What Are the Best Arm Care Exercise For the Travel Ball Pitcher?
It’s always a bit strange to me but at the Texas Baseball Ranch® we get the question “What are the best arm care exercises for the travel ball pitcher?” asked on a regular basis.
To me it’s like asking, “Coach Wolforth, what should I eat for lunch?” or “What should my favorite song be?”
These things are very personal and I believe your arm care process should be as well.
However, at the end of the day, I realize many people just want some direction on this rather popular subject. They are fearful of “choosing the wrong thing or doing too little or doing too much.” Most people want some help in structuring an arm care program that will help them stay healthy as well as prepare them to perform at their personal best.
I have been training pitchers since 1993 so I do have what I hope is a very helpful answer to this sincere question. First, I’m going to give a short answer to the question and then I’m going to suggest a path of discovery and point out its practical implementation.
My answer: You should do the program and utilize the tools that make the absolute most sense to YOUR arm and body. In other words, which activities allow your arm/elbow/shoulder/body to be ready for full effort, as well as remain healthy, durable and feeling great?
Quite often that means blending two or three different programs and tools together to create your own personal hybrid of sorts.
There are literally dozens and dozens of excellent arm care exercises, tools, protocols and procedures available in 2024. I personally believe that one of your primary responsibilities as a serious competitive pitcher is to gradually experiment and test various methods. Over time, you should develop a process that you like and that makes your arm and body feel amazing.
While someone or some group may claim their particular process and/or tools are by far superior to the others, my 25 years of experience tells me quite clearly that ‘ideal’ or ‘superior’ exists primarily in the personal perspective and opinion of the individual athlete.
For example, while some might say elastic tubing is their favorite, others might champion the shoulder tube, while others will prefer weighted balls or wrist weights. When someone asks me my favorite I nearly always respond, “My favorite arm care tool or process is the one you like (makes your arm feel great), the one you can actually utilize before a game or practice and the one that will fit inside of the schedule/time constraints that you are under.”
In other words, the process may vary depending on whether you are training or competing.
It may change depending upon if you are a starter or a reliever.
It may change depending upon cooler or warmer weather.
It may change depending on whether it is the only game of the day or if you are competing in multiple games that day.
At TBR we have our athletes regularly test and experience many of these exercises, tools, protocols and procedures and rate and record their rating 0-10.
0=Complete dislike and 10=Love
Then, based on those rankings, we have them create arm care processes for three different scenarios.
Scenario #1. No time constraints. Take as long as you would like. Create your ideal process with no constraints in time and/or in equipment.
Scenario #2. 30 minute time window. Create your ideal process with only 30 minutes available to you and using only the tools that you can bring with you on a plane and/or you are competing on a field far from your home base.
Scenario #3. Emergency/Expedited protocol. 5 minute time window ONLY. Create your ideal process with only 5 minutes available to you and you must get hot ASAP.
Going through those scenarios will give the pitcher a great foundation on what to do as the situations and circumstances change in the chaos of competition.
Finally, I highly encourage each athlete to continue to test, shape and evolve his process as he goes forward.
The primary thing I would counsel anyone against is blindly accepting an arbitrary process or set of tools and/or continually going through the process because it is the only one you know or because someone ‘cool’ or a MLB star uses it. That might be an OK place to begin your journey or experiment with but potentially a very limiting place to remain if it isn’t a good fit. Only through self discovery, attention and reflection would one know if a process is an excellent match or not.
This will give you a great beginning in creating and building an arm care process that will support you under the duress and chaos of a competitive season and allow you to consistently perform at your best and stay healthy during a long season.
Coach Ron Wolforth is the founder of the Texas Baseball Ranch® and has written six books on pitching including the Amazon Best Seller, Pitching with Confidence. Since 2003, The Texas Baseball Ranch® has had over 579 pitchers break the 90 mph barrier, 208 have toped 94mph or better, and 135 of his students have been drafted in the MLB’s June Amateur Draft. Coach Wolforth has consulted with 13 MLB teams, dozens of NCAA programs and has been referred to as “ America’s Go-to-Guy on Pitching” and “The Pitching Coaches Pitching Coach.” Coach Wolforth lives in Montgomery, TX with his wife, Jill. They are intimately familiar with youth select, travel baseball and PG events as their son Garrett (now a professional catcher) went through the process. Garrett still holds the PG Underclass All-American Games record for catcher velocity at 89mph which he set in 2014 at the age of 16.
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