10: Optimizing Pitching Routine (7-Day Rotation)

Jacob Billingsley: Jacob Billingsley, Build the BASE Podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about a high-low model specifically for a higher level high school or college pitcher. how to structure the days between outings so that you recovered, you are getting the most out of your days between outings, you have an optimal plan. to be able to create the best possible outcome and scenario to get you ready for game day again. this is going to help you understand ⁓ to structure a high-low model, how to structure those days between outings and between games. First thing I want to say is that the principles that I'm about to talk about, the high-low model principles, can be used for any sport. So it's not just for baseball players. It's not just for pitchers specifically. These principles can be used for any sport, no matter volleyball, softball, golf, anything. Honestly, can even be used for the adult population in fitness. ⁓ Your higher days are obviously gonna be the days that you train. The lower days are gonna be the recovery days between that. So let's actually get straight into that. The definition of high-low, what does that even mean? High days are gonna be the days when we're playing. If you're an athlete, those are the game days. Those are the high training stress days. That's things like pitching, throwing bullpens, workouts, high intensity sprinting, high intensity power development. Those are gonna be high days. Low days are of course gonna be your recovery days between those. It's gonna be recovery and mobility circuits, low steady state conditioning. going to a physical therapist or your athletic trainer to get treatment in soft tissue and manual therapy. Those are going to be lower intensity days that we're going to want to stack between the high intent days so that we're recovered and we're creating an optimal environment to be able to tack the next high day, the next game day. for baseball our high school and our college pitchers are going to be on seven day rotations. We're talking about starters specifically in this episode. But of we've got some pro athletes as well that are going to be on five day rotations. I'm specifically going to be talking to our high school and college. pitchers that are on seven day rotation. Day zero is of course gonna be game day. So just for the sake of this example, we're gonna say that you're pitching on Sunday, So that's of course gonna be a high day. We wanna keep our high days high and our low days low. So one thing that I really like to do, this is an example of how I would ⁓ structure my seven day rotation as a starting pitcher. One thing that I really like to do if your time schedule facilities allow is that after your game on game day, on day zero here, I like to do some sort of sprint volume and or med ball power work as well. And the reason being is because we want to be able to hit multiple power days within a week. the days that you're playing are gonna be high intensity days, so they're going to take more intent, but specifically for hitting certain types of power, we wanna make sure that we're hitting them multiple days a week, which we'll talk about in just a second, and being able to structure your first quote unquote power day with some sprint work, some med ball work, it doesn't have to be rotationally, because obviously we're getting a ton of rotation in the game as a pitcher. This might be things like med ball slams, overhead med ball tosses, overhead med ball throws. things that are going to be different planes of motion things that are gonna continue to increase upper body power specifically. And then of course our sprint work, some jumps. So I really like to do that after the game, if possible on day zero. Again, sometimes that's not gonna be possible just because of the time, the schedule, facilities, equipment, If it's not possible, we'll just simply move it to day one. So in day one, What that really is gonna look like is, of course, you're gonna wake up, it's gonna be the day after your start, you're gonna be tired, you're gonna be sore, you're gonna feel weak. So we wanna do is use this as a rejuvenation day. We're gonna do some soft tissue, we're gonna do some mobility, we're gonna get moving, we're gonna the body moving, we're gonna get ⁓ blood flowing. We're gonna try to reestablish the movement and the mobility that we have lost due to the body being sore. So we know that the body is going to tighten up muscles when it doesn't want them to get hurt because they are fatigued. So that is why you get a tight muscle is the body. Your brain is telling your muscle, muscle's fatigued. I don't want it to get injured. So I'm gonna tighten it. That way it keeps from over-stretching. So that's why you get tight muscles. and you get sore muscles the day after a start. And what we wanna do is just to go in and start to recover those, go in and start to some tissue length through static stretching and soft tissue, regain some range of motion in the joints through some nice, easy mobility work. And as mentioned, if we can't get our sprint work and our med ball work ⁓ after the on day zero, then this is where we would add this on day one. And the reason that we wanna add this on day one again is so that we can actually get two power days in. Because if we're not able to get this on day zero or day one, it's gonna be difficult to able to stack multiple days ⁓ power development without overdoing it and stacking too much volume. on those days because we want to prioritize lifting on the lift days and we want to prioritize power on power days if possible. So that's the ideal scenario is you're able to get the sprint med ball work done after the game on day zero. If you can't, we're going to get it on day one after we get our soft tissue, static stretching, mobility, we're going to use that as day one. Day two is going to be our heavy lift day. So this is going to be the heavy lower body strength day where This is honestly the highest intensity day of the week. This is where we're getting after it. We're pushing the weight, where we are increasing load. We are having high intensity in the weight room from a lower body standpoint. Day three is gonna be an upper body and arm care day. So high, low. So on day two was our heavy lower body day. We're not doing a ton upper body. it's a low day on upper body. It's a high day on lower body. we're pretty much gonna flip that on day three where we're not going like super high intensity upper body lifts, but we are getting a good upper body lift and this is gonna be our best upper body lift of the week followed by our arm care program or our shoulder care program. That's gonna be a good day to add that higher intensity upper body stuff in. Day three is also typically the day where guys' arms are starting to feel better. They might want to stretch it out with some nice, easy long toss. This is not a day where we want to do like pull downs or anything like that. you are a long toss guy, this would be a good day to do that before your upper body and shoulder care lift. Because again, this is the day that we want to stack our upper body intensity and volume on so that we can have a low day again to follow. which takes us into day four. And day four is gonna be a movement and mobility day. So this is a low day, we're going back through some soft tissue work, some stretching, some movement, some mobility, a low intensity day, allowing our body to recover from the previous day of upper body lifts, the previous day before that of lower body lifts. And that way we are getting ready for a day five bullpen day. The reason that I like doing bullpen on day five is two things. assuming we're pitching again on day seven because this is a seven day rotation. Doing bullpen on day five, there's two main things that I really like the first one is that it is going to force you to keep your volume ⁓ low on day five you know that you're pitching in 48 hours. You're gonna have day six as a recovery day. But if you dig yourself too deep in the hole on day five with a 50-50, 60 pitch bullpen, you're not gonna be able to be recovered in 48 hours to have a really good outing on day seven. So by allowing us to do our bullpen on day five is gonna force us to keep the volume low so that way we can recover on day six and pitch on day seven. The second reason that I like doing the bullpen on day five is because typically in that midweek bullpen, we are looking to improve upon some sort of skill. So it just gives us a little bit less time between actually working on that skill in the bullpen and actually jumping back on the mound again on your game day. So day five being the bullpen day, we are keeping the volume low, intensity can be medium to high on the actual bullpen. That's gonna be pitcher dependent on what you guys like and how your body responds to that. I personally really like doing the bullpen's on-day file for those two reasons. It's forcing you to keep the volume low and it's also close enough to game day to where you're not getting out of the rhythm of what the new skill you're working on developing is ⁓ before the game day. we do it too early in the week, there's too many days between when we did it and when the next game is for you to actually be able to remember that skill set or the cues that you might have learned. Following that day five bullpen is gonna be our third lift of the week, which is gonna be a full body lift. And we're gonna be specifically power development here. So again, if we're pitching on Sunday, this is gonna be the Friday to where we have our Friday bullpen and immediately after we go into a high intensity, full body power day. This is gonna be low volume, but it's gonna be high intensity. We're gonna keep the volume low, because again, we're pitching in 48 hours. We're going to have, let's say. two to five reps of an exercise. From upper body, lower body, they're gonna be primarily power-based where we're moving the bar fast. Maybe we're throwing med balls fast. If we're doing a trap bar deadlift on this day or some sort of bar specific lift, we're gonna try to be moving this bar fast to get us a high response rate. And then that's gonna take us into day six, which is gonna be the exact same thing as day four, the movement and mobility day, which is your mound. So the movement and mobility day is basically the day that you are doing before you touch a mound. if we're doing our bullpen on day five, we wanna do movement mobility on day four to prepare us for day five bullpen. If we're pitching on day seven, we wanna do the movement and mobility day on day six to prepare us and recover us for day seven. Reminder only is movement and mobility days that it doesn't have to be super long. It's just enough to feel good, just enough to get your body moving through a full range of motion and allowing yourself to feel good for the next day. We are not necessarily getting into intensity holds or pails & rails or anything like that that's gonna actually have a high stimulus on the joint. This is just simply a movement recovery day allowing you to feel good. for the following day. So be sure to not do too much intensity on those movement and mobility days because you're trying to use that as a low day to prepare you for the next day, which is gonna be the game day. Now I have had people in the past and I even did bullpens on day four at some point that really liked doing bullpens on day four as opposed to day five. Again, I suggest doing them on day five because it's gonna force you to keep the volume low, which is what you need, that is I. A mistake that I see a lot of college pitchers make is that they throw way too many pitches on their midweek bullpen and they're just digging theirself deeper into the recovery hole. And it's gonna take longer to recover if you're throwing a ton of pitches on that midweek bullpen. You wanna have a plan on that midweek bullpen. We'll talk about that another episode. But the main thing that you wanna do in that midweek bullpen is to work on whatever One or two things that you have already predetermined is going to be your plan of action for that bullpen and only work on those. Work on feeling good, work on getting better at that skill, executing one or two more things, but just not a lot of volume of it. But the primary use of that bullpen is going to be to develop a skill to use on day seven, which is game day. If you want to do the bullpen on day four, completely fine. You would basically just use that movement and mobility day, the following day on day five, but add a little bit more sprints, change the direction in med ball to make it kind of a medium day. I don't love medium days. I really like low or high days. But if you want to go bullpen on day four to have day five and day six between your next outing, that is what I would do is I would go bullpen on day four, use that day five as a medium day. So that way you can still use day six as a full rest and recovery day. That's our movement mobility day to prepare you for the game day on day seven. how I would structure the high-low model for seven-day rotation pitchers specifically for higher level high school college pitchers that are looking to understand how to structure their seven-day rotation. Until I talk to you guys in the next podcast, have a great day.