Your ability to jump with and without weights might be a crucial clue to finding your velocity recipe. This research by Huang et al. that I covered in part one had some interesting findings that I felt necessary to explore and share.

For a quick refresher here are the 3 factors that contributed to throwing velocity in this study called “Correlation of pitch velocity with anthropometric measurements for adult male baseball pitchers in a tryout setting”.

1. Height
2. Positive Jump Ratio between a loaded (44lbs) and unloaded jump
3. High Sprint Ratio between a 10-meter start and a flying 20-meter time

Let’s quickly define these last two in case you haven’t seen Part 1. The next couple of articles will focus on these ratios.

1. Positive Jump Ratio: The difference between the loaded and unloaded jump heights was relatively small.  If someone had a big difference between the two types of jumps, they would have a negative jump ratio. 
2. High Sprint Ratio: to display a high sprint ratio it meant that an athlete had a slower 0–10-meter time split compared to their 10–30-meter time

It’s these ratios that got me interested in this study.  I haven’t seen any that looked at an athlete’s performance in two tests that are similar to one another to create these kinds of ratios in the baseball world.

What this Means

When I first saw these results, they confused me.  The positive jump ratio that was correlated with throng velocity favored those that were more on the force end of the spectrum.  While the high sprint ratio that was also associated with increased MPH favors athletes that live more on the speed end of the spectrum.

These ratios are made up of two similar tests.  One test has more of an emphasis on speed while the other is on force.  Remember that Force x Speed = Power

With the jumps, the loaded jump relies more on force while the unloaded jump leans on speed.

When it comes to sprinting, the first 10 meters of a sprint require lots of force whereas the last 20 meters are more reliant on speed.

So, you can see why these results were a little confusing.  One would think that if being a more forceful jumper was positive the same would be true when it came to sprinting.  But it wasn’t.

What these results show me is how as a pitcher you need to have both speed and force to create as much power as possible. If you think about it, the act of pitching covers this whole spectrum.  We need a lot of force to initiate the delivery, in a controlled fashion, and as the delivery progresses you start to move faster and faster until the ball is launched out of your hand. 

Since throwing a baseball requires both strength and speed, I’m going to dive into each of these ratios to see what we can learn.

Jump Ratio

If you can jump pretty high with a load as compared to without a load, you can consider yourself to be “strong” as long as the jump weights are fairly high.  If an athlete for example has a loaded jump of 8.5 inches and an unloaded jump of 10 inches then we don’t need to calculate their jump ratio since, in this case, it doesn’t matter.  This particular athlete just needs to find their way into a gym.

Being “strong” like this means that you’re good at accelerating some weight in a fast manner.  You would find this kind of “strong” in the middle of a force-velocity.

Back in 2009, some pretty big names in the exercise science world conducted a study that supports the idea that strong athletes have a positive jump ratio between loaded and unloaded jumps.  Dr’s Greg Haff and Michael Stone were part of a team that ran 63 Division I athletes through a series of tests that included loaded and unloaded jumps.  They also used an isometric mid-thigh pull test which they used to determine which subjects were the strongest.

Those that had lower decrements (aka positive jump ratio) between the loaded and unloaded jumps were the strongest.

To explain why these results occurred the way they did the researchers quoted Newton’s second law which “indicates that greater forces will result in greater acceleration”.  Pitching is all about acceleration.  This is the kind of strength that you need to your body moving and accelerating from 0-60, so to speak.

The ability to get off the ground with an extra 44 lbs in your hands is a great asset to have on the mound during the 1^st half of our delivery. 

Why does this Correlate with Throwing Velocity?

The reason that a positive jump ratio can be linked with higher throwing velocity, in my opinion, is due to specificity. 

Normally when we think of specificity, we tend to assume that the movements have to look similar.  In this case, these two movements aren’t even in the same ballpark.  Loaded jumps are performed with both legs and the emphasis is to jump vertically.  This looks nothing like the act of pitching.

So how can I say that specificity is the reason that it relates to throwing velocity?

The specificity that I am referring to is the muscle contraction, namely its speed.

Jumping off two legs with an extra 44 lbs takes about the same time and force as it does to jump laterally off of one leg.  They would have to be some type of study to confirm this but my eyes tell me that they are at least close to one another. 

How to do this Test

Vertical jump testing is awesome.  But it’s only awesome if you have an accurate way of testing it both quickly and repeatably.  These researchers in the baseball study used a Gymaware. This type of machine is a linear position transducer.  It’s basically a cable that you attach to a harness or belt and then jump.  The cable, which doesn’t produce any resistance, measures the speed and distance that the cable moved as a result of the jump. 

These units are around $2000 but you can also attach them to barbells for example to measure bar speed for Velocity-Based Training,

Less Expensive Options

#1 – MyJump App: The study mentioned that the MyJump app ($20) would be a suitable option. This does take some extra time since you have to watch the video in super slow-motion to pick the frames when the athlete leaves and then returns to the ground. In a group setting this doesn’t work very well.

#2 – Balloon Headbutt: this is an idea I came up with that works really well, is super simple, and is very cost-effective.

All you do is suspend a balloon from a string that’s attached to the ceiling. Have the athlete stand under the balloon and measure the distance between the balloon and their head.  The goal is to jump high enough to headbutt the balloon.  The balloon is simply raised little by little until they fail.  Record their max height along with the amount of load in their hands. *Jumping to a target produces better jump results compared to saying “jump as high as you can”.*

The multiple jump attempts will make it into more of a workout but that’s okay since it could double as a training session.

Testing is Training & Training is Testing

If you want to get better at this particular test, I would suggest you practice it.  By testing (aka measuring) yourself every couple of weeks you would most likely see some positive adaptations. 

These jumps do a great job of filling a common gap in an athlete’s force-velocity curve.  A lot of times I’ll see online that a young pitcher’s training consists mostly of exercises at the far left side of the curve with slow but heavy movement and then some on the far right side at high speeds.

Weighed jumps are a great fit into any pitcher’s routine because they fill an important gap in the Force-Velocity curve. I wrote a whole chapter on weighted jumps in my e-book that you can check out if you want to dig deeper.

Here are a couple of remote athletes performing some weighted jumps over 5 years ago.

This is Nate Pearson jumping with a trap bar. This version is great. Below is an athlete that I trained for years using demonstrating a 45 lbs loaded jump using the front squat position.

Typically, I put these into the workout after a full warm-up that needs to include some low-level jumps and/or sprints. These kinds of exercises ideally are performed in that 2-5 rep range with adequate rest, about 2-3 min. Frequency wise you could do them as little as once every two weeks or as much as three times a week on non-consecutive days. In my opinion, of course.

What are some numbers to shoot for?

Here are the averages produced by the subjects in the studies that I mentioned

Baseball Study using Gymaware

• Unloaded 17″/43cm: hands-on-hips
• Loaded 13.75″/35cm: 10 kg dumbbell in each hand (44 lbs total)

College Athletes (NCAA D1) – using a force plate. 42 females and 21 males

• Unloaded Jump: 13.2″/33.5 cm with PVC pipe across shoulders
• Loaded Jump: 10.8″/27.5 with a barbell across shoulders (back squat style)

Jumping with a barbell on your back or weights in your hands has a bit of a learning curve. Especially the landing, so progress up to these kinds of weights.

If you can reach the mid to upper 20″ with a hands-on-hips jump and 80% of that with DBs in your hands I’d say you are doing pretty good. Good enough that you could probably spend more time doing other things that you aren’t as good at since you probably be seeing some diminishing rates of return at this point.

Is More Better?

I can see it right now. Some well-meaning teenage pitcher thinks that if jumping with 45 lbs is good then jumping with 90 lbs must be twice as good. This is not the case. If you try to jump with too much weight you won’t get the same benefit. More is not always better. Aim for a minimum of 10 inches on any loaded jump. If you can’t get more than 10 inches away from the ground then you’re moving too slowly and you’re working a different part of the curve.

Let’s end things here for now. Next time, we will look at the sprint ratio in more depth.

Until then, happy jumping

Graeme Lehman, MSc, CSCS

References

Correlation of pitching velocity with anthropometric measurements for adult male baseball pitchers in tryout settings
Jyh How Huang 1, Szu-Hua Chen 2, Chih Hui Chiu 3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35298532/

The relationship between strength characteristics and unweighted and weighted vertical jump height. Kraska JM, Ramsey MW, Haff GG, Fethke N, Sands WA, Stone ME, International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2009, 4, 461-473