Developing Arm Speed For Pitching

In this post, I want to focus on how to develop arm speed for pitching. Because of what I do, I talk to guys all the time about teaching pitching mechanics. I ask guys what they teach to increase arm speed. Some guys say weight transfer is very important, others say it is rotation. When I work guys during private instruction, I emphasize both as being important.

I strongly believe arm speed is correlated with how fast your body is moving toward home plate, and I think speed and force is increased by a complete rotation of the upper arm, just like a swimmer using a "crawl stroke". I think circling the upper arm is an effective way to generate arm speed because it allows the arm to externally rotate back before the pitch.

On eteamz.com, Gary Adams UCLA's former coach, has a basic drill on doing arm circles with 1 baseball in each hand focusing on the speed of the arm. Then, he talks about working up to 2 or 3 baseballs in each hand, while doing the circles.

If I could pick one sport all my pitchers could participate in when not playing ball, it would be swimming. Can you think of a better sport that promotes arm and force behind the speed? But again, ultimately proper mechanics go a long way in arm speed as well as long tossing.

Comments

[Tyler Sauve]

Hey,
im 16 not too big in size, and my fastball tops out at around 70 mph, but i want to be able to throw harder, any tips on better kick offs or diffrent work outs ?