What's up?
I’m Coach Dan Blewett.
In today's video, we're going to talk about weighted balls.
So when should you.
Start a weighted ball program, if at. All?
Are they safe?
What are some of. The pros and cons?
And if you do choose to do one, when is going to be the right time for you?
All right.
So if you're here, I'm Coach
Dan I'm a former pro pitcher and also a former baseball academy.
Baseball and softball academy owner.
So I've had. Skin in the game.
I've done some way to ball training myself in the past.
I've also done weighted ball programs with my players.
In the past, and I've also.
Done Non-weighted ball programs, which were the predominance of our programs
because I really don't.
Necessarily like the way that weighted ball training is done.
So here's the thing that I need to first explain before.
We get to the verdict, which I'll give you at.
The end all my recommendations about what I would do with my son or niece
or nephew or whoever, if they wanted to throw harder.
The first.
Thing you have to understand is that. Weighted balls.
Are not inherently dangerous.
This is a football.
It weighs, I think.
Like 17 ounces or something like that.
Don't quote me on it. This is a weighted ball.
This is a vortex ball.
Much heavier than a. Baseball.
This is a weighted ball softball.
This is a weight, a ball.
So, look, if it was true that.
Weighted balls themselves or, you know, these demon things
and that only five ounces was.
This pure perfect weight.
Then, you know, injuries would abound in.
All these other sports softball. Not really the case. Football?
Not really the. Case.
Really. The only people that are constantly.
Injuring their arms are baseball. Pitchers.
Yes, they're injuries for all positions in baseball.
But it is a.
Heavy concentration for pitchers.
And we all know this.
So it's not just throwing and it's not just throwing a heavier object.
What really.
Comes down to the risk involved.
With pitching a baseball at high speed and also weighted ball.
Programs or any velocity program in general.
Is how you. Do it.
And the intensity with which you're throwing these balls.
So the big. Problem that I. Have here is that.
You know, again, weighted balls are not inherently dangerous.
It comes down to the way you do it.
You could recreationally throw the football around all the time,
you know, in your backyard year round and probably never suffer any ill effects.
But people don't use weighted baseballs. That same way.
No one's ever going in the backyard and just tossing the eight ounce
weighted ball around this. It's not a thing that happens.
It could be, and there's no reason you couldn't.
But that's not the way they're used.
So when people are talking about.
Weighted balls for baseball, they're talking about velocity program.
So I want to just make this distinction that today the point is.
Should you starting a weighted ball velocity.
Program, is that a safe thing by different ages.
Or should you wait.
And focus on other things when you're younger?
So the first thing that you need to know is that young players
and I'm saying young, I'll say like under 15.
So middle school, elementary school,
these kids should not be doing weighted ball programs.
I'm just going to put that out there.
And the reason being is you can't out train your skeletal immaturity.
You can't out-train not hitting puberty.
Yet you.
Can't go in the weight room and try to to to gain five or ten more miles per hour
when you're only 12 and you're £86 and you're skeletal, immature.
Really.
The bulk of safe.
Gains happen when they're progressing.
Slowly over age.
Or when.
You hit this level of.
Skeletal maturity in high school.
Once you're starting to go through.
Puberty, your growth plates fuzed.
And then you have a lot less risk and you.
Start to like. Really hardened up and become more of a man and less of.
A little boy.
So the question you have to ask yourself, if you're.
A parent, you're looking at your. 12 year old or your.
13 year old or your 11 year old,
and you're saying, all right, my son doesn't throw as.
Hard as he wants to.
Should we do a weighted ball program?
The question is, how much are you really going
to get out of this and are you going to be able to outrun.
Their lack of physical. Maturity?
And the answer I'm here to tell you is,
Really a lot of these young kids, when they have.
Like a big spurt of like velocity or whatever,
they're just going to sort of taper off later.
You don't have continuous. Huge.
Jumps in, whether it's strength, speed, size, any of it.
Over and over and over.
You have a it all tends to sort of like evened out to a.
Relatively like.
Linear progression over time.
You know, everyone gains a couple of miles per hour every year.
Everyone gains six, seven, eight miles per hour every year.
Everyone would throw in the hundreds. Right.
So the thing to understand is
what can you control when a player is young
and you can control their love for throwing, their.
Love for practice, their love for baseball.
Their mechanics.
Their. Development of. Offspeed pitches, their focus.
On throwing strikes and commanding, and this mind body connection
that's important to throwing strikes, all of those things if you develop those
when young and there is limited brainpower and focus and times.
It is it is sort of a. Zero sum game.
Sometimes you can't just do everything.
So a lot of times when you do.
Focus so. Heavily on gaining.
Velocity, it pushes.
Brain power and practice time and focus. Out of.
Hitting your spot and work on your changeup and all this.
Other stuff.
I see a lot of kids who are obsessed with their.
Velocity and their parents are right there with them.
And it's a bad thing because now all they know how to do
is throw as hard as they can.
They go out in the game,
they're checking the radar gun every half inning
and they're completely taken by their velocity.
And if they don't throw.
86 today, if they're only 84, they're really sad even even on the pitch.
Well, and often these.
Players don't become good. Pitchers because they're so.
Taken mentally.
By velocity.
Only.
And velocity is just one aspect of pitching.
Everyone at this point knows some player who throws 90 in high school
who is only going to junior college.
Or isn't really recruited that well at all because the kid can't throw strikes.
Right. And of course. Throwing strikes is not that easy.
So I don't want to make that
make a flippant statement that everyone you better throw strikes is not that easy.
But there's more and more kids who. Have velocity, who.
Don't have anything else than ever.
And I credit a lot that to these.
Velocity programs that are so
pushing kids toward this mindset where velocity is only thing
I'm really concerned about and they're sort of like personal identity
gets wrapped up in it and it's not a real healthy thing.
So you do not. Have to be velocity focused.
When you're young.
To have good. Velocity when you're older.
That's one of the first things I want to let you know.
Is that focusing.
On this now when you're ten, 11, 12, 13, 14
does not mean you're going to be a harder throw when you're older.
In a lot of ways that the opposite is true, because if you're focused on.
Really hard training when they're young, A, they might burn out
and say, I'm done with baseball.
This feels I work. I hate this too.
If they start to develop.
Pain or any kind of injuries, even small ones that don't require surgery,
they might be like, You know what?
Baseball hurts. Baseball is. Not.
Particularly. Fun anymore, both because.
It does feel. Like a job and because my arm always bugs me.
I just want to go play video games.
So as a parent. It's not.
Just should we try to get them more velocity?
Because sure. Who wouldn't want more.
Velocity? But it's also a.
Question of am I doing the right things when they're young?
Am I building their passion for the game by building this fun
like you know, they they love to go out and throw a football, throw a Nerf.
Ball, throw a softball, throw a baseball.
Throw a tennis ball when they're young so that when they're older and they do.
Start to have a little bit of.
You know, arm problems or practice gets tough
or they're not playing that well on the field.
They're still really motivated to go practice and put in the work to get.
Better, to get that.
Playing time that they want because they love the game so much.
But weighted ball.
Programs and even strength training to an extent.
I tell parents all the time, do not push your kids into strength training.
Wait until they are begging you to do it and they're ready.
All these things feel like a job. When I retired from baseball.
I was so.
Burned out from strength training and arm care and all.
This stuff that's like good.
Wholesome, healthy things to do to keep yourself on the field.
But they suck.
So if your kid's.
Doing velocity program at 12 bossy programs,
like they can be fun and motivating.
But is that the right thing for him?
Or should he be spending more time being a kid recreationally throwing practicing.
Baseball skills rather than specific velocity.
Training, stuff like that?
So again, just remember that focusing heavily on velocity when they're young
does not automatically mean they will be harder throwers when they're older.
And it could. Be the opposite.
One thing I want to mention about weight of all training.
Is that it's still.
Relatively new.
It's still relatively. Experimental.
It really came into prominence just in the last ten years.
So a lot of players that.
Are doing it, it's still unclear.
If they're healthier because the weight of all training or less healthy.
From way too much training. We do know the injuries.
Injury rates have gone up.
They continue to not fall like we haven't figured anything out really
to lower the the you know, to reduce pitching injuries in general.
We have reduced shoulder injuries significantly.
So labrum surgeries, rotator cuff surgeries, those are both.
Dropped tremendously.
Because of exercise, like the.
Throwers, ten rotator.
Cuff exercises, quote unquote, arm. Care.
But the elbow.
You know, the UCL, Tommy John, surgery.
I've had Tommy John twice.
The elbow is a more passive structure.
You can't strengthen your Tommy John ligament.
You alter ulnar collateral ligament,
but you can strengthen all the muscles in your shoulder.
So shoulder injuries have.
Really dropped off, which is wonderful.
But elbow injuries, because again, it's a more
passive structure that you can't directly train and make stronger.
They have continued to rise.
Think about all the things that you've you know, the humans have been ingesting.
There's been a lot of food additives that took five, ten years before.
We realized.
This thing is getting out, giving a lot of people cancer.
There are lots of.
Things that it seems at first that there's no evidence that they're.
Harmful. But just because.
There's no evidence that they're harmful doesn't mean.
That there is. No harm.
So no evidence of harm is not the same as no harm.
So a lot of stuff with the weight of balls.
And I'm not saying that they're injuring everyone.
It's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that we still really don't know.
And the problem is that there's so many confounding variables in the mix.
You know, you do weight and ball training for eight weeks out of the year.
Well, then you also throw, you know, 65 innings
between high school and summer ball.
And you also do. Strength training and you also play.
Football for a couple of weeks in the fall.
So if you injure your arm.
Which is it, was it the way to ball training?
Was it playing football in addition to two baseball seasons?
Was it throwing 65 innings?
Was it throwing 20% curveballs?
We really don't know. It's so hard to pick this out.
And this is why it's often really hard
to find out what nutritional things are making people.
Sick or where is this.
Carcinogen coming from with the human body and all these sort of experiments
that we run on it and testing new things out and trying new types of training.
It becomes really difficult to figure out what is the.
Essentially effective dose of something.
And when something goes wrong.
Which exact.
You know, thing is the culprit.
So we know injury rates are climbing.
We know weight of ball training and velocity training is
a very prevalent thing.
Now, we don't really know exactly how those two are interacting.
We really just don't.
So as a parent,
I would say and this is what I would do if I had a son, I don't have any children.
If I had a son, I would do exactly what I do with my kids, my academy.
And we did some way to ball programs early on and we had some injuries.
We had two injuries in over like four years, but that was too many for me.
And I didn't like how that made me feel as a coach.
So we scrapped it, so we didn't do any way toward training
after like my first two years in business.
And so I. Said.
I don't know what's going on.
I think I did this really safely.
I think I did everything the right way, but I don't know.
So we're going to focus on mechanics.
We're going to focus on pitch quality.
We're going to focus on developing great offspeed pitches.
We're going to focus on command and a lot of the stuff
that pitchers are going to need anyway, they're going to get that from me.
If they want to get something else.
At a different facility. They can go do. That.
But that was what we focused on.
And that's the same decision that I would implore you today to make, which is.
If your kids are below high school age.
Focus on pitch. Ability. All three pitches.
Command, love of the game, mechanics, all that good stuff.
And then when they're getting a little older, they're 15, 16 and saying,
hey, we, you know, you're throwing 75 at 16 if you want to.
Play college baseball. If that's a desperate.
Need for you, you're going to need to add five or ten miles per hour more.
So how can we start to really ramp up your training to maybe reach that goal,
knowing that it'll.
Be a little bit riskier than.
Maybe some other things you could do?
So that's an informed decision you could make later.
But I don't think the benefits of doing really intense velocity
training when you're young,
I don't think that's going to have the long term benefits that you want
because again, it could burn the kid out
mentally, could burn your kid out emotionally and physically.
They could have more injuries in. They're young.
They could feel like it's their job.
And all these factors.
Cause them to quit.
Baseball outright or start. To stagnate.
Not really enjoy it, not get any better as they get older
because they all want to practice as much because it's not as fun.
So these are a lot of.
Things to think about as a parent.
So I know there's no easy answer.
To this, but if you ask. Me just to sum this up, I would say, look,
if your kid is not in high school age, don't do way to ball training, don't do.
A velocity.
Program in general, do a pitching program, do something focused on mechanics
and learn to pitch in developing their offspeed stuff, their mental.
IQ or their baseball IQ.
And their mental skills
do strength training if they want to do it and do a lot of arm care.
All those things will improve their velocity greatly.
And my kids and my programs, even though we didn't do it on balls,
they gain 3 to 5 miles per hour every year
and there's a bunch of them still playing college baseball today.
So it's not a zero sum where you.
Have to do velocity.
Training, a way to ball train to get where you want to go.
It can be definitely implemented safely, but there's still a lot
we don't know about it. So I think erring on the safe.
Side is a really good way to go about it. Look.
If you have any questions, leave it in the comments below.
And just remember, you might have done way too
well training for one or two years and you could be perfectly fine.
And that's great.
But that doesn't mean the weight of all training
might not come back to bite you in the future,
or that it's going to be safe.
Over a five year period or a.
Six or seven year period.
Think of longevity.
And remember, there's a lot of stuff that you don't know
and the industry still doesn't know about the way
some of these velocity training programs are affecting the arm long term.
All right.
Thanks again for. Watching and I'll see you here in the next video.