mikechamp wrote: ↑March 16 22, 10:38 am
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote: ↑January 25 22, 10:01 am
His approach is that you protect kids, within reason, by building endurance, using that endurance, and giving the proper rest. So, you bring a kid in on day 1, he throws 25 pitches max effort then 15 pitches 3/4 effort. 3 days (or more) rest. Day 2 is 30 pitches max effort - 17 pitches 3/4 effort. You build the endurance with the 3/4 pitches focusing on mechanics, essentially. Then 40-20. Etc. Get them up to 75 pitches max effort over a couple months. All while maintaining an emphasis on mechanics.
I wanted to revisit this conversation, because we're 2 weeks into our season prep. I adopted this approach, with the following modifications due to our kids being a little older than your son:
40 - 25/15
45 - 30/15
50 - 30/20
55 - 40/15
50 - 35/15 (reduced due to rest days between practices and trying to adhere to MLB Pitch Smart guidelines)
60 - 40/20
But I've got a question for you or your coach/adviser guy. I also try to adhere to something the Cardinals pitching coaches have done, which is severely limit the number of instances where a pitcher throws more than 25 pitches without a break. 30 is about as high as I'll go. So my question is, when you start to get to the upper levels of the table above, do you incorporate a sit-down period during the max effort portion? And if so, for how long?
Because part of my challenge is logistics. Getting 11 pitchers through their pitches in 120 minutes, when I have (at most) 2 mounds to work with. Maybe I'm just fighting a losing battle, though. But I'd be interested in your (and his) thoughts on that dilemma, because I very much agree on the not-pitching-when-fatigued tenet.
See, I'm the same way. Don't let them throw 30 pitches max effort without a rest was my thought.
Talked to the coach and he said getting that many pitches without a rest was the reason we go through this program but their mechanics have to hold up. They have to be monitored for fatigue. So, you watch a guy throw 25/15, no fatigue. You watch him throw 30/15, no fatigue. You watch him throw 35/15, no fatigue, 40/15 and he gets fatigued. Okay, send him back down to 35/15 and repeat that step again until he gets to 40/15 without fatigue. Out of probably 60 throwing sessions between our kids, we've stopped 5 of them short. One kid got stopped twice in a row and went to see a doctor. Doc said he had growing pains more/less that were very common in athletes. Said no throwing for a month (football, baseball, etc). Gave him some exercises to do. He just started back up (step 1) and is doing well. The other 3, we saw kids shaking their hands = immediate stop and 1 week rest. Most of these were early and we haven't seen any issues since.
At first, I was like, [expletive], this program is getting everyone hurt. But after thinking about it, I think we're just more in tune to the kids. Instead of letting them warm up and pitch wily nily, we can focus on them during practice and make sure they're good. Who knows how much hand shaking and bad mechanics and fatigue and what not we missed last year.
The program has also worked very well in terms of their production. Lots of strikes. As a team, we're over 50% strikes thrown in real games which is leaps and bounds above the teams we're playing at this point.
Back to your question about max pitches without a rest. In practice, I don't think you're seeing the same intensity that you see in a game. So, there's that. As noted, that many pitches is precisely the purpose of the program. And, adding the rest between innings only helps.
Regardless, we still don't let kids throw more than 30 pitches in an inning.
1. They're not doing well if it takes 30 pitches in the first place.
2. There's almost certainly a mechanical breakdown if it takes that many at this level, even if we can't perceive it.
3. Those pitches are going to be high intensity, higher than what they practice at with 'max effort'.
The logistics problem is real.
One thing you could do, if you have the setup, would be to let pitchers throw to hitters as they're throwing their pitches. This works well in a cage. Not so much inside without a cage though. But, at least doing it that way, you're getting the throwing program done and kids are getting to face live pitching, which is undoubtedly a benefit. Add in a live catcher as well and you get a lot of work in, especially considering at the younger ages the main parts of the game remain pitching, hitting, and catching.
Luckily we have 4 mounds and 4 cages. We have to modify the length from 46' to about 43' to fit a mound, hitter, and catcher all in one cage, but whatever. Even with that many cages, we still struggle to get all the kids their pitches in 1.5 hours when kids are at the 50+ pitch mark. It goes much faster with coach catchers and speeds up as kids get their rhythm.
One thing we thought about was shifting the onus to the parents of the kids to have them get their throws in. Though this runs into the issue of not being able to monitor mechanics, not being able to monitor for fatigue, not having access necessarily to mounds, everyone throwing on different days, etc. Ideally, some of the kids will be working with personal coaches and can throw with them and at that point just have to be worked around.