How To Pitch a Baseball: Warm Up & Streching

(Music Playing) Before you even pick up a baseball or a guy to even throw, the first thing we need to make sure we do is that we warm our bodies up properly to throw. Never ever throw the warm up and what I mean by that is do not show up, pick a ball up and call yourself getting warm by throwing a baseball. What you need to do is warm your body and be in prepared to throw the baseball. Whenever you go to practice, I can stress this enough. You need to warm your body up to throw So what we are going to do is with Jay and Timmy’s assistance. I am going to show you couple of exercises just going to help you. One of the things I like to have and do first which we would not do today is “Run” and we run like we have the baseball in our hand. You may ask why do we do that. We run with the baseball and get the feel for it. Want you be comfortable and spend as much time as you can. So for running, let us put a ball in our hand. Work on the foreseen grip to see across the two short saves, but get a feel for it. Once they have ran, they gather little sweat going and when they come in, we are going to stretch. Okay guys, just drop your gloves. What are we going to do is what we called Pitch the Shoulder. They going to take the right arm across their chest and they are going to grab it. What we are going to work on here is concentrating on stretching, the rotator back in here. We are getting that loose, especially with the throwing arm so if we get two right handlers Another drill, we can take the arm behind the back, pelbo it down and try to stretch as far down as you can, really getting a good stretch. Stretch, Now, we can switch over to the left side, doing the same thing. Reach down your back, Do not hurt yourself, nice and control. Let us put our out when fingers up. What we are going to do is pull a finger’s back. You are going to get a low pull right here in the forearm. We are getting our whole body ready to go because the wrist is going to play a big factor along with the forearm. Now, you can rotate that down, Palm up, and you get another pull. And, you get that flexibility going. Now, let us go to the left arm? Fingers up, Down, I cannot stress the importance to making this a daily portion of your routine. Now what we are going to do is we are going to take our right arm. Put it behind our back, and I will turn around and we are going to do is we are going is pull our right arm to our left and pull our head to the left and get a stretch. There you go, Now, we can switch to the other side, Again, get the neck loose while also getting the torso upper loose. Now, we can spread our feet a little bit wider and show the width but what we would do is we rotate to the right. And, we are going to take our right elbow and put it outside our left knee. Rotate, Come on forward, And get a good bend down there. What this would help, you do a simulate the finish in your mechanical motion. Now, we can rotate also to the left. It is also stretching the lower hamstring, getting a good stretch in the real leg. Come on, straight up. Another thing you can do is if I am with Jay, I can pull his arm up. I can put a nail in here and I can ask him to gently pull forward. Pull forward, Little bit of isometrics. I can also pull the arm down, No? Relax, now, pull forward? And get a little bit of strength in it. I can take both hands, ask him to extend his arm and what I will do is when he gets a little tight, he will let me know. But, we are trying to gain some flexibility here. Now, I will ask him to seat down, Put your right leg over your left, And then, you are going to hook yourself outside, what I call a pretzel. He is going to pull but his leg going to the right. He is going to pull the opposite way with his left and he is going to look behind him. Get a pretty good twist right here. Now, we can switch to the other side, Also, concentrate on your breathing when you are doing this exercises okay? One of my big once is now, I want you to pull your feet up under here, Feet together, pull them up under here, You are going to work on the inside of the groin. Grab you ankles? Now, we are kind of push down on the inside part of the thigh, this is big pre-season entry. A lot of guys will hurt their groin because they do not properly stretch. You got to understand guys, when you are high school and your season’s are limited to 20 games a years, if you blow something here, now, you are ruin your chances of having successful year because you will going to miss probably about half of your season. That is another good one, now, stand up a little bit? Spread your feet wide? And what will do, we are just kind of get a little groin action here to make sure because they going to really use our lower part of our body. Feel your body! You need to send some messages to your brain. See if you can see the muscle in here, Stretch and no one is too tight. Now, let us go the other way? That is good. These guys should be ready to go. It is pretty warm day. Remember: Different body types require longer. Maybe you are not old as I am. It is going to take me a lot longer than Jay’s. It is going to take me a lot longer than Timmy, but it is going to take Timmy a lot longer than Jay. So remember: You got to take care of you body. Warm you body up to throw. Never throw the warm up. If you go to practice, take it upon yourself to get a little bit early. Develop you own routine on what is going to help you and what is your problem’s spots so that you can concentrate on that and not run the risk of hurting yourself.