In December of 2021 we posted a thread on Twitter breaking down our progress halfway through the year at Baldwin Wallace University. You can find the thread below along with some samples of their training throughout the fall and winter and we've also included it in this blog post for convenience.
https://twitter.com/CxnPerformance/status/1469734436023545862
In August of 2022 our team assembled to run through an assessment and orientation with the BW pitchers. We took the athletes through a physical and mechanical assessment, then introduced them to our throwing philosophy, mobility program, and finished with a weight room orientation. Before we dive into our progression, I want to preface this by saying this programming doesn’t work unless the coaches are completely bought in. keeping in mind the budget, I recommended a v-flex (I think every college program should have one), tap targets, 10x10 screens, softballs, and Durathro socks. This would be plenty to start out with. Our first two weeks consisted of getting guys synced up and preparing their tissue to handle more throwing than they’ve ever come across before.
We uploaded every athlete onto our Connect software and gave coaches full transparency on any metrics they wanted to track, their daily plan, allowed the athletes to input their data and upload any file they wanted. In the gym, we programmed a ton of landmine work. We noticed a lack in a lot of athletes’ ability to push, pull, hinge, etc. so we wanted to groove proper weight room patterns before getting crazy. For the first month we had two rotations, they were either throwing live or getting their work in in the pen. One thing we did was during the athletes' drill work, everything was off the mound, we also mixed in all of their secondary pitches in all of their drills to simulate a pen.
LISTEN TO YOUR ATHLETES: after about week 3 we started to notice arm pain metrics were up and Velo was down. Therefore, I recommended a deload week. We cut the volume down in half and it gave the team a chance to catch up on a ton of indy D. The results? Mainly every athlete had a PR the following week in their live scrimmage and their arm pain was gone. This was before any velo phases. Once our month of practice was over we gave the athletes a week off to go be normal dudes and enjoy themselves. From there we introduced a new lifting phase and built the athletes back up for 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks, the boys were ready for our player development olympics.
We drafted teams, ran through all of the data we wanted to obtain throughout the first phase of our constraint long toss. We continued to chart all of the data in Connect and gave the coaches full visibility on patterns, trends, and PR’s. After 4 weeks of long toss we deloaded our athletes again. After the deload, we went into shuffle pulldowns. After 4 weeks of pulldowns we now have 14 of our 29 D3 arms shuffling over 90 mph with a 5 oz. We also had 5 athletes over 95 mph with their 5 oz and 3 athletes over 100 with their 4 oz.
After training hard for the semester we deloaded the athletes during finals week and the following week after to reduce the overall stress of the athletes. Over the winter we transitioned everyone back to the mound with mound shuffle bullpens. It doesn't matter what their pulldowns looked like if they couldn't translate the velocity to the mound. Over the winter our guys continued to test velocity off the mound now bringing in the main focus of "throwing strikes hard." We had 15 mound PR's over winter break including the one shown below.
Once the athletes returned back to campus they had one month of pens to prepare for live at bats. We penned twice a week with variation pens making sure the athletes were challenged as much as possible for a bullpen indoors in the middle of January. For those struggling to translate their bullpen velocity to live at bats we implemented lite flight bullpens. We had a live hitter stand in with a 2 ounce foam ball. The goal was to execute their fastball as hard as they could with a hitter standing in. This took the training wheels off and allowed guys to be athletic and aggressive with no risk.
Finally, as the season approached and we got into live at bats we focused solely on competition. Our moderate days consisted of a lot of variability and athletic throwing. This allowed the athletes to adjust to any environment and allow their body and athleticism to trump any mechanical adjustments or thoughts.
Throughout our live at bats, we still saw incremental gains with some athletes including the one below.
Now, the most exciting part of the year, the spring season. Overall, the BW pitching staff set multiple team records including team season strikeouts and K/9. With almost an identical staff as 2021, the BW pitching staff lowered their ERA by an entire run. With that, the pitching staff helped contribute to a regional championship, super regional championship, and a world series birth, just the second in program history. Baldwin Wallace University as a whole set a program record for wins and started as an unranked team to finishing 7th in the country in the final poll.
Finally, a big thank you to head coach Brian Harrison, associate head coach Tom Deangelis, and pitching coach Steve Hagen for a seamless experience in our first year consulting with Baldwin Wallace baseball.
For 2022-2023 season we currently have 2 open consulting spots for colleges or organizations. Please contact Training@Connected-Performance.com.