How Much Should You Pitch in the Winter?
In the past I’ve put together some general guidelines for how much you should practice pitching, but there are so many factors involved in creating an optimal and well-rounded training routine. For example in the winter, which is often the one true offseason for many pitchers who participate in games during the spring, summer, and fall, you don’t want to practice the same way you do during the rest of the year.
Pitch Less, Train More
The winter should be about rebalancing and improvement. Windmill pitching is a very unbalanced activity, and allowing physical unbalances to grow in your body puts you at greater risk for injury and stunts your potential. Playing a different sport in the offseason is a good way to encourage balance in your body. See this post that Joe put together with some suggestions for good combinations of softball, strength training, and other sports.
Whether you’re playing another sport or not, you should definitely reduce your number and intensity of pitching practices and shift your focus to strength training. A lot of pitchers think about improvement in terms of making their pitches better, but not in terms of making their bodies better to handle pitching more readily. THIS type of improvement will result in faster, greater, and more sustainable overall pitch improvement as well.
Getting stronger so that you physically CAN pitch better is more productive than practicing the same mistakes over and over again.
When you do practice pitching, don’t overdo it and focus on experimenting, fixing, and learning new things. If you know you have a mechanical problem, forget about throwing strikes while you have the luxury no batters and umpires and do whatever it takes to work on addressing that problem. Maybe spend a whole practice where you don’t even pitch full distance, but instead do a few drills that specifically address that problem. You can learn a new movement pitch and take it slowly.
You don’t want to come out of the winter simply having had more pitching reps; you want to come out truly better.
In case you haven’t been following, here is a wonderful 4-part off season strength training program that Joe has been sharing recently:
Note: this advice is meant for pitchers with some experience. Pitchers who are learning to pitch for the first time can engage in normal practice.
Looking into the possibly of getting video analysis for my daughter. She is 16, and has been pitching for 6 years. She started varsity as a sophomore last year but needs to increase speed. Will the video analysis provide drills and techniques to help? How long to get feedback from video? She will start throwing again next week to prepare for season at the end of March. Has been strength training since October. Thank you.