Improving Your Physical Abilities Most important in the initial stages of improving your physical abilities is to develop greater strength together with flexibility. Keep in mind that flexibility by itself is of little value in improving your performance. You must develop strength through the new found range of motion as you develop additional flexibility. By doing most of the exercises described in this manual you will develop not only greater strength but flexibility together with the strength.
Strength is the key factor for improving performance with youngsters. With additional amounts of strength not only does their coordination improve but speed, quickness, power and all of the factors that are related to strength are improved concurrently. Because of this it is not necessary to do much supplemental training with youngsters except for aerobic endurance.
However as the players get older and move into the teenage years where they begin training similar to adults, if they have been doing strength training for a certain period of time it is necessary to include speed, speed-strength and explosive type training exercises into the program. The reason for this is that additional strength training at this time (especially if they have been strength training for several years) leads to greater slowness, not quickness and speed.
The main reason for this is that in order to develop greater strength you must use heavier and heavier weights for fewer repetitions. As a result your movements become slower. In time the nervous system learns slowness, not speed and quickness as it does in the initial stages of a weight training program.
For years baseball coaches had resisted strength training. For example, I recall writing articles for various magazines, such as STRENGTH AND HEALTH on the merits of strength training for pitchers in the early 1980’s. The response from the baseball readers was unanimous in that weight training was detrimental to pitching and to baseball players in general. It was hard to find a coach who accepted my recommendations for specialized strength training.
Today, however, strength training is accepted by almost all coaches and most players undergo fairly rigorous programs. But strength training, as I mentioned above, is not the final answer. It is very important and must be included. However, strength is only one part of the total picture of improving your performance. It should not dominate the conditioning program.
It is very important to include exercises in which you can exhibit strength in a fast and explosive manner as required in pitching. Keep in mind that the faster you can execute the pitch the greater will be the amount of speed that you can generate on the ball. In addition the exercises must be very specific and duplicate the key actions involved in the pitching motion. This will show the greatest and fastest results.
Following are some of the key exercises that you should do for strength and flexibility in the base training. After you have developed a sufficient strength foundation you are than ready to undertake more speed and explosive type exercises..