Winter workouts: Long toss vs and/or weighted balls

Charlotte....waiting to confirm location. Like i said, we'll have the details after T-Day

 

Will you post the sign up information and other deatails once everything is in place?

 

Yes....I'm waiting on confirmation of the location and working out the details with Coach May. If Coach is able to secure the confirmation with our guest speaker, I promise you that alone will be worth the trip. But the workout itself is special and the whole day will be a blast

 

Wow!
Braves, Coach 27, a guest speaker, and a workout 2nd to none; that should be a great day of baseball. I told my boy to shut down until January, but I may have to make this one exception.

C10

 

It'll be worth it. We're having catchers this year, so those guys better be in shape

 

Bump

 

Weighted Balls vs. Long Toss

My whole belief on weighted balls is that your arm needs to be trained in several different ways. I like to seperate arm strength and arm speed. When we use weighted balls, we are trying to improve our arm strength. If you look up the word strength in the dictionary it is defined as.... the quality or state of being strong; bodily or muscular power and power of resisting force, strain, wear, etc. So when we train with weighted balls it has a specific purpose. Arm Health! Preparation, for me is the key. We monitor the amount of throws and the specific weights that they throw in an environment that has parameters and guidelines. Bottom line, I believe weighted balls improve arm strength. It builds a strong shoulder and elbow base that allows your arm to handle the physical strain of long toss and pitching.

With Long Toss or underload training, which I also believe in tremendously, promotes arm speed. This is what everyone wants! Improved velo, harder rotation on curveball and slider, better arm action on changeup. There are so many benefits in long toss it is ridiculous. But, my belief is that you must have a strong base to gain benefits with long toss and underload training. That is where the weighted balls come into play.

Having the strength in the shoulder capsule initially is extremely important! Please push your kids to develop that first, then improve the arm speed secondarily. I know I spoke a lot about weighted balls, but that is not the only thing that we do to improve shoulder and elbow strength. Someone mentioned earlier the manual scap phase with light weight and band work. Something that we have started doing over the last three years is Kettle Bell training. We do a lot of "bottoms up" excercises that improve grip strength and elbow strength. I couldn't be more happy with the results of Kettle Bell training. If you are a father with a young kid, please look into it. It is irreplaceable.

There was a point in my life where I was very closed minded to overload and underload training, kettlebells etc. But, since we have implemented it into our program, our injuries have been almost non existent. Our pitching staff has been able to bounce back more quickly and take on a higher pitch count. Again I stress preparation. If you want to improve your velocity, build a strong base first, and then strive for velocity gain. I would be more than happy to post some things if someone would be interested. This is all my IMO. I hope no one takes offense to this and there have been several great points on this thread. I enjoyed reading it.

 

cool thread...brings back good memories and now I'm trying to apply to 12 yr old fastpitch softball girls

one thing I have not seen mentioned (and I know the experts here know it) but your DNA limits how fast your muscle can twitch. Some guys can generate velo without a long toss or weighted ball in thier life, and bad arms can do both drills perfectly and never break 80mph.

Oddly enough, when I was in the minor leagues the Pirates hated me long tossing but I loved it from my college days. I also was roommates with Nolan Ryan's kid Reid who preached to me all the wacky Tom House stuff but I found alot of it worthless marketing. Find what works for you.

I think the bottom line is your training with can get your last drip of potential out, but you are what you are...AND you gotta rest, that wing only has so many snaps in it

 

Nice.......... I had my son try them in middle school.... up to the medium weighted balls... i had the set of 5 or 6 different weights.....they also worked well at breaking in a new glove.....
Hope all is well with you Coach Anderson...

 

Amen brother!