Switch Pitcher in the Gym

In the hopes of helping all kinds of pitchers, baseball players and general athletes we have a host of videos of our gym training. Please keep in mind Rafe has just turned 18 yrs. of age. Here is a link:  SP Gym Workout

Weight Training in Baseball

There has been great resistance to working out at a gym for baseball players until very recent history, and this has remained even more so in Japan. It was Nolan Ryan and Tom House who won the lifting cause and so I will relate their input through my own logical adaptions. Both have books on the subject, “Nolan Ryan’s Pitchers Bible” by both men & “Fit to Pitch” by Tom House.

The main feature of our drills, especially for high school seniors and onwards, is a higher rep count with lower weights. This can be how younger players, who are still developing and should not enter the gym until the later years of high school, can start to begin to introduce the gym into their training. The goals are to maintain or increase the speed, build stamina and then increase the strength. Young men are too prone to go for the wrong goals in the gym, and so bulk up muscle groups based on bad cultural ideas, which are based on appearance over function. Even here in Japan when we have invited other players into the gym to get stronger they immediately talked about the “bench press” and how much they can press a few times, and had no clue as to how to use the gym correctly.

Bodybuilders work to bulk up with size and focus on certain large (attractive looking on stage) muscles groups, and these drown out the smaller finer muscles that are necessary for dexterity and range of motion. If anyone has seen the movie Conan the Barbarian, with Arnold, you will see on a few occasions he doesn’t look to move smoothly and is even a little clumsy. Dexterity comes from all the finer muscles and supportive joints that must have the flexibility and reverse muscle groups in support to allow controlled movement.

Sumo wrestler coaches here in Japan don’t like too much of the weight lifting in their stables, as it makes their fighters too top heavy, and though pitchers may not need the low center of gravity of a sumo wrestler to throw best, they do need bodies more closely resembling something graceful over pure power. From gridiron thru rugby players, past hockey players on down we move further away from these bulky body builders, but stop short of  looking like basketball players and gymnasts in our goals. I say this as a person who played all of the above sports and has a body that reflects this. A good example of this dysfunction can be seen in marathon runners who are all legs with upper bodies that lack all assemblance of purpose, aside from the minimum carrying weight for the legs. To avoid the high levels of injuries found in baseball players there must be the supportive tissue in place.

Stretching

Rafe stretches more than any other athlete I have seen, and certainly much more than any amateur baseball player I have ever seen. Japanese baseball players do not excel at stretching and it is one of the flaws in most of their programs, or at least the ones I have seen at the amateur level. You will not see all our stretching in these gym workout videos, but it goes on before and afterwards. Stretching also happens on days off, and is only skipped on sick days or study days.

The legs can take much more work than other parts of the body. The leg joints are stronger and have had millions of years of human history to allow for their abilities to work out more often. The arms and shoulders are much more delicate, so need at least a minimum of rest days before getting back into action. Even after a two day rest from the weights, if they are still stiff, one only does drills that allow the circulation to get the blood back into the areas to speed up the body’s ability to repair the tissue damaged during in the early week’s workout.

All informed sources in baseball repeat the idea of not using your arms when they are sore, but it still goes on with those one arm users here in Japan. Rafe’s switching between arms has led to the only positive feedback from other Japanese players on his team, when they have had to practice with sore arms because the coach has made no allowance to allow a day off because of pain.

With all that being said, on the third day after a workout there is room for some kind of training,  beyond stretching, that must be done to get the blood into the parts of the arms to increase the repair, with only a clear injury being the exception. I have been the most careful in protection Rafe’s arms and so feel confident in this assertion.

Areas of the Body

Starting from the top of the body, some neck work should be done as its supports the shoulders, knowing the neck can get injured with the hard swings of the bat. From there the number of lifts in our videos shows how one must work smartly and thoroughly on those areas prone to baseball injuries. The rotator cuff muscles are key.  One of the lifts you will see we use is the “Empty Can Lift”, in addition to more standard ones dealing with the same muscle group. Being a switch pitcher demands double the workload in the gym, and thus makes such a player become the strongest on the team, which is usually the tougher catchers. Rafe has won the Japanese National Sports Test at his school for 3 years running as proof of this fact, receiving a perfect score the last 2 years, and only a single mark short of perfection 3-years ago.

After stretching comes a warm up lift, that should be slightly over half of the weight you intend to be as your maximum. With squats we do a full maximum after our warm up lift, as any other sportsman with no other considerations in mind. At present Rafe’s maximum squat is 180 kg., which comes just after his 18^th birthday at his 86 kg. weight on the scale.

After this steady increasing maximum test lift, we switch to the real pitcher lifts which are centered on the idea of pitching in a game with the eventually 100 pitch count always in mind. So we target roughly for most lifts 25 reps in 3 or 4 sets. During the off season it is more often 4 sets. Not all the lifts we do are this number, but a surprising number are despite the demands on the player. The key to this is lower weights that maintain the ideas of faster lifts to keep or grow the speed. Reverse muscle groups are trained to avoid injuries, as was the original motivation to switch pitching training at the beginning, for if Rafe had not been able to pull off the speed and control of a switch pitcher he would have still had a supportive body for single arm duty.

Food and drink choices will allow for better stamina, but we do not use any of the sport drink concoctions common to most athletes, as we make our own.  We follow our own recipe and it is uncommon for our time. If one studies history, and that of Milo of Crotona, you can see we are following a theme in originality set out by our possible ancestors on this score. Though we do not eat that much meat and drink that much wine at a sitting- as he did. Our goals are for pitching and not wrestling, and lifting of a full grown bull on our shoulders to march around the Olympiad is not in the cards.

Good sleeping patterns allow for recovery and with computer screens keeping boys up to all hours of the night this is now a serious problem.  Self-control must be done by the players themselves in the end, and failure to father or mentor, so as to instead be your son’s “best friend”, may be popular today but is not stoic of a good father. If your son is working hard then you must match this in not having emotional crutches of your own. Trust must come before being a disciplinarian.

Once again for all the gym videos please go to:  SP Gym Workout at “Rafe Milo” (Switch Pitcher) on Utube.