A lot of trainers spend a good portion of baseball pitching workouts using baseball pitching routines. However, most of these drills aren’t really very effective and don’t accomplish what they are aiming for, which many times is higher pitching velocity. The problem with these drills is that they concentrate on one particular part of the pitch and/or one part of the body that is used during the pitch (usually the arm) to the exclusion of the rest and in the process can end up throwing off the rest of the pitch rather than improving the pitch. Doing a lot of drills can also make a pitcher think too much when they are pitching and over analyze what they are doing, which has a detrimental effect in the long term.

The towel drill is one of the baseball pitching workouts that is generally not very beneficial. This drill focuses solely on arm extension, and correct pitching requires the entire body to work together. If you concentrate on one portion of the pitch to the exclusion of everything else, you can actually end up throwing off the entire pitch. Other common baseball pitching drills that do not really assist include the long toss or using weighted balls, or pitching from flat ground instead of the mound.

Any drill that focuses on building up arm strength is not going to help improve the speed of the pitch because velocity doesn’t come from the arm, it comes from the rest of the body. You use your entire body in order to throw a pitch, and if you learn pitching mechanics about the way the body works you can use that to your advantage in order to throw the ball harder without actually using more arm strength. If you learn to pitch properly your arm will be doing less of the work and be unlikely to get sore after just a short time pitching.

The only type of baseball pitching workouts that can positively help are those that are designed to assist pitchers train their bodies the proper mechanics for pitching, and teach them the positions that they should be in during a perfect pitch. If a pitcher can get their body trained to use the correct pitching techniques they will be able to throw at a greater velocity and with high power. A great way to understand where a pitcher might be having problems with body positioning is through the use of a video camera that allows you to go frame by frame and in slow motion when viewing the video.