Running 5 Miles Won't Help You Pitch 7 Innings
Jun 30, 2022
Edited by: Danielle Abel
Endurance ≠ Capacity.
I was teaching a webinar to 100 awesome people in my Strength and Conditioning group recently and this question came up: “Do baseball players need to do aerobic training to have the endurance to pitch for 7 innings?”
Now, is that endurance or capacity? They are not the same.
In order to pitch 7 consecutive innings, you need to improve the capacity of the anaerobic/alactic energy systems.
Capacity is essentially the amount of work that you can perform with a given muscle group or motor pattern before compensation.
This is not necessarily related to endurance (the capability to sustain an effort for a long time). Pitching primarily involves the ATP-PC system which is so anaerobic that we call it alactic (not even enough time to produce lactate).
Interval training for baseball should more closely replicate the work and rest intervals of pitching to drive adaptations to capacity (ex: Med ball slam w/ 10 secs rest between each, sled pull intervals, Kaiser rotation drill intervals, etc.).
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