The Young Guns Pitchers & Throwers Conditioning Class is the only program in the Bay Area specifically aimed at the development of athletes ages 12-14. Not yet young adults (avg age 13) these athletes need particlar care and training to meet their athletic needs. Over a four month period the participants went through a series of specially structured workout routines to build their bodies to answer the demands of being a throwing athlete. These routines were designed to be fun, challenging and innovative but most importantly effective. The results showed success in a variety of areas of training.
Leg Strength
After 29 training sessions we saw encouraging improvement in the particpants leg strength. The foundatiion for power and endurance leg strength plays a critical part in generating force and relieving the stress on the arm. As evidenced by our specialized jump test the average improvement was 8.07 inches. A 12% improvement in performance.
Lower Body Explosiveness
Lower body explosiveness implies both the ability to generate force (velocity) as well as nueroligically indicating the fast twitch of an athlete. Faster movements, higher velocities and ability to repeat those velocities.
Repeat Jumps – Our atheltes improved on average 4.12 inches thats approximately an 8% performance improvement. The biggest improvement was just under 8 feet!!!
Vertical Jump – The athletes averaged an improvement of 1.5″ in the vertical jump that’s a 10% performance improvement. The biggest improvement being over 3″ inches.
Lateral Stride – The ability to generate force or cover ground laterally is crucial in pitching. Our athletes testing showed 8″ inch improvement on lateral stride right and 7 3/4″ inches lateral stride left.
Endurance
Running tests showed an average improvement of just under half a second on a shuttle style run.
Arm Strength & Torque
Unfortunately our equipment was broken for the final test. Relying on our athletes and parents early observations we are hearing that the athletes are displaying improved endruance demonstrated by shorter recovery periods between throwing activites (games, bullpens etc) and improved velocities some commenting around 3-4mph. We hope to have these validated as the season progresses.
We want to thank all the particpants and parents for commiting to this program and look forward to hearing the stories of your success in the coming season and will see you at our next Top Gun series coming this October 2018.
