Velocity fluctuation tends to be an issue with many youth pitchers, college pitchers and even professional athletes. In this article, we will be focusing on why your velocity may be inconsistent in season, but these factors can contribute to off-season inconsistency as well. Along with this, we will be focusing on your average velocity rather than your top-end velo. Here are my top five reasons as to why your velocity has inconsistencies.
1. Fatigue
From my experience, these have been the biggest factors as to why velocity tends to fluctuate in pitchers. Weather this be from your intensity of your throws or just the overall number of throws, your body can experience a sense of fatigue due to the workload placed on the arm. The biggest telling factor as to possible arm fatigue is feel. If your arm is hanging and you feel the constant need to use products such as ibuprofen or icy-hot, you may need to doublecheck the workload you put on your arm.
The same goes for lifting; if you are lifting too heavy or too often and are not allowing your body to recover, your body will be in a constant state of fatigue. While you should be training in season, you should be smarter with how you train. Training in season is crucial to maintaining velocity and strength (or even gaining velocity and strength), but training in season as you would in the off season, you may need to rethink your workout routine. Schedule your lifts around your outings in order to limit any body fatigue you may feel on game day. (In season vs off-season lifting article coming soon).
2. Nutrition
Maintaining weight by eating a proper number of calories and consuming a recommended number of macronutrients are the two key nutritional pieces to this puzzle of velocity maintenance.
Creating a proper intake of calories in order to maintain weight is a two-part equation when it comes to nutrition. Your body needs calories to create energy to burn in order to keep on your muscle mass. How do you maintain your caloric intake in season? Even though you are at the field for around 5 hours, bringing larger snacks such as PB&J and a protein bar rather than goldfish and chips. Having the ability to eat a sandwich and a protein bar or two will boost your caloric intake around 800-1000 calories in comparison to lighter snacks. This also adds an additional 70ish grams of protein to your diet, 50ish grams carbs and 25 grams of fats, each allowing for better recovery and a more optimized diet. Creating a balanced macronutrient diet will help with weight maintenance, gain, or loss depending on what you need.
Check out our last blog for more information on macronutrients.
3. Uncontrollable
Sometimes the reasons for velocity variation are out of your control. One example of this is weather. If the weather is too hot or cold along or being rainy and windy, your velocity can absolutely be affected. This is out of your control. A second uncontrollable is the mound. Most mounds are different. Pitching on a perfect clay mound will likely yield better results to velocity in comparison to a mound that is considered a sandbox. Comparing turf with dirt mounds as well can create a variation in velocity. Is the mound dry or is it muddy? All of these can play a roll into your velocity, each of which are uncontrollable.
4. Quality of Sleep
An often-overlooked piece of the puzzle when it comes to velocity is sleep. Your quality of sleep has an effect on your energy level and recovery level, which creates what your body can output for the day (daily velocity output). Having a poor night sleep can likely lead to a small decrease in velocity, but it shouldn’t carry over.
5. Mechanical changes
Mechanical work is supposed to be for practice, often times when you actively focus on mechanics in game it can mess with your natural rhythm and create a hitch in your mechanics which isn’t smooth. This lack of smoothness will create a dip in your velocity due to the inconsistencies that it brings. This is why we work on mechanics heavy in the off season and during practice and let what the body chooses to do in game. Not only will your velocity likely decrease when thinking about mechanics in game, but your control tends to become an even bigger issue.
Conclusion
The best way to create and maintain consistent velocity is through a routine. Knowing what you are eating and how much you are eating throughout the day, when to workout and how much to workout along with getting to bed at the right time are all parts of a daily routine that will help you succeed. Most of all, dips and fluctuations in velocity happen to everyone. Don’t freak out, let nature run its course and evaluate what may be going on. If your velocity has dropped considerably, take a look at your lifestyle changes and what has been different and further evaluate what has been going on.
Create game-to-game adjustments if needed.
Keep working hard.
