At the 2015 ABCA Convention, the overarching message from pitching coaches and attendees alike was the idea that things need to be “kept simple.” That going into deep detail was ultimately very confusing and hard to understand, and not necessary – after all, pitching effectively simply involves throwing strikes, locating well, having a good pitch selection, and keeping the hitter off balance. What could be more difficult than that? Let’s back up. I think most people would agree that sprinting is a much simpler activity than pitching – it’s mostly in a single plane, it doesn’t require a second party that is reacting to what you’re doing, it’s generally easier to train for, etc. As we all know, Usain Bolt is one of the best sprinters in the world and of all-time: Unfortunately, sprinting turns out to be quite a bit difficult to understand – according to lead researchers in the field like Dr. Frans Bosch: “It’s very early stages in understanding,” he says. “It could be many, many years still before we know more. If you look at a very important development in science over the last 15 years called dynamic systems theory and complex theory, we have learned that the answers to our questions are actually further away than ever before. We’re probably not getting closer to the answer, we’re just getting closer to asking the right questions.” Pitching is heavily triplanar (sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes of movement) and tough to analyze using video without multiple cameras – often synchronized to get actual joint kinematics and kinetics through deeper analysis. If an Olympic sport that has been researched to death isn’t even close to getting the final answers, how can we hope to […]
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