Can an Average Guy Hit a 95 MPH Fastball? | Above Average Joe | GQ Sports

better better better I feel like I'm making pretty decent contact with the ball how fast are you throwing these? Although yes, it's about 25 miles per hour. I'm a clay captain and I have two days to hit a 95 mile per hour

fastball

. Well, this is above

average

, Joe, today we're talking about baseball. If you watch baseball on TV, velocity probably doesn't translate, but the

average

pitch in MLB is 92 miles per hour for those of you doing the math at home, that's the pitch. reaches the plate and about 425 to 450 milliseconds. Now the average major league player can swing their bat for about 110 milliseconds, but they've been practicing it their whole life.

I love baseball, but it's not my sport, so I thought I'd call some professionals. so you could watch me make some cuts and give me some tips thank you, I appreciate you joining us this morning, do you have an idea of ​​the task ahead of me here? I have a feeling I heard we're going to hit some baseball. I'm trying to hit an MLB

fastball

, so 90 or 95 miles an hour, haven't you experienced how to play or hit the ball before or do you know how to catch a dip? I played baseball until I was seven or eight years old. he quit because they went from an undercover trainer speech to using a machine and I was afraid of the machine, so you were afraid when you were seven, oh God, if we're going to put you at a fast pace of 95 miles an hour, well, Let me explain, this is one.

It's nice to have someone throwing 95, but when this machine is sitting here and you can watch the ball slowly roll down and then shoot it at 95 miles an hour, it's going to look like a bullet coming out, yeah, what would you find more intimidating? hit a 95 mile from a pitcher from a machine definitely a machine I mean I see a pitcher throw them all the time you could see a body movement you know so you have something that you can actually time because usually with a machine it's probably It's more of an advantage because after throwing a couple of pitches you will know the general area he will be in when facing a major league pitcher, they have a lot of movement in their pitches especially a fastball and not only that but they can get in certain areas of the strike zone, they can throw one up and if they want down and away, high class pitchers can do it, it's still tough, you don't know when you know what's coming, it's still tough. to hit it tomorrow I'm headed for the 95 mile per hour fastball oh timeout I can't see this today oh no I'm going to make some cuts for you right now but what are your three tips for me to see the ball? hit the ball, that's all you have to do, that's it, it can't be easier, more people would do it, don't think about it, just go kill it, put your hands up, put your front foot on the ground, it's well, and hit the ball. top of the baseball isn't going down it may look like it's going down this ball is going up hit the top of the baseball you'll have a better chance none of this sounds simple at all zero where do you grab the bat? keep it at the end of the bat, you might want to choke on this one a little bit, that's okay, that will help you speed up your bat a little more too, that's good, how big is your bat?

Where does it say 32 32? That's good so you can choke a little, but remember to be strong with your grip because it will hurt those I made contact with, my hands are itchy, that could just be because I'm a little weak, but yeah. you make good contact in the sweet spot, how does that feel? It will literally feel like nothing. You know when you hit that ball well and you hit it on the barrel of the bat. You know it like this when you hit the ball on the Sweet Spot, you don't feel it when you have that little sting in your hand, oh that doesn't feel very good, especially in cold weather.

I'll take some hits for you if you have any tips on my booty too. I'll take that, you know, baseball players always look so cool we'll put them at 50. 50, our batting practice guys throw harder than 50. Gotta start somewhere gonzo, know baby steps, oh I got Pressure, I know. you're looking to see if you're making contact here we go you see the ball hit the ball there you go you see that's simple man the machine is still scary but not so much you have to start a little earlier clay you You're getting it, you're hitting that ball almost behind you , one more, let me take one more swing, what did you see now when you were hitting right there, you were getting the ball and home plates right here, you were hitting right over it? off the plate, most good hitters want to hit the ball in front of the plate, that's how they get the barrel out of the bat and the ball just explodes, so I would try to get a little further back in the batter's box because you're gaining that extra millisecond Up there you have, remember the ball will be on you as fast as the moment you blink because it's 95 miles per hour, I'm going to tell you right now.

I'm going to try to kick the leg like you just did now and the ball will already have passed you. You're almost cheating to get to that fast ball early. One thing I want to assure you. I asked you about nerves. I'm going to be nervous facing a 95 mile per hour fastball. You've been in very high-pressure situations, including the 2001 World Series against my New York Yankees, when you left. Answer two questions about that, why did you do it? to break my heart and two, how did you calm your nerves in a scenario like that? Or what advice can you give me to stay calm when I'm in the box tomorrow?

It's more about entering your comfort zone. Major League players are very superstitious. in many different ways, if they hit the ball well, they will take the same route to the stadium at the same time they do things. You won't always have good games, but when you have those good games, you try to remember. What you did that day will prepare you for the next day to try to do it again. I congratulate you for what you are doing. It's always easy. You know we're all armchair quarterbacks. You know we're like, oh, that's easy to do, but. you get in front of 50,000 people there's no security blanket you're not in the comfort of your home on the couch no, I hear you, that's the premise of the show in some ways, except instead of doing it in front of 50,000 people, I'm doing it on youtube in front of you, you know millions of people who will stay there forever if I embarrass myself, okay, I didn't feel very good coming in today, I definitely feel a little more confident.

That's what batting practice was about, part of that was talking to some pros to get some good advice tomorrow we're going to say some prayers see if I can't hit a 95 mph fastball today we're at New York Empire baseball . I'm going to work with coach Jordan Baltimore to get me a fastball hit. Hopefully, I don't know anything about my swing right now. Judging by how athletic I look, what kind of shot would you give me to be able to do that? I'll give you the downside. You have less than 400 milliseconds to do it from the moment the ball heads your way, so less than four tenths of a second the time it takes for your brain to think about it and actually swing is more than four tenths of a second. second. so it's impossible, but we're going to teach you how to do it anyway.

I mean, I think what's pretty illuminating is that the hall of famer does it one out of every four times, so can you really control that and a round ball and the millimeter you hit that ball with, the answer is no. , but if you have a great swing and the swing plane is correct over time, on average you will have great contact, that is, a ball with a hard hit that is a line drive or a low fly ball. but in the absence of that, no, if you have a bad swing on average, you will not have good results or even good production, you will learn to swing first and then you will learn to hit.

What happens to people who try to hit before them? swing, you introduce a mental threshold instead of swinging as hard as you can or almost as hard as you can, your goal becomes can I just make contact? That's not the goal, hitting a ball that bounces 20 times in the infield and then you are eliminated. 40 feet and then you get back to the Duggars, hey, good contact, that wasn't good contact, yeah, that wasn't interesting at all and missing the swing isn't necessarily a failure. Did you have a great swing? So let's understand why you swung and missed. failure with a great swing is better than contact with a bad swing sounds like you have a lot of knowledge to impart to me, explain to me what you are going to ask me to do, what we are going to work on and what this is all like.

I'm going to shake today, so we'll start with a movement evaluation. I just want to understand your strength and mobility because the reality is that if you physically can't make a move and I'm left here insisting that you make that move that ends in one or two places frustration or failure or both, then we'll hand you a bat. and we'll tell you to swing and we'll watch you try to perform a task and then we'll start building some of the mechanical motion involved in the swing and we won't even use a baseball to do it, okay, let's get started, so I brought in Dr.

James, He is our performance director. We'll take you through the on-base batting screen to understand everything. your joints how you move why you move let's look at strength and mobility and dr. james will take you from there i feel better as a doctor here in case i get hit by a 95 miler there are certain segments of your body where we want to see more mobility and certain segments we want more stability this is your kinematic sequence when you swing from the ground up we want our foot to be very stable we want our ankle to be mobile the knee to be stable the hip to be mobile the core to be stable the spine to be mobile so as we go along it's very interesting how it works where we see this alternating pattern of demands of our body for mobility and stability this is our forward sitting rotation test and sit down here, slide to the end of the chair, place your feet under your knees so that you have sort of a 1 or 90 degree angle in the knees, bring your feet together, knees together and can you go ahead and cross your right ankle? on your left ankle squeeze those knees together take this bat put it behind your neck hold it on your shoulders a little bit Mike Trout style this gives us an idea of ​​how well you are moving and rotating your thoracic spine, so by locking your knees and your ankles together, we're blocking the movement of the lumbar spine, the lower part of the spine, so we're getting a feel for how it rotates because it's a key factor in creating that separation in that swing and creating that good rotational acceleration. .

If you can't rotate, then that's something we have to address before we even put a bat in your hands. Turn to the right as far as you can so it's about 45 degrees. Go ahead and cross your left ankle over your right ankle. Now turn as far to your left as you can, so I'm about 45 degrees, which is good, so we want more than 45 degrees, that's not bad, that's fine, it would really be painful, anything else we can avoid or train with corrective exercise, go ahead and stand up. I'm going to put this back down here. I want you to step just off the bat so your feet are aligned.

I want you to hold your hips with your left foot, just turn your toe in and try to touch the handle of the bat. looking at the internal rotation of your hips right now and now you have a little bit more mobility, okay, it's a lot easier to understand, is that right or is it that, so that's something that we're going to have to address because Being able to internally rotate your left hip during that swing is critical and that's something we'll address with the drill later, so I'm just going to hit lefty, you might not hit at all.

Let's go ahead and now rotate your hips. Can? try rotating rotationally instead of kicking your hips from side to side, so that when you do it on your own, you trust your own system to be able to stabilize and move correctly if it takes you and me. hug yourself, I'm doing the stability part for you and now we're just saying if you physically have that range of motion without having to worry about creating your own intrinsic stability, we have to work on both, that's a good way to say yes. It seems very instinctive to me, but you can actually train someone to get better at it, oh absolutely, and the key is to train someone to do it unconsciously, the left side of your brain asks questions, how am I going to perform a task?

Many people call it paralysis by analysis. Your left brain operates about 40 instructions per second, which is extraordinary. I'm in the batter's box and a baseball goes 95 miles per hour. I want to be on the right side of the brain already. The neural pathway is already built. You are prepared and that preparation will build confidence even if you are swinging the bat. with my arms and my hands, the most important strength actually comes fromright from the start. My assessment showed that I needed stability in my ankles through the lower half and more mobility in my hips and thoracic spine.

Mobilizing and stabilizing specific muscles will help me. with the transfer of power through the cinematic sequence, so before he can grab a bat and start swinging, dr. james put me through a series of activations to wake up and warm up those specific muscles. Many times we think about mobility deficits and we simply have to stretch, there is something that we see a lot is if you simply activate a muscle and teach your brain that it is safe to assume certain ranges of movement, that unblocks us without even doing a stretch that will help unblock that extension and rotation of your thoracic spine.

I am a big believer in using activation techniques to gain mobility, this is usually how I start our guys, we struggle with hip mobility, yes give them an external cue to drive their stability so distally in their hips , that allows them to free themselves, because this allows me. of using my upper body and my hips, it's just isolating the hips, yeah, you'll see guys playing for the Yankees doing these hip mobility exercises because they prepare the body the way it needs to be prepared, kick that left leg outside. on the side we're carrying that load on your hip we're working on ankle stability you're keeping that foot rooted to the ground it's burning just wait another five four three big chest two one and relax wow for our athletes we work on We can't wait for you They create powerful rotation, so our body has to be able to control rotational movements before we can create explosive power.

The big focus is working on disassociating the upper body from the lower body, which will be critical when we're developing your cinematic sequence when we screen a player at the beginning of the offseason. We have months to work on the things you just showed us right now for tomorrow's opening days, but how can we take well what you're presenting? now and I give you the tools you need to make the adjustments alright I'm a lazy coach now so it's getting me uh not hitting but swinging what exactly are we doing now? I am not going to limit my analysis to what I can.

Look with my eyes because the truth is that you are moving too fast for me to understand everything. This is one of the bluetooth enabled 3D motion analysis sensors. We are going to put one on your hips, torso, arm and hand to see the chain. with which your body moves, we will make those hips rotate first, we will create that energy that will then be used by the torso, then the arm, then the hand, and if we get that efficient sequence to work, the output should speak for itself. Yes, alone. Okay, let's tie it up, we don't want to just measure what your body is doing, we want to see the result that you're creating, so we've gone ahead and put an explosive motion bat sensor here so that we also understand what the bat is doing. doing on every swing there you do it sounds good helmet on helmet on I feel like an action hero better better better is this sound good or bad yeah oh I feel like I'm making pretty decent contact with the ball I have I have no idea how you see my swing mechanics for your coach, but it feels pretty good how fast he throws them, even though it's like 30.

Yeah, it's about 25 miles an hour on clay. Which makes me curious. Can you show me how hard you can do it? swing a bat right now wow that's a little different yeah now I'm going to say on a scale of 1 to 100 one is the least average Joe and 100 is the best Clay that was about a 65 that's Well, don't even think about hitting anything you can. Just swing as hard as you've ever swung. So I'm going to throw some balls at you right now and I want you to swing harder than you've ever seen in your life, but I'm going to ask you to do something that's going to be almost impossible, don't try to hit the ball, okay, okay, my job here is done, it's like I'm your coach, I mean it's weird because I'm not even looking at the ball and he just hits it, so you have to do it. get comfortable with that last swing and miss because the swing was good, let's work on the production, not the result, okay, that felt great right there.

Dr. James is not going to be happy because I definitely don't have lower half stability, bottom half stability. Half is absolutely critical to rotational speed because if you're just spinning and you're not stable in the bottom half, we're not transferring energy efficiently from the bottom half to the top half, if it's just spinning and we're not supported. in what we call a forward leg lock and you can't stabilize your core in the lower half so that your torso can rotate against your core, then you're never going to swing as hard as you can, so I'm going to give you a very simple instruction when you land. on that front leg and you want to swing your bat, how hard can you press your left heel into the ground while you're swinging?

This will help you stabilize your lower half better. So far it was the hardest or you slowed down to try to hit that ball. I slowed down and tried to hit that ball. Yeah, don't even try to hit her. Show me how hard you can swing and how hard you can swing it. press your left heel into the ground great, oh, we've got exit velocity at uh 64. That's good for a 12 year old. What is muzzle velocity? Output philosophy means how fast the bat comes out, but why does that matter? Because the harder you hit a baseball. the more likely you are to get a hit, it's that simple, your swing has changed because now you're trying to hit the ball and you're putting your hands down like you're reaching for the ball, yeah, now I'm going to give you one last instruction.

Can you swing directly on your chest without knowing where the ball is hard? Well, make it amazing now, make it stronger. I feel like I'm going to throw my back. Wow, let's get to the clay, my goodness. Oh my gosh, pay attention Clay, as I watched you hit those first few shots, you were just trying to hit the ball and when you hit the ball we saw low exit velocities and the energy wasn't transferring very well to the chain, I asked you to release it. He said, don't try to hit the ball, just show me how hard you can swing and immediately get out speed jumped energy transferred up the chain went up a lot and now we'll see your kinematic sequence, but I took a little look and I saw that we went from moving like a door where your four segments moved together, that thing that opens and closes, yeah, and then on your last swing, you moved as athletically as you've ever moved, certainly while you were in the cage, I see some things happening interesting so we're taking a look at some of the performance graphs that we got of your movements and this was one of your first swings and what we see here we're looking at graphs of your body movement here. how we can do it physically and that's the kinematic change in the sequence, that's the chain, yeah, so the hip is the red torso, the green arm is that blue and then the last yellow line is your hand, your hips, your torso and your arm, all shot exactly the same. time and if you look here it says one one one one everything moved if you remember I said it like it moves like a yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, you see, the separation between each of these lines is very, very small, right Yes, we do not transmit. energy, so I took a look at your swing, talked to you and said, this is what I want you to do for now, when you start that swing, smash the ground as hard as you can with your left foot, right foot, your swing speeds. output increased by 50, you put two. things together in your training helping to stabilize your lower half by really focusing on flattening the entire front foot, but you also started to swing more freely, we saw it in the improved exit velocities, but we also see it in your kinematic sequence, your hips they shot and then your shoulders, then your arm, then your hand and, surprisingly, in this we not only had a great performance, but we also had a great result: it is the hardest ball you hit of the day and you also hit it to your maximum hand speed in your worst swing. you are 0.76 seconds away from your first move, your load to hit a baseball and I told you you had a maximum of 396. yes, that took you 760. yes, you are hitting the ball after the catcher, yes, exactly at your best moment. you lowered it below 396 and that speaks to whether you can reach 95 and at your best you got under 396 milliseconds, in fact you almost got to 300 milliseconds and that all depends on your powertrain and how it works. that so you can move faster and then from there is absolutely when you can become pretty stellar, but this is exceptional, well, I had good coaches, thank you, good coach, good doctor, now you need to learn how to hit, yeah, okay, that's true. 95 miles per hour here we come here we go practice is over analysis is over now it's time to see if I can really turn my swing into a shot that's the final showdown I've got 10 strikes a couple of warnings for all the YouTube haters out there obviously we're inside we're not in a stadium the sessions aren't open until opening day I don't have a real pitcher I have a machine so I'm going to swing at every pitch lastly no one is rooting For me, no one plays against me except my mom , which definitely supports me at home, but that's it, I have to try, now is the time, okay, oh, that was contact technically three, I thought I had it, oh, those last two are close.

Wow, it didn't really hurt that much, here we go, I took a ball off my finger. I don't know if she's pumping adrenaline or what, it doesn't hurt that much, so I guess I'm lucky, tomorrow I'll feel great, I think so, clay. I'll tell you as we watched, we noticed your timing getting better and better. The hardest thing was the timing because when we went back to practice and you were throwing, it felt like you were looking for points, yeah, and I thought it was okay now when I know his hand is there. I start, I start my swing with this.

It's hard because you can see Chris carrying it but you can't really see the ball coming out. So you're saying it would be easier to hit a major league pitcher? Yes, definitely. just swing, you don't look at the ball and you can still make contact, yeah it's a really wild feeling, well we're proud of you, look I'm going to be honest, it doesn't surprise me, I stand by what I said there afterwards. Watching you go from where you started to where you finished just in that short amount of training I knew you were going to be successful today well I'm happy thank you all the credit goes to you Dr.

James good people at Empire Baseball I have only completed one of these challenges once before, so I never know how to react. It felt great, it was exciting, it was definitely scary at first. I think the most important thing was getting used to the speed of the pitch. Once I did it, I was trying to nail it down. the moment and then as coach jordan said just swing i'm happy i made it above average clay captain joe i usually don't make it through these challenges so today i can say he was actually above average in saying goodbye , thank you all for watching.