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All right I'd like to hear your opinion. How would you design your pitching workouts (tallking High School here)... What percentage should be mound work vs. flat ground. I know there is a lot of chatter about this lately (I hear that Tom House is proporting a very low ratio of mound work) What say you?
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What percentage should be mound work vs. flat ground.


The argument for mound work is that you should practice as you play. That way you get your timing right.

The argument against mound work is that it places more stress on the arm (which is why you can throw harder).

I'd say you do only as much mound work as you need to keep your timing and mechanics sharp. Conditioning should be done on flat ground.
Quote from DM site - interesting Confused


The idea that flat ground throwing is less stressful than throwing off the mound. It is actually the exact opposite since throwing off the mound allows gravity to assist the body in taking more stress from the arm. This theory has been around for years, which many of us including Nolan Ryan, took as a scientific absolute. It has also been responsible for killing velocity in thousands of pitchers and increasing many arm injuries.
I became a proponent of throwing on the mound a few years back when one of my players started passing everyone else on the staff in terms of velocity. All he did was throw on the mound. No long toss that I know of. Had a mound in his back yard and that's all he did. Later came across Dick Mills stuff and of course he's a big proponent of throwing off the mound. His arguments for it seem to be validated by what I am seeing. I have concluded that a combination of good instruction, long toss, bullpens on the mound and core strength conditioning are the best bets for pitchers. Of the course, none of it does any good unless it is done with purpose, sound mechanics and regularity.
We do both. We do chairwork per some of the stuff we heard at one of Nolan Ryan's speeches, we do shadow/mirror drills and we throw working on form from flat ground. We always get in mound work. We have 3 indoor mounds going and I move between the 3. We have half, 3/4 and full pen workouts.

When we say form from flat, we are talking about 30 feet from the other player working on various grips such as the curve. We are using 2 balls taped together, spinner disk, highlighted balls...

Whether ground or mound, they should always be preceeded by a good stretching program. We include band work. Then followed by a good stretching program. In either case, you also have to get some type of leg work in. Some believe in sprints while others believe in distance but that's another topic.
Last edited by CoachB25

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