Josh Gessner
@joshgessner • 46,418 subscribers
Co-founder: https://t.co/nbDchVYG2S
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The brutal reality of getting recruited. Throwing slow sucks. If you're in the low to mid 80s, you're in that range where a lot of college scouts will look at you. If you're a good pitcher, they'll show a little interest, but they usually won't give you an offer. Instead, they'll tell you to keep doing your thing. What they really want to see is whether you can develop into a guy who's throwing upper 80s or 90 plus. I remember this clearly because when I went to a showcase at 17 years old, I topped out at 88 miles an hour, but I was mostly a low to mid 80s guy. I dominated the showcase. I struck out a lot of hitters, had good command, and had good off speed pitches. The result was one offer from a small JUCO. The main feedback I got was, "We want to see you become more of a 90 plus guy." That's the brutal reality of baseball these days. But when I came back the next year, I was topping out at 96 miles an hour. Everything changed. I ended up with more than 30 Division 1 offers and even got an offer from my dream school, Stanford. If you're watching this and not getting the offers you're looking for, remember that we still need to be good pitchers. But velocity is often the thing that gets you to the next level.
Josh Gessner41,704 次观看 • 1 个月前
Lower body mechanics to throw 95 mph. There are four things about the lower body that I wish I knew when I was a 16 year old throwing 78 miles an hour and trying to throw 90 miles an hour and beyond. The first is the leg lift and how well you're able to start creating momentum toward the target. One of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking they need to fall forward as soon as they lift their leg to create drift. What worked for me was coming to a balance point first and then starting to shift my weight from there. That's still a form of drift, and you see a lot of Japanese pitchers do this, like Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The second component is the back leg and how it creates linear momentum toward the target. One of the biggest mistakes I made was diving too much into the quad. I'd get onto my toes and sink into my quad, which led to less power and actually made rotating much harder. Another mistake I made was squatting as deep as possible into the back leg, almost like a pistol squat. What actually helped me was simply dropping down as quickly as possible. I let gravity pull me down. If you've created enough drift, even just a slight drift, that drop will create linear momentum down the mound. The third component is getting the pelvis to rotate into foot plant. The biggest thing here is matching your pelvis plane of rotation and making sure the pelvis rotates down into foot plant rather than rotating upward. One of my favorite cues for this is to slam the knee down or get onto your shoelaces. The last component is simple. It's the lead leg block. You're trying to block all of the momentum you've created like your life depends on it. For me, I tried to extend as high as I could. That actually helped my pelvis continue to rotate because as the front leg extends, the pelvis gets more open. Those are the four things I wish I knew about the lower body when I was trying to gain pitching velocity.
Josh Gessner37,521 次观看 • 1 个月前
Don’t train like a pitcher, train like an Olympic sprinter. When I was with the Phillies throwing in the mid-90s, I thought sprinting was eyewash. I just wanted to get bigger and stronger. But here’s the thing—the key to throwing harder isn’t to get bigger or stronger. It’s to train your central nervous system to fire faster. And sprinting is one of the best tests for how well your CNS is firing. Look at Roki Sasaki, who throws 103 mph. When researchers studied him, they found he had similar characteristics to an Olympic sprinter. Or Aroldis Chapman beating Billy Hamilton in a race—when Hamilton was the fastest runner in the MLB. Or even Shohei Ohtani stealing 50 bases last year. They’re elite at throwing and sprinting because they’re so efficient at firing their CNS. So if you want to take advantage of this, here’s what you do: – 2–3x per week, incorporate sprint variations (acceleration, weighted, max effort). – Do ~10 sprints per session. – Add rate of force development, VBT, and impulse-type training into your routine. And if that sounds confusing, just comment SPRINT and I’ll send you the exact routine I’m using to throw 100 mph.
Josh Gessner114,694 次观看 • 9 个月前
Yoshinobu Yamamoto is able to throw in the upper nineties without lifting a single weight. Here’s how. I’m currently reading through his book, which explains his training, why he doesn’t lift, and why he throws javelins. I’m about halfway through, and one of the big things that stood out to me is his daily warmup routine. This routine includes back bridges, handstands, forward and backward rolls, side rolls, sidesteps, and lateral running. The whole point of this routine is to develop full body awareness so he’s able to move his body and be athletic in his pitching delivery. This routine originated from judo. It’s something I tried myself, and to my surprise, I struggled with most of these exercises. If you’re already at a high level, have a solid strength base, and have been lifting for a while, it might be worth trying these full body exercises. Focus on developing full body awareness and improving movement quality instead of continuing to hammer weights.
Josh Gessner48,227 次观看 • 3 个月前
If you have the yips you need to watch this. I couldn’t throw a baseball 60 feet to save my life, and it wasn’t because of my body, it was because of my brain. I had the yips so bad I couldn’t even play catch. One thought kept destroying me the whole time. Everyone thinks I suck. Here’s what I didn’t know. Nobody was actually thinking about me. There’s a study called the Spotlight Effect that shows people think way less about you than you think they do. In the study, people wore embarrassing shirts and then guessed how many others noticed. They guessed 50 percent. The real number was less than 20 percent. Here’s why. Everyone’s too busy thinking about themselves to think about you. You think about yourself 99 percent of the time, and so does everyone else. That means all that anxiety about what other people think is just in your head. Once I realized nobody actually cared, I stopped caring what they thought. That’s when I finally got over the fear and started throwing freely again.
Josh Gessner51,065 次观看 • 4 个月前
The Most Underrated Way to Gain 3–5 MPH. This might be the most underrated way to add three to five miles an hour. Almost nobody in baseball is talking about it. It’s called overcoming isometrics. When I first started training to throw a hundred, I thought getting stronger just meant lifting heavier. But throwing isn’t just about strength. It’s about how fast you can fire those muscles. You have to go from relaxed to full effort in a split second. I wasn’t training that at all. That’s when I found overcoming isos. Pushing as hard as possible against something that doesn’t move. It sounds simple, but it works. It teaches your nervous system to fire everything at once. It improves rate of force development and neural drive. That carries over to throwing harder, jumping higher, and sprinting faster. Once I added them in, my velocity jumped about three miles an hour in a few weeks. Here’s how I use them. Split stance isos that match my throwing position. That trains my lower body to put force into the ground. Trap bar iso pulls for total body force. Bench press isos for upper body power. My favorite is tempo isos. Relax for a second, then push as hard as possible for one to two seconds. Reset and repeat. It trains you to go from relaxed to max effort fast. That’s exactly what you need in the pitching delivery.
Josh Gessner28,123 次观看 • 3 个月前
Stop accelerating down the mound. I’m sure you’ve heard the cue to accelerate down the mound. Get down the mound quickly. The mistake most people make, and the mistake I made when I was 16, was trying to force it. I was throwing slow, around 78 to 80 miles an hour. I thought I had to push off the rubber as hard as I could to accelerate my body down the mound. When I made the jump to throwing 90 plus to 95 as an 18 year old, the big change I made was this. Instead of pushing off the rubber to accelerate my center of mass down the mound, I let gravity pull me into the ground. That matters because when gravity pulls you into position without pushing, your back leg stays loaded and under you. Now the back leg can work underneath you. It can rotate you and pull the pelvis open. That pulls the spine and then propels the arm. The goal isn’t to force speed down the mound. The goal is to let gravity set up the back leg so it can accelerate the pelvis, which pulls the spine into the throw.
Josh Gessner40,373 次观看 • 5 个月前
POV: you study Yamamoto's secret book to throw 98mph. Here’s the exact workout Yoshinobu Yamamoto does straight out of his Japanese book. It’s called the Five B’s. The first B is Breath. This helps him stay loose and learn how to relax. The second B is Board. This trains his feet and balance. The third B is Bar. This works on rib cage and pelvis mobility. The fourth B is Bowl. This helps him understand where his center of mass is. The fifth B is Bridge. This improves spinal extension in his pitching delivery. On top of that, he does a lot of judo style movements. That teaches him how to control his body while turning and falling. Just like the drift in his delivery. I actually created a full guide breaking down what he does and why. If you want it, comment Yamamoto and I’ll send it to you.
Josh Gessner26,887 次观看 • 3 个月前
POV: You throw through the target. This might be the most underrated cue in baseball for increasing pitching velocity. That cue is to throw through the target. One of the studies I read was from Tom House. What he said was that 80 percent of pitching velocity comes from the separation you create and the rotational aspects of throwing. The other 20 percent comes from how well you track toward the target and direct energy through it. This is something I made a mistake with. I created a delivery where I would pull off. I was trying to create so much power just from rotation. What was actually happening was that I was leaking a lot of energy off to the side instead of sending it through the target. Yamamoto is one of the best examples of this. I love watching him because when he throws, he doesn’t spin off at all. He lifts his leg and all of his energy goes toward the target. He even finishes by moving forward. Everything he does goes through the target rather than being purely rotational.
Josh Gessner42,148 次观看 • 5 个月前
This Back Leg Adjustment Got Me to 98 mph. What’s the best way to load into your back leg? When I threw 95, I tried to get as deep and load into my back leg as much as possible. The adjustment that got me to 98 was speeding up the drop into my back leg. I started dropping into that back leg as quickly as possible. The quicker you go down, the higher you can jump. That’s scientifically proven. That’s what we want to emulate in the pitching delivery with the back leg. We want to relax into it. We want to drop into it. By doing that we’re putting force into the ground not only vertically but horizontally as well. So to recap, you’re shifting your weight and then relaxing into your back leg. That’s what creates that burst of energy going forward.
Josh Gessner30,391 次观看 • 4 个月前
The Easiest Way to Increase Pitching Velocity. When I was going from 78 to 96 miles an hour, I did pull downs once a week. I also did either a mound velo day or a plyo velo day once more during the week. So why do I recommend high CNS throwing? There's a principle called the SAID principle, which stands for Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands. Basically, the body responds to what it's exposed to. As cliché as it sounds, if you want to throw harder, you need to throw hard. And you need to throw hard often. If you're only throwing at low intent, there's no real stimulus. There's no reason for the body to adapt and start throwing harder. But when you're doing pull downs and you're able to throw even harder than you can off the mound, that provides the stimulus. You're telling your body that it needs to adapt to handle that level of intent and velocity. When I was throwing 96 miles an hour, I was able to pull down 100, 101, and 102. I was exposing my arm, my body, my muscles, and my central nervous system to those speeds. They had to adapt. And once those adaptations were in place, they carried over to the mound and helped me throw harder.
Josh Gessner20,709 次观看 • 2 个月前
Stop Pushing With Your Back Leg As I trained to throw harder, I thought I needed to create a ton of momentum down the mound and really push off the rubber. That was actually holding me back from gaining pitching velocity for a couple reasons. The first reason was that pushing made it really hard for my pelvis to fire because it put me in a worse position instead of a better one. When I was pushing, it also made me fly open. The fix was thinking about keeping everything back and letting the pelvis rotate instead of pushing with my back leg. Most of your linear momentum comes from the drift and the drop in your delivery and the back leg. The back leg does have a role in building linear momentum, but its more important role is putting you in a good position to rotate. To create separation between your pelvis and your rib cage. That separation is what gives you true hip to shoulder separation that you can actually fire from.
Josh Gessner37,682 次观看 • 5 个月前
POV: you stopped lifting heavy and threw 98 MPH Up until I threw 95, and even in pro ball with the Phillies and Rangers, all I tried to do in the weight room was lift as heavy as I could. Now that I’m trying to throw 100 miles an hour, I’ve realized that’s not the most efficient way to train. This is something I see a lot of guys struggle with. They go to college, get bigger and stronger, but don’t throw harder. And they wonder why. The biggest reason is they’re not training rate of force development. In the pitching delivery, you only have milliseconds to produce force. If you can’t produce a high amount of force in that time, your velocity will be limited. Once I started incorporating rate of force development into my training, I began climbing into the 96, 97, 98 mile an hour range. My favorite ways to train this are overcoming isometrics, oscillatory work, explosive lifts, VBT-style training, ballistic barbell movements, and plyometrics. All of these teach you how to produce force fast, not just how much you can lift. I also created a full guide on this. If you want it, comment “guide” and I’ll send it to you.
Josh Gessner25,226 次观看 • 3 个月前
I went from 92 to 98 miles an hour by adjusting my drop. When I used to think about the drop phase in my delivery, I thought I needed to drop as hard as I could into my back leg. So that’s what I did. I dropped in, got into a squat position, and powered myself out of it. That got me to the low to mid nineties. What got me to 96, 97, and 98 was learning to create linear momentum during the drop. I started moving down the mound instead of just dropping straight down. One of the biggest things that helped was dropping into the inside of my back foot. Before, I would drop into the sole of my back foot. That put me in a very vertical shin angle and I’d go straight down. Then I had to push out of it. The simple adjustment I made was dropping into the inside of my back foot. That put me in a position where my shin wasn’t as vertical. It created a force vector that helped me get down the mound and build linear momentum instead of just going straight down. That linear momentum wasn’t powered by me. It was powered by gravity. I was able to use gravity to my advantage and throw harder with less effort.
Josh Gessner30,075 次观看 • 4 个月前
POV: you throw through the target. This might be the most underrated cue in baseball for increasing pitching velocity. It’s the idea of throwing through the target. Tom House did a study on this. He found that 80 percent of pitching velocity comes from separation and rotation. The other 20 percent comes from how well you track toward the target and direct energy through it. I made this mistake for years. I built a delivery where I would pull off. I tried to create power with rotation alone. What actually happened was I leaked energy sideways instead of directing it through the target. One of my favorite examples is Yamamoto. He doesn’t spin off. All of his energy is directed through and toward the target. He even finishes going forward. Everything goes through the target, not just rotation. Here’s the key. You still need rotation. That’s 80 percent of your pitching velocity. You can throw about 80 percent of your velocity from your knees because of rotation. But if you don’t direct that energy through the target, you’re leaving velocity on the table.
Josh Gessner22,709 次观看 • 4 个月前
This one change made him go from 87 to 92 miles an hour. He was stuck at 87 for two months. Then we changed one thing and he broke into the low nineties. His lower half was solid. His stride was dialed in. His pelvis rotation was clean. But he couldn’t break 87. The problem was his upper body couldn’t accept what his lower body was doing. His spine was firing way too early and trying to drive the whole throw. Here was the fix. We gave him a two pound medicine ball. It sounds simple, but here’s what happens. When you hold that ball out in front, it forces your core to stay back. That allowed his upper body to time up better with his lower half. If you want the full guide on how we trained him to break into the low nineties, comment guide and I’ll send it through.
Josh Gessner21,516 次观看 • 4 个月前