My Plan To Throw 100mph

written by JOSH GESSNER | The Athletter

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The Plan to Throw 100mph

It’s been 4 months since I stepped away from professional baseball.

At the time - I thought I was done.

But now - I feel myself wanting to go throw and train .

So I’m setting a challenge for myself:

Throw 100 mph in 100 weeks.

If I hit this goal within this timeframe - I’ll make a comeback.

If I don’t - I put down the baseball for good.

Why?

When I reflect back - I realize that there’s more in the tank.

If I just took some time off, get my body into shape and address my injuries:

I could get back into the high 90s and beyond.

I was 18 yrs old throwing 96mph.

I hit 98 as a 21 yr old.

I’m 24 now - I know I can get to 100mph.

What stopped me before?

I got caught up in professional baseball.

I got caught up in the movement metrics, command and everything else.

I had limited time for velocity development.

And its hard to sustain that progress through a full season.

But that’s not the case anymore.

I don’t have to be ready to compete. No expectations. No Spring Training to be ready for.

I get to REBUILD.

In 2017 I was a 16 yr old throwing 78mph.

2 years later, I came back touching 96mph.

For those 2 years, I went dark.

I focused on training and obsessed about velocity development.

I wrote about how I did it here:

This is the path I plan to take.

Go dark for 2 years and see how much progress I can make.

And here’s the plan:

Mobility

This comes at the top of the list.

As soon as I got surgery for my back in 2022 - I lost a ton of mobility…

Which led to a 5+ mph decrease in velocity.

I was performing the exercises I was prescribed, but the mobility never came back and I was constantly pitching in pain.

I remember not being able to touch my knees with straight legs.

Every time I stood up after sitting down - I got a jolt of pain.

So getting extremely mobile is going to be my main focus.

Here’s exactly how I plan on gaining mobility:

1. Train Stretch - Strength.

This is a training method I learned from KneesOverToesGuy.

It’s training flexibility with weights.

The weights push you into deeper ranges of motion you wouldn’t have access to without the weights.

I wrote about it in depth here:

2. Stretch 3-5 times a day.

I run a full time business (ThePitcherLab) so there’s a lot of time spent behind my laptop screen.

I’m going to make sure to get in 1-2 min stretches multiple times a day.

The more I stretch, the better my body feels.

3. Be consistent.

When I looked into the science of flexibility:

The most important thing was to be consistent and put your muscles in stretched positions at least 5-6 times a week.

1 week off can kill your progress.

Consistency > Intensity.

I wrote about the science of flexibility here:

My main focus is going to be on my spine and hips.

I naturally have elite mobility in my upper body.

As I explained, my spine was all messed up.

It’s better now, but there’s still progress to make.

I’ve been diving into Spinal Engine Theory, which I might write about at a later date.

But it’s opened my eyes into how important spinal mobility is for pitching velocity.

So my primary focus will be on spinal mobility.

Power and Strength:

The main difference between when I was throwing in the mid 90s and when I was barely touching the low 90s was my power.

When I was throwing 98 - I could jump squat with over 315lbs on my back.

(I DO NOT recommend this. I’m pretty sure this is what made my back explode)

Even though in hindsight this was a dangerous thing to be doing…

Jump Squatting 315 is no joke.

That’s a crazy amount of horse power.

When I was throwing slow - I became scared of doing explosive movements.

Instead I did a bunch of ‘strengthening’ exercises which didn’t help me at all.

So, I need to get that power (and strength) back.

I’m going to do this in a couple ways:

1. Heavy, explosive lifting WITHOUT any axial loading.

I don’t know if there’s any way of getting around the fact that I need to lift heavy weights explosively.

That’s what got me to the high 90s, so there’s definitely something there.

I’m going to replace all axial load exercises with ones that don’t put that load on the spine.

This means doing belt squat variations instead of back squats.

I’ve been experimenting with explosive squats with the belt squat, and they’ve been feeling amazing.

And instead of actually jumping, I’m going to incorporate Rhythm squats - something I learned from JumpBalance.

This guy has one of the highest vertical jumps in the world… And performs this exercise regularly.

2. Slow, Deep Positions

Another thing I learned from him was that slow, deep lifting contributes to power by developing the ligaments.

I already have a decent strength base, and so gaining general strength isn’t the biggest priority.

But what I found was a weak link in deep positions.

I can’t remember a single time I went lower than parallel with my squats.

I was really weak in those deep positions that I never trained.

So there’s a lot of improvement to be made there.

3. Keep it simple stupid.

Progressive Overload is when you gradually increase the weight you’re able to lift.

Everyone knows this.

But when I reflected back on my career:

I wasn’t able to make significant progress on a handful of exercises, because of the constant program changes and complex exercises I didn’t even understand.

Instead of looking for complex exercises to help me, I’m going to stick with a handful of exercises as my main exercises and progressively overload them for an extended time.

I plan on becoming world class at a couple exercises and let the compound effect take over.

This way I can continue to make progress in the exercises that I think are important and enjoy, rather than introducing complex exercises every couple of week / months.

A couple exercises I plan on incorporating:

Throwing and Mechanics:

There’s a huge difference between my mechanics of when I was throwing mid-high 90s vs slow.

One thing that sticks out is the lower half - due to the loss in mobility and power.

As I develop the mobility and power / strength to get back into better positions, I think my lower body will clean itself up.

I’m not going to be actively thinking about it unless it becomes a problem.

I’ve naturally had great lower body patterns since I was young (molded through the drills that I did) and I know I can get back there.

One thing I am going to be focusing on consciously is my arm action.

Later in my career I found that shortening my action led to better command and less pain in my elbow.

Since in pro ball “Availability is the best Ability” - I rolled with it.

But when I was throwing at my peak, my arm action was long and whippy.

I ripped sinkers from a lower arm slot.

Later in my career I shortened my arm slot, chased vertical break and command, leading to a pushier, less whippy arm action.

I’m going to be addressing this in my throwing - by being athletic and getting back to the way I naturally throw.

Obsession

Lastly - Obsession.

When you have a singular focus, you can achieve more than you thought was possible.

I’m going to have a singular focus on velocity development.

Not command. Not movement metrics. Not performance.

Pitching velocity.

Most of my off-seasons I had a split focus.

I was thinking of how to optimize a bunch of things at once, which worked against me.

I’m going to have a singular focus, obsession toward velocity development.

And see how far that takes me.

This is my plan for now, and will change as I continue to execute and learn.

I’ll be sharing my progress publicly as best as I can.

My hope is that this becomes a cool story - or at least you learn something from my journey.

If you want to be directly trained by me to increase velocity:

You can apply for ThePitcherLab here: ThePitcherLab

Till next time, 

Josh