3 Tips To Throw More Strikes

In this video, Scott Haase introduced 3 different ways to start throwing strikes. These tips are so easy to implement that you could use them from one pitch to the next, during a real game! The strategies include aim small - miss small, breathing, and repetitions.

If you are interested in becoming a Healthy Velo Remote Athlete, getting an in-person assessment, an online mechanical breakdown, or working with Scott in other ways please visit: www.healthyvelo.com

To be on the exclusive Healthy Velo email list to hear the latest updates and get first access to programs and offerings from Scott, click this link to sign up: www.healthyvelo.com/join

Follow Scott...

Instagram: www.instagram.com/scotthaase14

Facebook: www.facebook.com/scotthaasepitching

Twitter: www.twitter.com/scotthaase14

TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@scotthaase14

Full Transcript (will update):

3 Tips To Throw More Strikes

 So the coach tells you, you need to throw more strikes, the parents are yelling, come on, just play catch with the catcher, and your buddies are getting real frustrated behind you. And you don't know what to do, let me tell you three different things that you can do in game in the middle of the game that can help you throw more strikes, number one, and actually allied, the third one, you're gonna have to do in addition to the games, so you can do it in games, but it's gonna be something you do also, outside of in all of these, you should, but number one, is something that I wish I would have been told, when I played.

1. Aim Small, Miss Small

I never heard this, but now I've heard it apparently all the time I barely everybody knows about Aim small, miss small. What does that mean? It means you find the smallest target you're bidding at beady little eyes can see, and that becomes your target. So it doesn't, for me it was you're trying to hit the glove. And you know what I did when someone said try to hit the glove, I looked at the catcher as a whole, you can look at the catcher where your focus is just the catcher, or maybe I'd look at their mask and see kind of what their facial expressions were. Or maybe I'd look at their glove sometimes. And I would just I would look away, and then pick up the last second tell wasn't even focusing on the target. But my general place to hit was the catcher. That's not a big restaurant a very small target, it's a pretty big target. To talk about Aim small Miss small because if I miss small or big from big target, so if I miss by an inch or two, or miss by one or two feet, all of those are balls, because the catcher tends to be wider than the plate. And even if they're not, if you miss a catcher their whole ball hole catcher by a couple inches, that's way outside. Now that's a ball. So if you aim small, and you miss small, sometimes you can't do anything about missing big or small. But if you aim small and you miss that could still be a striker named small and you miss that can still be a striker. Again, you aim big, you miss any, that tends to be a ball. So find a target, I mean not not even the glove, if you can see some of the webbing or some of the words and the letters, find the smallest thing you can find focus on. And that's what you focus on. So that's number one.

2. Breathing

Number two is breathing. All this definitely has to do with focus. So while you're aiming you should be focusing you should be looking at the target. And you can also look at the target longer. Some guys pick it up late or not at all. But then breathing. If you inhale and then exhale longer, you can slow down your heart rate, which can help focus you which can relax you so you can move more like you're used to because you're really really nervous. Like we've I think we've all been there and your heart rates going really hot really fast. It's hard to move and feel comfortable, because you're not used to moving at that type of intensity. I'll actually have guys in the bullpen do five or 10 Push ups or a quick sprint and then pitch to simulate sometimes when they're out of breath in the game, because sometimes you just it's gonna take you at least a couple pitches if you're really good with your breathing. So that might be something you need to train in your bullpens where, again, you do a quick sprint, you come back and try to execute a pitch because your heart rate comes up. Now you've trained and performed like you will in the game shows your own practice how you play well, there's some things that you can do to simulate that. Also do try to work on your breathing, try to inhale and then exhale for twice the amount of time. So if you inhale for two seconds, try to exhale for four and then push it so I've done this over many, many years, trained a lot of people on how to breathe, so I can inhale the exhale for a really long time you get the point. Also, through breathing, your ribcage starts to contract and get closer to your spine, the muscles content, they ended up contracting and get tighter. And you can actually create more stability in your body and in your spine. So when you rotate, you'll hear some guys grunt sometimes or they'll breathe when they exercise their exhaling, what that does is create more stability. And if you have more stability, when you release, an arm comes out, then you can tend to have more control. So through breathing, which focuses you which relaxes you, which slows down your heart rate and gives you more comfort, you can also get more control just from having more stability in your body through exhaling during the breath. So that's always a good thing to so you can take care your breathing. And then we talked about your focus and Aim small, miss small, don't aim small Miss small breathing.

3. Repetitions

And then lastly is going to be repetitions. So repetitions is definitely something you got to do in practice. But also when you're in a game, I would recommend that if you're trying to adjust don't do it one pitch the next pitch the next question the next best because you won't have an entire inning where you've tried 15 different things and you have have no idea what worked, give yourself a couple pitches. Now, if someone recommends otherwise, that's fine. But I have found with most athletes who we're trying to tell them already to simplify things, if you're going to work, and you're trying to get a guy out, and you need to know what to do, you're going to have to try something different after a few pitches. But within that, it's not some easy blanket statement where there's always one to do because you might see one guy, and it's your last pitch, and you have to make an adjustment, you might see another guy who's a completely different hitter, and you're trying to make another pitch. So there's gonna be a lot of just different adjustments. But if you can try to adjust something here first. And let's start here. So what's my focus? Like? What's my breathing? Like? What's my routine? Like? What am I saying? It's all the stuff we're going to try and fix first. Before I ever try and think of, I'm gonna try and fix where my hand is, or my mechanics or something that's a little more dynamic. I'll start simpler. So up here, what am I saying to myself? What am I thinking about? How was my focus? How was my site, how was my breathing, and just doing that over and over and over doing it in your bullpens trying to simulate those things, like I said, with the breathing, always a really good idea. And then, especially for the youth athletes, and this isn't just young bucks, this is also high school, middle school, and even college guys, there are dudes at so many different levels that pitch on a Friday, and may not pitch off of a mound for another five days, 10 days, three weeks, depending on a ton of different factors. And then the coach puts that player in. And everyone involved, the parents, the players, the coaches, the teammates, everyone, everyone expects you to do well, and you expect yourself to do well, too. Well, that's a big mistake on everyone's part, if you're not on the mound, and no one else is doing for you, you got to take your own career into your hands. And you got to figure out how to get yourself on the mound. Because if you're not getting the repetitions of just throwing fast balls to a target, let alone all the stuff we're talking about right now. If you're not getting the repetitions, in practice, then how in the world you can expect to be able to go out on the mound and perform in a game when you haven't been practicing it. I see this way too often where guys go out there don't do well, they're frustrated, the coach frustrated, they don't get another opportunity maybe for a couple more weeks, because they didn't perform well. And it's just a vicious cycle that repeats itself. But a lot of times guys just need to be on the mound. Especially because there's so many variables but just with a mound. So they got to get comfortable with some kind of mound, hopefully a couple different kinds of mounds to be able to go out there and perform and do you wouldn't ask anybody else in the world doing anything, to not do it for weeks and weeks on end. And then expect to perform at the highest levels. The only time that kind of works is for big competitions, let's say for a track runner, a sprinter, they might sprint sprint, sprint, do all this type of training and then they might take a day or a couple days or a week or however long it is because I don't know sprinter training as much. But they might take some time off from that sprinting, pull up their body recover and be in peak performance and pick tip top form in order to go and execute other sprinting. That could be something of an example, but they're not going to take weeks and weeks off and that sometimes legitimately happens. I'm sure you've seen it and we need to get rid of that. So take care of all of us. Aim small Miss small breathing and repetitions.