Pathway Performance

The thoracic spine is a crucial part of throwing a baseball, not only for throwing harder, but also for staying healthy. Check out these examples of different T-spine movements, ranging from static holds to more dynamic movements. Once exercises like these are mastered, even more active movements should be introduced that more closely mimic how the body moves during an actual throw. Follow us for upcoming videos featuring more active and dynamic baseball-specific mobility work for high-level pitchers!

A proper pelvic load and unload pattern can be an easy unlock for pitchers and help them coil more energy to then release later up the chain. Try each of these and really feel how the pelvis is driving your delivery. 
✅ Janitor: pre set coil
✅ Darvish Pause: active coil 
✅ Darvish Swing: swinging coil 

Put it all together with a walking windup or normal delivery to feel this smooth pelvic loading and releasing pattern.

Shohei Ohtani is the modern Babe Ruth of baseball. His talent, work ethic, and ability to thrive on both sides of the game has been nothing short of extraordinary, even fellow big leaguers call him a "freak." Mid-90s+ velocity on the mound, elite exit velocity at the plate, and that includes his outs.
 We're not hitting coaches, but we'd love for coaches to drop their thoughts below because it is incredibly interesting how Ohtani's swing and pitching mechanics share similar tendencies in rotational kinetic sequencing.

Nowhere close to identical, these are two very different motions, but clearly cut from the same cloth. Comparing your swings load and unload to your motion on the mound can help pinpoint inefficiencies in your delivery, something we love doing at Pathway.
 All rotational motion starts from the ground up. Ohtani's back foot is the anchor of everything, both at the plate and on the mound. It's the foundation he creates tension off of before transferring energy up the chain. He shows a significant pelvic load against his back leg in both positions, with pronounced IR dominant movement patterns, his pelvis rotating on top of the femur against a rock-solid base. This IR dominance creates that "knees together" feel getting so closed you can see the sole of his spikes facing the target. 
What separates him is his rare ability to hold this coil WITHOUT leaking energy into riding down the mound or foot strike in the box. Most guys try to replicate this and slowly bleed energy along the way. He rides tension for an extremely long time, and when he finally opens, it snaps explosively.
 He delays pelvic rotation masterfully, keeping his pelvis level as his knee rotates outward while the foot holds. This stacks tibial internal rotation on top of hip internal rotation, creating a ridiculous spring effect as the entire back half becomes one coiled unit ready to fire. All of that stored energy then shoots aggressively up the chain and into the arm or swing. 
The sequencing between pitching and hitting is no doubt different, but understanding his motor patterns and how they relate to his anatomy is a powerful example of how loading and unraveling tension can be so similar across both motions, at least in a lower half rotational movement like throwing a ball or swinging a bat.

2027 LHP Cole Cinnamond (@colecinnamond) is one of the nation's top high school prospects  and an incoming top MLB Draft prospect. His bullpens at Pathway and his work ethic day in and day out show exactly why. Elite two-seamer sitting 90-94 with a gross slider and change up combo. Hitters are in serious trouble in the box. Can't wait to watch Cole dominate his junior year! 🔥

Stop oversimplifying separation.
 Two lines on a screenshot isn't hip/shoulder separation, it's a 3D movement pattern working through every plane of motion simultaneously.
 Here's some drills to train all planes: 
  Pre-Spinal Rolls → MB Overhead Throws
  Transverse Rotations →  Side Bends
 Lateral MB Slams → MB Rotational Scoop Tosses
 Master all three planes and you'll finally begin to understand what real pelvic/torso separation and sequencing feels like in the throw.

Most guys peak in March and fade by June. Here's why, and how to stop it. In-season "training" isn't the Rocky montage like it was all winter long. It's the quiet, disciplined work that keeps you sharp when the schedule gets long and the body gets tired. You're either getting better or getting worse. There is no staying the same.
 The pattern is brutal and predictable: elite winter training → strong opening weeks → slow fade → velocity and stuff down a few ticks by summer. It happens to guys at every level. And it's almost entirely preventable with a simple in season program. Here's what's actually killing your numbers as the season goes on:
 ❌ Recovery without discipline. Scrolling TikTok in bed is not recovery. Real recovery is blood flow work, soft tissue, mobility mindfulness resets, and protecting your one true off day per week. 
 ❌ Mechanics go on autopilot. You should NEVER think mechanics on game day. Compete. But what about the other 3-5 days? Take 1-2 low intent days per week to dial in positions. Ignore this and you'll spend all summer unlearning bad habits.
 ❌ Strength and speed quietly disappear. Nobody PRs their backsquat in April. But nobody should be losing 15% of their power either. Micro lifts and smart high-low training models keep your numbers maintained without wrecking your body.
 ❌Body comp slips. Without structure, weight drifts in the wrong direction. Healthy calories and macro awareness aren't optional, they're part your performance. 
 ❌Workload becomes guesswork. Flexibility and accountability matter when your start day changes week to week or you are a mid relief guy, you should still be prepared and adapting.  This is genuinely one of the hardest things in all of sports performance not the physical part, the mental grind of staying locked in day after day when the games are happening. Most guys don't realize what they've lost until they show up to summer ball. It’s often a lesson guys learn the hard way, don’t let that be you.  Play hard. Train hard. Recover strategically.  ☝️If you want a real in-season system built around YOUR schedule and workload,  that's exactly what we do at Pathway. hit the link in bio to get started.

If you want to have a long career and be respected at the highest level, study Clayton Kershaw. 18 years. 3 Cy Youngs. An MVP. 3 World Series rings. Here's how he did it and lessons you can take from Kershaw for your own career: 1. Your preparation IS your performance: Kershaw was first in, last out - every single start. Film study, bullpen work, precise conditioning. His 2014 season (21-3, 1.77 ERA, NL MVP) wasn't talent. It was a routine built so tight that greatness became inevitable. As an athlete, your work between competitions is where championships are actually won. 2. Adapt or get left behind: By his mid-30s, Kershaw had lost velocity on his fastball. Most pitchers fade. He reinvented his arsenal, leaning into his curveball and mixing speeds with elite precision. The lesson? Your physical tools will change. Your IQ, your craft, and your ability to evolve should always improve. 3. Come back harder every time you get knocked down: Back injuries. Postseason collapses. Years of public criticism. Kershaw missed significant time multiple times and kept returning to an All-Star level. Recovery isn't just physical, it's the mental commitment to trust your process and come back with the same hunger. 4. Protect your body like your career depends on it - because it does: Even at his peak, Kershaw managed his workload obsessively. He understood that longevity is a skill. The athletes who last aren't always the most gifted, they're the ones who treat sleep, nutrition, and recovery as seriously as reps. 5. Let your work build your reputation: No drama. No excuses. Just results. His teammates, coaches, and opponents all say the same thing, Kershaw showed up and competed at the highest level every time out. That consistency over 18 years is what separates good athletes from ones people talk about forever. The athletes who last aren't just talented. They're disciplined, adaptable, and relentless. Be a Kershaw.

2027 Maryland commit Bryce Edick (@bryce.edick) got after it in a recent preseason bullpen at Pathway. 

Heater sitting 88-91, touching 92+ mph (up to mid 90’s in other pens this off season) with a nasty changeup and sweepy slider keeping hitters extremely uncomfortable in the box.
 Keep getting after it, Bryce - the sky's the limit! 🚀

Not every athlete moves or feels movement the same way — especially when it comes to how the hips load and unload during the delivery. Understanding an athlete’s individual hip anatomy helps determine how they should sequence from the ground up and optimize the kinetic chain. While deep discussions on hip anteversion and retroversion could explain this further and more in-depth, we’ll simplify it here by breaking down ER (external rotation) vs IR (internal rotation) dominant pitchers — and how each should be cued differently. ER-Dominant Pitchers: Often the athletes who can maintain that classic “vertical shin” position you hear every coach talk about. This isn’t just a skill — it’s anatomy. These pitchers naturally find stability in that position and use it to rotate and drive the pelvis efficiently. IR-Dominant Pitchers: These athletes typically can’t hold a vertical shin without restriction. Instead, their shin angle works slightly toward the plate while maintaining ground contact and stability through the back leg. Their pelvis rotates basically on top of the femur, helping them coil and then unload more naturally — when cued properly for their structure. Example: Garrett Simon (LHP – @kellam.baseball / tmcoastal) Take a listen to Performance Coach @sam.alheit and @garrett.2116 break down what to cue in this simple Hinge/pelvic coil drill. Garrett spent years trying to figure out his lower half — specifically trying to achieve the classic “vertical shin” position by sitting back— but anatomically, he can’t. Once this was identified during his initial evaluation, we adjusted his cues to focus on the pelvis rotating on top of the femur while coiling into the ground. Since then, he’s continued to set PRs week after week — a direct result of smarter movement patterns, individualized cueing, and a relentless work ethic. 👉Unsure which category you fall into? Reach out — at Pathway Performance, we help pitchers and position players from high school to pro ball throw harder, move better, stay healthy, and perform at the next level.

Knowing when to flip the switch from training brain to competitor brain is becoming a lost art in baseball especially pitching. 
 During the season, yes, you still train and follow a structured program to minimize decline. You maintain mechanics, structure your lifts around game days, manage body composition, and prioritize recovery. That discipline matters and the best guys understand if you aren’t getting better, you are getting worse. 
 But here's where guys go wrong:
 They have an unreal fall and winter. Gained strength. Added velo. Developed a new pitch. Then spring comes... and they can't find it in a game.
 Why? Because somewhere along the way, they forgot that the entire point of training was to compete. They got really good at developing  and forgot how to play.
 The goal was never to be a great trainer. The goal was to take those gains and unleash them in competition.
 The best players we see at Pathway understand this completely. On a training day in and out of season they are locked in, detailed, analytical, technical. On a game day - the switch flips. Instinctive. Aggressive. Not thinking about pitch shape or mechanics AT ALL. Just competing one pitch, one AB and one innings at a time, doing whatever it takes to win on that mound.
 Train like a scientist. Compete like a killer. The transition between those two modes? That's a skill in itself and it might be the most undercoached one in the game.

Taking a step back and letting pitchers swing a bat might do a lot more than just help them practice their bat flips. It helps in 3 major ways: It reverts them to their natural athleticism without having them think about endless mechanical cues in the lower half.
 It helps them (and the coach) understand how they individually like to load tension into their backside. Often, pitchers are either more ER-dominant or IR-dominant in their lower half loading pattern but this is a spectrum with many different paths, not just two buckets.
 If done properly, it can help reinforce rotational power sequencing. (A golf club works great for this too... yeah, we just gave the green light to all the guys at Pathway we hear talking about their afternoon tee time.) Keep it simple, give it a try, and we hope you have that "oh sh*t" moment,  the kind we see guys at Pathway have all the time when they unlock something cool.

Very few coaches are going to say "go watch Camilo Doval's mechanics." Why? He has what the conventional baseball world calls mechanical “flaws" yet still throws 100+ mph. You can dismiss him as an outlier and ignore the fact that he is one of the hardest throws on earth or you can actually ask WHY. His goal isn't to hit mechanical checkpoints that look good when you pause a video. His goal is to figure out how energy flows best for him. Early arm flip, super rotational east-to-west delivery, not staying stacked with a shoulder tilt but still chucks. And it's the perfect example that the goal of pitching is to transfer energy from the ground, through the body, and into the baseball, not to look pretty at still positions along the way. What we tell guys at Pathway is there is no "ideal" mechanic. There ARE principle patterns to understand and feel, but they will look different for every guy. The goal is to take the principles and apply them to your body type and your unique way of spiraling energy up the chain with the help of dynamic constraints, internal cues, and throwing progressions. Here is an example of a Doval “Flaw” that can be thought about and looked deeper into - his early arm flip up. The reason coaches hate it isn't the position itself, it's what it typically causes from MOST guys with an early flip up: A hitch that kills momentum (aka energy) The torso flying open ridiculously early (kills chain of energy) Forced scap retraction and a muscled-up, tight feeling (tension kills energy) Timing disruptions throughout the rest of the delivery (kills chain of energy) Notice something? All 4 of those "flaws" share the same root concern: energy flow. Not the surface level position your eyes can see. Doval does this wrong from a freeze frame view and still pumps 100+ because he has an elite understanding of how HIS body moves energy up the chain. This video alone you can see his body builds momentum and flow even with “flawed” mechanics. Stop thinking just positions. Start thinking energy flow. The guy who understands how their body flows will always outlast the one who was just taught to check off the “ideal position” freeze frame.

Stop thinking “hip-shoulder separation.” it’s really about how your pelvis and torso work together… and apart. Not just the hips and shoulders. When the pelvis begins to unload, the torso must have the ability to naturally dissociate from it. This is what allows you to create and store elastic energy — the tension that transfers force from the ground, through the lower half, into the hips, then up to the torso, and finally into the arm when timed properly. Lose that separation, and you leak power before it ever reaches the ball. Think of it like a rubber band: the more efficient the stretch between the pelvis and torso, the more whip you create up the kinetic chain. You load then unload the bottom first (pelvis & lower half rotating down), naturally dissociating the(torso), then release. The tighter the “rubber band” the more whip into torso rotation. 5 constants for elite torso–pelvis sequencing: ✅ Ability to access key ranges of motion (hips, T-spine, etc.) ✅ A well-timed lower half that stores and transfers energy ✅ The ability to dissociate the pelvis from the torso ✅ Feeling the “pull” or stretch — that rubber-band effect into rotation ✅ Seamless timing this pull into torso rotation and ball release Master this relationship, and your delivery becomes effortless, efficient, and explosive. 👉 Questions? Reach out. At Pathway Performance, we help athletes unlock real velocity gains through science-backed movement, strength, and mechanics.

Check out George Mason commit Brody Comparto (@official._brody)  absolutely gross off-speed stuff, pairing a heavy ride heater into the low 90’s with a nasty curveball and a new deviating kick-change. 😮‍💨🔥
 Hitters, beware this season… excited to watch Brody get after it.

“Push off for more power!” A universal cue that’s been passed down for generations. From a glance, it makes sense… but when it comes to biomechanical efficiency, it doesn’t withstand the test of time. (Don’t worry — every one of our dads at Pathway told us to push off too.) Here’s what it actually does 👇 It makes pitchers triple-extend off the rubber, drive up instead of rotate down, and even in the weight room or med-ball work — start muscling up instead of sequencing efficiently. That same pushing pattern eventually bleeds into the upper half, creating a pushy arm action and killing velocity potential. Whether it’s a med ball, weighted ball, or plyo ball, going too heavy too soon causes the body and arm to disconnect. You lose sequencing, leak energy, and move further away from what actually builds power — fluid rotation. In this clip, Performance Coach @samalheit breaks down why starting with lighter loads and relaxed, athletic patterns is the first step. Once those patterns are clean, heavier implements can be introduced to feel positions — not to throw at 100%. The body should move like a fluid tornado, unwinding from the ground up. Each link in the chain pulls the next one — it doesn’t force it. That’s how you create Easy Velocity. Stay Healthy. Throw Harder. 💬 Want to find out if you’re pushing with your lower or upper half and leaving velo on the table? Pathway Performance works with athletes from high school to the pros to help them throw harder, move better, and perform at the next level.

If you're measuring hip-shoulder separation with a screenshot and two lines, you're missing the full picture.
 Separation is a 3-dimensional movement, and all three planes matter when it comes to building and sustaining velocity.
 Follow us so you don't miss next week's post on how to train and target all three planes of motion for real velocity gains.

An object in motion stays in motion”—basic physics, right? But how does that apply to arm action and the different ways pitchers use the arm spiral? The way the arm gets up into foot strike is a critical part of how energy transfers up the kinetic chain into true velocity. Any blocking motion that disconnects the arm from the body threatens the ability to carry force generated from the ground all the way to release. Yes, there are different styles—short vs. long arm patterns, early get-up vs. late get-up—and every athlete will sequence them differently. But a few constants always apply: ❌ Too late: the body or arm ends up pushing to “catch up,” stressing the arm and losing velocity. ❌ Too clunky: pauses or stiffness kill the flow, breaking the “object in motion stays in motion” principle. ✅ Just right: the arm flows into a smooth spiral staircase pattern, catching into a relaxed scapular retraction as the torso and pecs pull it into the same plane as the shoulders and then into ball release That’s how to create an efficient arm spiral—by keeping energy continuous, fluid, and connected from the ground up. ⚡⚾ 👉 Want to learn how to refine your arm action? Save this post, share it with a teammate, and reach out to us at Pathway Performance to see how our motion capture analysis can help you unlock your next velocity jump.

"Mobility” - one of the biggest buzzwords of the last few years in the baseball world. But why does it matter, how do you actually use it to your advantage in the delivery, and why do most people throwing around the term get it completely wrong?
 Basic static mobility work (like these examples ^) is a decent starting point for tighter movers, but it shouldn't stay that way.  The missing piece is progressing that mobility closer and closer into the actual delivery and natural athleticism. You see it even at the high college and pro level, ranges have been opened up, and over time the mobility warm up helped a ton but now it's just being used to feel okay and warm up. It's no longer being coupled with actually getting better on the mound to be a better athlete. The returns diminish drastically from when guys first started hearing and doing their first true "mobility" work.
 The next step is asking: how do you transfer mobility work into dynamic movements that make you a better athlete on the bump, not just something that warms you up and oftentimes creates dependency on doing it to feel ok.  Follow us for future posts on how we take guys through this style progression once they've built the necessary ranges like the examples shown in this video.

Coming off an All-Star season with a 1.63 ERA and triple-digit velocity out of a lanky 6'3" frame, Edwin Diaz is one of the most unique arms in baseball. Most people watch Diaz and naturally focus on his legs and his wild, unorthodox lower half. But that actually misses the bigger picture. Yes, a strong back leg matters, but the back leg is really just the foundation. The pelvis is the true driver of his delivery, and the legs are largely a byproduct of what the pelvis is doing, not the other way around. This is one of the most overlooked and misunderstood concepts in pitching, and Diaz is one of the best outlier examples in baseball to illustrate it.
 He possesses genuinely rare hip internal rotation ability, making him what we often refer to as IR-dominant pitcher. From his leg lift he loads into a deep, coiled pelvic position,  he holds that coil down the mound for an unusually long time. Then, at the very last moment before front foot strike, he explosively pops the hips open and attacks the ground from above. The result is a massive spiral of rotational energy that fires all the way up through the torso and out through the arm.
 What makes this even more telling is what happens to his back foot. He's not lifting it or following through intentionally the pelvis is so aggressively uncoiling that it literally pulls the back foot off the ground this. That's the pelvis leading, and the legs simply responding. A perfect visual of the concept in action. That same pelvic uncoil also drives what's commonly called the lead leg block, and it's worth clarifying that the block isn't just the knee straightening. It's the pelvis closing aggressively into that front side that creates the real stopping force and sends energy back up the chain.
 Now, his positions are extreme and most athletes won't be able to replicate them, nor should they try. But that's actually what makes Diaz such a valuable teaching tool. Seeing these concepts demonstrated at such an exaggerated, elite level helps athletes understand the look and the why behind their own mechanics so they can then understand the feel of theirs that more subtle examples can’t.

@noahmurdock28 popped in-house for a quick on-ramp submax bullpen and displayed a nasty arsenal prior to heading down to spring training with the Pirates. The movement on his stuff is absolutely ridiculous, paired with a sinker that sat 95+mph in 2025 with the Athletics.