What muscles affect the velocity of a thrown object and how can they be trained?

[jay f]

hi guys. first time poster here.

working on a project for increasing the velocity of a thrown object, i.e. a baseball pitcher throwing a ball to home plate. what I'm trying to figure out is based on the following hypothesis:

velocity of a thrown object = angular velocity of the human arm (i.e. the faster your arm goes the faster the object goes)

based on that, I'm trying to figure out what muscles in the human body directly corelate to, or have a direct impact on, the speed at which a human can throw an object.

finally, and most importantly, what is the best way to 'train' those muscles to go faster, thus increasing the velocity at which the object can be thrown?

some background; I'm a youth sports coach with an engineering degree and physics background. I'm trying to apply biophysics to help improve my pitchers' velocity at which they throw. I've tried the traditional methods that are tossed around in the sports world, weight lifting, cardio, rubber band exercises, pushups, weighted balls (throwing a heavy ball) and none of them work. curious if this community has any insight?

thanks!

jay

 

[berkeman]

hi guys. first time poster here.

working on a project for increasing the velocity of a thrown object, i.e. a baseball pitcher throwing a ball to home plate. what I'm trying to figure out is based on the following hypothesis:

velocity of a thrown object = angular velocity of the human arm (i.e. the faster your arm goes the faster the object goes)

based on that, I'm trying to figure out what muscles in the human body directly corelate to, or have a direct impact on, the speed at which a human can throw an object.

finally, and most importantly, what is the best way to 'train' those muscles to go faster, thus increasing the velocity at which the object can be thrown?

some background; I'm a youth sports coach with an engineering degree and physics background. I'm trying to apply biophysics to help improve my pitchers' velocity at which they throw. I've tried the traditional methods that are tossed around in the sports world, weight lifting, cardio, rubber band exercises, pushups, weighted balls (throwing a heavy ball) and none of them work. curious if this community has any insight?

thanks!

jay

Welcome to the PF, Jay. :-)

It's more than just the angular velocity of the arm that imparts the velocity to the ball. There are at least two other factors that I can think of offhand... What are your thoughts?

 

[jay f]

leg drive, head wind...many others.

i guess the bottom line question is, what muscles determine how fast the arm goes and how can we make it go faster?

 

[Danger]

It will also depend upon which kind of pitching you mean. I'm assuming "hardball", but I don't know for sure. Personally, I was a softball pitcher. Due to what I can only assume is the the physical structure of my shoulders, although I don't know how mine are mutated, I simply can't throw overhand because my arms won't move that way. This seems to be the only instance in which I'm different than anyone else. I could easily break 100 kph with an underhand windmill pitch, though.
My best catcher could throw a softball overhand over the centre field fence from home plate. I won't tell you what his trick was until you've exhausted your investigation.

 

[Khashishi]

I'm sure technique has a lot to do with it. I suppose flicking the wrist and elbow at the right moment will add a lot.