Why Your Kid Doesn't Throw Hard
55/100
We all wanna throw gas.
Every single pitcher and baseball player has been in the same position at some point. The internal “I need more throwing velocity” dialogue has been had by almost everyone. Whether it be in the minor leagues of professional baseball, all the way down to the 8 year old who wants to throw hard so his teammates think he’s cool. I even hear this from the parents, who desperately want their child to improve and throw harder.
Odds are, you yourself have been in this same mindset. Toiling away trying to figure out where the next Mile Per Hour will come from whether it be yourself or your kid. I get it, I have trained with almost every single velocity method out there and a bunch of them work. However, in regards to training and trying to help the youth, it is significantly different than trying to help a 25 year old who’s career hangs in the balance of 2-3 miles per hour.
Creating an environment in which kids will feel comfortable to throw hard and throw freely is very simple, but there are a set of principles that need to be put into place to help them succeed.
Principles for Throwing Gas
1- Know When to go, Know when to stop.
2- Measure
3- Compliance is the Science
“Know when to go, Know when to Stop”
It’s really easy to buy into something that you care about and blindly assume that “more is better”. This is fair, most of the time in regards to improving a skill it is better. This is simply not the case for pitching and throwing velocity.
In velocity training, as well as tons of other types of training you will follow the general principle of the Stimulus-Recovery-Adaptation curve. If you don’t know what that is, look below.
It’s a simple idea, and quite frankly it is the entire basis of training at a high athletic level. The key idea in this curve that i need everyone to grasp is this: You do not get better by having the most stimulus, you get better my having the most stimulus **That you are able to recover from**.
This means: doing 50 high effort throws won’t improve your game more than the 15 throws if your body is 1: only built up for 15 and 2: doing 50 makes you just beaten down and fatigued when you or your child’s next high effort throwing day comes around.
Professional pitchers train to be at maximum velocity for roughly 15 pitches, why do you think your 12 year old kid needs to throw at full effort for an hour in order to improve?
The only thing you are doing by making your child throw for an hour is guaranteeing that they will probably hate baseball and get hurt in the process. I am all in for throwing a lot, but managing the maximum effort throws is critical.
When it is time to “go”.... GO. If today is your day to throw hard, throw as hard as you can. Throw the ball as far as you can, and don’t hold anything back.
This brings me to the “know when to stop” point. In a good velocity routine, throwers will go hard 2ish times a week. 3 if they are fully built up and feeling spicey. And even then… they won’t do it consistently. The best pitchers don’t throw bullpens every single day, so why would you or your kid throw as hard as you can 4 times a week? You shouldn’t, and doing so will not make you better.
Know when to GO: Pick your days, know at the beginning of the week what days you’re going to throw hard and be ready for them.
Know when to STOP: Don’t go hard every day, and don’t overthrow because you think more is better.
Key Takeaways:
Throw as hard as you can 2 times per week, and sprinkle in some lighter effort throwing days.
MEASURE:
I cannot emphasize this point enough: if you do not measure it, then there is almost no point in doing it. Without a bar to reach, there won’t be the same intensity, there will be no knowledge of how it actually went, and you will likely toil away with limited progress.
Now, this doesn’t mean “if you don’t have a radar gun then don’t waste your time” there are TONS of ways to measure throwing velocity without a radar.
Here are some of them:
Long Tossing on a football field: During COVID i did my entire rehab from Tommy John on a football field to measure effort. Every day I would start with my partner on the goal line and back up as far as I was allowed to go. Eventually this led to me throwing mid 90’s off of the mound after and almost 100 yards without stepping into it. If you have a goal to beat, it doesn't matter if it is 70 yards or 70 MPH, you are going to try as hard as you can to beat it. You can also do this with base paths (if they’re really young) or even pacing off distance and marking different lengths with cones or measuring it out with a tape measure.
Measuring long toss with google earth: yes, this is as simple as it sounds. You go and long toss. You are on a field somewhere and you build your way out as far as you can do. All you need to do is make a mental or physical note of the furthest point you threw from and make a point of where your partner caught the ball. This will likely be a rougher estimate, but knowing that you were “about 280” is way better than being like “yeah man arm felt good today it was probably 280, and it was really 225.
MY PERSONAL FAVORITE: using the field dimensions. During COVID I would have to go to the field by myself and throw into a net to warm up. After I was fully warmed up I would take the bucket of balls and stand behind home plate. I would then hurl ball after ball at the center field wall and try to throw it over. It helps because the grass was significantly overgrown and it would stop the ball pretty quickly. This serves as a good external motivator as throwing the ball over the center field wall was pretty fun, but for younger ages it’s more likely just trying to throw a ball all the way into the outfield in the air and then eventually finding your farthest ball thrown and measuring it via any of the ways talked about above.
Obviously, if you have a radar gun this whole ordeal becomes much much easier. I fully recommend buying one, a pocket radar is more than good enough. Buying my pocket radar roughly 6 years ago was one of the best decisions I ever made in regards to my personal baseball training.
This also opens up more opportunities for throwing drills other than long toss, while long toss is king in my opinion doing the same thing repeatedly can become boring and monotonous.
Other throws to measure are:
Mound throws
Running throws
Turn and burns (backpedal into a turn and throw)
Positional throws (catcher pop or shuffle throw)
Compliance is the science:
Training is hard, there’s a reason it is really hard to get better and even harder to become the best. Doing these a few times and giving up is a very common response, but it won’t get you anywhere. Just back to surfing the web trying to find the magic answer.
Compliance is what gets you better, doing this 2 times a week for a year is going to get you further than doing it once every few weeks and thinking that’s enough.
John