This week was spent, as the last few have been, working on very specific aspects of my throwing pattern. I’m working on building velocity out of specific positions and then I’ll gradually add more pieces back in until I’m on the mound.
Generally, I have two high output days, Monday and Friday, but this week I was only able to push on Monday. My elbow did not cooperate on Friday, but I think it’s something a simple short deload will take care of, but I’ll know more later today. The goal is to get to 90-93 mph out of the drill I’m using right now, in the next two weeks or so, and then add another piece back in before working to the mound.
My velocity has been decent so far, but I’m still working on getting more comfortable in these positions and finding efficient ways to create velocity. There has been a good amount of trial and error while I feel things out. I think I had a bit of a breakthrough on Friday, but I won’t fully know until I can test it at full effort. While I couldn’t do my normal high output throwing I still went through my normal drill work and played with some patterning tweaks at the end while getting some submaximal velocity readings. The numbers were promising when I tried the new pattern and I’m excited to test them when I’m at full effort. I’ll get into the specifics of this in more detail next week once I have more information.
One of the things these last few weeks have taught me is that simplifying your approach is generally the way to go. I’ve reduced the number of different constraint drills I use to 3 that allow me to work on the specific pieces of my delivery I need to improve, rather than trying to work on everything at once and seeing minimal improvement. I think that when athletes are at a relatively lower level of performance or newer to throwing, more drill options and a more rich proprioceptive environment can be beneficial, but when you’re trying to make relatively small improvements to an already high level of performance, more specificity and less variety tends to work better.
On the general fitness side of things, my mobility still continues to improve along with my power. It’s a matter of being comfortable being bored with the general side of things at this point. I have specific things I’m working on, so changes to my program from block to block are not very significant which leads to some boredom. But, that’s how it goes once you reach a certain level of general qualities and have to narrow your focus.
Anyway, thank you for following me on my journey to the show! Check back this week for more content and a more in depth look at the changes I’m making.