Pitching in the Modern Era

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 breat...