In my baseball travels I
’m constantly asked, “How can my son or daughter get a stronger
arm?” My answer is quite simple. Do arm circles, play long toss and
establish a regimen of resistance training with surgical tubing.
Just playing catch before practice at a short distance won’t do it.
Stretching out your arm and
strength training for your shoulder and rotator cuff muscles is
the solution.
In my baseball travels I’m constantly asked, “How can my son or daughter get a stronger arm?” My answer is quite simple. Do arm circles, play long toss and establish a regimen of resistance training with surgical tubing. Just playing catch before practice at a short distance won’t do it. Stretching out your arm and strength training for your shoulder and rotator cuff muscles is the solution.
As we enter a new youth baseball season, most youngsters are guilty of too much throwing, too soon, and too fast. Most are coming out of basketball season or soccer and haven’t thrown a ball in months. Maybe some threw the ball around a few days before tryouts. Now, practices are upon them and they become overzealous. Sore arms start occurring on every team. But it doesn’t have to happen.
By establishing an arm-strengthening program for your youth player or team, and sticking to it, you’ll find their arms getting healthier and stronger as the season progresses. In a lot of cases, players lose strength during the duration of the season and their arms are burned out and tired. Some have reccurring arm pain. Some go into post-season play wishing the season was over.
Getting started is easy. At practice, or before you start to play catch, grab two baseballs. With your arms outstretched to your side at shoulder height and a ball in each hand, turn your palms down. Your arms should be relaxed and your elbows bent. Now begin with arm circles going forward. You’ll start with 10 small circles, 16 half circles (a little bigger), 16 three-quarter circles (bigger) and 16 full circles (the biggest). Without stopping, you’ll go back to three-quarters, halves and small circles. These will also be 16 repetitions each.
Now, turn your palms up and do the arm circles backwards with the same sizes and repetitions. At first, you’ll feel your arms and shoulders burning and it will be tough to finish. Burning is a good thing. It means your shoulder and throwing muscles are not as strong as they could be. Don’t force things. If you can’t finish some circles, stop and relax and pick up where you left off. In time, a few weeks, the arm circles will be easier to do. Then, it’s just a matter of maintaining them throughout the season.
The next part of the program, and the most important, is long toss. And it means jut what it says, throwing the ball long. It begins with players playing catch at 40 to 50 feet apart, or less, depending on your level of play. Then progress to throwing from the hip from the same distance and then moving back to 60 feet or more. Again, depending on your level, it could be more or less. Throwing from the hip means your feet are stable and your body is sideways with your shoulders facing your partner. You lean back on your back leg and before your body moves forward, break your hands and throw the ball with your weight out over your front leg. Your feet stay stable and your back foot pivots.
After this, you begin to slowly move back toward your optimum point, or how far you can throw. You do this with a crow hop. All these throws should be on an arc, not bullets. You’re trying to stretch out your arm and see how far you can throw. Once you’ve reached the farthest distance you can throw, you begin to come back in. While coming in you still crow hop, but now you’re throwing on a line as hard as you can. You’ll eventually come back to your starting distance. This entire long toss segment should take as little as 20 minutes or as long as 30 minutes. One game days, you can cut it in half. Both the arm circles and long toss can be done at each practice and before games.
The last piece of the puzzle is the surgical tubing exercises. They are more extensive and in-depth. As long as you get started with arm circles and long toss you’ll make it through this season just fine. You can work on the tubing in the off-season.
There is no substitute for strengthening your arm. If you’re asking young players to throw the ball from the outfield, throw it harder across the infield or have more velocity as a pitcher, then you need to give them the tools and the time to do so. If not, arm pain will persist and young arms will grow tired. Throwing mechanics and pitching mechanics will suffer. I’ve seen high school and youth players excel in the program, throwing the ball further and with more accuracy and velocity.
As Alan Jaeger, whose “Thrive on Throwing” program we’ve just discussed, has said many times, “your arm is the future.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Rich Taylor is a professional youth pitching instructor and owner of Morgan Hill-based Taylor Made Baseball. His column appears the first and third Tuesdays of the month.
