29 October 2020
 Categories: Recreation & Sports, Blog

Few things have changed baseball like the influences of data analytics and targeted approaches to core strength routines. Youth baseball pitching coach courses can teach veterans and newcomers alike how to harness the power of core training and data analytics to help ballplayers optimize their potential and passion for the game.

Complex Data Made Simple

Just a few years ago, the technology needed to gather the data analytics used by professional baseball players was prohibitively expense and complicated for most baseball coaches.

• Arm Angle: A pitcher's arm angle is critical. Youth baseball pitching coach courses can show you how to capture a pitcher's arm angle using a tablet or camera phone and user-friendly software applications. To get an accurate idea of a pitcher's arm angle, you'll need to gather a healthy sample size. This means recording a player's fastball, change-up, curveball, splitter, and/or whatever pitches they throw several times. Once you gather the recordings, baseball analytics software applications can you give an accurate arm angle for each pitch and the ideal arm angle for each pitch. Youth baseball coaching courses will give you the tools to correct arm angle deficiencies using drills to improve pitching mechanics.
• Spin Rate: Another important metric used by professional baseball pitchers is spin rate. This metric helps explain how "hittable" a pitch might be. Youth baseball pitching coach courses can teach you how to use the same applications used to correct arm angles to measure spin rate. In many cases, improving spin rate boils down to improving grip and exit velocity. Once you figure out which variable is most deficient for your pitchers, you can provide specific instruction to make their pitches even harder to hit.

Strategic Core Routines

Pitching is tough on the body. Helping your pitcher's avoid frustrating and debilitating injuries should always be a pitching coach's primary goal.

• Kinetic Chain: All physical movement involves muscles, tendons, and bones working in concert to generate force. All pitchers, regardless of their skill level, have weaknesses in the kinetic chain used in their pitching motion. Youth baseball pitching coach courses can help you design core strength routines that improve the weaknesses in a pitcher's kinetic chain. For most baseball athletes, this means working on lower back and glute strength.
• Im-balancing Act: One of the ways to improve a player's balance is to put them in positions where they are out of balance. For instance, using single-leg core strength exercises like pistol squats or goblet reaches can improve a pitcher's core strength.

Contact a baseball pitching coach course for more information.