3 Months of BRX Training Leads To A Division 1 Baseball Scholarship

BRX is about finding your baseball potential from deep within that no one else sees besides yourself. This is why I want to dig a little deeper into the story of our client who turned himself from an unrecruited senior into a top prospect within a matter of three months.

Jim Jarecki was a right-handed pitcher at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee. Going into his senior year, Jim was completely unrecruited and his fastball topped at 82 mph. After three months of training at BRX Performance, Jim reached 89 mph and sat at 86-88 mph. He soon received a 70% scholarship offer from Bradley University, which covered around $112,000 of tuition over the course of four years.

How can someone make such a significant velocity improvement in such a short amount of time?

Here’s my theory: Jim’s hips were extraordinarily restricted – groin, glutes, hip flexors, everything. Such restricted hip mobility makes optimal mechanics (i.e. hip and shoulder separation) impossible. Jim certainly got stronger and more explosive in the three months of training, but anyone who tells you that this alone can improve velocity 7 MPH in three months is lying to you.

I had Jim attack hip mobility drills for those three months – two times each day, seven days a week. Improving his hip mobility likely allowed him to optimize his mechanics on the mound by getting the most out of his body, which ultimately led to hitting 89 MPH on the radar gun three months after topping at 83.

Here are three of the most important hip mobility drills we implemented for Jim at BRX:

Groin Mobilization

If you have an excessively restricted adductor (groin) musculature, you’re not going to be able to stride adequately towards the direction you’re throwing or optimize lower-half mechanics. Add one set of 8/leg at each position into your warm-up.

Glute Mobilization

If you lack mobility in your glutes, which are hip internal rotators, your body will resort to external rotation too soon in the throwing motion. In layman’s terms, your front side will open up too soon, possibly causing your top half and arm to lag behind. Add one set of 8/leg into your warm-up.

Hip Flexor Mobilization

Lack of mobility in the muscles that flex the hip (think high knees) will mean you can’t properly extend your hips during the throwing motion. Hip extension (think what your hips do as you stand up on a squat) is an enormous source of power during the delivery and all sports for that matter. Add one set of 8/leg at each position into your warm-up.