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.
Agree with this 100% and it's been my observation as well at every school I've coached at.
You have to understand that there is throwing and there is pitching. Long toss is throwing and pitching is pitching. With every athletic event or movement you want to do it with power. You want to throw the ball hard, you want to pitch the ball hard, you want to hit the ball hard, you want to have a running back hit the hole hard, you want a D-Lineman to fire off the ball hard, you want a basketball player to go for a rebound hard.....I think you get my message. In order to be able to do things hard you have to push yourself hard. It might be in the weightroom or it might be long tossing. Lifting weights correctly will help your arm strength but the overall best way to develop arm strength is to throw and throw far.
I'm not saying you get out there and you take the humongous crow hop, head jerks to the side and all that. Take a good fundamental throw but throw it as far as you can. Don't worry if it's so high you hit a low flying plane - just throw it hard.
For those of you who don't long toss and you want to use the increase in velocity that your son makes I think miss the point. Every person will get stronger as they grow up and there will be a gain in MPH on the mound. But the increase will be much more if they would long toss properly.
I've seen it work too many times for me not to believe in it. But remember you can't long toss for a week or even a month and expect to see real gains. It's got to be done regularly over a significant period of time.