What's up coach Dan Blewett here.
In today's video, I'm going to show you the best baseball arm strength training
exercises that are going to help you increase your velocity, keep your
arm healthy, all that sort of stuff.
So if you're new to my channel, I'm coach Dan Blewett, I was a long time
pro pitcher, long time strength, coach, long time baseball Academy owner.
So if you're looking to increase the health of your arm, throw harder and
need some of those baseball strength training exercises for your arm, then
this is going to be the video for you.
Okay.
The first thing that you need to know about this video is there's going to
be timestamps in the description below.
So if you want to jump to a certain exercise or the end where I put the
workout together for you or at the end, Where you can get a free arm
strength training program, then you can just jump in the description,
click those links, and you can jump right to that spot in the video.
All right.
So here's what you need to know about this video on arm strength training
exercises - number one, I'm going to give you a couple tips about five
and help you understand what isn't a good arm strength training program.
Number two, we're going to go through the different exercises.
Number three, I'm going to show you how to put it all together.
And then number four, I have a free program.
You can get a link to it.
If you want to get your own arm program from me, you can do
that in the description below.
And I'll explain that at the end.
All right.
So for arm strength training exercises, here are the five big
things that you need to know.
Number one, we need to strengthen the decelerator muscles.
So obviously you need that internal rotation strength.
That's going to help you throw harder.
But really your body's going to be limited unless we have great decelerating muscles,
which are the bulk of the rotator cuff.
Number two, the scapula.
So your shoulder blades, we need to make sure they have strength.
And they're really good at moving and sliding, which is
what they do on your rib cage.
We want to make sure they're healthy and they can slide and rotate and
stay safe, stuck to your back.
That's what helps keep your mechanics in check as you get tired and it
helps keep your arm healthy over time.
So number two is we definitely need good scap stabilizers.
Number three, the shoulder needs, and this includes the rotator cuff.
It needs both stamina and it also needs stability.
So as we go through all these different exercises, we're going
to be looking to build both of those and some other qualities too.
But obviously if you're going to pitch a hundred pitches in
a game, you need some stamina.
And the shoulder also needs a lot of stability to keep like all those
tight tolerances of your bones and your muscles in that joint together.
Cause that's how you stay healthy over time.
Number four bands, body, weight, dumbbells, they all, all these
different exercises and these different types of implements have their place
and an arm strengthening routine.
So yeah, bands aren't better than dumbbells, dumbbells
aren't better than body weight.
The oldest sort of have their place and they're going to be, we're
gonna try to use the right implement for the right type of exercise.
And then number five, this is an important thing to know.
There's this myth out there that five pounds is the heaviest weight
that you should use for any of these rotator cuff exercises.
And that's not really true.
If you're strong enough to use six pounds or seven pounds or eight
pounds with really slow controlled, excellent technique, then use it
for aggressive overload and getting stronger over time is really critical.
So we don't want to just magically limit ourselves to five pounds.
If you can do more than that, which it's going to take time to build up to that.
Yeah. More, you know, more power to you.
That was an old wild wives' tale that was kind of founded on.
The idea that if you use more than five pounds, all these bigger muscles
kicked in and then your rotator cuff wouldn't get the work that it needs.
So that's a myth and we're going to kind of debunk that in today's video as well.
Okay.
So let's go over the core exercises in this video.
Number one, prone Ls.
So prone Ls are great for your external rotators.
They're really important for your mid back.
So your upper back, those trap muscles and your, your rhomboids,
all these muscles in your upper back are important for your posture.
And they're important for your arm as it pulls back and starts
to rotate into external rotation.
So prone Ls are a great exercise and they definitely have a
place in your, in your program.
Number two.
Prone Ys.
So prone Ys, or actually they recruit a lot of different muscles, but the
key one that we're targeting here in the, and why is the lower trap?
So the lower trap is not part of your rotator cuff, but it's
one of the really important scap stabilizers in your mid back.
So that's what this one's going to target.
It also lines up with a lot of the other rotator cuff muscles.
And just your shoulder in general.
So the prone Y's are a really critical prone exercise.
And if you don't know what prone means, it just means when you're
laying down on your chest.
So prone, Ls, and prone Y's are two of the first exercises that
you definitely want to include in an arm strength training program.
All right, moving on forearm six way.
So obviously Tommy John surgery is a major problem in baseball, UCL
injuries, which when you get Tommy John surgery, that's when they repair the
owner collateral ligament or the UCL.
So you want to do some forearm training.
So the forearms, the forearms are obviously what's going to kind of keep
your elbow together, that elbow joint.
And so when you have stronger forearms, they're going to
be protective of that UCL.
Now doing forearm exercises, they're not going to say that you're
never going to get a UCL injury.
Uh, but preventative maintenance is important and we have stronger
forms and more importantly, probably.
Forearms that have some stamina to them because you're going to have
to keep your mechanics and you want to keep them that UCL or that, that
UCL stabilized over the course of a whole start, and a long season.
Um, so you want to get forearm training.
That's both reflecting all the different ways that the forum moves and also
giving you some stamina and just bringing some stability to the elbow joint.
So the UCL cannot be protected directly.
Like you can't really strengthen your UCL, but strengthening the
forearm muscles all around it.
They all are sort of like the body guards that help protect the UCL.
Okay.
So the next grouping, we're going to talk about the pushup plus, which
is a great, um, scapula protraction exercise and the sword pool.
So pushups in themselves.
They have a lot of shoulder blade movement.
They have great core stability.
They give you some shoulders stability, cause you have to stabilize.
So pushups in general are good, almost like an arm care exercise in themselves.
But the plus part of this is when you push a little bit farther and you
extend your scapula, your shoulder blades a little bit more into the sky,
and that's called a shorter blade, protraction or scap protraction.
And protraction is one of the movements.
That's probably under-trained too much in most throwing program or
most arm strengthening programs.
It kind of gets missed, but lots of young players have winging scaps, which
means they're shorter blade sort of.
Peel off their, their, their thorax, their upper back.
And they, they have this like winging effect.
Like they're gonna fly away, right.
Training this through scap pushups and the pushup.
Plus they help build those scap protraction muscles, which help keep
the scapula clinging to the back.
So it slides around it and it doesn't peel off in that sort of winging motion.
So these are really important.
The next one, the sword pull, this is sort of like reverse throwing.
And so you're going to fold over the waist slightly, and you're going to go through
your whole sort of deceleration pattern.
And then you're going to come back up to the start.
So the sword pull is a really, really great exercise.
Obviously it looks a lot like throwing and so it's directly strengthening
some of those again, rotator cuff deceleration muscles in the exact
sort of pattern that you would throw the last two exercises in this video
on arm strength training exercises.
Next is the band external rotation, which you probably done if you're
watching this video and external rotations are crucial, right?
They hit the exact muscles in the rotator cuff.
That are slowing the arm down.
So external rotations are one of the staples, one of the
founders, they don't exercise in an, in an arm arm care program.
And so we definitely want to include those.
They're also great with a dumbbell.
I think they're a little more effective with a dumbbell, but I'm sure most of you
have bands that you want to take to the field that you already use a little bit.
So I want to include this version in the video.
And then lastly, Blackburns, this is one of my favorites.
Scap endurance exercises and scap stabilization exercises.
Now the limitation in Blackburns is that it doesn't have a big range of
motion because you're laying on your chest on the ground, but it gives you
a lot of the stamina that you need to pitch deep into games, and it helps
teach your mid back and the scapula stabilizers in lots of different ways.
You actually do six different positions.
Uh, it's a really, really great exercise.
So Blackburns are something you can easily do as a team.
So if you're a coach, it's a great one to give to your players, you
know, as part of their warmup or the game, it's easy to do watching TV.
So it requires no, no extra weight until you start to get stronger at it.
So Blackburns are really excellent.
We've been using those for years and years and years, and they, they make
a big difference in player's posture.
And again, in that scap stability and stamina.
All right.
So we've gone through all the exercises and remember check out the description
of this YouTube video, uh, for links and a full program, but the way you
would organize the, the exercises in this video are the following.
So, number one, we might pair because you're both lying, you're lying.
You're laying down for both of them.
We'd probably pair prone Ls and prone Ys, and do two to three sets
of 12 to 15 reps for each one.
So you can go back and forth with maybe a 30 second break in between.
You're going to get tired.
They do use some of the same muscles, but again, that's important because
as a pitcher, you need that stamina.
So I'm not afraid of doing two prone exercises back to back as
a sort of a super set where you would do one set of pronouns.
One set of prone Ys, then back to prone Ls then back to prone Ys.
So again that they're going to hit different muscle groups,
but they are still gonna use a lot of the upper and mid back.
And so again, you might need to take a little bit of a breather if
you start to get too tired where you can't do both of them properly.
Again, these should be easy enough and they should, um, it shouldn't be too big a
deal to, to super set these two together.
Then for the forum six way, this is something you'll probably want
to just do as its own station.
So after you've done those first two, you'll go into the forearm six way and
you can just bang out all those exercises.
I would go through them as a circuit.
So do you know your wrist extensions, your reflections, your pronation,
super nations, your honor, deviations and radial deviations.
And again, that's explained in more detail, you can jump to all
these videos in the links, in the description, um, but bang out the form
six ways sort of as its own group.
After that the pushup plus and the sword pull, those are great.
They're very different muscle groups.
So you can do your pushup pluses, and then do your sword poles go
back and forth between those two.
Again, two to three sets of 12 to 15 reps is going to be ideal.
And then lastly, band external rotations.
And your Blackburns.
I would do the band external rotations first.
So just bang out your three sets of 12 to 15, and then once you're
done finished with your black burns as a group, buy it, that's going
to be the easiest way to do this.
All right.
So to summarize arm strength training workouts, this stuff is really important
for baseball pitchers, obviously.
You know, the harder you throw, the more stress you put through your arm, the more
innings you throw, the more imperative it is that you have a good arm care regimen.
So baby, this fall, especially as a pitcher, it's kind of
a 100% injury rate sport.
Meaning that if you play long enough, you're going to
have some injury or another.
It's not going to say you're going to end up in the, on the surgeon's table,
but you're going to have bumps and bruises and some pain along the way.
It's just, it's a very stressful motion.
And even if you have.
Quote, unquote amazing, perfect mechanics, which isn't really a thing.
But even if you have excellent pitching mechanics and you have
an excellent arm care regimen and you're very in shape and you get lots
of sleep and have great nutrition, you still can still get injured.
It's just, it's just the way that it is.
So all these things are very good things to do.
It's important.
You want to give yourself the best, possible chance to stay healthy, but
there's also just personal factors.
Genetic factors, like some guys, just really hard workers do everything, right.
They get injured.
I kind of count myself in that group.
And there's other players who are really lazy to be honest, and
they're, they're never injured.
So, you know, the whole factor with injuries and performance enhancement,
it's sometimes very, very muddy.
Now, if you're interested in a readymade program, again, check out the links below.
I have a new strength training program called Early Work, includes
an arm care program and includes a great strength training program.
And we offer free trial.
So if you want to try that out, you can do so in the links, in the description.
But obviously if you follow my channel and you've watched my videos, you know
that I know what I'm talking about.
I've been doing this for a long time with lots of baseball and softball players.
So if you're looking for a good strength training program to follow with a great
arm care program attached with it, then early work is probably for you.
All right.
Thanks for watching.
I appreciate you being here and I will see you here in the next video.