Hey guys, glad you’ve decided to check out my post! If you don’t know me my name is Tyler and I’m a pro baseball player and strength coach. I’m going to be chronicling my journey from the lower levels of professional baseball to the highest level I can take my career to.
For the last three years I’ve played minor league baseball for a variety of independent league teams and had a moderate level of success. Each year I’ve improved, but so far I haven’t improved enough to catch on with a Major League organization. So when it came time to make a decision about where to play this year I didn’t have the options I’d expected, and I was at a crossroads. I’ve worked so hard to get to this point and felt like I had more to give to this game, but I wasn’t sure what to do.
I had to be as honest with myself as I could be. To catch on with an affiliate I have to have either elite command or velocity. While my velocity is better than it has ever been and sufficient to get professional hitters out (94 mph), it wasn’t enough with my mediocre command.
So, I’ve decided to use this season to train to improve my command and velocity. In late November or early December I will be throwing for scouts and I will need to show 96-97 mph and command of all four of my pitches. To reach these goals I’ve reached out to two of the best people I know in the human performance field to help me put together a training plan for throwing and lifting/mobility/etc. This will be a fun human performance experiment-trying to take an advanced level professional athlete to an elite level of performance.
The first part of the plan is a four week shut down from throwing as I’ve been throwing for the last 20 months straight. During this period my first training cycle will be a hypertrophy (muscle building) cycle. I’ve never focused on this during my training career so this will be a fun challenge and one that will pay dividends down the road.
I’ll update this with more specific numbers to show my baselines and goals as the week goes on. I’ll be posting a few times each week, so stay tuned and thanks for reading!