Indoor Throwing Routines for Colorado Baseball Players
Players ramp up for the season with indoor throwing routines and defensive drills at HitStreak.
Prevent Strain and Strengthen Arms with an Effective and Efficient Indoor Throwing Program
Across Colorado and other states with cold and snowy winters, gearing up for the upcoming baseball or softball season in the winter and early spring is paramount to your player’s and team’s success and individual development. Of course we know that as well as anybody! However, many teams spend their indoor baseball training focusing mainly on hitting (and understandably so). Kids love to hit and many facilities are designed specifically for hitting.
But this is also in part due to the fact that it’s easier to hit indoors than throw. Many indoor facilities don’t have enough room, tunnel space, or tall enough ceilings to have any normal routine of throwing that you would be able to do outdoors on a field. Because of that, Colorado teams generally come out of the gates swinging the bats well, but the defense and pitching sides of the game are usually lagging behind initially.
More importantly than that, the lag is compounded by the risk of arm injuries and soreness, especially early in the spring when players’ arms may not be in peak physical condition. This is when a lot of arm problems start to pop up and can get deepened by poor habits or ramping up too quickly. For any player, especially youth players, it's hard to ask a player NOT to throw the ball hard when they get thrust into real competition.
We value the safety and long-term health of our athletes more than anything and always look to do everything we can with our players and teams to safely and effectively ramp up the throwing programs and routines to ensure health, arm care and long-term growth.
Coaches can incorporate several different ways to address this issue, maximize your practice time and help ensure players get their arms in shape for the coming season while building strength for many future seasons ahead. With a little creativity indoors, you can ensure your players get their arms in shape without taking a lot of time out of your practice plan as well.
Before anything, it’s important to remember that players should warm up to throw and not the other way around. Coaches and parents: do not let your team simply get to the field or the cage and start throwing. Athletes should warm up first with some dynamic exercises or extensive warm ups before touching a ball. This ensures that muscles are loose, blood is flowing and the arm is prepared to throw.
Here is one solution for indoor throwing for youth players:
Divide the team into two lines and set up two buckets of balls at one end of the cage. As players cycle through the line, they grab a ball from the bucket, throw it into the net at the opposite end of the cage, return to the line, and repeat the process.
We typically have our players start nice and light (maybe 50% throws) into the net/screen for 5-10 throws, and then they can gradually ramp it up. Our first few practices, the players may only throw 20-30 balls at 50-70%.
Each practice moving forward, we will increase the number of throws and intensity of the throws, eventually getting to a full "long-toss" style throw into the back net.
There is simply no benefit to starting a season having not thrown a ball for a couple months and coming in and throwing from a mound at 100%.
This responsibility often lies with the coaches and parents. Put a ball and glove in a youth player’s hand, and he will start going throwing it as hard as possible without any instruction.
Try this routine in your practices and, in just 5-10 minutes at the start of each indoor session, you can ensure you are preparing your players to be healthier and stronger because of it. From there you can incorporate more strength building, proper throwing mechanics and more specific throwing.
When the snow thaws and the season starts, they’ll be ready to start the season strong!
HitStreak players run through defensive drills while preparing for the upcoming spring season.
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