quote:Originally posted by Coach_May:
Long toss is for baseball players. The fact is the kids who are the best at long toss have the best arms. When your guys are on the field long tossing your best players will be long tossing together. They will be the ones with the best arms. And the guys that can throw to each other. The players that take the time to work on a consistent long toss program are the same guys that take the time to work harder in the cage. Take the time to work harder at the game. I don't know what others experience is with long toss outside of their own kids experience. But from my experience the players that long toss on a consistent basis simply have stronger arms than those that do not and have not. In fact its not even close. But that is just my experience with players over many years. If your experience leads you to see something different fine.
It's so true. I too have noticed that the kids who wotk diligently on throwing and long-tossing have the best arms on the team. I was once quite skepticle of long toss until last year when my son really started taking it seriously. Almost immediately he added 5 mph to his fastball from the mound. Now it could be just coincidental....or it could be that long toss has merit. I know that it certainly hasn't hurt son's velocity or control one bit. My son doesn't do the whole crow hop very much in his long toss. He pretty much just winds up as if he was on the mound with leg kick and let's her fly.
Son also throws a lot of bullpens to work on velocity also. As to which is better- who knows, or who really cares. Personally I think doing both strengthens different parts of the body and improves different motions to a quicker more efficient form.