This study was still a necessary and significant first step towards our ultimate goal of making better pitchers. While we have begun to isolate and measure the things that seem to contribute to having good command, we still need to find a way to provide an external focus and stimulus to the athlete beyond saying “just hit your spot”.
No hard scientific articles backing any specific training methodology may exist yet, but there is now a much clearer and more intuitive standard for coaches to design training around. For example, implementing differential learning techniques could likely force adaptations in a pitcher’s ability to adjust throughout his delivery. Our command training balls of varying size and weight fit this bill perfectly, and we plan to investigate further how these command training balls might be able to quantifiably drive favorable adaptations.
We also plan on increasing the scope of our analysis in further investigations. Looking at full time series data, as well as joint forces and energetics, is at the top of the list. Additionally, we plan to test these command training balls against what we’ve found so far.
But most important, we will continue to refine and distill our interpretations of these findings into something our trainers can confidently use to help our athletes. Whether in the form of a tool or a drill, we hope to find some type of constraint we can implement into training that is proven to drive the adaptations we have found to be important.
And in doing this, we hope to, once again, revolutionize the way pitchers train.