Send us Fan Mail

An 11-year-old facing Tommy John because a coach copied weighted ball drills from Instagram is the kind of story that should stop every softball parent in their tracks. We’re joined by Mark Fitzgerald, a longtime softball dad, to talk honestly about what he saw from ages 12U through high-level club play: year-round travel schedules, big price tags, and a lot of “training” that never starts with a real assessment of the shoulder, spine, or total workload.

We dig into why weighted ball warmups can push young athletes into compensations that look like strength but are really just survival. Mark shares the injury cycle his daughter Paige dealt with as a catcher, and we break down what finally worked: cleaning up throwing mechanics, rebuilding the shoulder with scapular control, and addressing the back and pelvis so the whole chain supports the arm. If you care about youth softball injuries, shoulder pain, elbow injury prevention, and safe throwing mechanics, this conversation gives you a practical lens for what to watch and what to avoid.

Then we zoom out to the travel softball system itself: the money spent for “exposure,” the weekend game overload, and the uncomfortable recruiting reality that many New England players run into compared to athletes from the South and West. Our big takeaway is simple: exposure doesn’t replace development, and a real program should show a plan, a curriculum, and measurable progress over time.

If you know a family navigating travel ball, share this episode with them, subscribe for more evidence-based sports performance talk, and leave a review with the biggest myth you want us to tackle next. What’s the worst “throwing advice” you’ve heard in softball?

Support the show

The Velocity Rx podcast mission is to help save one million arms by giving the very best mechanical, health, and arm care information to it's listeners.

Send us Fan Mail

Fall ball ends, the schedule finally opens up, and a familiar question hits every pitcher: do I keep throwing or do I shut it down? I push back hard on the idea that the right answer is months of doing nothing. If you feel like you need a complete shutdown just to “rest,” that’s often a sign something deeper needs attention like workload, mechanics, or the foundation your body is working from. The goal is not to throw every day at max effort. The goal is to keep improving while lowering stress on your arm.

We walk through a clear offseason training plan for pitchers built on three pillars: functional exercise, repeatable drills, and bullpens with a purpose. I explain why I don’t love body-part splits for throwers, and why whole-body functional movement matters for arm care, injury prevention, and velocity development. We get specific about scapular control, balance, single-leg athleticism, and building movement from proximal to distal so the trunk and spine drive what the arm delivers.

Then we get practical: towel drills for daily reps and feedback, controlled throwing sessions at about 75% effort, and mound work limited to roughly two bullpens a month. When you do get on the mound, we use a four-quadrant approach so every pitch has intent and you start building pinpoint command, not just radar-gun chaos. I also share my favorite “tool” for pitchers: a notebook and pen to track the cues that help you throw strikes and repeat them under pressure.

If you want more pitching velocity, better command, and a healthier arm, this is a simple blueprint you can start today. Subscribe, share this with a pitcher who needs an offseason plan, and leave a review with the one cue you’d write in your notebook.

Support the show

The Velocity Rx podcast mission is to help save one million arms by giving the very best mechanical, health, and arm care information to it's listeners.

Send us Fan Mail

LIVE COACHING CALL:

A small “mechanics tweak” can look cleaner on video and still wreck your timing. We open by dissecting a pitching guru’s before-and-after clip where the correction makes the pattern worse: early drift, the ball coming out of the glove too soon, upper trap tension, spine tilt, and a front foot strike position that leaves the arm late and scrambling. If you’ve ever felt like your delivery falls apart the moment the game speeds up, this conversation explains why.

From there, we zoom out to what actually creates baseball pitching velocity and arm health over the long haul. We talk about why real development takes months, not a weekend, and why foundational movement matters more than flashy “velocity camp” cues. You’ll hear the case for staying back, learning a true athletic squat, and building durability with high-quality reps. One takeaway keeps repeating across players from college to pro: keeping the ball in the glove as long as humanly possible can clean up the sequence and unlock measurable velo gains.

The Q and A gets specific: how to handle two steps forward and one step back, how to reduce “too many thoughts” on the mound, how to progress from towel drill to throwing a baseball without your mechanics going haywire, why we like throwing into the ground, what we think about lead leg block, and how stride length interacts with balance and timing. If you care about pitching mechanics, kinematic sequence, injury prevention, and a simple plan you can repeat, you’ll get a lot to steal here.

Subscribe so you don’t miss the next live breakdown, share this with a pitcher or parent who’s chasing velocity, and leave a review with the one cue you’re working on right now.

Support the show

The Velocity Rx podcast mission is to help save one million arms by giving the very best mechanical, health, and arm care information to it's listeners.