Building a better throwing program:
A deep dive into offseason programming for high school athletes
Auhtor, Michael Stafford
November ,2019
This offseason I recently accepted a new position with Richmond Baseball Academy (RBA west). I will be serving as the pitching coach for our showcase 17u team while also working with some of our high school/youth pitchers across the whole academy.
Over the next 10 weeks I will be analyzing and giving an overview of an off-season throwing program I developed for our high school age pitchers ranging in age from 15-18. This program is a long toss and plyocare based program popularized by some of the most well-known names in baseball player development.
Although I have adapted many of these methods, the ground floor of this program revolves around developing proper technique and sequencing the throwing motion. Many of these methods have been researched and implemented by some of the top minds and programs in the country. I am personally thrilled to be implementing this program and I'm exited to see the gains these young and talented athletes make.
The biggest piece of coaching advice I've recieved in the past few years is to make big time where you are at. Whether that be in a high school program, local facility, or a D1 college program. This is exactly what I am aiming to do here at RBA. Even though I'm no longer on the college scene, these young athletes can greatly benefit from the wealth of knowledge I have aquired over the years.
The two biggest challenge in building a high school throwing program is scaling the program based on age and inspiring young athletes to commit to the program over the full 10 weeks. The biggest mistake I see in many facilities, is they don’t take the time to individualize the program and they do not have any type of accountability.
Each athlete is different, and thus may require some tweaking to how each plan is programmed. The second part of this is encouraging athletes to follow through even on the small tedious tasks over just accomplishing the major ones. In the long run the small, “not fun” tasks are the ones that will make the most difference. These include areas such as arm care, dry work, pre-throwing, and post-throwing.routines.
When dealing with young athletes it is important to scale these more advanced programs in order to blend with the level of development. This can aid in reducing the risk of injury, as well as give them stepping stones for developing year after year. When structuring this offseason program, I implemented it across 4 phases over 10 weeks. Each phase is used over 2 to 3 week implements. This first article will dive into the first phase of the program.
Phase 1: Volume
Week 1
The volume phase of the program is a development time which is severely overlooked. This is the portion which is reserved for developing endurance in the arm without the added stress of throwing off the mound. This first phase is performed over the first 2 weeks. During this time, we focus on developing a proper arm path while working at a lower intensity.
I personally split the first two weeks into two subphases. The first is Volume & Extension. This involves working at a lower intensity with our plyocare work and solely focusing on the extension phase of the long toss program.
The extension phase is monitored by percentage where we only work from a 0-80% RPE (Rate of Perceived Effort). This RPE is also cross monitored by a length of set time. Below is an example of how this might be set up.
5 minutes 0-50% 10 minutes 50-60% 5 minutes 60-80%
The principle is to build up in intensity but to put a set time limit to focus on quantity over intensity. There is not exact time limit some athletes might be spent at the end of the 10 minutes while others may push themselves to 15-20 minutes.
Much of this is by a case to case basis. I encourage athletes to “listen to the arm” as they move back into extension. Roughly speaking for athletes ranging from 15-18 years old, 20 minutes is a challenging period of constant throwing. Anything over that can begin to overstress the arm. If they begin to find that too easy add greater intensity over a set time limit.
This first week is mainly used to teach the athletes each drill/movement. It is also utilized to condition the arm for the later weeks of higher intensity. For most of these kids they have never been through a program with this much responsibility and it will take work to get them on a solid routine.
I try to use a mid-week check in to keep players accountable even when I am not physically with them. At the end of the day it is there career and their choice, but nothing is better than having a coach push/encourage them to the next level of training.
The second week I begin to implement a sub max pull down phase. This is where we have already stretched in the extension phase out to our max distance, but then begin to pull down on a line. Through this process we do utilize the use of slight overweight and underweight balls, but with young athletes we keep this to a minimum.
More advanced athletes can implement the use of 6oz-8oz baseballs for overweight and 3-4 oz baseballs for underweight. The first week of this is kept to a an 80% RPE. I tell athletes to leave some in the tank. This is mainly again to get the arm conditioned as we begin to move into more aggressive phases of the program.
Within each week I also give the athletes a physical focus, along with a mental focus. For example, these are the overall focuses I use throughout each phase of the program.
Stage 1: Improve Upper Body Movements; Focus on process, not results
Stage 2: Focus on Lower Body Movements: Developing Intent
Stage 3: Blend movements with mound: Internal focus versus external
Stage 4: Game situation: Blend game mindset with improvements.
If you are interested in offseason programming for teams or as an individual. Please contact me at staffordbaseballperformance@gmail.com.