Pitching stamina - "Going the distance"

[halskinner]

This is a chapter of one of my books. The question of 'Pitching stamina' has been raised on this board.

There is general physical stamina and there is 'Pitching stamina'. After watching hundreds of students and paying close attention to their work habits when it came to their pitching, I can assure you there is a DEFINITE difference between general physical stamina and 'Pitching stamina'.

You always want to strive for the best health, to be strong and have excellent general physical stamina.

Unfortuneatly, doing all that work for general stamina might not make a big effect on your pitching stamina at all.

I wrote this article / chapter as a piece of inspirarional advice to young pitchers to hopefully get them to work harder at their pitching. I think it will help and be applicable to the question of ;Pitching stamina recently asked.

Here is the chapter.

GOING THE DISTANCE ã 1999,2001

There are many young pitchers out there that pitch on the weekends. They pitch in their tournaments and the only other time they work on their pitching is in the 1/2 hour or 1 hour with their instructor.

Pitchers that only practice and work at it that much will NOT be the best pitchers out there.

If that is the kind of pitching regiment you keep, if that's the type of work ethics you have, you will not be a strong and dominating pitcher. You might throw well enough to just get by, however, it is unlikely you will be much better than to 'just get by'. A once a week workout with your instructor and a few games on the weekend IS NOT ENOUGH practice/pitching time to be a GOOD pitcher.

Most team coaches are not pitching instructors. Most really don't know enough about pitching to be of great help to their team's pitching staff. Many coaches seldom have their pitchers throwing at team practices. If they were never a pitcher themselves, they just don't realize what it takes to be one of the best.

Many young pitchers are told (or are led to believe) that they are among some of the best pitchers in their area. A very strong team defense can carry a weak pitching staff, to a point and vice versa. No team's defense is perfect. If enough balls are hit, there will be errors. The ball will be too hot to handle, just out of reach, a bad throw or missed catch. Combine that with a few walks, an occasional hit batter and the other team runs up the score real fast.

How much a pitcher should work between weekend tournaments is a separate issue and one of great debate for any particular age group/level. I don't believe anyone will ever come up with a generic amount of pitching recommended per week for any particular age group, there are just too many variables.

Let's look at it this way. If you decided to start running a mile a day, the first time you tried, you would probably think you were going to die. You would not be in good enough shape because you would not have the stamina to run that far. You would run for awhile and then have to stop or walk before trying to run again. You would probably have to stop and walk several times before you reached that mile marker.

However, if you ran a mile a day for a month, you would probably have built up enough stamina to run a full mile without stopping. It still would not be easy but you could probably run a full mile without stopping and live to tell about it. If you ran a mile a day for three months, a mile without stopping would seem an easy workout.

If you only ran a mile once a week, running that mile would be hard, you would have to push yourself and it would always be tough going. It is doubtful that you would be able to run a full mile without stopping because that is not enough running to build up good running stamina.

One thing a GOOD pitcher must have is pitching stamina. If you only throw for one hour during the week chances are you will only be good for one hour in a tournament day, then you will start to poop out.

In many cases a young pitcher will go to their instructor for a thirty or sixty minute lesson. Many times they are in a small group and that hour gets divided up two, three or more ways. They may actually only be throwing for twenty minutes of that hour lesson. That twenty minutes is, in many cases, the ONLY pitching practice they do between weekend tournaments. They pitch in the tournament and start off their first game throwing with great speed and ability. Then, around the third inning, their speed is gone and they are struggling, they start pooping out.

Pitchers that work on their pitching more than that during the week are usually good for more than one game a day. Work ethics are a HUGE part of how good of a pitcher you will be and how much you can pitch and pitch 'well'.

If you are only accustomed to pitching twenty minutes a week, then that is about all the pitching stamina you will have in a tournament day because that is all you have built up. You will not go the distance, you will not throw real well for very long in any game before you start to struggle and have to push yourself. You will poop out early on.

Now, think about your pitching, how it goes in a tournament and how often you practice your pitching between tournaments.

The average game time is 80 minutes. If you are throwing for half that time, you are throwing for around 40 minutes of that game. The average game goes 7 full innings and that means you are pitching an average of 5 minutes per inning. If your pitching stamina is only good for 20 minutes a day, because that's all you have built it up to, then you are trying to pitch twice as long as you will have the stamina for. You will throw well for 5 1/2 innings, then you will struggle and shortly after that you will poop out and the batters start pounding you.

Now ask yourself this question and answer it honestly; do the batters start hitting your pitching towards the end of the third inning, much better then they did in the first inning? If they do, you are probably not working hard enough between tournaments to be the best pitcher you can be.

You probably don't practice enough to have a full game's worth of pitching stamina.

I have dropped a few students that would throw their heart out for me but would do absolutely nothing on their own to practice and get better.

If you are a team coach and your pitcher poops out fairly early in the tournament or has problems before they get to the end of one game, you might want to find out just how much they practice during the week.

If you are a team coach or the parent of a young pitcher, please do not think that only throwing for their instructor for that hour during the week is enough practice for them to be at their best on the weekends. If that is what you think or have been made to believe, you are sadly mistaken.

If you are a young pitcher that struggles like I have noted here, DON'T BLAME YOUR INSTRUCTOR because you can't throw a winning game as often as you would like to. If you only work on your pitching once a week between tournaments, you may point the finger of blame at your instructor but when you do, remember, the other three fingers are pointing back at YOU. Your instructor can teach you many things but he/she cannot be with you 24 hours a day, everyday, to make sure you practice what you have learned.

You can work hard at it and be one of the best pitchers in your area, or, you can not work hard and just be 'a' pitcher.

The choice is yours. Do you want to win a few games this year, or do you want to win them all?

WHAT'S IT GONNA BE???

 

[8isgreat]

Reading this when I get home today and having my daughter read it as well. She has only begun to play TB this year - and has really seen a difference in her pitching time.
she has been the "A" pitcher for so long but in Rec Ball they limit them to 7 innings per two games, and practice was pretty much null and void once the season started due to lack of practice facilities, school, etc.
On this travel team she has pitched two or three games in their entirety, usually not going over 6 innings in any one game. But when it's 110* on the field it tends to wear on you...
thanks for sharing this with us!

 

[halskinner]

There are limits on pitch counts and sessions and innings, and it's simple to figure it out. You can't just say, "oh I built up to it, so it's fine to pitch 200/day," when you're 10 years old, when you are still growing. So what do you do when the pitcher is 20 and in college, to top herself? 500 pitches twice a day? Rest is just as an important ingredient as practice. And we should not encourage young pitchers to pitch more than one game a day on the weekend, even if that is what every coach wants. I do think the article is dated, because you have the opposite problem today, overwork overuse and burnout.

I don't know any pitchers related to family members who don't practice. I also think you get the stamina other ways than pitching that are more healthy, so have a balanced workout through the week is the third part of this.

This goes for 8 year oldsa anmd 20 year olds. 3 months befor the season starts, determine what amount of pitches equal a 'Bad game day'. If you had a horrible game, how many pitches would you throw?

Over the next three months, start at, letys say 40 or 50 pitches a day, 3 times a week. The next week, bump that up by 10 more pitches, 3 times a week. Keep bumping that amount up for the three months. When the season starts, you are throwing 150 or so, pitches a day, 3 times per week.

Now, if you determined that a bad game might be 90 pitches, that bad game wont be stressful because its not as taxing on you as your normal weekly workouts.

I have had a few 10yos that practiced and threw well in excess of 250 pitches a night. They were exceptional and had built themselves up to that amount starting at 5 years old.

 

[halskinner]

Left field,

numbver one, you do not speak for everyone, dont know why you think you do.

The 10 year old I referred to kept those work trheic her entire career. She is now, 2nd year of college and received several full ride offers. She never had an injury, until she got to college. The head coach immediately started all the players doing squats with heavy weights and she tore a quad muscle, seperated the muscle. Two days after, she could not stand or walk, coach made her sit on a stool and throw batting practice. Pitcher quit the team and that ended her pitching career. That same day 3 other new players and 2 asst coaches also quit the team.

Training 6ft tall slender pitchers like they were football players.

As I said, she was an exceptional student.

As far as your pitching chart go, wgo put those together? Does that know all there is to know about pitching? Or is it just someone's opinion that thinks every pitcher is a generic kid? Hope not, we got WAY too many of those out there.

Just so you know bubba, I hjave been accused chastised for coddling pitchers more times than I can count.