The Kyle Herrick story starts in the summer of 2017. It was pulldown day. Again. The results so far were not encouraging. After hitting 99mph last winter on a pulldown, the hopes for the golden 100 were high. The gun was not cooperating. 89. 90. 91. It seemed there just wasn’t anything left in the tank and he couldn’t figure out why.
Go back a couple months to the spring season. That 99 he had hit in training the winter before just wasn’t there on the mound. 85-87 wasn’t going to do it for him. He needed to figure this out.
(Kyle Herrick 104mph pulldown with 4 oz ball last winter. He hit 99 with a baseball)
Fast forward again to the summer. After the third session of disappointing pulldowns, it was decided he needed to take a break. No more pulldowns until he figured out was he was doing.
This is where the story really starts. Here’s what we knew:
- Herrick was a big, strong dude. He’s 6’3 218 lbs. He deadlifts 500+ pounds and has reverse lunged 315+ pounds. Strength was not an issue.
- He was stronger rotationally in the so-called “merry-go-round” versus the “ferris wheel” plane. We had begun testing med ball throw velos using both rotational throws and pulldown style throws (think roll-ins with a two handed throw from over top with the med ball). His numbers were substantially better in the rotational throws when compared to the overhead throws. It also doesn’t hurt that he can hit a ball out of the park on a tee with a wood bat.
- He was not a very mobile dude.
- He was putting in the work he was asked to put in, but the results weren’t there.
- The ability was there as showcased by his previous pulldown numbers.
Arm Slot Change
After talking with our head coach, it was decided Herrick should try lowering his arm slot. Normally when coaches ask players to do this it is followed by a roll of the eyes and a shrug. It usually means the coach is asking them to “spot up” from a lower slot, which will allow them to supposedly be more accurate and get more movement. However in this case, he wasn’t lowering his arm slot so he could spot up. He was lowering it because of what we had seen from him rotationally. The lower arm slot would match up more closely with his rotational strength than his current 3/4 did. It was also more natural for him as he had played shortstop growing up and could throw from there without thinking about it.
Lateral Power
Using the lateral to medial leap test (you can read about it here) we found that while Kyle was strong, we could do a better job of transferring that strength into usable baseball ability. We started programming more lateral work into his workouts. This included banded lateral jumps and heavy lateral lunges. You can read about my experience with heavy lateral lunges here, which is what prompted the experiment on Herrick. He started out with a lateral leap of 79 inches. By the end of the summer, he had increased that to 84 inches and had also laterally lunged 225 for two reps to roughly three quarters depth.
Mobility Work
While Kyle had previously been doing mobility, he needed to get more mobile in his upper half. So, he did something he probably wasn’t very comfortable doing and probably wasn’t much fun: He cut down on his upper body lifting. The goal was to stay as strong but lose some mass and gain some mobility. He started thinking more about speed than weight. Combine that with an increased awareness and dedication to upper body soft tissue work and this no doubt contributed to his velocity jump.
(Side Note: I am still on the fence about how heavy throwers should go in their upper body lifting. I think it depends a lot on the individual. Are they naturally more mobile or strong? Figure out where they are at and go from there).
Mindset
There are a lot of mental “gurus” out there I don’t really appreciate. That’s not what I’m referring to here. There were two separate aspects Herrick said really helped him to focus specifically on what he was doing when it was go time.
- Ping Pong: over the summer Kyle and myself played ping pong every single day. We both noticed benefits in the mental game. I have spoken about this before, but competing in something everyday that is outside of your actual sport allows you to try different things. It allows you to get out of your head and your sport to find ways to deal with success and failure in a different way. As Kyle got better at managing himself during these competitions, he also began to train and throw with more fire and focus than he previously seemed to have.
- Pond Walks: our team began practicing two weeks before school started and roughly 5 weeks before our first series. During our practices, before school started, we would start out with a pond walk. This simply means we would walk a certain distance and no talking was allowed. It was your time to get your head right and get in the right space. Kyle continued this by himself into the season and it helped him with his focus and conviction on the mound.
While most of the mental stuff helped Herrick the most in becoming a better pitcher, not in throwing harder, I have no doubt it had a small impact in that area as well. The more conviction you have in yourself and your pitches, the harder you are going to throw. It may not have been the biggest aspect, but it was part of it.
All of this leads up to our first series of the fall. Herrick is our opening day starter, comes in and shoves, gets the win, and hits 93, sitting 89-91 in the later innings, something he has never done before. Some footage:
To sum it up, we worked on the following things:
- matching arm slot to rotational power in a specific plane
- increasing lateral power to transfer strength into performance
- mobilized the upper half
- trained the mind/person to work with greater focus and conviction
Are these the things that are going to help you? Maybe, maybe not. It’s about finding what’s right for each individual athlete. Pick apart each aspect of your performance, find the weaknesses, and get better.
Questions? Leave a comment below or shoot me an email at brady@dacbaseball.com.