Wednesday, July 9 Fister prides himself on being the same person Day 1 through Day 5, but he has a few non-negotiable routines. The most important: a pregame nap. He usually sleeps for between 30 minutes and an hour somewhere in the clubhouse — normally on a couch — roughly three hours before game time in order to calm down and visualize the game. With a 7:05 p.m. start at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Fister emerges from the dugout and heads to the bullpen a half hour before the game. After stretching in the outfield and playing catch with bullpen catcher Octavio Martinez, Fister heads to the bullpen for a 31-pitch warmup session with starting catcher Wilson Ramos. At 7, Fister walks across the outfield with pitching coach Steve McCatty and Ramos. As a line of relievers heads from the dugout to the bullpen, Fister bumps fists with each one. He takes his seat in the dugout, and when Bryce Harper strikes out to end the top of the first, he jogs to the mound. He needs just six warmup pitches before Orioles leadoff man Nick Markakis digs into the box, and at 7:24, he winds up and throws his first pitch.

Tuesday, July 8 Fister’s start is rained out. Since he never even got to the bullpen for a pregame warmup session, there’s nothing to do but wash away the day, then repeat it Wednesday.

Monday, July 7 This is the day before Fister’s start, and when he walked through the clubhouse just after 3:30 p.m., he had both a bottle of water in one hand, a bottle of Gatorade in the other. Hydrating, he said, is key throughout the week, but particularly in the summer, and particularly the day before and the day of his start.“I’ve been chugging water like crazy,” he said. “As soon as you’re thirsty, it’s too late.”This is largely a day of physical rest. But because it’s the first day of a new series — the Baltimore Orioles are in Washington — Fister sits in on the defensive meeting and offers insights on how he’ll attack different Baltimore hitters so Washington’s position players can better know where to play. (Most starters don’t do this.)The extent of Fister’s physical activity is shagging balls during batting practice. “If it’s 30-foot sprints, if I take just a good five steps, that’s enough,” he said. “I just need that burst.

Sunday, July 6 On Day 3, Fister looks at any video of his last start that he finds pertinent. Against Colorado, he struggled keeping his pitches down in the strike zone, so he pulled up a better start against Atlanta for comparison. He discovered what he had suspected: Against Colorado, he was working too slowly, and that loss of rhythm caused a mechanical flaw. Fister then returned to the weight room, where he worked on his core. He also used rubber bands again to continue to strengthen his shoulder. “It’s a season-long maintenance program,” he said. “It doesn’t stop.” His final workout: running during batting practice, which he calls “power-shagging,” chasing after fly balls and line drives to get his legs some short bursts of work.

Saturday, July 5 For most pitchers, Day 2 includes a bullpen session, but Fister usually chooses to throw from flat ground instead. He throws mostly fastballs, but will work in a couple of breaking pitches as well. Because he is throwing on this day, Fister gives his upper body and core a day off in the weight room but spends an hour to 90 minutes on his lower body.

Friday, July 4On what is really Day 1 of his normal cycle, with his next scheduled start four days off, Fister arrives at the ballpark early to lift weights. The holiday creates an odd schedule with an 11 a.m. start against the Chicago Cubs; Fister’s normal routine, with a 7 p.m. start, is to come in between noon and 1 and then spend an hour and a half to two hours in the weight room working on his upper body and core. Fister also plays catch on the first day of his cycle, getting blood flowing to his arm again and working out any stiffness. “There’s no time limit, no number of throws,” he said. “It’s a feel thing.” During batting practice, he shags balls — not haphazardly, but with an intent, running in short bursts and getting his legs back under him. After batting practice, his day is pretty much done.“I can shower up and turn into a cheerleader,” he said.

Thursday, July 3 The Nationals had a rare home off day — no game, no travel — one of just three scheduled this season. Still, Fister was up early for a 7 a.m. run with his fiancee, then went sightseeing with friends from out of town.

Wednesday, July 2 At 8:32 p.m., Fister left the Nationals Park mound after completing the top of the seventh inning against the Colorado Rockies. After drinking water on the bench, Fister retreated to the training room and went through a series of shoulder and arm exercises — using a rubber band as resistance — while his body was spent. The exercises might concentrate on the rotator cuff or the shoulder blade. “We try to vary it so it doesn’t get monotonous,” head athletic trainer Lee Kuntz said. By 9:45, Fister was out the door of the clubhouse, headed to his car and home to the northern Virginia suburbs.

Starting pitchers are an anomaly in the major leagues, called on only every fifth day to perform. But their entire season is filled with work. “There are no days off,” Nationals right-hander Doug Fister said.

“I try not to be a robot,” Fister said. Yet his professional existence calls for some physical and mental robotics, repetitive, regimented actions. Fister’s mind naturally scurries about; he describes his style as borderline obsessive-compulsive disorder. As he played two years in community college and later at Fresno State, he had plenty of places to put his thoughts. If he wasn’t pitching, he was hitting. If he wasn’t hitting, he was fielding. He might catch a bullpen session for another pitcher. He might take flyballs in the outfield. There was always something.

But his senior year, he decided to concentrate on pitching. He was selected in the seventh round of the draft by the Seattle Mariners, who immediately sent him to Class A Everett (Wash.). There was no batting practice to take, no classes, no first baseman’s mitt. Here, the life of a starting pitcher sank in.

“It was kind of, ‘What do I do with myself?’ ” he said.

That question has been asked for years. Only in the last decade-and-a-half has the answer become so refined.

“We didn’t have video,” said McCatty, whose career with the Oakland Athletics spanned from 1977 to 1985. “We didn’t have weights. There’s a lot more breaking down first-pitch swings, what they hit in what count, what they hit off what pitch. The numbers are all there for pretty much anything you want to find.”

But before you can find that, you have to find yourself. Fister struggled with that in those early days of the minors, and it affected his preparation. He made just four starts for Everett before concerns about a high pitch count over the entirety of the college and pro seasons sent him to the bullpen. He returned to the rotation the next year, but posted a 5.02 ERA over two full seasons at Class AA. His struggles infuriated him, and for two or three days after starts, he would fume. There was a new weight program, a new running program, shoulder maintenance, a throwing program.

“Especially at the lower levels of the minor leagues,” Fister said, “you’re really trying to learn how to get through each five-day rotation.”

Even when he got to the majors with the Mariners, in 2009, he had to figure out those four days. What to do with my brain? What to do with my body? For generations, there has been no uniform response. Steve Carlton turned to martial arts. Roger Clemens ran. Randy Johnson became a weight-room resident. Curt Schilling developed into a bookworm, knowing hitters better than they knew themselves.

“To each his own,” Nationals right-hander Stephen Strasburg said. “Some guys don’t like to do that much, just recover. Some guys like to train really hard. At first, I probably over-trained a little bit, and it kind of just caught up to me as the season went on.”

Doug Fister signs autographs for fans during an off day, at least for him, as the Nationals host the Cubs. In a 162-game season, a healthy starter will pitch only 35 times. That gives each 127 games in which they are all but guaranteed not to play.

However it’s handled, it must be productive. “It’s not a vacation,” Strasburg said. And so it is that while his teammates continued their tussle with the Rockies, Fister grabbed a large rubber band and began working the same right shoulder that had just unloaded 80 pitches.

‘Clear my mind and enjoy nature’

For Nationals starters, there is no chiseled-in-stone routine in those moments after they leave the mound, but head athletic trainer Lee Kuntz is adamant that they work their throwing arms. This is done in March or May with September and October in mind, and it is often done when the game is still going on. A pitcher’s long-term health is more important than whether he sees his teammates record the final out.

Against the Rockies, Fister immediately went to work with the set of rubber bands, providing resistance for his arm, putting further workload on an already tired shoulder.

“A lot of people will say, ‘You’re beating a dead issue; he’s tired,’ ” Kuntz said. “Yes. But if they had a huge workload, we can drastically reduce what they do in the training room, and they still get their routine and the discipline of having to do it when they’re tired. It’s a little nugget for me. The idea is to get the monkey to jump through the hoop and think it’s his idea.”

For Fister, this isn’t a problem. The OCD part of him dictates that he relishes the work immediately after he pitches; he understands its importance over the next five days, over the rest of the season. Kuntz and the training staff frequently have pitchers submerge in a cool tub after pitching and work their arms using the water as resistance. They ice their arms because that can calm swelling. And if Kuntz is able to diagnose real fatigue, he can suggest to McCatty that the workload in coming days be reduced.

But even with that close monitoring, both by himself and the Nationals’ staff, Fister woke up the day after his start against Colorado feeling sore. “Just mentally, physically exhausted,” he said. It is like this for most every major league starter after most every major league start. “You can feel it,” Roark said.

Fister’s response, at 7 a.m.: A 41/2-mile run with his fiancee. This is nothing more than cleansing. They are training for a half marathon together, so they took to the hills in northern Virginia. Even as a kid, only two things could truly wipe Fister’s brain clean: mowing the lawn and running.

“It’s a mental and physical break for me,” Fister said. “I use the mental side of things just to clear my mind and enjoy nature.”

The Nationals had a scheduled off day, the last before the all-star break, so he, his fiancee and friends from out of town toured the monuments and the National Mall that morning. When the Chicago Cubs arrived for a weekend series beginning on the Fourth of July, Fister began his typical, at-the-ballpark day-after routine: an hour-and-a-half to two hours in the weight room, training his upper body and his core, a light game of catch out to maybe 100 or 120 feet to get blood flowing in his arm, then shagging balls during batting practice, reminding himself that “if it’s the 17th inning, and we’re out of players, ‘Skip’ might need someone to run out there.”

For most starters, the second day of work after pitching is reserved for a bullpen session. Strasburg, in his early days, would fire 50 or 60 pitches, trying to refine each and every little thing. He has since toned them down, and each of the Nationals’ starters has settled into a comfort zone of somewhere between 20 and 35 pitches, give or take. Each starter, except Fister.

“I’m so particular in my pitching style and my bullpens that if it’s not where I want it to be, either one, I’m not happy with it, or two, I’m going to continue to throw until I get it,” he said. “And a lot of times, I don’t get it that day. So I’m just continually pounding my head against a wall.”

Early in his career, these bullpen sessions became completely counterproductive. After as many as 75 pitches, he was physically spent and mentally frayed. So now, he is the rarest of major league starters: He doesn’t throw a bullpen between starts. Rather, two days after he pitches, he plays a hard game of catch from about 60 feet away, but not from a mound, to a squatting catcher.

“They don’t have to do anything they don’t want to,” McCatty said. “I can suggest things, but it’s up to them.”

So on the morning of the second day of the series against the Cubs, after he had worked on his legs in the weight room, Fister retreated to the grass in right field and began his most strenuous on-field activity between starts. Like everything in his routine, it is perfectly dissected. He does not wear spikes, because that forces him to keep his weight on his back foot; otherwise, he might slip on the grass. If he stays back, he can properly separate his lower body from his upper body, getting the former in proper position so he can follow through with the latter, perfectly timed.