Today’s podcast features Seth Lintz, a pitching performance coach, based out of Scottsdale, Arizona.  Seth was a second-round pick in the 2008 MLB draft, carrying a maximal fastball speed of 104mph.  Known as the “Pitching Doctor” on his social media accounts, Seth has trained over a dozen individuals to break the 100mph barrier in the past 2 years, using a progressive training system that combines a priority on neuro-muscular efficiency with intuitive motor learning concepts.

Of all the high velocity activities humans can do, throwing a ball at high speed is the “fastest”, and is a truly special skill worth studying.  Within a high-speed throw comes critical use of elasticity, explosiveness, levers, and fine-tuned coordination of one’s movement options.  Seth is a coach who has a very high-level, innate feel for all of the factors it takes for a human being to achieve extreme throwing velocities, connecting elements of physical performance with skill acquisition, while integrating the all-important role of the mind.

On the podcast today, Seth shares details from his early immersion in throwing mechanics, gives his take on the mental elements and kinesthetic, feeling-based elements of throw training.  On the training end, he talks about the ability to “surge” and change speeds within a movement, the use of different training speeds, from super slow to over-speed, and developmental aspects of throwing with different weights and objects.  Within the show, many connections are made to sprinting and human locomotion, and this is an episode that coaches from baseball to track, and in the spaces in-between, can find helpful in their process.

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Timestamps and Main Points:

3:34 – Details of Seth’s early start as an athlete, and his study of frame by frame pictures of Nolan Ryan and Pedro Martinez

11:49 – Thoughts on using visual references and positions in early athletic performance training, versus letting athletes build their technique off of instinct

20:50 – The mental element, and mental picture needed for an athlete to break velocity throwing barriers

24:26 – The critical skill of being able to feel in one’s own body, what a coach is trying to communicate visually

32:57 – Discussing the importance of different utilized speeds in high velocity training, from over-speed to extreme slow, and associating feeling with various velocities

39:22 – How athletes having too much awareness, or watching too much video of their throw, can actually present a problem in the learning process

44:42 – Tempo and “surges” of velocity in a fast throw

53:07 – Using different tools, weighted balls, and objects in nature to help an athlete connect to the feeling of intention in a throw, and the developmental boost that comes with it

“Whenever I look at my throw now, I try to look for the kid in my throw”

“With intent, your body will find its most efficient way to produce power at that given time”

“Humans are infinitely capable at birth, and that moment is when the limitation process begins.  Everything they see from that moment forward is limiting them from what they believe to be possible”

“For humans, throwing is an evolved skill for both hunting and safety (fighting)”

“What your body is doing, and what you feel like it is doing are often two different things”

“A mental picture is not a single faceted thing, it is your mental relationship to throwing, because when you have a mental picture, it gives you a feeling too… it should at least”

“Anytime you are planning, you are slowing down… that’s the job of a coach, how to get you as a student to be aware of the change that needs to be made, yet deliver it in a way that you can attach that adjustment to being in a more efficient position without planning for it… that’s a skill”

“The kids that can feel the way that you look, and then they can put that into their movement; man, that’s when you have a kinesthetically aware athlete who can make progress really fast”

“Mechanizing your movements and being afraid of a bad position, that’s not it either”

“The feeling when you can make that crossover from picture to feeling, you can use it in your actual throw, because the throw is not a position, it’s a bunch of positions woven together”

“In training, all speeds matter”

“I see guys going through extreme slows all the time, and it doesn’t actually look like their throw; but it’s very revealing as to what their mental picture is of their throw, and what they are trying to do to create power”

“Perfect mechanics start with intent, and emotion, and unadulterated form is purely thoughtless”

“I don’t discuss with them what their mental picture is for the throw; I have them do things that give me what their mental picture is for the throw”

“I try to limit awareness on some things, and bring awareness up on other things, if I make you aware of too much, that acts as interference to the other stuff”

“After bad days, I won’t send guys their video”

“Guys will get bogged down in making things too fine-tuned and perfect and copying the wrong things or whatever else”

“It’s not slow, faster, fastest… it’s fast, faster, fastest”

“It’s the ability for the body to get moving at a fast pace, but then stay relaxed at that pace, so it can continue to act at the fast past”

“With throwing (relaxation) is associated with throwing really light objects”

“I think if you could learn to throw downhill, that would be very very valuable”

“Whatever object a (child) puts in his hands that he throws the hardest, is probably the one he should be throwing the most… as soon as he feels it, it sends a feeling up here to throw with intent, to throw it hard; that’s where he is going to learn it the most, throwing”

About Seth Lintz

Seth Lintz is a pitching performance coach, based out of Scottsdale, Arizona.  He was a second-round pick in the 2008 MLB draft, carrying a maximal fastball speed of 104mph.  He goes by “Pitching Doctor” on his social media accounts, and has trained over a dozen individuals to break the 100mph barrier in the past 2 years.  Seth’s athletic and performance career began very early in his youth, emulating top pitchers such as Nolan Ryan and Pedro Martinez.  He uses a progressive training system that combines a priority on neuro-muscular efficiency with intuitive motor learning concepts.