Structured Return to Throwing Programming
Everyone has their opinion on shut down periods and pitch counts. Yet, there are very few clear “return to throwing programs” to properly prepare the arm for the season. One thing is true, a piece of paper from a PT, Doctor, or coach given out to the all different ages, injury history, workload capacities, and movement patterns is not the right answer.
There is a common misconception with shut down time for throwing athletes and their build up to season. If you shut down for an extended period of time you need a slow and steady on-ramping for the arm, preparing your delivery, and pitch count.
This blog is written to help educate players, coaches, and parents on managing your off-season arm preparation. Before we go any deeper, if there is one thing that you take from this just know that every single arm is different with feedback, recovery time, arm stress and more. There are several different options and variables, some described below, that. can adjust your program to lead to healthy, strong season.
Listen to your arm. Listen to your body. Be consistent.
Adjust any throwing on-ramping program based on feel and comfort.
Key points:
Start with low volume and intensity following proper warm-ups. Build up volume, distance, and intensity over the course of 4-5 active days for 4 weeks before max output throwing.
Before throwing begins, begin active ramping with jaeger bands, medicine balls, and weight training.
Distance is least valued in our opinion. Work to your comfort distance matching designated intensity for the day. This differs case by case.
You are not just on-ramping your arm. You are preparing your delivery each and every day. Make your reps count.
At the end of on-ramping, the arm should feel zero restrictions during warm-ups or long toss.
Quality reps, not just quantity.
What should shut down timeline look like?
This depends on several factors listed below. We look for 8 weeks of no baseball throwing. Personally, we want athletes continuing jaeger bands, consistent weight training, and some basic plyocare drills for at least 4 of these 8 weeks.
Factors:
Age - younger athletes should have longer shut d0wns.
Inning workload
Physical Maturity
Skill level
Velocity and Mechanics
Expected timeline for upcoming season
Injuries
Differences for Ages/Levels
In an ideal world for a HS athlete who has played from March through September, we should be shut down for 8 weeks in October and November. These months should be highly focused on getting stronger, managing body weight and mobility. Your 4-5 week on-ramping phase can begin the second week of December to give 14 weeks to prepare for HS season.
College athletes have several more factors and are more difficult to determine when to shut down. One part should be consistent, if you are shutting down then shut down for more than just 2-4 weeks.
If you are a spring-heavy inning workload arm then shut down for part of the summer and improve your strength, movement quality, mobility, etc. After this shut down you can prepare for fall season, deload after fall, and throw through November/December as you prepare for Spring.
If you do not throw much in the spring, you should find ways to get innings in during the summer. Ideally, you can shut down from mid-July through early September and on-ramp for end of fall season. Most coaches want every arm throwing in their fall season which is understandable but also has to fit their timeline for having a shut down in between spring seasons.
This is the same for professional pitchers. Ideally, the shut down begins as early in the fall as possible. Some professionals will shorten actual shut downs and keep work capacity low so they can continue working on simple aspects such as spin, movement efficiencies, and more.
Every professional is different and should have enough feel to understand their needs. Professional pitchers should have a longer bullpen build up to work on each pitch, build up work capacity, and review spin data.
Personally, I want every competitive pitcher to have a long, steady on-ramping phase with ample time for movement development, pitch design, and adjustments based on how arm feels. Rushing a pitcher back to competitive season is the worst thing for your preparation for the most critical part of your season, the playoffs.
How On-Ramping Should Look:
Schedule your on-ramping backwards knowing when you are expected to be “mound ready” or beginning a high-intensity throwing phase. Work at least 4 weeks back from there. Get your plan set, equipment needed, and set a consistent scheduled throwing time at a facility.
Have a structured warm-up from mobility, CARs, Jaeger Bands, to plyocare work. Your pre-throwing work is vital to restoring a repeatable and efficient throwing motion. Your post-throwing modalities are just as important as your warm-up. Execute them properly.
The 4 week plan is a steady increase of volume, intensity, and distance. At any point the soreness becomes uncomfortable, rest, then go back and do the previous day again. Do not move forward until level of soreness lowers. The goal is to only have slight soreness the day between throwing days with little restrictions on throwing days.
We use a player readiness scale to assess how we feel on a 1-5 scale, 5 meaning feeling great. We need to be at a 4-5 for it to qualify as a throw day during on-ramping. The players track their sleep, nutrition, stress, arm, and body readiness.
Plyocare drills should be tailored to the individual, but we try to keep some variety in the day to day throwing to challenge quality movement and feel with their own delivery.
For position players, we simply adjust plyocare drills from the mound to flat ground and have them work in their specific position movements (backhands, forehand, etc).
Each day and week should see increases in the intensity behind throws. We start our guys around 60% RPE (rate of perceived exertion) and build up to 100% at the beginning of week 4.
While some struggle with judging their intent, it keeps the mindset consistent with getting more aggressive each day. Some athletes will need to maintain a 75-90% RPE to stay connected and smooth in throwing motion.
PRP Baseball On-Ramping Program
Email us at prpbaseball101@gmail.com to receive the On Ramping Program!
From here, we make adjustments in throwing volume, intensity, and plyocare drills knowing their limitations and deficiencies. We strongly believe in this format as a “good start” to any on-ramping program for ages 13 and up.
We have already seen athletes crushing their previous velocity maxes at the end of this on-ramping program in their baseline testings.
General On-Ramping Recommendations:
Don’t pay much attention to distance. Focus on the intensity and staying connected. Ball flight should be true and consistent on way out to distance needed for the day.
Take an extra day of rest when needed. Goal is to get 16 throw days in 4-5 weeks.
Add jaeger bands, mobility, CARs, tubing, basic plyocare drills on days in between scheduled throwing days.
Basic plyocare drills - Reverse Throws, Upward Toss, Pivot Picks, Rebounders
If can’t throw outside at distance, set up throwing targets in the cage for having intent and purpose with each throw as you build up. (Hoops, tape, rope, etc)
Long Toss Phase Explained:
Alan Jaeger (@jaegersports) has praised long toss for years and how letting your arm breathe, taking it for a walk, or massage catch play can prepare your arm for battle. Instead of “limiting” throws or “saving bullets”, we should be trying to add bullets to the chamber. Long toss is a critical part of PRP programming during the off-season and monitored in-season for our athletes.
Alan Jaeger describing his style of Long Toss program.
There are several different beliefs in what long toss actually is. We follow Alan’s style with extension phase on the way out to comfort or max distance and then compressions on the way back in. Volume, distance, and intensity depend on the day and how the arm feels.
Extensions - High arc throws, have a hump on it, air underneath it, or massage throws as Alan Jaeger refers to.
Compressions - On-A-Line throws or “pulldowns” with a shuffle step as your partner comes back in to about 120-90 feet after extensions.
We want our athletes to have a minimum of 3 full long toss days before any “high-intent” or competitive throwing sessions tracked for velocity and we program our on-ramping that way.
Here is a full list and mini-breakdown of our plyocare drills used at PRP Baseball. Most of the drills you can see on our YouTube Channel.
In these drills, we are challenging different parts of the delivery from lower half patterning to arm action. Finding a handful of exercises that challenge yet promote better movement in your delivery is key for improvement throughout on-ramping.
Click the button above to view FREE videos.
The True On Ramping…
What happens in the weight room, on the floor in your mobility work, sleeping and eating enough, and improving movement sequencing is what will truly make your on-ramping lead to better numbers and production come competition time.
Your arm will only improve if everything else improves. The hand is the final part of the kinetic chain and conditioning the arm doesn’t solve movement deficiencies. This is why we spend time developing the movements before on-ramping begins as well as the strength and conditioning component to prepare the body for added throwing.
Our athletes go through certain CVB drills, med ball throws, and plyocare drills based on the needs of the athlete to improve control of the ground, hips, and their arm swing. This is more valuable than any piece of paper with throwing volume listed.
For example, we are focusing on low reps and more volume in the weight room to build strength and work capacity during our on-ramping. We also blend medicine ball drills into the pre-throwing work to work on movement sequencing and lower half mechanics.
Attention to Detail
The most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of developing younger baseball players is catch play. The high-level athletes play high-level catch. Every single time. Feeling out your movements, getting to consistent release points, feeling proper spin, and more can all be worked through during low-moderate volume catch play in your on-ramping.
If you are scattering the baseball and not repeating movements you worked on in your pre-throwing work then you are simply feeding the bad habits at the most important phase of your work day. This shouldn’t require coaches to harp on during catch play. This is expected in our athletes as it should be yours. Bad catch play leads to poor performance. Simple.
Besides catch play, we often see athletes who get bored with repetitive workouts, drills, and mobility/strengthening exercises. These drills are prescribed for specific reasons and can directly affect your game performance if executed well every day.
While new drills and variety can help challenge the CNS and keep athletes engaged, it is often the simple and specific exercises that are needed to change habits.
After You Finish On-Ramping
This can go several different directions for different ages, timelines, player needs. For most pitchers ages 15 and up, we would enter a pulldown phase with mound assessments. Plan would be to start assessing velocities both in pulldown and mound then setting modalities from there. Most would enter a 3-4 week velocity-based phase with pulldowns and high-intent bullpens.
Player A Example -
Day 1 - Velocity Day - Pulldown Assessment
Day 2 - Recovery - Core Velocity Belt (CVB), Video Review, Lower Lift, Arm Care
Day 3 - Hybrid - Light Long Toss, Medicine Ball, Hybrid Plyocare, CVB, Upper Lift
Day 4 - Hybrid - Mound Assessment - 10-15 pitches - Movement Lift, Video Review
Day 5 - Recovery - CVB, Medicine Ball, Drill Implementation
Day 6 - OFF Throwing, Lower Lift
Day 7 - Hybrid - Long Toss - CVB, Medicine Balls, Hybrid Plyocare, Drill Work, Upper Lifit
During this velocity-based phase, we want to implement drills (CVB, Med Balls, Dry Work, Plyocare) to focus on any deficiencies in our delivery. Mound blending occurs during high-intent phase but will become a bigger focus.
After few weeks off velocity-based programming, bullpens should increase in frequency and pitch count. Below is a simple, very adjustable bullpen schedule following a velocity phase:
Day 1 - Bullpen #1 - 1 set - 20 fastballs
Day 4 - Bullpen #2 - 2 sets - 10 fastballs, 5 change-ups
Day 8 - Bullpen #3 - 2 sets - 10 fastballs, 5 breaking balls, 5 change-ups
Day 11 - Bullpen #4 - 1 set - 10 fastballs, 5 breaking balls, 5 change-ups
Day 15 - Bullpen #5 - Hitter Standing In - 2 sets - 20-25 pitches each - Count work - First pitch strikes, 0-2/1-2 counts, 3-2 counts
Day 18 - Bullpen #6 - Hitter Standing In - 2 sets - 20-25 pitches each - Off-Speed Focus
Day 22 - Bullpen #7 - Starter - 3 sets - 20-25 pitches each / Reliever - 2 sets - 15 pitches
Day 26-27 - Bullpen #8 - Startere 3 sets - 20-30 pitches each - Live Hitters
Obviously, these days and amount of throws should be adjusted based on age, time to season, and how the arm is recovering!
In Conclusion
The most important thing to take from this is to have a plan. Write it down. Track progress. Make adjustments. If you follow everything from our information above with zero adjustments or progress tracked then you did it wrong. Listen to the arm. Listen to the body.
There are several variables going into a return to throwing program. If you are coming off an injury, be sure to run any throwing protocols through the person prescribing your workouts. It is very common for injury-based return to throw programs are too passive and do not have the ram ready for high-intent work.
If you are shutting down for an extended period of time be sure to follow a steady return to throwing program. The worst thing you can do is take an unconditioned arm into high intent work and expect it to last the season.
For questions, e-mail us at prpbaseball101@gmail.com!
