control. [Read more...]

Filed Under: General Hitting, Hitting Mechanics Tagged With: Baseball Swing, Hitting Mechanics

February 22, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

New Pitching DVD

One of the most common requests we’ve been getting since the release of our DVD Series is if we could split up the information in smaller chunks and of course for a fraction of the price. Good news, as of last night, we’re now making available instant downloadable clips from our DVDs. There will be some more to come in the near future as well.

What clips are available? [Read more...]

Filed Under: General Baseball, General Hitting, General Pitching, Hitting Mechanics, Pitching Mechanics Tagged With: Baseball DVD, Pitching, Pitching DVD, Pitching Mechanics, Pitching Videos

February 21, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

Thoughts On Hitting Drills

Thoughts on Hitting Drills

Here is a question from a H.S. coach we received a bit ago. It addresses some issues I think many coaches and parents deal with, how to solve reoccurring hitting problems. In the answer there are a ton of resources for you on this subject. [Read more...]

Filed Under: General Hitting, Hitting Mechanics Tagged With: Baseball Hitting, Baseball Swing Mechanics, Hitting Drills, Swing Mechanics

February 2, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

Dan Uggla Workout

A few short days ago I sent you a sample of a workout by MLB SS, Jimmy Rollins. There was quite a bit of speed and agility emphasized in his routine. Today, I wanted to contrast that by showing you a clip of Dan Uggla’s workout. If you’re unfamiliar with Uggla, he’s a second baseman for the Marlins. He’s got 5 seasons under his belt and has put up some good sized numbers. While not the speedster Rollins is, Uggla’s value is in his power and production at the plate. You’ll see a lot more weights in his routine, though he still mixes a ton of core work in.

Take a look, there are some unique things he does in his workout that combines strength building and unstable environments for his core.

Dan Uggla clip

Filed Under: General Hitting Tagged With: Pitching Workout, Pitching Workouts

January 31, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

Jimmy Rollins Off-Season Core Workouts

Both Dan and I write a lot on core strength as it is vital to be a top athlete today. Everything one does in baseball has to do with the core. Many times on Sunday nights I like to browse YouTube and observe what guys in the Bigs are doing both in season and out of season to improve their game. I found a couple clips with SS Jimmy Rollins and what he works on to make sure his core is ready to endure the nearly 200 games (counting spring training) he plays every year.

Pay particular attention to the amount of movement he combines with his core strength/flexibility training. Gone are the days were static stretching (stretching without moving around) should be the norm. If you’re not using dynamic stretching, the first clip will give you a couple ideas to begin with this season.

This is the main reason we love to endorse core training materials from Barry Lovelace. He fully gets the concept that core strength MUST be combined with dynamic/unstable movements in order to simulate what the body goes through in any given game, regardless of your position. Here, check out asample workout from Barry. Also, here are a couple of his products we like and highly recommend:

Core Power for Baseball

Core Strong 13 DVD

Jimmy Rollins clips:

Rollins’ Dynamic Baseball Warmup

Rollins’ Discusses Off-Season Training

Filed Under: General Baseball, General Hitting, General Pitching Tagged With: Core Power For Baseball, Pitching Workout, Pitching Workouts

January 17, 2011 By The Pitching Academy Leave a Comment

Baseball Tips From The Seahawks

Yesterday I headed over to a friend’s house to watch our mighty (tongue in cheek) Seattle Seahawks battle the Chicago Bears in the cold and snow. None of us had expected the 7-9 Seahawks to make the playoffs in the first place, but after the major upset against New Orleans the previous weekend, we began to hope and care… a little bit.

Silly us. I’m sure many of you didn’t sit down for that stellar matchup, but it was a butt-kicking. 21-0 Bears at half time. Being the amazing couch offensive coordinators that we are, my friend and I could help but become exceedingly frustrated at the Hawks continuously running the ball up the middle into Urlacher and his thugs.

IT WASN’T WORKING!

Quick, short, middle of the field passes were working, but it was apparent that the coaches on the field weren’t seeing the same thing. Finally, late in the game the adjustment away from the run was made and the Hawks added some points to the board, a bit too late however.

So how does this relate to baseball? Easy. If you know that something isn’t working with your baseball swing or your pitching mechanics, you got to take the time to diagnose the problem and fix it. More of the same training, practice, and workouts will only produce the same results unless you can figure out where the problem lies.

We were taking some ground balls in a gym yesterday with some high school athletes. A third baseman kept throwing the ball wide of first base. He’d slam his glove to the floor in frustration but yet didn’t bother to ask me if I could tell what was wrong. Finally, after conveying glove throwing tantrums don’t sit well with me, I showed him how to direct his momentum towards 1B better. Problem solved.

My point is that it’s so easy to get into a routine with baseball, that you must stop and evaluate your routine daily. If you’re a coach, plan out your practices and what skill your boys will learn. No more, “hey, let’s just take some swings” type practices. If you’re a parent of a young athlete, sit down and learn some hitting and pitching mechanics so you can help your kid a little in the back yard. If you’re an athlete, make a list of three things you need to fix this off season and find some resource or some coach to assist in fixing your game.

Oh well, the Hawks season has come to an end. Guess it’s time to look forward to the Mariners. Maybe their front office will read this article… I can only hope.

Filed Under: Coaching Pitchers, General Hitting, General Pitching, Pitching Workouts Tagged With: Pitching Mechanics, Pitching Tip, Pitching Tips