Today's pitching question comes from Jenny D Ralph aka mom and she says great
vid as usual we just moved to our new home and the heart the ground is not
level to set up a pitching area for my son any suggestions for setting up areas
at home to practice pitching when there is no place for a full bullpen that's a
great question and I've got a great answer for you but before we get into it
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So the first thing that you need to know when it comes to pitching is you really
don't need a big area bullpen shouldn't be a majority of your work and in fact
you can even get some throwing in in a small area so just find a small space
let me tell you a little story about one year I was getting ready for pro
baseball I moved to a new place as well funny that you say that it was a new
place it was away from everything I didn't have a throwing partner and this
was in before a professional season that I needed to be ready for to do well in
and what I did was I just worked in my garage and there was stuff in the garage
so I didn't even have a full garage all I did was that built a pitching mound
and I put up a net actually I put up a piece of wood and strapped pillows to it
because I didn't even have a net and I would throw balls into that so you don't
really need a whole bunch of space to work in so find a small area whether it
be a half of a room or whatever it is and there's a lot of things that you can
do in that small space to get ready to be a good pitcher for your next season
the other thing you need to understand is that pitching is just not about
throwing right you can work on some strength stuff I remember when I don't
know how old your player is but when I was around 12 or 13 years old my dad
bought me a weight bench and I started working out inside of my room so you
know I didn't have a whole lot of space in there but I was able to get some
workouts in and start getting stronger so I could be a better pitcher you know
a weight bench a squat rack whatever it is you know it only takes up a small
area in a place so you know if you got a basement
a garage an extra room just a small area where you can put some of that stuff
that's great because that would be a huge benefit to really any pitcher
that's trying to increase in this offseason to get ready for next season
another thing we can work on as pitchers trying to get better as speed right so
we've talked about throwing a little bit we talked about strength working out now
we can work on some speed plyometrics right we don't really need a big area at
all we can work on jumps box jumps if you got to jump something to jump up on
tuck jumps side to side jump skaters just explosive movements in this very
small area you can work on that so that's a great one Sprint's I think you
mentioned that your new home is hilly so it's it's it's sloped maybe you run
sprints up and down the hills that's a great way to work on the explosive
training as well so that's a way you can use the landscape that you have to work
on your explosive training as a pitcher as well another thing you can focus on
in a small area is arm care right you can do dumbbells light dumbbells and
bands pretty much anywhere right I use three pound dumbbells and and this is
all you really need you know this is what I use in pro baseball so even if
you're a high school college guy you don't really need more than three pounds
obviously this doesn't take up any room you can go through a dumbbell routine
with that and then you could use bands as well just find somewhere to hook
these if you don't have a hook on your band's you know you could wrap it around
something in your room or whatever it is the bottom of your bed and just work on
some of your arm care routines the dumbbells and the bands are very great
to use to help you be stronger more durable more stability in your arm your
back and they don't take up any space so another great thing that you could do to
work on your pitching in a very small area another thing you could do is you
can throw into a net or build a piece of wood with some pillows drive to it like
I did or you could even use what I call the Sully sleeve or the baseball
training sock it's basically a device that you put over your arm the bottom of
your arm strap it to your wrist and you could actually take the ball and
throw it inside of that sock and get your throws in so this is a great way to
get your throwing in without even letting the ball go anywhere so that's a
great one fact it could actually be even more
beneficial because of the weight of the ball staying in the sock and you having
to decelerate with that extra weight in the sock can help you become a stronger
pitcher in fact one of my roommates and pro baseball did a program that had
these in it it was called hold and he ended up having a lot of success with it
and it's just a great great tool that you can use especially if you don't have
any extra room get your throws in right where you're at now what about a mound
right of course getting on the mound this is an essential part of pitching
although I think we focus on that too much sometimes but yeah of course you
want to get on the mound every once in a while what if you don't have a lot of
space for a mount well mound doesn't really take up that much space like the
story I told you in the beginning I built a mound put it in my garage and
where I was throwing to was probably only 15 20 feet away so I wasn't
throwing very far it was a short garage so you don't have to throw far I can
throw with the same intensity from here to the camera which is maybe 10 feet
away as I could 300 feet away I can use the same
intensity so the distance really doesn't matter the distance of course is going
to help with accuracy but as far as getting my arm strong and getting ready
for the season I got to make do with what I have if I don't have a lot of
space I can put them out and throw very short ok it's about working with what
you have okay you can build a mount I built my own mound or now I've got a
mound from a company that built it for me and it's great it rolls around and I
use that pretty much everywhere it's actually smaller than the mound that I
built and it's pretty affordable as well so I'll leave a link down below where I
got that if you're interested in that one we could also do some pitching
drills right pitching drills don't take a whole lot of space up a couple of my
favorite drills is the wall drill where you just come up next to a wall and
you're just gonna lead with your butt and stop when you hit the ball once you
hit the wall you want to make sure that your side of your butt is touching but
not your knee not your foot not your shoulder so this is gonna tell you if
you're starting to move down the mound the correct way the other thing we want
to feel is our back leg engaged we still want to be sitting into it we don't want
to be straight with our back leg we want to feel the glutes and the hamming it as
well a little as a little the hamstring but we want to feel strong
as we're going into that wall and that's just a great drill that you can work on
with limited space another drill pitching drill that you can use when you
have limited space is the rocker drill you're just going to get set up nice and
wide like you took you already took your stride and you're gonna rock back and
forth get your hands moving a little bit separate closed 45 degrees closed off or
more and then turn and throw that ball you can throw the ball you can wear the
sleeve and let go the ball into the sleeve you can work on leaving your back
foot back on this drill when you go to throw it shoelaces down to the ground
and then you can work on letting your back foot come up and over as you do
that as well so it's really great drill pitching drill to do with limited space
as well another pitching drill that you could do with very limited space and
probably my favorite is using the king of the hill the king of the hill is a
leg drive trainer it lets you know instantly by giving you audible feedback
and just the feeling of if you did it correctly if you're using your legs
correctly so if you're a pitcher or a coach or a parent of a pitcher who
thinks that they're not using their legs enough in their pitching delivery I
highly recommend the king of the hill leg drive trainer because it teaches
them without you having to try to teach them it gives them that instant feedback
and they know right away I've seen guys hop on that thing who aren't using their
legs and within four or five pitches off of that thing they are feeling it and
understanding how to make it click and how the legs should really work in the
pitching delivery which is a huge benefit in my opinion another thing you
could do to get better at pitching in a small area is roll out or do some
stretches work on your mobility right you don't need a big area to do that you
know if you got a foam roller just get you a little foam roller roll out your
muscles if you're feeling tight from your workout work on some stretches work
on your mobility I did a video before where I showed a couple mobility
exercises mobility drills some stretches that you could do so I'll leave a link
down below where you can check that out but again that is something that you can
do to become a better pitcher that doesn't take much space at all so work
on some of that stuff as well the last thing that I'm going to leave
you with that you don't need any space for in fact you could do this pretty
much anywhere nowadays because all you need is your phone and let's just study
study the game study other pitchers get on your phone get on YouTube watch
youtube videos like this or watch major league pitchers going through it they've
got tons of slow-mo clips now of major league pitchers they got tons of fast
clips of major league pitchers find someone that you really like someone's
mechanics that you really like look at them learn from them watch my pitching
videos watch other people pitching videos your whole job as a pitcher your
whole job as a baseball player is to learn as much as you can try some of the
stuff out that you learn see what you like best
keep that some of the stuff that you don't like get rid of it and at the end
of the day you're the guy on the mountain right not me not mom and dad
not your 10 other coaches you're the guy on the mountain so you got to do what
you know works best for you and if you just take the time and learn some extra
stuff on your phone you're gonna be smarter you're gonna be a better player
you're gonna have more tools to work with to get better so make sure you get
your studying in as well I hope that answers your question I know that was a
little bit long-winded if you have any more questions drop them down in the
comments below I'd love to talk some more pitching with you and I'll see you
guys in the next video