Conditioning For Pitchers

by: Adam Jeannette

Old School Conditioning

What is it?

   -It was common practice up until the last few years to have pitchers run long distances as a form of "conditioning" and "recovery." Coaches would tell players to jog a few miles the day after an outing to "flush the system" or "get rid of lactic acid." Most coaches even believed that running long distances would help pitchers increase their stamina on the mound, leading to longer starts. All of this is complete nonsense and has been proven wrong in recent years across all levels of baseball. 

 

Why does it not work?

    -I will start with the reasoning why running long distances is not an effective method of conditioning pitchers. The reason for this is pitching is a max effort movement performed over the course of a few seconds with anywhere from 15-20 seconds of rest between pitches. This gives the athlete time to catch their breath from the previous pitch before performing the next one. This is the reason why jogging long distances where the athlete is not given time to catch their breath during the activity is not relatable to pitching conditioning. Moving on to the recovery aspect of pitching, old school conditioning techniques are inferior as well. Running long distances to "flush the body of lactic acid" is nonsense. First off, as noted in an article on ericcressey.com, pitching does not cause a significant rise in lactic acid in a controlled study. The article states, "In the current research study examining the physiology between pre-pitching and post-pitching blood lactate levels of six college baseball players after throwing a 7-inning simulated game. Even though during an inning there is a slight lactate production of 5.3-5.8mM, (which is not high, considering resting lactate is 1.0mM), it does not cause a buildup of lactic acid in the arm of a pitcher after a game (1). Although this quote is lengthy, it contains great information in regards to lactic acid buildup in pitchers. If pitchers do not build up lactic acid like old coaches believe they do, why would they have pitchers run long distances to "flush" it out?

Better Ways to Condition Pitchers

Shorter Sprints

    -The first quality alternative to running long distances is shorter springs. Dr. Josh Heenan speaks of this in great detail on his social media pages as he is a strength and conditioning specialist in baseball. There are two main sprint variations that he recommends. The first one is 10-20 yard max effort hill sprints with 3 minutes or less of rest between sprints until rest takes longer than 3 minutes. The other form of  sprints is flat ground sprints which are meant to be 10-60 yards in length and performed at 80-100% effort. The rest for this is identical to that of the hill sprints. The reason sprints are superior to long-distance running is that the body takes less of an impact from shorter durations of sprinting than it does during long-distance running. When recovering from an outing, the pitcher wants to speed up recovery, not dig the hole deeper. 

Strong Man Training

    -As talked about in my prior post regarding fastball velocity increases, "Velocity Increases in Major League Baseball," pitchers lift heavy regularly in today's game. This is why strong man training is a good option for conditioning as it not only trains the cardiovascular system, it also builds more strength to transfer over to the mound. Exercises such as farmer's walks, sled push/pulls, tire flips and heavy med ball drills are good options for strong man conditioning. 

 Conclusion

   -Conditioning pitchers can be challenging sometimes, but there is no reason to overcomplicate things. Pretty much eliminating long, "flush" runs for pitchers will show benefit to those who are currently using them as a form of conditioning. With baseball following along in the data-driven, analytics age of sports, running long distances just isn't the answer to conditioning pitchers.