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General | Blog | 12/12/2023

Wolforth Throwing Mentorship: Article 32

Ron Wolforth

What Should Pitchers Be Doing in November, December, and January?
Part 2: Six Elite Performance Training Concepts

First, a quick review of Part I:

I recommended beginning with a simple self-assessment before determining what you should be working on over the next three months.

If you have not yet done so, I urge you to complete this quick self-assessment and prioritize the list from one to five. (“One” is the thing you believe is most constraining to your performance currently, and “five” is the least constraining.)

____ Arm Health and Durability. My arm is simply always barking at me. It rarely feels great, and even when it does feel pretty good, the feeling doesn’t last for long. I just know if my arm felt better regularly, I’d throw harder and more consistently in every area. I’ve tried rest, and in short order, my arm always returns to the same level of discomfort.

____ Velocity. I am behind my competitive peer group in terms of velocity. If I don’t throw it harder, I simply will not be given the opportunity to pitch in games.

____ Command. I am behind my competitive peer group in terms of throwing strikes. If I don’t throw more strikes regularly, my opportunities to pitch in games will be limited.

____ Swing-and-Miss / Stuff. I fill up the strike zone and have decent velocity, but I can’t seem to avoid regular solid contact. I need to improve the effectiveness (sharpness, shape, tunnel, deception) of my secondary offerings (curveball, slider, cutter, changeup), or my opportunities to pitch in games will become limited.

____ Consistency. I do very well in one game, but then, in the next game, I may be quite ineffective. I appear to have wild swings in my outings; I never seem to know when I’m going to pitch “lights out” or when I’m going to pitch very poorly. If I’m not more consistent, my opportunities to pitch in games may eventually become limited.

My suggestion is to focus on intentionally addressing the items you listed as “one” and “two”.

In this segment, Part II, I will be offering six basic fundamental concepts for maximizing your off-season during the months of November through January.

Six Elite Performance Training Concepts

#1: Always Begin with The End in Mind

Determine the approximate first date you will pitch full effort in front of a decision maker, and then go back a minimum of eight weeks (preferably 12) and design your personal ramp-up. As I mentioned in Part I, we believe that the steepness of the ramp-up is the #1 factor regarding the health and durability of the arm during the season.

A very steep ramp-up of two to four weeks in transitioning from relative inactivity to full-effort mound throws is, unfortunately, a very common problem. It is also a major contributor to injuries and challenges with the health and recovery of the arm, shoulder, and elbow. If you abuse or overload your soft tissue early in the season, you may be feeling the negative effects of such a decision for much of (if not the entire) season.

So, first and foremost, be forward-thinking and begin with the end in mind. Start your off-season with a gradual, progressive, and cycled ramp-up of eight to 12 weeks prior to the season. Give your soft tissue time to be ready for the intensity of games.

#2: Cycle Your Workweek

Every day can’t be a heavy day, or we will eventually crash, burn out, or break.

Every day can’t be a light day, or we will never improve.

If every day is a medium day (which is the most common failure in off-season training), you will see a slight bump in “progress” early in the process. However, after three to eight weeks, we begin to stagnate and plateau as the body hits homeostasis.

Each week (every seven days), try to carve out two heavy/high-intensity/push days. Follow the heavy days immediately with light days, giving your body ample time to recover. The remaining two to three days of the week can be medium days.
The only major rules to cycling are these:
• Have at least 48 hours between push days. For example, if you push on Monday, ideally your next push day should not be until Thursday.
• If you pitch in a game or a full-speed bullpen, those are considered push days.
• Light days can often involve just a great wake-up/warmup, arm care, and then go home.

#3: Customize Your Work

Dedicate your time to working on the things that you believe will matter most regarding your current status and needs. In other words, focus on the work that will have the biggest impact on you and your pitching performance.

So often, we get caught up in following someone else’s process or following a one-size-fits-all solution. I would encourage you not to follow that path. Rarely does a one-size-fits-all program lead to exceptional results.

I would urge you NOT to simply be busy. Being busy is easy.

In our opinion, your objective should instead be to become “productive”.

In our judgment, your primary goal should be to impact your game time performance truly and positively.

This objective almost always requires customization, purpose, intention, and attention to detail.

Borrowing poetic license from Forrest Gump, “Mediocre is what mediocre does.”

#4: Prioritize Your Work

At the Ranch, we are fond of saying, “It is true that everything can be important… But each ‘thing’ doesn’t have equal importance… Nor do they all matter at the same time.”

A very good habit is to routinely ask yourself, “If I could only improve one thing, what would that one thing be? If I could only improve two things, what would they be? If I could only improve three things, what would those things be?” (We rarely have to go deeper than that.)

Maybe in two weeks, three weeks, a month, six months, or a year… The top three may change. When that answer does change, change your priorities. Until then, keep the main thing the main thing. Don’t major in minor things.

As Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Don’t dabble in things that matter. Instead, work at mastering the things that matter.

#5: Measure Your Work

“You can't improve what you don't measure.”
- Peter Drucker
Wherever and whenever you can objectively measure, record, and track your progress, I would urge you to do so. At the Texas Baseball Ranch® Summer Program, all our athletes keep a journal. If your work is important… And it darn well better be… It’s important enough to measure, and it’s important enough to write down.

Those simple acts can transform your career trajectory.

#6: Start Again

There is a saying among elite martial arts instructors, “Each day, start your work with a beginner’s heart and mind.”

Whenever we start a new journey, we typically begin with excitement, openness, and eagerness. This is often why we improve so quickly in the beginning days and weeks of a project. But as the newness wears off, we often become distracted, bored, uninspired, and flat.

Although this is obviously a challenge for all of us, how we “think” about and “manage” our process is a huge indicator of our long-term growth, success, and ultimate mastery of our skill(s). The great news is that each day, we can intentionally return our consciousness toward that of a beginner… Open, eager, excited, and intently aware of ourselves and our movements.

Tennis great, Arthur Ashe famously said, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” This inspirational quote encourages individuals to take action and progress toward their goals, regardless of their current circumstances or available resources. It emphasizes the importance of beginning each day with what is within one's reach.

This was only a small piece of the incredible wisdom of Ashe, but I believe it was a foundational part of his incredible career.

Working Hard and Smart

So often, young men and their parents look for secret recipes and/or go on social media for the “hot idea of the week”.

I suggest a much more practical, logical approach.

Hoping things get better or corrected in the off-season with the same program everybody else is doing is not a great plan. Prioritize and customize your work.

At the Ranch, we say that long-term exceptionalism is created via intention AND attention.

· Intention = The “Why” – The vision… Purpose… Specific intent.
· Attention = The “How” – The Awareness… Recognition… Consciousness… Presence.

We need both.

Hall of Fame basketball coach, John Wooden said, “Nothing will work unless you do.”

That is correct. If you are reading this, working hard is probably not your problem. It is working hard AND smart that you can improve on.

In our next segment on this topic of the critical nature of your work from November through January, I will be offering simple guidelines for improving in each of the five previously mentioned “Performance Categories” during these crucial months.

Until then…

Stay curious and keep reaching for the stars.

Coach Wolforth

Coach Wolforth is the founder of the Texas Baseball Ranch® and has written six books on pitching including the Amazon Best Seller, Pitching with Confidence. Since 2013, The Texas Baseball Ranch® has had over 577 pitchers break the 90 mph barrier, 205 have toped 94mph or better, and 135 of his students have been drafted in the MLB’s June Amateur Draft. Coach Wolforth has consulted with 13 MLB teams, dozens of NCAA programs and has been referred to as “ America’s Go-to-Guy on Pitching” and “The Pitching Coaches Pitching Coach.” Coach Wolforth lives in Montgomery, TX with his wife, Jill. They are intimately familiar with youth select, travel baseball and PG events as their son Garrett (now a professional catcher) went through the process. Garrett still holds the PG Underclass All-American Games record for catcher velocity at 89mph which he set in 2014 at the age of 16.

- - - - - - - - -

Upcoming Texas Baseball Ranch® Fall/Winter Events

• 3-Day Elite Pitcher’s Boot Camps for pitchers ages 12 & up. Three camps, one per month, between December and February. More information at https://www.texasbaseballranch.com/elite-pitchers-bootcamp/ To receive a detailed information package entitled “What Makes This Bootcamp Different”, please email jill@TexasBaseballRanch.com.

To Learn More About the Texas Baseball Ranch®, go to:
www.TexasBaseballRanch.com

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